fossilised | it's a new plot!

Splitting up was wise indeed. Valkyrie and Hulk would work together leaving Thor on his own. He was quite used to that. Thor alone went to New York, leaving the others to go as they saw fit. The city itself was not under much of an invasion, however, but HQ absolutely was overrun by black clothed soldiers carrying a wide array of scavenged weaponry. They were not easy to render lifeless, but Thor had a few new tricks up his sleeve.

He was still sparking when Tony and Peter screeched into the compound. “What the hell happened?” Tony asked just as FRIDAY enveloped him in his armor. He looked half annoyed by it, stepping back so that the plates were fitted better to his body.

Thor set his hands on his hips after he tossed away a helmet (head still inside, whoops). “I was saving the day.”

“Where are the rest of the Avengers?” Tony barked, frustrated. Especially when Thor just looked confused. “You know? Our friends?”

“I know not. There were several of your workers huddled together. I believe some may have been harvested. I have seen no face I know.”

That was bad. “Okay, Flash Dancer, you stay here.” He had to look for Bucky. “Look after my Bug.”

It probably wasn't very heartening to Thor, having killed all of his opponents, to receive no accolades and only be told to look after a child as if he were a nanny and not a warrior in his own right. But he wouldn't be the only one put out; Peter was already scrambling into his suit, skinny chest still on show as he looked up at Tony pleadingly.

"Aww, come on, Mr. Stark, let me come with you. I can handle it, I really can. I'm strong, I'm fast, and I swear I'll follow orders. Not that it's not super cool to meet you, Thor, you're-- wow, look at your arms, they're bigger than some trees I've seen, that's amazing. It's just that I want to help, not be protected like some kid."

He gave Tony his best puppydog eyes as FRIDAY relayed an incoming call to him from Steve.

"Tony? Do you read me, are you okay? There was an attack at the compound, we've mostly dealt with it but we have some injured and some missing. Could really use your help when you get this."

At least Peter was good at accolades. Thor gave him quite the appreciative nod. Yes. He was indeed pleased. Very good. This boy that was somehow in Stark’s charge could stay. Even if he turned right around wanting to go with Stark. That was the problem with Earth. They had some odd ideas about who their heroes ought to really be. What was cooler than a King?

Tony held up a hand to keep Peter’s whining down to a low roar. “Cap?” He knew the man wasn’t anymore but old names died hard. “James with you?”

There was a crackle and then silence before Steve answered in the negative. “One of the missing.”

Thor opened his mouth to reply but Tony snapped his fingers in his face to shut him up and the startled Asgardian did just that as the humans squabbles on the radio about who was meant to be safe guarding whom. When he could stand it no longer, Thor plucked the device from Tony’s hand. “Enough of this pettiness. We must find the main ship in this area. It is where your friends are.”

And that meant that Steve was stuck tending to wounded on his own but Peter was in luck. They could use his web shooters where they were going. Tony nodded to Thor. “Show me.”

But Thor’s face blanked. “About that. My flight is somewhat more limited now that I no longer focus my strength through Mjolnir—“

No one could see it, but Iron Man rolled his eyes and opened his arms. “Jesus Christ. All right, hug fest. Hold tight. You fall, that’s on you.”

"Oh-- oh, okay, hug fest, that's cool."

Peter babbled in a mix of nerves and excitement as he wiggled his way into the awkward three way hug that was going on, pretending as if he weren't nestling his head against Thor's chest and wondering just how many sit-ups to Captain America's workout he'd have to do in order to become quite that ripped.

Not that James was still on the ship. The scavengers, after all, were primarily interested in monetary reward or gifts of greater value for anything that they found. The dregs of HYDRA had made themselves known pretty quickly and paid a good price for him, so he was already gone. They still had Wanda, as well as Sam, Scott, and a bunch of high ranking politicians that had obviously been worth something.

