fossilised | For Steve

"I know," he said, because Steve had to be hurting too. "I know. I just have to remember that I know." He closed his eyes and let the last part of his grief wash over him. "I think spending a little time on my own here would be good too. I wish Mr. Stark didn't feel the need to just throw money around, but it will be good to be back in Brooklyn and figure out my own way." A tiny smile formed on his lips as Steve put the car into reverse to pull out of the spot. "At least I won't need driving lessons. I've been studying the city. Buses and underground trains... It all seems really easy to get around. But.. We can still visit each other, right? When you're not off saving the day?" He'd really come to like Steve. Yes, they had the same lives up until the day Bucky shipped off, but so much had changed since then and it made them different people. "When you make it to Brooklyn, I mean."

He already knew Steve was going to say he would. And he also knew that he might end up seeing more of Steve than he did of Bucky for awhile. And that was good. No one else could really understand him. Grant had a lot to catch up on so that he could really start to fit into New York of the twenty-first century.

Back in the lab, Tony didn't even look up as he fitted two instruments together, waiting for JARVIS to finish a print out of his latest model. "You can stop hiding in the corner. They've left."

Bucky wasn't sure how he felt about what had happened that morning. To be quite honest, he still wasn't sure whether he really was exactly himself any more yet, the Soldier was still at the edges of his mind and looking at Tony brought the word handler to his head before it brought anything else. It was why when he spoke, and it didn't really come out as a suggestion, he moved to obey without thinking about it.

He stepped out from the shadows of the corner and just stared at Tony. He wasn't sure this was a good idea at all, but he had to be somewhere away from Steve and Grant for a while. Not because they didn't help, or because he hated either of them, but because the hope they looked at him with made his skin crawl with guilt that he couldn't be what they needed him to be.

"I know."

Of course he knew, he was always hypervigilant of his surroundings.

"Thank you for letting me stay, I won't get in your way. You won't even have to see me."

That made Tony laugh. "You're hiding in my lab from the two people that like you and accept you and love you most in those world and you say you're not going to get in my way?" He turned the chair around to grab one of his tools. "I have the worst feeling that all you're going to do is be in my way, but I guess I deserve you."

He needed to do penance, right? At least Tony said exactly what was on his mind. He told things like it was. It was neither more complicated nor simple as that. Bucky was either going to adjust to life in the penthouse of the most sought after building in New York to live or work in or he could go back to the compound. Or to Brooklyn. He had lots of options now.

"You want to help me understand why you're here and not with your pair of hot blonds? Because inquiring minds want to know what your deal is. Your real deal. Not the one I'm just guessing and using as a weapon."

Tony was fine with being the bad guy here, to take the heat off of Bucky and his decisions, but damn. Someone needed to really fill him in on what he was doing or he'd dissolve into some fantasy realm.

Edited 2017-02-26 12:48 (UTC)

It was oddly easier to talk to Tony. Maybe because Tony didn't like him at all, so Bucky didn't expect to see the sympathy and pain that spasmed onto Steve and Grant's faces when they learned some of the things HYDRA had done or some of the madness still in his head. Tony wouldn't care; hell, he might even think Bucky deserved the pain, and that made it easier to express.

Though he did it in a level voice that completely detached him from the situation, even if everything he said was true.

"I don't really know. A lot of the time I still don't know who I am, I just know enough to fake it with Steve and Grant. They're such good people, I don't want to ruin them with what I am and what I've done." What he let people do to him. "But maybe if I can make some kind of-- I don't know, make up to you what I did to your folks, whether that's by letting you punish me or helping you out or-- anything, then maybe I can say that I'm not all bad. Maybe there's enough of a possibility to let me go back to them and protect them. All I want is to be dead, but I can't, so what I want besides that is to protect them and give them a good life."

Stupid, probably didn't make any sense. He was prepared for Tony to tell him that he was being childish, or selfish, or any other insult.

"Besides, I like you."

