fossilised | For Steve

Even if Tony didn't know exactly what he was doing, and even if he still hated Bucky for everything the Soldier had done, he wouldn't be able to miss how much this course of action deeply affected the man. He looked beyond terrified as the words came, his metal hand digging so deeply into the floor of the cave that he left genuine gouges in the rock, and the last word was accompanied by a scream of desperation, raw and terrible.

And then all of a sudden he was nothing, he was blank, he was obedient.

His handler told him to not let them be captured, and so he obeyed. Tony would get to see the Winter Soldier at work, what would happen if all of Cap's natural serum abilities was honed into decades of training, ferocity, and utter ruthlessness. The Soldier killed the full pack of dogs with his bare hands in a little under sixty seconds before he turned back to his handler and picked him up with care.

Then he began to run.

Not the running he had been doing before, where he fought through the snow with desperation, but a flat out sprint where he simply didn't let the depth of the snow or the rough terrain slow him down for a second. His legs got cut up, his ankle twisted on uneven ground and the crunching sound of bone was audible, and yet still he ran. The Soldier could run on a broken ankle, the pain was nothing, irrelevant.

He saw the quinjet and he banked to the left. Don't let them capture us pertained to everybody, after all.

There was, Tony was now sure, no greater evil than torturing s person. He would never forget the things he had seen on that screen and he was still not sure how to live with himself after making Bucky go through this. It didn't matter that he had been asked to. It didn't matter at all. The sounds of everything happening to him from being lifted out of a cave mouth whose snow covering was covered in gore from dogs and from men to the moment he saw the quinjet would not leave him. Not ever.

"Rendevous," he whispered, arms clutching Bucky so he didn't get dropped. "That's our extraction. No one is inside is to be hurt. They're... Allies." The ramp to the quinjet was already lowering anyway and Tony was never so happy in his life to see Steve Rogers.

"Buck-- Tony--?" The blond was shocked. Understandably, so. Tony motioned for him to get out of the way.

"Start us up! We need to get out of here immediately!" Sam was on point for that and confirmed as Bucky ran on his broken ankle up the ramp to the cargo hold. "Shit. Down. Put me down. And you sit." Bucky would t do it on his own without orders.

The Soldier didn't need the added explanation of them being allies. He had his orders not to hurt anyone inside the quinjet and so he wouldn't raise a hand to them even if they beat him to death. He was utterly blank eyed as he got them up the ramp, looking through Steve as though he didn't even exist, something that stole the breath from Steve's lungs in one painful rasp.

Tony was put down as the quinjet lifted off and Sam took them back into the air, and the Soldier simply sat down on the floor the second he was ordered to. Straight backed, eyes only on his handler, waiting for the next order.

"Buck--" Steve looked like he was going to try, voice hoarse and hesitant. "Buck... Buck, look at me. Tony, what-- what happened to you both?"

The Soldier didn't glance at Steve even once. He was buried under layers of obedience, nothing existed for him except the mission and his orders. Even his ankle, obviously broken for the splinter of bone poking through the skin, didn't get any of his attention.

It was too much. Tony didn't want to talk. These details were pointless, like oil being added to a lamp you were trying to extinguish. He held up his hand, the bloody one, to Steve, and dropped into the jumpseat beside Bucky. The Soldier's head was just above his knee and Tony could reach out and ruffle his hair if he wanted to. He didn't.

"He needs medical attention," Tony told Steve. "And someone needs to get back there and clean out that silo. Their portal technology is in there." Tony looked pretty bad too, shivering in his tshirt, cuts on his face from falling debris, and the extra damp side where blood had seeped into the black material of the shirt. He really wasn't interested in being poked and prodded at right now though. Not when Bucky was suffering under all of those layers of forced upon blankness. If the man remembered all of his victims, it meant that he would remember all of this too.

And Tony wanted him comforted.

He took a few breaths and then looked up at Steve. "He's not Bucky right now. I triggered the Soldier."

One of Steve's worst nightmares since he had found out what happened to Bucky, was that he lost the man to HYDRA again. It was the fear of being unable to protect him again, of failing to live up to the amount of times that Bucky had been there for him all those years, and it seemed that was coming true. But when Tony said that he triggered the Soldier... not that he had been triggered, but I triggered...

Everything happened so fast.

Steve was moving to try and pin Tony and punch him without even thinking, but he found himself flat on his back with a metal hand around his throat. Bucky hadn't even stood up, he had been ordered to sit down after all and he hadn't been given leave to stand again, and so that made it a little more difficult to protect his handler. Still, a hand to the attacker's ankle and a sharp pull, followed by fingers at his throat should do it.

