fossilised | it's a new plot!

"Did you miss the part where I said that wasn't a good idea?" Tony grunted. "You need to stop threatening me. I had to do all sorts of things to explain away those bruises you left the last time." He hadn't, actually, no one wanted to know about them. No one ever looked at him that closely anymore. And Rhodey knew better than to question him about anything personal. He never liked the answers. "And I don't appreciate it."

He doubted that his bodyguard with this new, unstable personality actually cared, though. He also doubted that these were posturing words to leverage help. He would kill him. It was written all over his face.

"Aside from an inability to understand when I'm reading and when I'm actually addressing you, you're going to have to be about ten times more specific about what your problem is. Don't just make impressively aggressive faces at me. You came to me. Again, I might add."

He gestured absently to the furniture for Bucky to have a seat before he used the heel of his boot to situate his stool back under himself and transferred his now distracted rear from the desk to it. He leaned his elbow on the table and spent another minute or two flicking through digital files before the slow process annoyed him enough.

"FRIDAY, full scan. Let's see what we've got to work with here."

"I don't know why I've come to you."

It was a quiet admission and sounded much more human than anything else he had said. He didn't know why, much like the Soldier hadn't known why he had destroyed Tony's Captain America model collection. It was instinct, something deeper than memory that recalled that Tony hadn't treated him unkindly and could be trusted. But if he had to give voice to that, then he had no idea.

It only took a fraction of a second for FRIDAY to finish the full body scan and put it up on the screen. Aside from the the damage to Bucky's shoulder that was already known about, he had a fractured left leg and two broken ribs. But it was the scan of his brain that would be the most worrying, there were so many dead sections and scars that it should be a literal impossibility that Bucky were even alive at all. Bits of metal showed up white on the scan, and no less than four blood clots were already forming where maintenance hadn't been performed in too long.

Bucky sat still while this was going on, though he watched Stark the whole time out of intensely focused eyes.

Watching the failures with Bucky's body was like watching a diagnostic of a crashing system. Parts were highlighted in brilliant scarlet, words of warning flashed. FRIDAY suggested calling the hospital for emergency transport, and one of the smaller voices that often plagued him whispered that fixing him would be a piece of cake.

Piece of cake?! He wasn't quite panicked, mostly incredulous, but there went his heart rate again, pulsing and pounding in his ears. It didn't drown out the sound or the surety he felt, despite having just broken one of his cardinal rules about never, ever, acknowledging those voices.

He pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head.

"You're getting in Cho's machine. I'm not a brain surgeon. I don't want to learn to become one either and I don't think you have a whole lot of time. I can fix you, and that bed is going to keep you alive while I do it."

What was the worst thing that could happen?

Bucky could die? He certainly wasn't living right now, that was for sure.

He could see the scan results as well and hear what FRIDAY said about emergency hospital relocation, but it was what Stark said that scared him the most. For the first time since he had shown up months ago, his expression changed from the stoic and neutral mask that the Soldier had been trained into, and became genuine fear.

"I'm not-- no."

He wasn't going to go into any sort of machine. Especially not one that would mess around with his brain, he couldn't do that again, he couldn't lose what precious tiny sense of self he had managed to get back.

"It's not that bad, I can handle it."

Fine. If it was a choice between the malfunctions and submitting to a machine again, he would take the headaches and the loss of vision. He had handled worse.

Tony knew exactly what caused the sudden burst of emotion and he understood why Bucky thought it was better to live with crazy brain hemorrhage’s than to let Tony help him. He gave Bucky some side eyes and put his hands on his hips. “You’re not going to be wiped. You might die, but my brain is pretty insistent that you won’t. I like those odds and you should too. Listen to me. You won’t be restrained. I mean, I probably should since I need to cut your head open and all but all you’re going to do is lie back on a bed and look at up my gorgeous face for about—“ four hours, “—four hours. I don’t have the trigger words.”

That last sentence might be what Bucky needed to hear most of all.

“I looked for them to make sure I don’t accidentally ever say the sequence in front of you but they’re missing. They were stolen and no one made a digital copy of them. So you’re safe. You’re safe with me.”

Tony never waxed so poetic, he never said the words that made people look up at him like a hero, but his Nanny was dying right in front of him. Tony had to try to help, even if it was doubtful if he could.