"Um, Mr. Thor?" That would be Peter, even as they flew closer. "I'm not really sure how to address you. Can I just call you Thor? No, wow, that's way too familiar, right? We're not there yet. Maybe we can get there one day, but not yet. Mr. Odin's Son? Or is it Your Majesty? Or Your Highness? What's the difference? Or is there an address for a God that I don't know? Does it matter that I'm an atheist?"

“My rightful title is All-Father, though friends call me Thor,” the largest of the three boasted with a full heart he couldn’t help but laugh in his enjoyment of this battle. What he had assumed would take place alone had become a merry band indeed. And though Peter was young, he was an Avenger. And that was a group Thor held above many. They felt a great deal like family, even if they could never truly be.

It mattered not. Their storming of the ship was full of glory and Thor gave praise to the small one that Tony called his Bug. He was much like Thor’s bug too, save that he spoke a great deal more than Miek ever did.

They freed the people onboard but even that did not seem to make Stark pleased and he once more left the Bug in Thor’s care.

The tall one eyed man turned to Peter with a frown. “I would like to celebrate this victory with you. Lead the way to the Starbucks!”

The Asgardians cemented their place with the Earthlings by the end of the single day siege. Hulk and Valkyrie made a game of it and spent the following day hunting down those that had initially evaded them. That was two full days of James Barnes being lost.

Luckily, Tony was a resourceful sort. FRIDAY picked up on coded communication, on key words that Tony was always listening out for. And the Asset? Well that was one of them.

He at least knew better than to go it alone on a rescue mission. Steve had his hands full, but the rest of the team was already making quick work of binding governments together to combat future planet wide catastrophe. “Rogers. Found him. We’re shipping out,” Tony said as he swooped in over HQ and landed with a thud. “Suit up.”

The thing that made Steve a hero was his selflessness. He wanted to abandon everything and search for Buck-- James, he wanted to ignore all the stupid backbiting politicians who said one thing to his face and another thing behind his back, but he didn't. He did his duty and he kept his focus on the good of the world, because he wasn't about to let the people here get hurt if he could help it. Maybe Thanos was a bigger bully than he was used to, but he was still a bully and Steve Rogers fought bullies.

He was out of the compound faster than Tony could land, there before he even finished saying suit up, uniform on and shield in hand. It had been overwhelming - the public called for him to be reinstated, the other Avengers called for it, but he still hesitated when he saw Tony. It had been Tony, after all, who told him that he didn't deserve to carry the shield any more. Would he still feel that way?

"Where is he?"

He'd go to the ends of the earth and back to track him down if he had to, blue eyes earnest and worried.

There was a lot to Steve that Tony was not sure about. The guy had dropped a giant shipping container on a child he didn’t know would be able to survive. He’d destroyed millions of dollars in property trying to clear the name of a guy he couldn’t even find because they were best friends. And Tony could have forgiven that. He could have forgiven all of that if Steve had tried trusting him. Just a little bit.

But all of that was a year behind them. James had mended their fences, just with duct tape but it was a start. Now they didn’t have the time to try and regain each others’ trust but they could still work together.

Despite their differences, they had always worked together so well.

“You’re not gonna like this, Cap. HYDRA has him. He’s in Siberia—. You’d think they’d learn but I guess it’s more economical not to abandon perfectly good bases.”

Tony didn’t know what they’d be walking into but it wasn’t going to be good.

A lot of people thought that Captain America wasn't a killer, like a soldier could be a soldier without having blood on their hands. Just because he didn't like bullies and he wouldn't commit cold blooded murder, that didn't mean that he wasn't okay with killing in a fight. It was a strange dichotomy that people seemed to have about him.

He honestly didn't have the energy to dissect it most days, letting people have whatever impression of him they wanted. But if they went into a HYDRA base in search of Bucky, then he would kill with exactly the same amount of hesitation and compassion he had shown when he busted him out of that first experimental chamber - literally none.

"Right. We'll be faster if we take the quinjet, but we can't spare it right now. So you're gonna have to carry me and fly us fast, hard, and silent."