"Заказы, сэр?"

Tony had dodged a big blond bullet for that one. Steve had reacted without thinking, because if he had thought for a moment, he would understand that Tony hadnt know. The trigger words. No one on the team did. So for Tony to encite the Soldier, he either had to have been forced to by HYDRA or Bucky had told him how.

Tony slid back down to his seat as Bucky impassively held Steve down. He would have to wait for orders for another few minutes before Tony responded in Russian. "Отпусти его." His wound in his side had opened a little further and he clamped a hand to it quickly, breathing out as his eyes closed and his head hit the back of the hull. "You can get your kicks in later, Cap. How's your battlefield triage? He needs his ankle set. He was running on that."

Bucky might be blank but he was still a person to Tony. And tony would not let him suffer.

Steve genuinely couldn't imagine a situation in which things would be so hopeless that Bucky would give someone the keys to triggering him. He didn't relaunch himself at Tony when the Soldier obediently let him go, but the set of his shoulders and the way he trembled from head to foot said that he was angrier than he had ever been before. Bucky was his sticking point, Bucky was his everything.

"...make it stop, Tony."

Steve's voice was utterly broken, cracked and brittle. He moved to crouch beside his friend, but god the idea of causing him even more pain by snapping a broken bone around made it impossible for him to touch. Surely it was better to leave it, let him rest it, until they could get him to a hospital with painkillers and anaesthesia.

"Let him go, make him Bucky again, give him back his freedom."

The Soldier watched this exchange with no outward expression, though he did tilt his face to his handler after a moment or two.

"Могу ли я двигаться?"

It had been the wrong move to look at Steve while he spoke. Funny. Steve looked exactly how Tony felt right now. He lowered his eyes, not wanting to look the blond directly in the face any longer. The truth was, he had no idea how to free Bucky. He had no idea what he was doing at all right now except calling up to Sam to get Bruce in the line to talk him through an ankle set since Steve was being no help.

To Bucky's question, Tony agreed that he could move if he wanted to. "Преуспевать," the word came out easily enough followed by a suggestion (which would likely turn into an order in Barnes' mind) to stay seated so he could look at his injuries. Let Rogers loom above them.

Tony didn't have a proper answer for him anyway.

Not until it dawned on him that he could query Bucky the way he could check the source code of a machine he was hacking. Tony frowned. "Есть ли способ, чтобы дать вам свободу?"

Those were conflicting orders. To be allowed to move and told to stay seated, but the Soldier was resourceful and he would not allow himself to fail at either order. So he shifted along the floor without getting up in order to get closer to his handler, and then turned to face him. He took off his shirt and began to tear it into strips, before he began trying to roughly bind the worst of his handler's wounds by stretching up as far as he could.

The question caught him by complete surprise. It wasn't a mission report request, or a demand for information that he knew. How to give him freedom? The concept was such an alien one to the Soldier, freedom wasn't something applied to tools.

"Разве я не свободен?"

No, stupid question, of course he mustn't be if the question was being asked. He frowned, and then gave the only answer he could think of, fairly certain it must be the wrong one.

"Убей меня."

At least Bruce came on the line pretty quickly, voice sounding loud over the speakers in the quinjet, relief evident in his voice. "Tony, there you are, thought you'd run out on us for good... you okay?"

"Don't be insane," Tony snapped, pushing Bucky's hands away. "I'm fine and-- Никто не собирается вас убить." No more killing. No more pain and suffering. "Stop asking me, all right? And we are done with Russian. Shit. Everything I say you're going to take as an order--" This was all bullshit. "One minute, Banner. I'll be right with you," he grumbled. He couldn't stand this, but Steve was useless and Sam was... Sam. Good in a pinch, currently flying. Didn't matter. Sam was ignorable.

Tony hiked up Bucky's pant leg and another vomitted to see the state of his ankle. The bone bad poked clear through and wasn't even bloody at the tip. That was disturbing.

"Just... Stop needing orders. Do whatever you want as long as you don't actively try to hurt someone and we'll go from there, all right?" he snapped at Bucky before he sucked in a breath and tried to clear his dizziness. "Now. Banner. I have a wound here with bond literally protruding out of the ankle. I need immediate triage before I puke all over everything. And then I need back to back vacations without any of you getting me kidnapped."

"Not that kind of doctor, Tony!" Bruce protested with slight apprehension from what he was hearing. He wasn't going to refuse what help he could offer, but at the same time he wasn't a medically licensed doctor. He exhaled heavily. "Okay, is there a lot of blood? If not, then the best thing you can do is pain relief until you get to a hospital, if there is then we're going to need a tourniquet."