"I don't know if I can."

That wasn't even getting into the thorny situation of if he would, but he didn't know if he were physically capable of remaining still while someone cut into his head and not falling back on every instinct that would tell him to defend himself and slaughter the person touching him.

"It can't be that bad of a malfunction, I don't need anyone to cut into my head. I just need some painkillers, that's all, I won't bother you again."

He was obviously getting more frightened now, his body language completely rigid and his breathing coming in a bit faster. He needed to get out of here, he needed to not be in a place where someone was trying to cut into his damn head.

"I want to believe you, but I can't do that."

“Do you want me to bring it up again? FRIDAY?” Tony’s voice lifted and the scan of how disastrous Bucky currently was popped up against the wall. “You’re not dead because of the serum. But that is going to change real fast if you don’t let me in there.”

He wasn’t sure why he was pushing for this. It would be better if Bucky just left, if he called Rogers and had someone else deal with this. No one knew about the relationship he had to the blank, stoic bodyguard. No one knew about his dad.

And he wanted it to stay like that.

Tony sucked on his teeth and frowned. He couldn’t let his Nanny die. Not with everything he knew now.

“FRIDAY, run the Captain Berserkica protocol,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets as FRIDAY complied. Tony always had ways of protecting himself against his friends. The armor that collected around Bucky would, likely, keep him still if not quite as it dragged him back at Tony’s request towards that bio bed. “You can’t learn to trust me. After I save your life.”

The second that the armour closed around him, he fought. Not just with the strength of a super soldier, but with the furious desperation of a man who never wanted to be trapped again, and the expert knowledge of the Soldier. He wasn't a match for a fully mechanised suit of Iron Man armour, but he did manage to buckle some of the metal plates and even ripped one of the arms clean off before he found himself strapped into the bio bed.

His teeth were bared in a snarl, he looked less like a man and more like a feral animal being captured. Terrified. Utterly and completely terrified.

He lost all sense of language, merely spat out threats in about two dozen languages. But he couldn't fight this. Just like Tony would find that he couldn't fight the damage done to Bucky's brain, not completely. Anything he did would be a stop-gap, would need constant maintenance and vigilance, seventy years of being fucked up wouldn't be that simple to fix.

Once he’d gotten into Bucky’s head, through an all too convenient plate expertly hidden along folds of skin and in hair, Tony thought about mocking the voices that had assured him that he would be able to fix the man. But how do you fix the biology? He could replace wires and he could upgrade the small chips making the Soldier capable of functioning, but this was just a mess. He worked quickly, glad that the brain didn’t have nerve endings and so his patient wasn’t feeling any of the proddings he was doing. Tony worked as quickly as he could, scanning and relaying information through FRIDAY’s databanks, until he was about as confident as he could be that Bucky would not have an more debilitating pain or losses of vision. For now. But it was truly a stop gap and one he would likely need to research before he attempted.

If Bucky has passed out at all, he would find Tony sitting next to him, the suit off, the bed he was laying in beeping softly from time to time. He’d be eating pizza, lounging back into a well upholstered chair, the corners of his mouth twitching in thought.

If Bucky hadn’t worked himself to passing out, Tony would still be eating pizza, but the armor would be on Bucky still, at least until he managed to be able to use his words again.

“How’re you feeling? Your eyesight should be better.”

Bucky had passed out during the surgery. Not through pain, he felt almost nothing bar the odd tugging sensation within his skull, but out of sheer terror. He knew what was coming, he would find himself altered again when this was over with new and terrible things inside his head. He had made a mistake in coming here.

Any residual trust that Stark had enjoyed was snuffed out in that moment.

It didn't matter how damaged he had been, or even if he had been about to die, the choice still should have been left in his hands. He shouldn't have been forced to live, forced to undergo surgery, if he didn't want to. Which was why, as soon as he woke up, he was up and off the bed in mere seconds. Ignoring the slight swim of his vision for moving so fast after brain surgery, he shot Tony a look of genuine and complete betrayal before he ran.

No words, no nothing. Just fleeing.