“Okay cool. I’ll just carry you for forty-five hundred miles...”. If Steve died on him, that was going to be a problem. A huge problem. A James would never ever forgive him problem. “Luckily I’ve got something better—“

If it wasn’t destroyed in the attack. The single person mini-jet that James and he had flown over in (being squealed together with the man hadn’t been all that bad for Tony) was just under the brush. Tony had been using the prototype for a week or so now, ever since he located Bucky up in Canada on that train. It worked pretty well but it was a bumpy ride.

He would not be climbing in there with Steve Rogers, however. He’d let Cap take it all on his lonesome.

Tony took off first, but the jet would beat him. He just couldn’t sustain flight against headwinds the same way a jet could. And so ten minutes after Steve landed, Tony tumbled into rock hard ice next to him, sliding on the slick surface because he hadn’t wanted to use his vents to brace himself. This was supposed to be a stealth mission.

The base looked desolate from the surface but heat readings a few meters down proved that HYDRA was as stupid as the intelligence. That was both good and bad.

All it took was a few words to undo James completely.

Iron Man glanced at Cap. “Let’s just kill everyone else and not bother with each other this time.”

That really wasn't funny, and the look that he shot the red and gold helmet covered head to his left said that clearly. He didn't think that what had happened between them had been at all worthy of joking about, even after the fact, but then he dealt with his emotions in a different way to Tony.

"If we can get to him, we have no way of knowing if he'll even come with us willingly. It's entirely possible that he'll attack us."

It killed him to say that. He didn't want to distrust Bucky, but what was in there might not be his Bucky, it might be whatever they had hollowed him out with and put their own creature inside. God forgive him, but he really did want to get his hands on every person in there and kill them slowly. He wanted revenge for what was done to the best and bravest man he ever knew.

"You speak Russian, don't you? Do you think we could get you infiltrated if we managed to get hold of a uniform and shaved your beard off, make you less recognisable?"

“You want to shave my beard.” Tony lifted a hand to his faceplate, as if trying to offer it an extra level of protection. “Really? Don’t you think I’ll look the same without it? My Russian is pretty rusty.” He listed of another ten reasons why it was a bad idea to shave off his beard for a plan that wouldn’t work but after half an hour or so, Steve had him sheared and stuffed into a HYDRA uniform.

The truth was that they both knew that if James had been triggered, Tony was his best shot at getting him out. He would have to take over the position of handler. Infiltration was honestly their only option of James would not only get away, he would probably join up with a HYDRA extraction team before they could track him down.

Definitely not an option.

And so off Tony went, whiskers left behind, into the bowels of the base. No one asked for his ID. He just saluted and said a few words in Russian, mostly demanding to know where the Asset was, as Steve stayed in the mini-jet and monitored the situation.

Ten minutes after he entered the base, someone showed him to where James was being kept. This group was leaderless. HYDRA had been fractured and this just proved it. In a way, that upped the stakes. These men were so much more dangerous.

Fractured societies were dangerous, and these ones were desperate for any semblance of control that they could get back. That they had recovered the Asset had been such a massive moral boost that they had begun to rest on their laurels, and they had also made sure to take out their frustrations and pent up energy on the one target that wasn't allowed to fight back.

The Soldier wasn't alone when Tony was shown into him, though he was naked and bruised all over. His expression was completely blank, knelt on the floor as a man with blond hair and eyes so pale blue that they almost seemed colourless washed his hair for him in an oddly intimate way.

The HYDRA soldier looked up, jealous of another come to interrupt him. He was the Soldier's handler, the one with the phrases, and that gave him immense importance here. He was, truthfully, just a junior handler who had been in training when HYDRA fell, but there was nobody there now to tell him that he couldn't be in charge.

"What is it?" His Russian had an appalling accent, he was clearly American by birth, probably somewhere in the Southern states.

Tony was furious and without a beard to hide the way he clenched his jaw, there was literally no way to hide that anger growing in the pit of his stomach. James wasn’t his by any right, but they’d come to the understanding that they’d hold hands and play video games sometimes. There was no covenant with any pretty blond boy for hair washing that Tony was aware of and the desire to just shoot the kid in the face was pretty much through the roof.

