fossilised | it's a new plot!

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.

Bucky might not appreciate what Stark had done and he might not ever want to see him again, but that didn't mean he would ignorantly sit by while the man got his throat sliced by vibranium tipped claws. He had been stalking this man who was on his tail for a while now, the one who thought he had killed his father back in America, but he had managed to evade him until now.

He very nearly intervened... until that shield broke through the door and hit the wall at high speed.

No. No.

How could Steve be here and he not even know it? He froze on the windowledge of the hotel room, six storeys up, invisible from the inside thanks to the darkness outside, and watched.

Cat Woman-Man grabbed Tony and dragged him out of the chair by the collar, the t-shirt tipping as the engineer half stumbled and half fell over his own feet in the least graceful of ways. Bucky’s heading, if he wasn’t paralyzed by fear of being found and no longer listening, should pick up Tony saying yet again that there had been no one in that room with him except for some ‘hired help’ he even tried to air quote while he was being dragged. That a high end call girl (or boy) had gotten a little rough with him went along with his playboy persona, though whoever this guy was would provide the alibi he needed for the messed up face now that Steven Go The Fuck Away Rogers was on the case.

Tony didn’t struggle too badly, he just tried to get his feet under him, as he was held in front of the cat suited man just as Rogers stepped into the room.

He wondered how many men had gotten hard and how many women got their panties wet when big, strong Captain America in that enticingly tight uniform of his strode through the doorway. Tony mostly just felt like rolling his eyes, but they were swollen and bruised enough already and he wasn’t sure how good it would feel.

“You’ve been following me,” the accented man said to Steve, who had already retrieved the shield.

“You’ve been my best lead. Let Stark go and stand down.”

“Gentlemen, no need to fight over me—. But actually yeah, Kitty Pryde, I would love for you to put me down.”

“He knows where my quarry is,” the masked cat growled.

Tony grunted. “I have no idea who you’re even looking for! But if it’s Barnes,” judging by Cap’s appearance and words and... well. Facts. “I haven’t been looking. It’s not my business. I’m here for a lecture!”

This wasn't good.

He knew that the Wakandan King was after him for the supposed murder of his father, but did the others know that was who was under the cat suit? He could evade him, probably, but Steve Rogers added in a whole new dimension of concern to the situation. He really didn't want to come face to face with him again, not yet. Maybe not ever.

And then there was Stark.

Irritated and disgusted as he was by the man's actions, some residual part of his orders to protect had clearly lingered because he wasn't following the more sensible option of leaving. Instead, he felt for the window catch and prepared himself to make a move if it looked like Stark was in any further danger.

“Easy... Easy.”

“There is not Easy. You will give up Barnes to me. His life is forfeit and by right it is mine.”

Tony had stopped talking by this point, eyes scanning the room for something to use. He was nothing if not resourceful, or so he liked to tell himself, and he was pretty sure that even as this escalated, he’d be all right. No one was here for him, they wanted Barnes. And his Nanny was so long gone he might as well be in another time zone. Super soldiers clocked in pretty fast. He knew. He compared Steve’s trials to Bucky’s. And some of the Soldier’s measurements had been done while his legs were broken.

When there seemed to be an opening, Tony jammed his elbow hard into the suited man’s chest, only to feel the bruising spider over his elbow almost immediately. Vibranium. Who the hell had enough of that stuff to make a suit out of—? The answer came to him immediately after.

Wakanda.

He’d been to enough conventions and around the world of weapons designers and dealers long enough to know suddenly who he was dealing with.

“Black Panther? Seriously? Huge fan. This is pretty cool. Let me go,” Tony said, squirming, as Steve made a move to bum rush the guy holding him. And that worked out pretty well for Tony, dropping and rolling, just before what he assumed was some epic hand to hand combat (judging by the sounds) hit his ears. He army crawled to the window, whispering into his watch for FRIDAY to send his armor. He was going to jump. He did it once before and it was fine.

He was eighty stories up instead of fourteen but hey. Same principal.

Except it wasn’t. And he ought to know that. Physics was his thing. But so was trying not to be mailed.

Bucky might have been prepared to go in, but he wasn't prepared for Stark to take a sudden running jump out of the window in, what seemed like, an act of suicide. He didn't think it was, the man had shown no other suicidal tendencies and it seemed more like he was just making a really ill-informed and fear-driven attempt to escape the two men duking it out in his room.