Tony knew what it was like to want to be dead. It rarely hit him anymore but as a kid, when he tried so hard to get his dad to pay attention to him and his refused, Tony used to think it was just easier to be dead. His dad would be happier right? And he would stop hurting. The trouble was that life and pain went together and death was just a really boring way out that hurt more people than it helped. So yes. Bucky was being really selfish for wanting to be dead but Tony didn't judge him.

"Unless you're some sort of genius under all of that emo, you can't really help me. Plus, it wasn't you that killed my parents. You're just the guy that's trying to cling to some sort of truth that isn't just listening to orders. So whatever. You're barking up the wrong tree there." Tony understood Bucky. He knew that he was never going to be carefree and happy, like the hints of that man he had seen in the videos before the torture. But that wasn't the point. He was pretty sure he wouldn't have liked that Bucky either. "But whatever. If you want to atone, you're in good company. That's what I've been trying to do for years."

Tony was not the best life coach. It was as if he hated hope and sought to destroy it.

"Take a seat. Maybe you can tell me what my dad was like when he was younger. Was he an asshole?"

He didn't need to be carefree and happy, he just needed to be functional. Honestly, that he was still alive and he wasn't spending every waking moment sobbing or cringing from the world was a massive achievement, but it was one that he couldn't see for himself. For all he had been through, that he was even still believing there might be a hope for him, it was a big thing.

He took a seat the second after the order came. Did Tony notice how when he phrased things as an order, or what could be construed as an order, that Bucky obeyed without question?

"I didn't meet him that often, and when I did he was more focused on Steve. He was okay, I guess. Kinda arrogant, selfish, but he wasn't a bad guy. I don't think so, anyway."

Howard and Bucky had never been friends, never been close. Sergeant Barnes was all he had ever been to Howard, important only for his proximity to Steve.

"Sounds about right. That's how magazines used to describe me. Arrogant. Focused. Work oriented. Cold. Calculating. Heartless. I never had a Steve to obsess over. Not that I would. Spent my whole life on your bestie's shadow. Man. I really hated him. I hated him since before I knew what the word was." And wasn't that a kick in the teeth?

No one alive or dead could hate Steve Rogers save for Tony. He was the monster here. His feelings gave it away.

"So let me tell you that my dad was an asshole. He put every ounce of his life into finding Rogers. When he couldn't, he drank, and drinking relaxed him enough to be more of an asshole and more arrogant and come up with brilliant ideas and schemes thst helped out a whole lot of people. But he also liked to hit me. He was never my hero, my dad. But I still look up to him. Even tyrants deserve respect."

Which brought him to another point.

"Sit in the chair over here," he pointed, and watched Bucky do that. "Touch your nose." He watched Bucky do that too. Fun. "You need to get that out of your head," Tony snorted. "Punch me."

Bucky could understand that mindset better than Steve ever would be able to. Steve would just be horrified and tell Tony that his father had been wrong to hurt him, and that nobody who bullied someone weaker than themselves was ever deserving of respect. But Bucky knew that was wrong. He detested all his old handlers, he hated them so much that it made him sick sometimes, but he respected every single one of them. You respect what can hurt you, or you end up dead for your arrogance.

His fingers curled into a fist, but he didn't swing at Tony. His body just started to tremble from head to toe as if someone were physically holding him back from punching even though there was nobody there.

"You don't," he spat out through clenched teeth, trying to change the subject. "You don't hate him, you like him. He's your goddamn friend, and I know that's the truth."

"Hit me." He did like Steve. He still resented him sometimes but the man was his friend. He had trouble admitting it sometimes but that was all ego and for show. Tony liked the showmanship. He liked it when people watched him or looked at him or saw him as something different. He craved it. That was the reality here. He needed the animosity. His dad had shaped his life in that way. It pushed him to be better. And Tony respected thst part of their relationship. The beatings, the kicks or slaps, they were almost nothing compared to being informed. But that pushed Tony too. No wonder he needed the spotlight.

When Bucky still held back, Tony stood and got right into the man's face.

