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“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.

The Asset did as he was told. He didn't need instruction on how to pilot the jet, expert in all forms of military transport and weaponry, and so he was long gone before the carnage started. Steve knew about it, because FRIDAY was giving him updates as he requested, but... he honestly couldn't find it in himself to be sorry. He would have been stealthier, and he wanted to be involved, but he still would have made sure every damn man and woman in that place was destroyed.

It was amazing the devastation that the Iron Man suit could really do when Tony unleashed its full power, and before long the Siberia base was a smoking wreck of a crater, nothing left but charred bodies and bits of debris.

The Asset, in the jet, would be the first to arrive at the location in Maine, as no suit could ever fly quite as fast as a custom built jet like that. But all he did was stand on the flight pad and wait for further orders, he hadn't been told to infiltrate or observe or anything, so he just-- stood there. Next to arrive was Steve, and when Tony arrived he would find the blond man stood in front of the brunet one, eyes pleading as he spoke.

"--used to play poker for sugar cubes. You always won, and then you'd have super sweet coffee for the next week while I had it bitter. I used to let you win sometimes, 'cos I knew how much you had a sweet tooth--"

He would keep going on at the blank faced Soldier until Tony interrupted.

“So that doesn’t work.” Tony sounded horribly cold about it but he needed to be. Steve was here, acting out, and as much as Tony would have liked to be in his shoes, he couldn’t. Not in front of other people. He walked calmly out of his own armor as if he hadn’t just blasted a hole in Siberia. It was lucky that the Accords were currently blocked and on hold. Not that anyone but the Russians would care what he’d done.

He walked right passed James and Steve until he realized that James — the Asset — was just going to be standing out there.

“Come in,” he said, phrasing the order like it was an invitation. “I’m going to make us all something to eat.”

They probably had James on that weird liquid diet of his that Tony had been slowly helping to reverse. A nice soup should help.

As soon as Tony arrived, the Soldier's eyes were fixed on him. This was his de facto handler until such time as he returned to a base that he didn't yet know was destroyed, the other man was irrelevant other than the orders not to harm him. He moved immediately to obey.

Steve followed on behind, brow furrowed in genuine anger that wouldn't stop rising up inside him like bile. "What the heck are you doing, Tony? We need to find a way to help him, and you're acting like this is no big deal. What even is this place?"

He had never been to the Maine house before, surrounded as it was by the ocean, and he had no idea that it now belonged to James rather than Tony.

There was only so much of Steve right now that Tony could take and though he wet his lips with every intention of ignoring the blond, he needed to get a few things straight. “I was with him the last time he was triggered. I have done extensive, two year long research into this. I have the words. And I have the documents that say that familiarity will make him slip back into his original persona. Dad always was great with his notebooks. You trying to tell him about memories he doesn’t have any access to right now won’t help, but being in his own house? Around his own things? And with real food instead of some nutritional slurry? That’s what he needs. And we have to stay with him. And be with him. And we have to help him when he starts to remember on his own. It’s a whole damned process, Cap and you need to back off.”

So much for ignoring the blond. He’d gotten right up into his face instead. There was something very dangerous in Tony’s eyes right now. He was a mama bear, protecting one of the only things that mattered.

“I hope you like chicken soup,” he grunted before he backed away again, rubbing s hand against his eye socket, and stalked into the kitchen where he and James had spent the better part of three days hanging out during meals and holding hands.

That was more important to Tony than any kiss could ever be.

"How is this how own house? His own things?"

He knew that Bucky had been staying with Tony for a little while in the Tower, but this was a whole other level. He had been well enough to have his own house? He had possessions? It made Steve look more critically around at the large open plan rooms and hardwood floors, as if judging them as not Bucky's style.

Steve kept close to Bucky as he walked into the house and was told to take a seat while soup was cooking, though he kept his eyes on Tony.

"How much of what happened to Bucky did your Dad have a hand in, Tony?"

Because those notebooks sounded both incriminating and helpful.

If Steve knew everything that Tony actually had, he’d be so pissed off. That was why Tony had told Bruce that he had overreacted with the whole Bucky killed my Mom thing. That... and it was his Nanny. It was his boyhood crush. Guilt played a large part in Tony’s decisions, but more than that, his legacy almost demanded it. He came from rotten fruit and part of his tree had never grown right.

He tried as hard as he could to accept that about himself but it was almost impossible.

“Firstly, yah. This was dad’s weekend get away and the place I stayed out when I was thinking about dropping out of MIT. I don’t need thirty-eight houses, Rogers, so I gave him one.” A special one. This wasn’t one of many places dotting the coast where James had gone to get wiped. This was a house built after he’d been taken from Tony’s detail and put into deep freeze.

It wasn’t James’s style, sure, but James didn’t even know what his style was and he loved the views of the ocean, he loved how easy it was to defend the place as it was at the end of a long and private peninsula, and it was still capable of having Amazon deliveries.

“Secondly... he made the initial machine to jump start the process. He made the wipe machine. That arm? His. The wiring in his brain? His. Thankfully the conditioning wasn’t.”

And Tony had never known about the rapes until James publicly made that information available to whole world.