The Soldier sat utterly immobile as though he had been powered down, the only indication of how distressed he was showing in the slight trembling that shuddered through his entire body every few seconds. How did he not need orders? He didn't even know what want felt like. But not doing what he 'wanted' was disobeying a direct order and that was a failure. They'd take him back to the reconditioning chamber, they'd punish him.

"Tony..!" Steve finally snapped the word out, eyes fixed on Bucky who was utterly silently hyperventilating, still without moving a muscle. "Tony, make it stop! Bucky, Buck, please..."

"What kind of doctor are you exactly? I hear a lot of negatives out of you. Fine. Get Cho. We have maybe two hours in the air to get back if I boost flight range and we stay low over the ocean-- God damn it, Rogers, in case you haven't noticed, I have no clue how to make him stop!"

Grant, who was seated beside Bruce as the radio played everything everyone was saying in that plane grabbed from the microphone. With JARVIS down, they were using good old fashioned hands on technology and Grant could get behind that. He pushed the button to talk and though he wasn't there and he couldn't lead anyone like this, took control of the situation.

"Steve, you go through to him last time. He knows you. He doesn't think he does but it's true. You need to talk him through this. Mr. Stark, he needs orders right now. Not giving him anything is conflicting with his programming and stressing him out. I can hear his breathing. If you triggered him, he'll be looking to you so give command over to Steve. You have to do it verbally."

Grant waited until he heard Tony's voice: "New... Mission, Soldier. Steve Rogers is your handler. You'll do what he says."

Good. "Okay, your turn, Steve. Leave his ankle. He won't feel it anyway and that's not important. What did you do last time to break through his programming, Steve?"

Tony got up from the floor and limped towards Sam. He was done with this bullshit. He was so done.

But that let Steve kneel down in his place. "Hey pal. Bucky. Do you know me?"

Sam looked sideways towards Tony, sympathy painting his face. He sometimes still felt like a sidekick to the real heroes, but he was a good guy and he felt for all of them. This whole situation really disturbed him on a personal level, he had worked with vets for a long time and seen PTSD, but never anything like this. It was a whole new game in a whole new ball park.

"You doing okay there, Tony? Need anything?"

Back in the main hanger, the Soldier's attention had shifted immediately over to Steve. It wasn't quite as easy as that for one handler to exchange for another, he still owed his ultimate loyalty to Tony and any orders from him would override any orders from Steve. But he was used to being given interim handlers for specific missions, so it soothed him to have a pattern of behaviour he understood, allowing his breathing to go back to normal.

His eyes were dark and intense on Steve's face, his voice low and gravelly. "You're my new handler, Steve Rogers." He'd been told no more Russian, after all.

It was a long, long two hours of Steve sitting with Bucky, talking about their friendship. For awhile, Grant listened and then he turned off the radio and smiled at Bruce. "We should probably get everything ready, huh? And maybe tell Col. Rhodes where to direct the military.? Someone will need to see to the Silo." He wasn't Captain America but he had all the qualifications for it.

Tony waved a hand towards Sam and stayed silent, listening to Steve talk incessantly. He was going to unravel, he could almost feel it,, but as any hero with a martyr syndrome, Tony kept it to himself.

He was ready to get off the plane after the quinjet landed on the roof, though. Natasha was there waiting, Rhodey and Thor off to take care of the mess in Siberia. Grant and Bruce were inside with Helen Cho. Tony was the first off of the quinjet, stomping down the ramp, right passed Romanoff and then passed Grant and Banner, until he could be somewhere alone for a long, long while. He'd stitch himself up later. The bleeding was just a trickle anyway. He'd be fine.

It was Bucky that would be star of the show for awhile anyhow. His coldness made everyone worried, but Grant took lead on that too and jogged into the quinjet to stand at the edge of the ramp and watch Steve and Bucky together.

"Welcome home."

Listening to Steve talk was exactly what he needed. It didn't help there and then, the Soldier gave no reaction to the endless stories of a life that had little to do with him, but the seed had been planted. It only grew stronger when he saw Grant, something in him innately aware that this was someone he wanted to protect. Wanted to. Not had to. But again, it was too far buried at first.

It didn't take long at all to set his ankle, especially with Helen Cho there to help, and he was soon being led oh-so-carefully by Grant and Steve back to building seven in the hope that getting a shower and into fresh non-Soldier clothes would help him. Nobody even really thought of Tony and how much he must be suffering too, not for a couple of hours at least until Banner made his way to Tony's rooms and tried to get in.

JARVIS barred his entrance, finally up and running again, under orders to let his master rest. Bruce left a message to be relayed asking to help, then another three hours after that telling Tony to please not isolate himself. He wanted to help, they all wanted to help, and he was sure that Tony must have gone through something awful there as well.