"I ordered you to hit me," he said, making sure not to clench his jaw just in case Bucky did not him. And directed that hit to his face. He wouldn't begrudge the man that, if he did end up following his orders. It would serve Tony right.

And honestly, he wanted it.

Sometimes it was worth it to be physically hurt. It made him do better.

The trembling got worse on the second order, as if Bucky had been pinned by metal stakes through his arms. The muscles of his flesh arm actually flexed and strained against the invisible force holding them back, and sweat popped on his brow. Tony would be wrong if he thought it was Bucky trying to hold back from punching him, it was the Soldier doing both.

He had a failsafe, a deeply embedded set of instructions to never harm his primary handler, the one who spoke the words, no matter what other orders were given. But when the primary handler was also the one telling him to disobey those orders, it created a dichotomy in his head that he just couldn't resolve.

Bucky felt himself fray at the edges, reality warping, and then the third order came from a man up close to him, and he snapped. He staggered back a step and fell to his knees, vomiting violently as his body rebelled against the conflicting orders. He didn't understand why Tony had done this, was it punishment? Why the hell would he give conflicting orders?!

"Я провалил." It came out in retched gasps, his pupils blown wide and honestly he was no longer sure if he was Bucky or the Soldier. All he knew was that he had been given two orders, one old and deeply rooted and one new, and he had failed in them both. "Я провалил. Я провалил. Я провалил. Я провалил."

That answered all of Tony's initial questions. He didn't really want to deal with the vomit, but at least he knew what he was up against now. "So I'm still in handler mode, huh?" Tony sat back down and told DUM-E to come in and clean up the mess before he smelled it. "I guess pancakes isn't enough to change that, but I've got to say, pancakes is usually pretty good to cure almost everything. So we have to figure out to cut this obsession you have with me out of you. It's not that I don't appreciate it, I'm really flattered, honestly, but I like women and I think your boyfriends would kick my ass if I granted you your wish."

Tony was mostly talking just to talk right now, and he was having a very good time being crass and rude. It kept him from feeling too emotionally attached to the idea that he was left holding the leash to a guy that had been experimented on awake and conscious to turn him into a lap dog that never it the hand that fed it.

"No more orders. I'm not good at asking but I guess I don't have a choice. This is going to be bad for the both of us. Steve was your last target right? So what happened between waking up and meeting Grant that kept you from really wanted to kill Captain America?" He really hoped that the answer wasn't going to be time. Tony had other things to do than baby sit someone that needed to be with him because he was his master.

If Steve could see Tony now and the way he had pushed against the programming in so ruthless a manner, he would sure as hell be the one to punch him just like he wanted and he probably wouldn't hold back either. But Steve wasn't there, it was just the two of them and they understood each other oddly better than they should.

"I don't know," muttered Bucky, at least managing to recall himself enough to switch back to English again, throat raw from being sick. "Time, I guess. Exposure."

Maybe it would do Tony good to be babysitting for a while, it would keep him from being alone and who knows? Maybe he could even make a new friend out of it when all was said and done.

"It's complicated, I know you're not my handler but I still see you as my handler. People think-- Steve thinks that the Soldier is just what they made me, but it's part of me and I don't know how to separate the two."

"Yeah, well, you can't regrow an arm and you can't force yourself to to forget that you know how to backflip or shoot a bunch of really impressive guns either," Tony pointed out as DUM-E spread sawdust all over the vomit, and all of Bucky's shoes too if he didn't move away. Maybe the robot would follow after him anyway just to complete it's order. Tony gave all his robots some autonomy, but they weren't free. They were still slaves to their programming. Just like a human being. "You have to live with what you are now. Just have to learn to make the choice of listening to the Soldier or to Barnes. I know both are terrible choices but unless you've got a third personality in there, yiu're really stuck."

Tony turned his chair slightly away from Bucky as he tightened a screw on the device. His latest diagnostic on the Ultron program would be back in a few days and he'd try it again. But until that happened, he was working on a gift for Banner. It wasn't anything major, just a little toy that garble any data it got too close to. Just in case Bruce wanted to go back on the run again or needed to hide from Natasha if the redhead decided to make her flirting a little more obvious for the most romantically challenged person he knew.

