fossilised | it's a new plot!

"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.

It took time to do this and Tony Stark was not a traditionally patient man. He cut corners whenever he could, took hard lefts through gaps in traffic to make a light and rarely used the speed limit as a safety precaution. Wishing he had some liquid courage to help him pass the time, though he wasn’t too afraid of anything other than the affable Steve Rogers joining him as he waited for Bucky to be Bucky again, Tony watched the light on his HUD move around the sewers for awhile until it went still. Only then did he report back to the Avengers that he had finished his sweep and verbally agreed to get some medical attention for the whole being choked out and punched and threatened with claws issues he’d been managing through just fine without any help over the last few hours.

It gave him the excuse he wanted to head down to where Bucky was hiding.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Boss,” FRIDAY said as Tony stepped out of the armor.

“Just order me replacement shoes if you’re so worried about my health. Actually. Order me replacement shoes even if you aren’t.” This was pretty awful. He tried not to think about Germany sewerage engineering as he headed towards where he’d seen Bucky come to rest. It was brighter than he’d thought it would be, but his footfalls on slimy brick and concrete were deafening. St least he wouldn’t be sneaking up on the man.

He paused in the opening of a grand junction. Light poured down from above, punching through the grating like spotlights, pinpricking across Bucky’s skin.

“Do you know me?”

The sewers were comforting. The smell didn't matter, he had suffered through much worse than a few bad smells; but they were dark and branched off in many different directions which would make it easy for him to evade capture. He knew how to move to avoid making a lot of noise... which obviously the other person down here really didn't.

It was only due to the fact that he was Howard Stark's son and looked a bit like him that saved Tony from attack, because Bucky registered him as a HYDRA technician and he knew that his orders weren't to attack any other operatives. Though the eyes that looked at him were blank and emotionless.

"Maintenance required."

That wasn't an answer to the question, but at the same time... it sort of was. He wasn't himself yet, he had been ripped away again by words implanted so deeply that he might never be free of them.

“Back to HYDRA then? Yep okay. You do need some maintenance.” He kept his hands in his pockets as he approached, fearless and non threatening, and circled the younger man part of the way before his head tilted. “I don’t have all of my tools so you’re going to have to give me a run down.” He didn’t want to treat Bucky like a machine but in this fragile state, Bucky probably felt better being treated at least partially like one. Tony was doing his best just to be polite, and to make sure he wasn’t attacked. His armor was close but not close enough. His wrist watch was reset but it could only do so much. It was mostly meant to stop ballistics. Not a a hulking arm.

And yes. He had disabled it, but if Bucky used any momentum st all, he could swing it right into him with the force of a Mack truck and lay him out. Easy peasy.

He wasn’t interested in figuring out what that felt like.

“What’s wrong beside the arm? I’ll have to get you to the lab for that one.” He wasn’t lying. Tony was going to have to get him hooked up to a program to get those neurocircuits back into tip top shape.

"All malfunctions are within my arm, it's ceased functioning completely and I have no feeling or control."

It might surprise Tony to know that Bucky had feeling in his metal arm, or maybe it wouldn't depending on how deeply he had looked into the schematics for it. The operatives had wanted him to be able to sense pressure in order to more accurately perform delicate tasks, and also pain to be able to sense if there was any damage that needed to be fixed. An added cruelty, considering that the arm itself caused pain for how it was wired directly into the skeleton and the weight of it always dragging him down.

"I have orders to remain outside until further commands come, I cannot return with you for maintenance yet."

Not unless he had overriding commands, which was a possibility.

At least he wasn't outwardly hostile towards Stark, his muddled mind having placed him firmly in the HYDRA technician camp in his head.

“Then I guess we wait.” Tony had no where else to be. All right, that was a lie. He had everywhere else to be but he didn’t want to be found right now. He had no intention of answering any more questions. It was lucky that the World Protection Agency hadn’t slapped then with further citations, Steve would never let him live it down. Tony was pretty sure that the truth of the matter was in time spent anyway here. Bucky would gradually come off of this sort of triggering drug and when he did, he might need someone to hold his hair back while he vomited. Tony knew all about crashes. Of every variety.