Tony just chewed what was in his mouth after pausing to watch Bucky rush towards the exit. He wasn’t the kind of guy to ask permission or to give people choices, and besides, he’d actually done a little bit of good here. He didn’t know if Bucky would be back to kill him but that didn’t matter to him either. He focused on his pizza and on a job well done before he had DUM-E clean up the mess he’d made of his lab and went to bed.

The voices and whispers were quiet and for once, let him sleep. He got himself a full seven hours before FRIDAY told him that Rhodey was on his way over. Tony rolled over into his stomach and tried to ignore her, but she was terrible about that stuff.

He shaved and dressed and greeted his oldest friend, who had brought more pizza over, and tried not to be so distracted as Rhodey filled him in on how close Steve was getting to finding Bucky.

Tony couldn’t help but smirk at that.

“So they think he’s in Romania?” Yeah right.

If Tony ever wanted to build a rapport with the man he thought of as his Nanny, then he'd have to learn that choice was a huge deal to him. He couldn't be treated as if he had no choice, or as if his permission didn't matter, or he'd end up being driven away for good or worse, he'd end up killing the one who forced him.

Rhodey had no idea of the magnitude of what Tony had found out regarding his past and his father, only that he had been drunk more often and withdrew from the friends that he did have. Not good.

"Yeah-- Steve has asked a few times if you'll come and help. He said you helped track down Bruce, you'd be invaluable, and he's really worried about his missing friend."

“The guy is a terrorist. They have video of it. You know as well as I do that the moment anyone finds him, he’s going to prison. Do you really think Rogers is going to let that happen? And do you really want to deal with two super soldiers?” Tony knew that he actually should be looking for Barnes. He should be working with Ross, who was still on hold from two days ago, to get him the updated spy satellite network he used to track Banner—

But he wanted Bucky to have his freedom. He was probably able to think and to breathe for the first time in a long time, finally able to exist without a lot of pain thanks to that surgery. Tony wanted him to have that.

He wanted to give him what HYDRA and his dad refused. Sure. He did it his way but the result was life for Bucky instead of a slow, painful death as those electrodes and chips corroded against his brain.

It was worth it.

“All you ever do is try to guilt trip me, Rhodes. I’m good. I retired. Hung up the red gloves. Let the younger men look for the terrorists now.”

Sometimes Rhodey wondered if his life would have been easier if he were deployed to an active war zone, because sometimes dealing with Tony Stark felt every bit as emotionally and physically exhausting as being in a battle could.

"You're not retired, three satellites saw the Iron Man suit out for a spin just last week." Just because he hadn't got into any fights (that they knew of) it didn't mean that he bought that Tony was living the quiet life from now on. He knew the other man too well for that. "And everybody keeps asking about you."

Well-- maybe not everyone. But some of them.

"Steve thinks that he could get Barnes acquitted based on the strength of the HYDRA files Natasha released to the public domain, a lot of them are really damning. He thinks he could get Barnes an acquittal and pardon under prisoner of war rules, clear his name properly. But we have to find him first."

Tony rubbed his hand over his eyes and shrugged. “Tell you what, since I’m that sorely missed, I’ll put it on the side project list.” He wasn’t lying, but he had absolutely zero intention of letting the old Scooby Gang in on tracking down Barnes. He’d do it himself, hopefully find out if the guy was still breathing, and then, perhaps, tell him what Rhodey just said. He knew Bucky wouldn’t take the bait, Tony himself wouldn’t either.

He’d said as much the last time that they’d spoken, after all. Everyone wanted him to be a person he could never remember being and could never be again. Tony was in the camp of Leave The Guy Alone, but evidently his old colleagues weren’t going to allow that to happen. He had every intention of letting Barnes go after they met up again. Maybe he’d bring him a little anti-spy Stark Tech to get him through the hurdles that the Avengers would be forcing him through, but his intentions on his old Nanny, who had been so prized, and so well loved when he was a child, were minimal.

He couldn’t be responsible for putting him back in a cage. He’d done his time. He’d been a mindless, experimented on drone for decades—

If Tony had a heart, it might be broken right now.

Eventually, he managed to get Rhodey out of his expertly messed up hair and started FRIDAY on a scan of the tech he’d replaced all of Bucky’s old, malfunctioning wires and circuits with. It was surprisingly easy. It was less easy getting a tech talk set up in the area Barnes was hiding in so no one suspected where he was going, however, and a week would pass before Tony Stark would see his old caretaker again.