"Maybe it would help to try to remove one of the trigger words in the sequence. Not sure if we can remove them all, but if it's all a matter of conditioning, it shouldn't be too hard. We just have to associate one of those words with something that isn't Soldier oriented. Like...one in the middle. People can get over being afraid of spiders by being around them. Exposure, like you said. If we take the power away from that word, it might work. Or you might try to kill me. Either way, should be fun."

He was thinking more word association work. JARVIS could help with that. No one needed to be emotionally or physically scarred here.

The casual insult about Bucky's personality not being a great one to choose either made him laugh all of a sudden. It was a sound that came quietly, as if the man making it had almost forgotten how, but insistently. And it grew and grew until he was leaning on the work bench with a huge grin all over his face. This was what he had been missing with Steve and with Grant; when they saw his suffering, they both seemed to reduce him to nothing but a victim in their mind. This broken and shattered thing that had to be treated so carefully. Tony knew the worst of what had been done, just watched him break, and then casually insulted him.

"You're a goddamn punk, Stark."

But something in his chest eased as the laughter died away, maybe the decision to stay here wasn't such a bad one after all.

"We're not messing with the trigger words, but yeah-- exposure. To you. God help me."

"Uh, do you remember that you kind of made me your boss? So now you're talking back to me? It's a good idea. I'm a certified genius. I have the paper work," Tony complained, though was not a psychiatrist or a behavioralist and he had no idea what he was doing. Aversion therapy didn't usually work with innate behaviors. Now, you could argue that Bucky's were learned but it was hard to tell what was what any more inside that twisted head of his.

He set his little cube down and gave Bucky a hard look. First for the laughter and then for the weird enjoyment the other man seemed to have of his company. Tony didn't like it. He didn't choose Barnes. Rhodey, Banner, maybe Steve (but usually not)-- They got to be pleased to be around him. Barnes was supposed to be on his shit list right now. It just wasn't right.

"There are people that would love to be in your shoes right now. You don't have to bring God into anything. Damn it. Who did I piss off to deserve you?" He rolled his eyes and stepped around the vomit puddle on the floor. "Just for that, I'm going to finish up that cake. And since we're playing Handler here, you can just sit there and watch me do it."

There was a thin line between jokes and what crossed the boundaries into something harmful, and Tony would have to learn it really quickly, because the joking atmosphere dissipated almost at once. Not because Bucky gave a shit about the cake, but because he found himself moving already to go and take up a stance to watch.

"Quit it," he growled, at least already doing better at vocalisation than before. It was like his body and brain existed in separate planes for this. "Stop giving me orders, I can't-- I can't disobey them."

And that felt horrific, he didn't like to be so helpless to another person.

"Thing is, I really think you can." Tony was always cruel. He couldn't help it. It was in his nature to be, especially when he was right. "You just have to work with me here. You wanted exposure right? Well this is exposure. And look. You're already fighting it."

Not with his body but with his mind. When he was the Soldier, his mind was completely integrated into the persona. Obviously that wasn't happening here. Bucky wasn't just aware, he was able to express his displeasure at knowing what was happening to him.

"And I don't want you to like me anyway. You're ruining our working relationship every time you say that." Truthfully, Tony was a good guy. His dislike of Bucky had less to do with Bucky and more to do with his own hang ups and issues.

So upstairs Tony went. If Bucky followed him and watched him eat the cake that Grant had so lovingly made for him, so be it.

Of course he followed, and he watched as every piece of cake disappeared down Tony's throat. It brought up some bad memories, training exercises where he had been starved and forced to watch his handlers eat to check that he had self control, to check that even when his body screamed for something that he would ignore it on orders. He was sweating by the time the last mouthful disappeared, but he just glared at Tony.