Which was why he caught him.

Vibranium alloy fingers caught in the back of his shirt and stopped his freefall very abruptly and suddenly. If Steve or the Black Panther looked out of the broken window, they might get a glimpse of Bucky looking startled as he held onto Tony Stark, like he had caught him on instinct rather than choice, before he dropped out of sight.

Lucky for Tony, super soldiers were much more durable, and so his legs too the impact of a fourteen storey jump much better than Tony's would have done.

"Run. They're after me, not you."

The bruises on his face and neck were nothing compared to the ones that ringed his biceps and laced his chest from the fabric snapping taut against his skin. The armor had aborted its attempt to catch him and was now hovering above the pair. As usual, Tony would have survived, the armor taking the brunt of the fall, but FRIDAY was waiting for another directive now that her job had been completed by another. The AI, because Tony had built her that way, wondered to herself in silence how it was she had to look after Tony Stark, a man-child who was not, in fact, suicidal no matter how many safety protocols he completely ignored over and over and over again.

Struggling to catch his breath, Tony gripped Bucky’s shoulder and cranes his neck upwards. There were still sounds of fighting above him. Evidently Rogers stopped Black Panther from coming after him or Black Panther was keeping Rogers too busy to break away.

“Report!”

“You’re a bit of an idiot, Boss, but Captain Rogers and Black Panther are currently still engaged in combat. Would you like to put on the armor now?”

“Yes, yes— We won’t need to run if I can fly,” he said, and FRIDAY scooped him up a moment later. As the eyes in the face plate glowed, Iron Man turned back to his Nanny. “Let me help you.” You know. Instead of going up to help Steve.

Fuck Steve.

Maybe they had been so busy fighting one another that neither of the men still up in the hotel room had noticed Bucky at all. That would be ideal, if they just thought that Stark had fallen and managed to get to his armour, it would keep him out of this whole mess as much as he could. Which probably wouldn't last long.

"No. I go with you, they both know that you have a connection to me."

Even if it's not one that could be exploited. The Wakandan King would likely still try and torture it out of him, and Rogers would be so disappointed that Tony had lied that it might cause a permanent rift between them. He didn't want that. He didn't want to keep destroying everything he came in contact with.

He took a step backwards, eyes fixed up on the broken window up above.

"I have to go."

Iron Man made a sort of half saluting, signing off gesture and used bus repulsors to clear himself from the alley. He was no longer useless in this fight and as he hovered in the window, about to make some famous, witty quip to stop the action and bring attention back to himself, a veritable fleet of quintets descended from the sky and agents filled the only exit points. Tony’s stomach sank and he zoomed in with the HUD through the metal to ID various men and women from government and law enforcement entities. Rhodey had gotten him. His arrogance had gotten him. He didn’t know who they had been tracking, himself or the Wakandan super or Rogers, but it was bad news. They were all heavily armed. Though the damage so far was only to one hotel room, which worked in their favor for once, there was no guarantee that it would stay that way.

“Iron Man. Captain America. Two unknowns. Stand down,” a loud speakered and oddly gender neutral voice called, blasting over at least a half a mile radius in the city. “Hands up, weapons down. Come quietly.”

Tony could have jetted away, but both Rogers and Cat Woman were at the window, and neither of them seemed to be putting up a fight. Below, Bucky was surrounded by agents with guns. Tony rolled his eyes finally, which did actually hurt, and he lowered himself back to the street, stepping out of his suit neatly. “Fellas, put the guns away.”

No no no no NO!

This couldn't be happening to him, Bucky was so careful and so attuned to what was happening in each city. He knew how to track radio frequencies, how to map the movements of both private and government militia, and somehow he had become surrounded without even knowing they were moving in.

His gaze darted wildly, desperation and panic clear at the forefront, like a cornered and feral animal. He glanced across at Stark and then, briefly, up at the window to meet blue eyes that he hadn't properly looked into since he had been trying to kill him above the Potomac.

He genuinely considered fighting. They'd cut him down with that many guns, but he'd take out a lot of them before he went down, and he wouldn't be captured at the end of it. But he didn't, nor did he go down on his knees, he just stood rigid without knowing which way to turn.