Bucky was very hard to track down because, unlike Banner, he didn't have a particular need for clothes, shelter, and food in the same legal channels that Banner preferred to get them. He moved like a ghost from city to city, crossing boundaries and borders seemingly without effort, but he couldn't hide from a tech tracker. If he had known that Stark's replacement wires were able to be traced then he never would have gone to him in the first place.

He wasn't an idiot, he knew when he was being followed, and he very nearly ran all over again. But Stark didn't seem to be here with the other Avengers, and he owed the bastard a punch for taking away his free will again.

Which would be why Tony wouldn't be at the little meeting he set up in order to cover his finding Barnes, it would be Bucky who slipped into his hotel room and dealt him a large and vicious punch to the face. Only the fact that he used his flesh hand rather than his metal one probably saved Tony from any broken bones.

Technically, Tony hadn’t been following anyone. He hadn’t been going from city to city or street to street in hot pursuit of Bucky. Though showing up at a hotel three blocks away from where Bucky was living wasn’t coincidence, he had no intention of cornering his old friend nor of trying to force anything into him.

And that was why, dressed in a three piece suit that was no ruined by a river of blood, he activated the handguard on his wristwatch and punched right back while he was filled with adrenaline and before the pain really started to eat at his motor skills. He’d been held prisoner and tortured long enough to be aware of how to function quickly when a strike was called for because he would dissolve into a baby once he started to have real pain.

“Jesus,” Tony hissed, since even if he landed the punch, it wouldn’t have mattered, Bucky would be unaffected. He doubled over, uncovered hand around his nose. “I’d hate to see how you show you’re pissed off if this is how you say thank you!”

The punch landed easily enough, Bucky was well used to dealing with that sort of pain and he didn't even flinch, as he surged forwards to grab hold of the inventor and pin him to the wall.

"You took away my choice, I'm never gonna thank you for that, you bastard."

He didn't care if he would have died otherwise, that choice to live or die should have been left to him. He still doesn't know which one he would have chosen, but he would never get the chance to find out now.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

In the last five years of his life, Tony Stark had been pinned up against walls in all of the least fun ways more than he had ever had in the decades before it. The whole thing was exhausting, to say the least. He wasn’t a weak man but he didn’t understand how everyone kept getting the better of him this way. That was a pride issue, however, and living was a little more important to worry about over being made to feel little. Blood coated his nose and cheeks and chin and his voice came out stunted and stilted, too much liquid in his mouth.

“Are you kidding me? Take away your damned choice? Is that better or worse than having you march into my home, twice, sneak up on me three times, throttle me twice and punch me in the face? You asked for my god damned help—. No. You demanded my god damned help. I only tracked you down to tell you that I’m having a hard time keeping them off of me to help them track you down! Your old bestie things he can clear you of all charges as a POW. At least he hasn’t broken in to rough me up yet. Now get the fuck off of me!”

Bucky didn't let him go, utterly unimpressed with his return retort. Was the man an idiot, or just really arrogant enough that he didn't understand the lines between violations? It seemed impossible to believe that he couldn't know and yet apparently be considered so smart.

"I broke in, I hit you, but never once did I not give you a choice. You could hit me back, or refuse to help, or call for help. You could do what you wanted. You took that from me, you forced me into something I didn't want, that makes you as bad as all the other people who have done that to me."

He finally stepped back, utterly contemptuous.

"I don't care about your reasons, everyone thinks their reasons justify what they do. But you just proved that you really are your father's son. Now keep the hell away from me."

That was low. After Tony spent his entire life trying to live up to his father, to find out he was HYDRA and then to have that held against him? That was so low. “I’m not the sort of guy that can stand by and let someone die,@ he said, the swelling really setting in. “So I’m not sorry that you feel totally violated so that I could give you some semblance of life back now that you’re able to actually live. You deserve it.”

Tony stepped away, pushed off from the wall with his bloody hand to stumble like a fawn to the bathroom. It was not his most graceful move but he was upset and he was in pain and most of all, he was still reeling from what Bucky had said.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got the picture. You won’t see me again. Unless you turn on the TV or pick up a book.”