But he couldn't force Tony to let him in.

The Soldier didn't speak for the next four days. Four long, silent, blank days where he followed Steve like a shadow and obeyed every suggestion as an order. Where it seemed like he might be that way forever. But the incessant company of Grant and Steve, both of whom were trying to keep themselves from breaking, was wearing the Soldier down even if he couldn't see it.

On the fifth day, as the Soldi-- as Bucky stared down into the oatmeal they'd put in front of him and told him to eat, because orders were the only thing that worked, he put his spoon down and looked up at Steve and Grant. His words were quiet, hesitant, but they were his.

"I prefer pancakes."

The team was divided again, Tony in his ivory tower in Manhattan, the rest floating around the compound a few hours north by car. There were things to do and places to be, the world never stopped needing protection, but for the most part, the rest of the Avengers did what they could to allow Steve to stay with Bucky. And when he couldn't, Grant was always there.

He was doing the cooking, since it was the least he could do, when Bucky mentioned pancakes. Grant had been making another chocolate cherry cake from scratch while Steve and Bucky were supposed to be having breakfast when the words made him nearly knock over his batter. "Yeah? Chocolate chip?"

Even Steve was smiling. It had taken more time than it ought to for Bucky to come back to himself after an event but at least he was crawling back. Whatever happened to him in Siberia must have really forced him to bury everything down.

It was probably a good thing that he was back. Especially considering that s sleepless, genius engineer was working on his Ultron project. He'd not let Banner inside. He hadn't spoken to him save to say that he was busy and he really needed the peace and quiet if he was going to pull off his next feat of inspiration.

Needing to wrap the world in armor was a metaphor for needing to wrap himself in armor, really.

But most of the Avengers paid him no attention. Tony Stark went through these manic phases before, after all. It was nothing to think about really.

And Grant and Steve certainly weren't!

They had the first signs of their Bucky back.

It was hard, clawing back to himself, but he was doing it with the determination of a man who was either going to get there or die trying. Steve and Grant were his anchors, the reasons he managed to fight so hard, and why he finally had Bucky on the surface. It wasn't quite so cut and dry, but at least he had begun to get his autonomy back.

He didn't say much else until he had eaten the pancakes, watched by beaming blonds, and pushed his chair back to stand up without actually being given an order to go and shower or-- do anything at all.

"I need to go to Manhatten, I have to see Stark."

"Maybe in a day or two, pal," Steve said before Grant shook his head and he rephrased. "But I can give him a call and see if he's around?" Steve had a harder time than Grant did with this, likely because Grant had full knowledge of what had made Bucky who he was now and because he had worked so fericely with him back in his own reality. He had more experience here and Steve was too used to having results these days to step back and let things happen on their own terms until it was brought to his attention what he was doing.

"I actually miss the Tower. Seeing New York the way it is now. Why don't we take a drive up anyway?" Grant knew that Bucky could slip, but one of them had triggered him. Steve was currently his handler and not his target. So Bucky was the safest he could possibly be with them. He wasn't worried. "But let me get this cake in the over first? We'll bring it to see Mr. Stark. Everyone likes cake."

Two hours later, the three were piled into one of Tony's cars left in the garage. Steve was at the wheel and Bucky up front with him while Grant moved from window to window to take in all the sights. Even the traffic jam leading over the bridge to the island city.

"Never gets old," he said wistfully. "I love this city. Even the broken parts."

The probably currently included Tony Stark, who had just about given up on his project and was finally napping fitfully in his living room despite the sun shining down on him through the windows.

Bucky was grateful to Grant for fighting his corner, because he still didn't have the autonomy needed to refuse what sounded like an order coming from Steve. He would have backed down and waited that day or two even if he wanted to go, and it would have made him resent Steve for taking away his choice again. At least Grant sort of understood, if Bucky said he needed to do something and it didn't come from a place of being ordered, then to let him do it.

He sat in the car with the cake on his lap, feeling the warmth slowly leech out of it on the drive, and stayed silent. He had always been taciturn before this time of going missing, what he had been through did not lend itself to easy conversation, but now he was almost eerily still most of the time.

It was good, though, to hear Grant's enthusiasm.

Tony would be woken up by the sound of JARVIS modulating his voice levels to a volume sufficient to wake his master from his nap. "Sir, Captain Rogers, Mr. Rogers, and Sergeant Barnes are at the door wishing to be let in."