“I’m going to handle this.” He couldn’t just have his armor fly Bucky away, he couldn’t claim to have anything to do with the Winter Soldier or this just wouldn’t work. So he kept his voice down and his hands out. “Just don’t talk. You’re good at that,” he continued under his breath before he stepped forward and grinned at the closest man. Woman? He couldn’t tell under the body armor or the helmet. “Is this some new homeless round up?” he asked, looking unimpressed, until he was literally manhandled down to his knees.

Usually the bad guys did that. They underestimated him, they made him seem weak, and then he blew them up. But these were the good guys. These guys were on his side. And they were taking him into custody without any due process.

Thankfully, the Black Panther’s big reveal and Steve Rogers’ homegrown charm had everyone on egg shells enough to offer the three a conditional release. No more going off board. No more going out of the margin of the book the rules were written on.

Tony wasn’t keen on any of the rules but he did help write them and he was trying to be less of a hypocrite lately. Trying to distance himself from his father had never been more important.

Sam and Rhodey met the three in Germany after Tony charmed the numbers from some of the ladies in an attempt to have FRIDAY copy cellphones and bounce interference off of the jet carrying the cage Bucky was being transported in. He had a plan. No one was going to be thrilled with it, not even himself, but he was short on time and notice. He had to do what he could with what he had.

Tony led the way into the office building, arms pumping as he tried to keep ahead of the others. He wanted to take a look at the control room. He wanted to see where they were taking Bucky before Steve could worm his way in and talk to the guy. He managed it, managed to try to make some meaningful connection so he wasn’t asked awkward questions.

But then all hell broke lose. He had no idea that someone might have the missing, elusive trigger book. He’d had no idea at all.

It was Stark that stopped him from fighting.

As the other man murmured that he would handle all of this in an undertone, he would see a flash of deep blue eyes that were desperately afraid before Bucky lowered himself to his knees and let them cuff him. Not just cuff him, he was forced into a cage and strapped down, restrained from all sides because of how dangerous he was. He would place his trust in Stark this time to make sure nothing happened.

He heard Steve's voice calling out to him in anguish, but he didn't look in that direction. He feared falling apart if he had to confront Steve now, and so the other man would have to be content with the sight of him restrained and taken away as his first glimpse in over a year.

And then--

God, he screamed, he fought, but it wasn't enough. The security feed would show the sheer strength of him, proving that the restraints were ineffective if he really chose to get free, the metal buckling and the bullet proof glass shattering as he slammed his way out. But then all of that energy was coiled inwards, trapped behind the veneer of the Soldier.

He had his orders, nothing else mattered.

Though Steve told him to stay put, Tony had no intention of doing so. He didn’t have anything on himself to contact FRIDAY and have his armor delivered, and while it would have been smarter to hack into the computer system in the room to get himself some protection and fighting power, he cut down the back stairs as everyone else went to try and stop the triggered Soldier.

He didn’t know what his orders were. The feed from the warehouse that they had been holding Bucky in had been looped. It was going to take some time to unravel all of that and time was not something that Tony had.

As he dashed out of the stairwell, Steve was being hurdled back against a wall, making the whole thing buckle. Tony ducked his head to avoid plaster from the ceiling cutting him up too badly as he zig zagged towards the atrium.

People, ordinary citizens were going to die today. Tony couldn’t help them. He needed to get down to where they were holding his armor and he needed to do it before they lost sight of Barnes so he could follow him.

He heard Widow taking a beating as he ran, and while he didn’t feel too hero like going away from the action, he rarely made anyone promises and he needed to keep this one. His Nanny was going to need him when he fought this thing off.

He just had to do that first. And that would mean finding a way to make that arm of his a non-issue.

It was a good thing that Tony had access to electromagnets. And that he knew how to fine tune them to vibranium.

The Soldier had the most dangerous of orders.

He was at his least lethal when he had set orders - find this one target and neutralise them - but he had just been told to escape no matter the cost and await further instructions. That gave him permission to be as destructive and as public as he wanted to be.

The man on him with the colourful shield was a hard opponent, but the Soldier had the edge when it came to fighting. His strength and his skill was the best in the world, that's what he had been made for. So it probably wasn't any surprise that he made it right out of the building and into the street, three people dead just for being in his way, before his arm went very suddenly dead.

He had evaded capture thus far, so he ripped up a sewer grate with his flesh hand and dropped down, a good place to hide and evaluate.

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