"I do like you, you're a good man. You're not doing this because it hurts me, otherwise you'd be ordering me to do-- other things. You think it's gonna help, it's not, but you think it is."

He wasn't expecting Tony to like him, not now and not ever, he honestly didn't expect anyone to like him. He could handle Steve and Grant because they had nostalgia goggles on, but everyone else? He knew he wasn't much fun to be around.

"So if you're gonna work on my issues, maybe I'll work on yours. Why do you keep pushing them away when they care about you, and God knows you obviously want to be cared about?"

"Why are you so quick to dismiss this?" Tony said between bites. He was much too full of chocolate and he was pretty sure that he was suffering more than Bucky because of this. He kept expecting Barnes to grab at the cake or at him, but one little session of forcing the difference between wanting to do something and having to do it wasn't going to break the cycle.

He just hoped he could figure out something else to work on that wasn't cake next time. Maybe he could finally get all of those DVDs alphabetized with Barnes' help? He was about to say something about his he felt about that when Barnes opened his mouth and decided to fight fire with fire.

He couldn't blame him.

And just for that, he decided to be brutally honest too.

"It's better to push people away than have them leave," he said, lowering his fork to the plate. He set his chin on his palm and watched Bucky with calm, Amber eyes. "I'd rather have that control. And... Rogers bothers me. They both do. There's something about that that make my teeth hurt. They're not perfect. They're not all good and fluffy...but they are. And I hate it."

"You hate it because you don't think you deserve it," said Bucky, understanding implicit in his eyes even if his voice remained the same level monotone it usually did. "You keep showing Steve your worst sides, the most terrible things you've done, and all the reasons that you're a monster and he still sticks with you. You hate it because you can't drive him away, and that scares you because maybe you have to grow up and admit that not everyone leaves."

Some people did. A lot. Even without factors coming into play, human beings just naturally drifted apart very often, it wasn't anyone's fault. But you couldn't go through life pushing everyone away first, that was just dumb. Even Bucky knew that.

"I know what it's like to want to push them away, but at least I'm working towards being good enough to show them that their faith is worth it. What's your excuse? You're still a kid and you're not man enough to face up to yourself. Grow up and realise you don't have to wallow in your own self pity about whatever happened in the past, people are there for you. Steve is. The least you could goddamn do is be there back."

"I don't want to be!" Tony didn't like having his cards displayed. If he did it himself, fine. But this hit too close to home and he and Barnes were not close enough yet to show each other anything but their ugly sides. Tony was aware that his feeling were being manipulated too, he could feel it. That didn't stop him from making a scene though, even if Bucky was the only one there to see it.

He could easily do something awful right now. He could force Barnes to do something just to prove he could, but that wasn't who Tony was. He didn't lash out with strength. He might be a bully and an unreliable ally, but he was never going to hold what he had over Bucky's head.

Slamming his dishes in the sink, he returned to his lab. There had been no order for Barnes to follow him, but just in case he had JARVIS bar the way after him. He had little doubt the ex-assassin could force his way in, physically or through other means, but he wasn't making it easy for him.

Tony needed some time to stew. And he didn't need a guy he didn't care for pointing out all of his flaws.

He might not like it, but maybe he was smart enough to see that Bucky was telling the truth and even mature enough to face up to himself. Maybe not too, maybe he'd end up self destructing for no other reason than his own stupidity and stubbornness. Either way, Bucky wasn't about to follow him since he had no orders to do so.

He went to find a bathroom instead and took a long shower, heat up so high that it almost scalded him, and found fresh clothes. He took his time, he savoured a sandwich that JARVIS helped him find the ingredients for, and he just tried to find himself in the silence of solitude. He would make it back to Grant and Steve, that's why he fought, it's why he wasn't dead.

If Tony came out of his snit then he would find Bucky in the main lounge, pizza box open at his side, dressed in some loose sweats and a t-shirt, watching Return of the Jedi on the massive flat screen TV.