It made the soldier get to his feet and ask again in a louder voice what Tony wanted.

He used that to his advantage. “I’ve come for the Asset,” Tony said, his Russian far from perfect but it was good enough. He lowered the pitch and the timbre, letting it vibrate through his throat. “What are you doing? There were no orders to give him a handler. I don’t care how accurate your hair color is, you’re breaking protocol. I’ll have this in your file. Soldier—“

And this time, Tony addressed James with authority, pushing down the heartbreak.

“You will come with me. Immediately. There is a mission. Your target was spotted in the area. Where are his clothes? Why is he bruised?”

It was obvious that the kid hardly understood what he was saying and so Tony switched to English, but made sure to affect the proper Russian accent. “His clothing! This is not play time. We are at war!”

The Soldier looked up at Tony out of huge brown eyes, like one of those beaten dogs in a commercial for animal charities, but he didn't move despite the order to. All of his handlers were the same, they all had the hair and the eyes and the words, this one didn't have any of those and he hadn't been given leave to follow him.

The young HYDRA operative rose frowned at Tony, half concerned that he might have actually found himself in the presence of a superior, and half indignant that his prize might be taken away from him. So he shook his head, taking a gamble on it, and replied in English since this goddamn demanding bastard actually spoke a civilised language.

"The Asset is under my command, I'm his handler, so any missions have to go through me first. What exactly is it that he's needed for? You know that he shouldn't be deployed for grunt work."

“Do you believe that I would be here for ‘grunt work?’ No. I would never be sent to this god forsaken outpost unless it was for a damned good reason. Captain America is nearby.” And since Tony had the tech with him, he pulled it s holographic display screen to show Steve Rogers, sitting inside the mini-jet. It was a calculated risk.

Tony stormed forward, his entire attitude making the younger man flinch and draw back. He even rolled down his own sleeves.

“If you had thought that you would be well rewarded for securing the Asset once more, your current attitude is ruining your prospects for any reward at all.” Tony flashed the salute, one meant to intimidate, to ferret out supporters. He even gave a nice, crisp, “Hail HYDRA,” which his junior more or less fell over himself to do the same.

Young men, no matter their affiliation or alignment, were all the same. The puffed at first until the big dog approached and bit their necks.

“As he’s imprinted on you, foolish boy, and we do not have the time to wipe him, you’ll accompany the Asset on his mission. Understood? Now. Get. Him. Dressed.”

Even though Tony was smaller and unknown, he gave off an air of command that came from experience and from years of being the head of his own company, that made the young man leap to obey him. He muttered a command in Russian that had the Soldier rising to his feet and jogging out of the room, heedless as to his injuries and nakedness both.

"Fifteen minutes and he'll be mission ready, sir. We can rendezvous with you by East Gate six, is that okay?"

He really didn't want to go out into the field. It was why he had gone into the training to control the Asset; he wasn't a natural at combat, but he had the delight of psychological torture and the love of being in control that made him a natural to control their living weapon. He wasn't supposed to go near the Avengers, that was supposed to be other people with big guns, but he couldn't argue with a superior, so-- well, he'd just have to hope the Soldier protected him.

As promised, the Soldier and his handler would be at the cold and barred metal gates on time. Now the Soldier was decked out in black leather tactical gear, most of the bruises well hidden, and a whole armoury worth of weapons hung from various straps and belts.

Tony had no intention of telling this twisted little child to go with them. He found East Gate Six with FRIDAY’s help and before he even got there, everyone on the base was calling him Sir and saluting him. Good. Very good. That boded well for this little exercise, if he was really thought to be sent from some other, more centralized HYDRA facility.

Once James and the Handler arrived, Tony looked over the latter very carefully, criticized the way that he held his gun (it was the way he himself would hold a weapon so he knew the kid learned it from movies and not the way a trained soldier would), and rolled his eyes.