Sitting, however, would not be an option. There wasn’t enough sanitizer in the world for this mess and he didn’t need to trigger any of his germaphobia either. Pepper had done wonders to help with that, but she was no longer in the picture and his hold on the realization that a little dirt wouldn’t kill him was slipping.

“What was the initial order? I’m going to guess it was something along the lines of wreck havoc because you pretty much beelined on out of there. It was impressive. Any headaches? Vision issues?” Tony flitted from topic to topic, mostly to combat his own boredom.

"My orders were only to escape at any cost and remain undetected by enemy forces, I am to await further contact from my handler."

It wouldn't be as easy as Bucky just coming down from a trigger word high, he would need to be, in the words of Clint Barton, given cognitive recalibration. He'd need to be knocked clean out to give his brain the chance to reset itself and break out of the programming again.

"There are intermittent vision issues, but nothing substantial enough to cause a lack of function during battle."

“Yeah. Well. We wouldn’t want that.” Tony paced for a little while, arms crossed or swinging in a variety of patterns as he went. Time passed, but it was slow, even going by his wrist watch. He huffed a little, imagining that he was completely full of human waste brought about by the mass consumption of sausages and sauerkraut (or whatever Germans ate) and shuffled his feet around patches of wetness before he stopped in front of Bucky.

From the manual, a trigger slowly lost its hold on the subject, though a mission could and usually did prolong its effects. He was not currently on a mission though, he had just finished one—. Or was he still waiting for those final orders to bring it to a halt? Tony frowned, the lines around his eyes deepening.

“This is taking too long and we have both been out in the open a lot longer than planned,” he said, still trying to play along. “I need you to get us both back to a safe house. Your arm does need to be fixed. It’s a liability. No one is coming. You have to have some back up orders, right?”

He hoped so or else they were stuck in smelly hell forever.

This was one of the situations that the Soldier did have a little autonomy. It was minimal, but he always had back up options in case his original orders would fall through, or license to improvise on a mission if the situation required it. In this case, returning to a safe house for repairs while he awaited further orders would not be out of the realms of possibility.

He considered it for a moment, before he just turned and started to walk down one of the dark tunnels, his footsteps barely audible even though the floor was very hard to avoid making noise on.

"There is a safe house in Dusseldorf, I can requisition a car and take us there, that would be acceptable."

As much as Tony just loved to traipse through the sewers, he was pretty sure that waltzing into a HYDRA base was going to be somewhat unfortunate should HYDRA still be using it. Given that Bucky was still in operation up to last year, chances were pretty good. Tony almost balked, almost declined, because if HYDRA came, they would get their favorite weapon back and he’d have to play along unless he wanted to die.

And they would kill him. He’d been on that list in the database for target practice.

Begrudgingly, Tony rolled his eyes at himself and headed off after Bucky, geography failing him on how far of a walk it would be.

The answer came as no real surprise…it was far. Very far. His feet ached, and his knees and hips hurt like the old man he was becoming as he climbed final ladder back to the surface. Bucky never showed his impatience, which made Tony nervous because if he didn’t snap out of it soon, he was going to have to take matters into his hands. And that would get to be quickly unpleasant.

“I hope this safehouse has scotch.”

"I don't know, the last time I visited this safe house was in 1965."

But he knew where it was. Whatever else got deleted from the Soldier, they made sure that they never touched important things like the locations of weapons caches, safe houses, or the HYDRA operatives that he was supposed to obey at that current point in his operations.

He waited patiently for Stark to get out of the sewers and then replaced the manhole cover to hide the fact that anyone had exited there. By the time his companion had properly got himself sorted, the Soldier was already scanning the surroundings for a suitable car to steal.

Lucky for both of them, he was an expert in that sort of thing, and had the door to a nondescript Ford unlocked and the engine hotwired in under a minute.

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