At least Tony did get out of his so-called snits pretty easily so that was lucky. He came up stairs somewhere in the middle of the movie, as if drawn by lightsaber battles and the smell of pizza. He helped himself to the latter and dropped onto the opposite end of the sofa, kicking off his sneakers to cross his legs at the ankles on the coffee table.

"Ugh, you went to Crespo's? Supreme has the best pizza. JARVIS, didn't you tell him Supreme was better?" Tony complained, and though JARVIS did give an explanation, Tony ignored it. He was quiet for the rest of the movie, minus a little cheer here and there because he was still a kid, and one point where he told JARVIS to pause the movie so he could make popcorn.

At least he put the giant bowl between them both, half as a barrier and half because Tony wanted to share with some guy living in his house who was not and could never be a friend.

It turned out that time rather than exposure would be the best bet for Bucky. Being around Tony really was exposure enough and he would find himself more and more able to ignore the occasional, accidental commands that the inventor gave. A few weeks passed and Tony got word that Grant had managed to get accepted into Brooklyn institute of art, mostly due to Tony fudging his transcripts, and he brought the news to Bucky with his hands in his pockets.

"We should send something. Like a gift basket of ramen noodles or some paints."

A few weeks, it turned out, was all that was needed to turn Bucky and Tony into friends. Not that either one of them acknowledged it as such, but they understood one another in surprising amounts of ways and got on most of the time. But the more time that passed, the more that Bucky felt somewhat more secure, and the more he missed Grant and Steve. He hadn't reached out to either, and both had been respectful of his wishes to be left alone.

Though the one time that Banner had come over, he had very gently told Bucky that the pair of them missed him a lot and only wanted him to be okay.

Brooklyn Institute of Art was a good school and he was proud, though he wondered if Grant knew that the syllabus promised a semester on 'art history of the wars' and included Steve Rogers' sketchbook in that. Probably, maybe not. He nodded at the suggestion and pushed himself off the couch.

"I think I'll take him something."

It was said so innocuously, as if he had been popping out every day when really this would be his first time out of the Tower. But surely Tony would understand, he didn't want a big deal making of it.

They were not friends. Tony would never admit to that. They were not friends at all, they just hung out most of the time and watched the same movies and laughed a lot when Bucky felt like laughing. And when he didn't, Tony laughed for him. They played Call of Duty together. And Portal 2. And Street Fighter. Sometimes Tony made DUM-E bring Bucky a blanket if he fell asleep on the couch. And maybe Bucky let him take a look at the masterpiece that was his arm so that Tony could get a little creepy about it and then vow to do better, or make a realistic covering for it. Even if Bucky didn't ask. Or didn't want it.

Telling Tony anything was nearly impossible.

He put his feet up as Bucky walked between the couch and the coffee table, once he had cleared the space. "What are you going to take him?" When Bucky didn't answer right away, Tony turned to drape an arm over the back of the couch and frown at Bucky. "No, seriously, what are you going to take him-- Not flowers, okay? Guys do not like flowers, I don't care how small and sensitive they--" He cut himself off and shrugged, turning before he could smile.

He couldn't help it. He was glad that Bucky was getting out for awhile. It made him pick up the phone and ask Banner over for the first time in weeks.

"I need your expertise. Car is already on the way," he said, not giving his friend any time to say anything at all.

In a neighboring borough, Grant was just getting done his first day at school. He'd collected syllabuses and some numbers too from classmates. They all looked about his age, though most were about five years younger, wore crazy clothes and had hair that was anything but naturally colored. He'd enrolled himself in two different art history classes, life drawing and a cartoonist class that focused on storyline and layout. And he had a digital design class that excited him to no end even if he had no idea how to use most of the programs. But that was what school was for, right? To teach him?

He left the school by himself, a silly, huge smile on his face when he saw who was waiting for him at the curb, leaning on a motorcycle. He hadn't seen Bucky in just under.a month and for a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Dressed in a white collar shirt, khakis and a sweater vest, he still looked like the boy Bucky had known all that time ago, despite the setting and the people streaming around him.

"Buck....?"

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