He knew he wasn’t a good guy. He knew he was responsible for the deaths of so many people. And yet... he never felt evil before.

But if his parents were evil, did that mean he was tainted?

Tony drew water up to his face in the bathroom, the coolness stinging him as he tried to clean up. Mostly he was just swirling the blood around everywhere.

Stark's words angered him enough that he didn't leave right away, he just stared at him as he went to go and splash his face with water. What was wrong with people that they could say things like that and think that they were in the right?

"The choice to live or die should have been mine. You made me less than a person again, a machine to be fixed whether I wanted it or not, and you expect me to be grateful. Maybe if you'd explained everything to me and given me the choice, maybe I would have trusted you enough to let you do it. Or maybe I would have chosen to die, shouldn't that have been for me to decide? You did this because you can't stand by and watch someone die, even if you have no right to interfere. That doesn't make you a hero for saving a life, it makes you arrogant for thinking your view and your comfort takes precedence over anyone else's."

He wasn't sorry for comparing Tony to his father. Howard and Zola had stopped him from dying when he fell from the train, even if he would have been better for it. Now the choice had been taken from him again.

"This is why it was so easy for HYDRA to hide, because everyone thinks their actions are more justifiable than anyone else's, and even the "heroes" are evil."

Great. So this guy had said maybe three words to him the entire time that he was growing up and now here he was, damaged goods and hardly knowing anything about himself or life lecturing him? Tony didn’t interrupt. He was too busy flushing his nose out with water and swishing the blood out of his mouth. At least none of his teeth felt loose. Trying to explain why he was all bruised and puffy to the Avengers when they cake around again begging him to help would be fun.

Maybe he’d say he was into a little S&M, and tell Rogers to google it. That would be a fun second hand story from Rhodey in a few weeks.

As the accusations fell silent, Tony looked up into the mirror. He wasn’t looking for Bucky. He was just trying to make sure that he’d washed the blood off.

“You came for me to fix you. And you were fine with that until I said you had to get into a machine. So fine. I took your choice away. Good news. Give it six months and you’ll be right back where you started from a few weeks ago. Less than that. All I did was a stop gap. You’re still going to malfunction and you’re going to be in pain. So consider that a parting gift from me to you. Enjoy the next six months deciding if you want to live or die. Call Rogers. Talk to him. Lay low if you want. Just don’t lecture me like you understand anything about me. We were done decades ago. Even if you don’t remember me. I gotta say, whoever this real you is? He’s an asshole.”

"I don't need to understand you to know what you did was wrong."

That was delivered without heat, just... tired. What tiny impressions he had left of the boy Stark had been were of someone enthusiastic and keen to change the world for the better, to be a good person and innovate. And now? Now he was arrogant and selfish, only able to see the world through his own viewpoint.

A part of his eyes, focused in the mirror on Tony, were desperate and pleading. He wanted to be told that he hadn't misplaced the first tiny bit of trust he had given someone and had it spat back in his face. But he couldn't, because Stark was unwilling to see this as it was and apologise, give it the gravity it deserved.

After a moment or two more of silence, he slipped away.

“I’m still not sorry that you’re alive,” Tony called after the ghost’s shadow, shouting weirdly so that his blood coated saliva flecked the mirror. He felt desperate for a moment, anxious, but it faded away and turned into a self depreciative laugh. His heart was heavy, his stomach rumbles, his face hurt. So he drank to forget, just for a little while, drowning out his sorrows and his pain until he passed out.

Everything was fine for about four hours until Tony awoke to a man in a cat outfit messing with all of his stuff. He thought he was daydreaming until a dark, growling voice demanded he tell him how he’d found the terrorist. When Tony didn’t answer, he literally was pounced upon, claws of all thing directed at his throat.

What was with people trying to rip his throat out?

“I don’t know what terrorist you’re talking about. But I suggest you take your high glossed leather Cat Woman Halloween outfit out of my face.”

“I tracked him here. He was just here. Where is he?!”

There would be no answer once the hotel room door burst open and a shield flew into the wall behind him.

Jesus. Today was not his day.

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at work now <3

Re: at work now <3

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