“Give me verbal control over the Asset until we complete our mission. You will wait here and prepare the medical bay. Captain America will not go without a fight and the Asset is sure to take some damage before we bring the target in. I do not want us to being our weapon back home looking like he was in a meat grinder,” Tony said, accenting heavily, and watched relief form in the Handler’s eyes. Tony hit on two things the kid wanted... to be recognized as James’s handler and not to have to go and fight.

The kid gave over control to Tony, giving the proper instruction that the Asset was to heed whatever Tony said until they returned here to base.

Well guess what? The joke was on that kid because they were not returning to the base. Tony was going to nuke it.

The controls given were meant to be temporary, but this junior handler was new and inexperienced and didn't think to place in failsafes as he had been trained to. He was meant to implant commands so that if something went wrong, or if he fell into the wrong hands, he would automatically return to a base within a set amount of time.

Not this time, he just gave the temporary command words to his superior and gratefully left for the medical bay before any minds could be changed that might put him back in the line of fire. So now it was just Tony and the Soldier, the latter standing at the former's side as though he were the hired bodyguard once more.

"Ready to comply."

It was the first thing he had said since Tony came in, delivered in flawless Russian as he had been instructed to speak.

Tony wasn't an easy man to hurt, not on the surface, but he felt like he was being punched repeatedly in the gut. It hurt more than it had any right to hurt. It had been his fault, letting James go alone, but it had also been James' choice. James asked him to give him time with Rogers-- But it wasn't Steve's fault either, as much as Tony wanted to blame the man. He looked at Bucky for too long, the blank slate he remembered so well from his youth, and stepped up to the gate.

"Follow me closely. Our mission may change. Be sure to listen to everything I tell you." This was not going to be easy. He knew that. He doubted that the Asset, now that he was given orders to listen to Tony, would buck at those orders, but one could never tell. James' mind was currently not his own. He was locked in there, looking out.

And because of that, despite the cold beneath the coat, and the moment that they moved far enough away from the base, Tony turned to Bucky and said five words to the man. In Russian.

"Remember that I love you." Steve didn't speak Russian, and though he was listening in, it would mean nothing to him.

It had been hours since the whispers bothered him, hours since he'd seen anything bad about to happen. He hoped that everything stayed quiet for now as he guided James across the snow to where Steve waited.

"Rogers is on our side," Tony continued. "Don't hurt him. We need to get out of here. These kids are idiots. So no killing. No hurting anyone. I don't want to give you orders, but this one you need to follow. Okay?"

Tony might think that Steve didn't know Russian, but he would be wrong. Over the last couple of years because he knew where Bucky had been held and he had wanted to look over all of the files and videos himself, he had taught himself the language. Thankfully the serum had made it much easier to learn and retain, but he still wondered if he wasn't as proficient as he might have believed once he heard that.

Love? Tony loved Bucky? It had to be in a brotherly way, much like Steve loved him, but it was still a shock to hear. After all, the man had killed Tony's parents and not that long ago, he and Steve had warred over it. But he made sure to school his expression when the two came up to the little single-seater jet, he was a better liar than they gave him credit for a lot of the time.

The Asset followed his temporary handler without complaint or question. If he were told not to kill, then he wouldn't kill, if he were told not to harm Captain Rogers, then that's what he'd do. He didn't need explanations, he just followed his orders without question.

Steve slid down from the cockpit of the tiny plane to stand in front of Tony and James, trying not to look like he wanted to cry at the sight of him so blank eyed again... at least he didn't know about the condition that Tony had initially found him in.

"How are we gonna do this? The plane isn't big enough for all of us, I don't even think it would hold two of us, and your suit can only hold you."

Maybe Tony and either Steve or Bucky could fit in the plane, but not two super muscled serum enhanced soldiers. And neither of those two could fit in the Iron Man armour either.

It was a good thing that Steve didn’t really read into the way that Tony had barked orders at the young agent to get Bucky properly dressed. He wanted to keep that to himself. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t let whatever degrading things had been done to him in the last day and a half to be spread to the world.

It didn’t matter if some of the videos still being passed around online had been much more hard core than some bruising and some hair washing. This was so much weirder. And so much more personal. And Tony really was going to come back here and kill these people.