“Dad had a pretty big hand in all of this after you went down.” Which meant he’d come on the project later. After the conditioning had started. It was still pretty bad though.

Tony opened a half dozen soup cans and dumped them all into a big stock pot. Super soldiers, he’d found, liked to eat. And this would be easy on James’ stomach.

He hated that.

Howard might not have been his best friend in the world, but he had liked and respected the man, and to know that he had been so evil the whole time was disgusting. Just because he hadn't joined the project until after he had gone down with the plane, it didn't mean that the capability hadn't always been there. A good man couldn't assist in the breaking of someone they knew without qualms.

Steve looked a bit sick and he had to resist the urge to wrap his arms around Bucky and sob like a baby. As it was, his throat just bobbed a few times and his voice came out with a husky quality.

"Would you let me read those notebooks, Tony? Please?"

“I think that would be a really bad decision.” He rummaged around ina. Few drawers to find the large wooden spoon to mix this with as he turned the burner on, muttering to himself that he shouldn’t have given James leave to just constantly rearrange everything. It was his house, sure, but hunting for utensils twice a day was getting old.

He gave the soup a few good turns before he glanced back at Steve.

“Not because you aren’t smart enough to deal with it. Or because you’ll get angry and rip it all apart like some measly little log in Clint’s backyard—“ He congratulated himself silently in the funny. “You’re too close. It’s not going to do you any good. You know what you can do? Play cards with him. Use those stupid sugar cubes as ante. The more familiar he feels the better. But he’s really good at cards, so watch out.”

Truthfully, Tony didn’t want Steve to see any of his dad’s stuff. He didn’t want him to find the patents .

"I have to know."

He knew that Tony was right on one level. All it would do would be hurt him, and haunt him, but he still had to know. He looked sidelong at where Bucky sat without any care that they were talking about him, and his voice got even huskier.

"I know it's not nice, and maybe it doesn't help anything, but it's something I have to do. I need to know every way I failed him, I just-- please, Tony. I'll help out how you see fit if you just let me see the notebooks."

He'll play poker and not talk about memories Bucky didn't remember and even go away if he was told to.

Rogers was maddening. “Fine. But they’re not here. They’re at the Tower. And you can have a look when we get through this.” And Tony had some stuff to take out of his vault first. He couldn’t deal with the guy hating him again so soon after they had sort of made up. Kind of. “It’s all originals. In his handwriting. Just—. Promise me you won’t hold it against me as much as I hold it against myself.”

He couldn’t look at James right now, he hated the way he stared at him, as if promised for the next stage of the mission. Then again, there was no if about it.

Tony sighed. “Soldier.” Codenames were important to him. And that was how he could be sure James would even respond. “This is downtime. You shouldn’t expect further commands today after you eat.” He wasn’t sure he could or should command the guy to rest...

And he wasn’t sure how quickly he should take this.

“Any ideas on what you want to do to pass the time?”

"I'm not going to hold anything against you, Tony, none of this was your fault. Whatever your Dad did, those are his sins."

He would certainly go and find Howard if the man had still been alive and punch him square in the jaw if he could, but he'd be a bad sort of person if he put the blame for crimes onto a man's son who had nothing to do with it. Tony might be irritating and selfish and occasionally frustrating beyond belief, but he wasn't a bad man and Steve wouldn't treat him like he was.

He turned his face to Bucky at the question, almost as if he hoped to hear a response that brought back the man they apparently both cared for, but the only reply was a very mildly baffled expression. After an uncomfortable amount of silence, Steve cleared his throat awkwardly and pasted on a smile.

"Poker, right? We can teach Tony how to play the rules we used to play, okay? We'll clean him outta sugar between us, pal, wait and see."

If Tony could shoot that blond agent again, he would. Why couldn’t this be like a vampire thing? Kill the head vampire and all the rest just go back to normal?

Oh right. Because this shit show was reality and reality was never nice and cut and dry.

They had soup. They watched James mechanically eat the soup. They played cards. They tried to carry on some lively banter, but it was depressing. Even if James did win all of their sugar cubes.

Tony ended up leaning back against the chair as night obscured the ocean from view and then pushed away from the table.

“I’m going to take a shower.” Or run away to think and pout and blame the world. Maybe a little of both. And that left Steve sitting at the table with a barely responsible shell of a best friend and his own guilty conscious.

“I thought you died,” he said, softly. “So I never looked for you. But I saw the tapes. I know you waited for me. And I can’t make it up to you. I don’t know how.”

They might not think that they were helping, but deep inside the Soldier there were pieces of ice cracking off the longer the three of them sat together playing poker. Strange that he hadn't needed the rules explaining, nor to be told how to bluff. But he wasn't fun to play with, he never spoke unless it was to request a card or state if he called or raised a bet.

He watched his handler go until he was out of sight and then tilted his eyes back to the blond man as he began to talk - to Steve. Though almost at once he set his eyes down on the table again, something about looking into those blue eyes hurt him, like they were weapons somehow.

"Do you need me for anything, sir?"

He didn't want to hear these apologies, he wanted to go, though that was bad in of of itself, he shouldn't want anything.