When the door opened, there was someone actually behind it for once. Grant, who had somehow taken the lead, smiled up at him with that do gooder, friendly smile he'd always had since he arrived. "Hello, sorry for the intrusion. We brought--"

"I can't," Tony cut him off. "I can't be the Master. I can't command anyone to do anything. Not again that's done with and he's your problem now-- did you bring came? Are you trying to bribe me with cake?" Tony wrinkled his nose and then held open the door. "All right. Fine. Come in."

Grant glanced over his shoulder at the other two and watched Tony, wearing his father's robe, March into the kitchen area to pull out plates. Grant moved to help him, if only so they could speak. "He asked to speak with you. He asked, Mister Stark. So please, can we hear him out?"

Tony groaned. "I wish you weren't so cute. Fine. What do you want, Barnes? I think--". He paused, cake in his mouth as the others settled around the table. "Where did you buy this? It's really good!"

A part of Bucky reacted to the sight of Tony as if he were seeing his handler again. His muscles tensed, his head bowed into a natural state of submission, and he felt his breathing pick up slightly. He hated it about himself, but he knew enough to know that he couldn't help it and he should let it rest.

He was too quiet.

He opened his mouth to speak twice and nothing came out, as if he were afraid that by speaking out of turn he'd be punished. Maybe Steve was right and this should have waited another day or two, but he had been so desperate. He channelled that desperation now into determination, finally forcing words out in a rough voice.

"Thank you," he said, causing Grant to pause in his explanation that he'd cooked the cake because it was Bucky's favourite. "Thank you for letting me save you. Thank you for what you did in there. Thank you for everything you've done for me. And I'm sorry."

It was the first time anyone had bothered to apologize to him, though Tony looked guilty for hearing it. "I should be thanking you. That was a lot of quick thinking. My only contribution was a miscalculation."

Grant glanced between the two. No one had found out what had happened the nearly two weeks they had been lost. No one had even known that Bucky was with Tony. Or that Tony was kidnapped. And Tony didn't know how Bucky even ended up in Siberia. That last part he really didn't care about though. Grant, however, pushed a little harder into the silence that followed. "You bounced a signal off of a satelitte right? That's what made us come for you. Steve and Sam at least. They were already in Russia doing some recon work. It was a smart move."

Tony sighed at Grant, giving him a pass for that comment. Seriously. A smart move? That was like saying elephants were on the large side. "Well whatever. We got out. And that's all that matters." Being alive was better than being dead. Even if you had to deal with a lot shit while continuing to breathe. That was Tony's point at least.

Having had a lot of time to think about it, Steve decided to speak up too. "I'm sorry too. For the quinjet and the way I acting. I didn't have a right to lay my hands on you."

"Yeah you did. Maybe not for that but I'm sure I still deserve it." Tony chances a smile but it soured.

Bucky was still relatively sure that Tony hated him, no matter what had happened, and that was almost comforting. The gentle looks, the sympathy, the almost naked hope in the eyes of both Steve and Grant ever since he had spoken his first non-Soldier words that morning had been grating at his skin. He needed time, just like before, to figure out who and what he was. He itched to run and isolate himself, but he knew that would hurt them both deeply.

And so he made a choice.

"I want to stay here," he said, looking straight up at Tony asking for permission rather than at the other two, who he was worried might look betrayed or confused. "Can I stay here with you?"

Though Steve looked ready to speak up, Grant held his eyes and lightly shook his head. If Bucky wanted to be here, as much as that hurt him deeply, he should be allowed to be here. He should be allowed to be anywhere he felt safe. And this was better than having him just run off again, right?

Grant had felt like a failure since that perfect afternoon and evening with Bucky, and then with Steve. He'd been more or less useless and now he couldn't even do the one job he was good at: be the anchor and help Bucky stay himself. It took a lot of energy to keep his face stoic.

Especially when Tony shrugged. "Do what you want. Just stay out of my lab." Tony didn't actually want to be alone. That was the sticking point here. As much as he wanted solitude, the silence scared him. And hey. Maybe he could actually have someone to talk to in the meantime. Or maybe he'd make things worse and have Rogers knock his teeth in.

It was just as cathartic.

Steve got up from the table, excusing himself. For as much as they were the same, so too were they very different.

Bucky watched Steve go with a slight sinking sensation in his chest, and caught Grant's wrist before he could follow. His metal fingers curled around that slender wrist that he could snap like a twig, but he didn't, he was so careful and cautious not to actually hurt him. He just stepped in towards him and pressed a sudden and probably ill-advised kiss to his lips.

"I'm not leaving you."

He hoped.

"You're still my anchor. You and Steve. I just have to figure my head out for a while without putting you at risk. I need to talk to Tony, please don't-- please give me this space, but don't think you're not needed."

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