But first?

“Air drop ready? FRIDAY?”

“Yes Boss, just over the hill and waiting.”

Tony had done more than fixed up Steve Rogers’ shield. He’d done more with his time than just create a hundred new suits to replace the ones he blew up. He’d also been hard at work doing what he should have done for his teammates instead of putting the armor around the world.

“Cap. Meet Iron Cap,” Tony grinned as they stood on the top of the hill to see the red white and blue armor glistening in the heavy sun. “Let’s hope you didn’t put on weight in exile.”

"Whoa."

Despite the situation and how much his heart was currently aching for his best friend's predicament, Steve couldn't help but be impressed by the armour that landed in front of them. He had never particularly wanted a suit like Tony's, but he appreciated what the gesture meant and stepped up to it without hesitation.

It closed around him and a large HUD display lit up, labelled: SIMPLE MODE FOR GRANDPAS. With the controls labelled things like "press to go fast" or "up". He snorted and tilted his covered head towards Tony.

"Smart, thank you. Are you going to take your suit and-- order James to take the jet, or are you going to try and squeeze in there with him?"

And the amusement was gone right away. Nobody should ever have to order Buck around again, not even for his own good, everything should be his choice. Honestly, he didn't even like the idea of him on the Avengers team, he felt like Bucky had been fighting for seven decades and if anyone had earned retirement where his only problems were sleeping in late and what pie to eat, then it was him. But again, that wasn't his choice.

"We need to get him secure and then we need to come back here and deal with this base."

Because he also wanted to kill them all.

“That’s not James,” Tony said, frowning. “But I will be ordering the Asset to follow us to a secure location.” To Maine, actually, since that was the place that they had just left where James said he felt safe and were all of his boxes from the Tower not already unpacked had been brought over. Tony had gifted the house to the other man so that he always had a place to go, if he wanted it.

It would be better to try and rehabilitate him there.

Tony had seen James come out of a trigger in a few hours but he had no idea if having someone to imprint on instead of just issue commands would make any of the difference. He didn’t know if James just needed time and autonomy to escape his mind...

But what he did know was that Tony was going to try anything he could to get the man some help.

“You’re welcome to come back with us, Cap. FRIDAY can pilot you so that you don’t crash into the Atlantic again.”

"I'm never gonna call him that."

And he hated that Tony had, especially if he supposedly loved the other man in some way. He should always be James or Bucky or whatever name he chose for himself, not the designation that some evil child of the Nazi regime had given him. He wasn't the Asset or the Soldier, he just wasn't.

"And I'm pretty sure that I can manage it, thanks to these grandpa controls."

He just sounded dry and still unamused as he set the repulsors going and lifted a little way off the ground. "I'll follow you to where we're going too, then."

They were just going to have to have a disconnect in ideology. The man following him wasn’t James. He was a shell, not even the Nanny that used to follow him around as a child. Tony couldn’t actually bear to give James orders. Not after everything. And so he needed this disconnect to do his job and rescue the guy under the mask, his first and longest friend.

And yeah. He knew it was faulty logic. His friend had actually just been this automaton for much of their time together. Tony himself layered on a personality that honestly hadn’t been there.

It was what it said on the tin. And nothing more.

As Steve tried out the controls, lifting off, Tony turned back to that blank eyed stare and felt his heart crumble.

“We’re heading to James’ house in upstate Maine. Get into the mini-jet. Coordinates are already programmed in. I’ll be taking care of last minute business here.”

Steve would be too far away to stop Tony from blowing up the facility by the time that Iron Man was launching missiles and the mini-jet would not be broadcasting what was about to happen. It flew hard and fast away from the scene and Tony listened for FRIDAY’s go ahead that James had idea what was going on. He’d hovered overhead just long enough to draw most of HYDRA out before he started.

That blond agent got it the worst. He would be unrecognizable.

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idk why I wrote brown when I know his eyes are blue

i read it as brown eyed dogs anyway!!

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