It wasn’t the first time Buck called him sir. He’d outranked his friend, after all. Sir was protocol. Sir was expected. But neither were active members of the US Army. They were back to being civilians and as such, rank didn’t matter at all. In many, many ways, Steve was surprised that Bucky spoke to him at all. He’d not been vocal unless they asked him a direct question. He never asked questions himself.

But Steve didn’t get his hopes up. Maybe it was protocol to ask for orders if he was just given statements that weren’t orders. Those notebooks would shed a lot of light on the situation, but Tony hadn’t handed them over yet and Steve didn’t know if he’d even have to heart (or the time) to delve into them.

The question made him sigh, though. “Yeah, pal. I do. I need you for a lot of things.” He pressed his face against his palm before he dropped it back to the table. He didn’t get to be upset here. “I thought we’d been to the end of the line a few times now, but it hasn’t happened. We’re hard to kill, aren’t we? So I’m okay just waiting here until you figure it all out. Do you need me for anything?”

Edited 2017-12-03 16:55 (UTC)

The end of the line.

Those words hit him like bullets, knocking the air out of him more effectively than most weapons could, and his eyes widened. Something akin to fear flashed across his face and he stood up so quickly that his chair clattered back onto the ground, a loud noise after an evening of deliberate quiet.

Why those words had got to him he didn't know, other than his head was suddenly pounding and he had an urgent need to get away. But he hadn't been given permission to leave by his handler, and so he was in a difficult situation. He ended up stood in the middle of the room, body so tense that minute shivers ran through him every few seconds, and an expression on his face like a hunted animal.

“Tony!”

Steve didn’t play around. He’d done something or Bucky had remembered something, but either way, it didn’t matter at all because the guy was acting like he’d just been stabbed, or like he was about to pounce. That hadn’t been Steve’s intention and he backed away slowly until he was at the base of the stairs.

Tony appeared at the top in a bathrobe that was cut a little too short from Steve’s old fashioned experience and he came down the thin pile carpet in bare feet. “What did—“

He didn’t have to finish asking. Not when it was all so obvious.

Tony exhaled slowly but approached the man in the center of the room like he might any man. He did not show fear, but then again, he wasn’t even remotely afraid either.

“James?” He was just testing it out. If Bucky didn’t respond at all, he would lightly gesture for the Soldier to sit back down.

The Soldier didn't react and so he was sat back down again, calmed at least somewhat by the presence of his handler and the direct order, however gently given, for him to focus on. Steve looked heartbroken at what he had unintentionally done and eventually decided that it might be best if he left, though he asked Tony if he'd be able to come and visit for an hour or two each day.

He said that he would cover for Tony for a week with the duties of the Avengers, but if there was no change after that then they'd have to have another conversation about things, because they needed Tony to be involved if Thanos were on the way in the next couple of months. They might have beaten these scavengers back with minimal deaths, but that was just a tiny fraction of what was coming.

For four days, the Soldier remained silent. He ate on his own, always soups or easily digested things, slept on his own, and washed on his own. He otherwise seemed blank, never really responding to anything Tony told him. Until the middle of the fifth day, when Tony was sat beside him playing a video game, and he might just feel a hand creep over and take his hand to interlock their fingers. Sure, it would cause his character to die on screen when he no longer had the ability to hold the control stick, but would he mind?

Tony sat the controller on his knee and closed his eyes briefly. He’d always had these moments with his Nanny, when sometimes, out of nowhere, the man would react towards him in an affectionate, or at least a non robotic way. He could link up a lot of those particular memories with days where his Nanny was no where to be found, when that aberrant behavior had been spotted by his father and the Asset was taken away. Tony knew why now. There was something in these moments when left unchecked that would have the potential of giving Bucky his memory back.

Tony lightly moved his thumb across James’ knuckles and just sat back in the overstuffed couch. He didn’t want to ruin it, this momentary lapse in programming, but his mouth wasn’t exactly one known to remain still in silences.

“It’s taking me longer than I thought it would to regrow my beard.” Just something random, but friendly, as he lightly squeezed Bucky’s hand.

He had actually been recovering himself since that moment where Steve said those fateful words and it had only got stronger and stronger as the days went on. With visits from Steve and with Tony always by his side, he had managed to recover more than he ever thought he would, though it had taken him a long time to drag those pieces out from under the Soldier's stoic influence.

Bucky squeezed those fingers right back and then slowly, ever so slowly, leaned sideways so that he could put his head onto Tony's shoulder. His eyes slid closed and when he spoke, English finally, his voice was raspy with disuse.

"I like the beard."

“Yeah. Me too. I mean it’s a lot of work to keep up but my chin stays warm.” They settled into the couch together, just holding hands with James himself choosing to cuddle against him. And that made Tony smile as the resume game screen flashed st him. It could just stay that way for the rest of the day for all he cared. Tony lightly rested his cheek onto the top of James’ head and made a mental note to tell Steve about this later tonight.

The blond would be over here in a moment otherwise and call Tony jealous (obviously) but he wanted this for himself.

A slow, steady draw slipped from his nostrils and rustled up James’ hair as the sounds of the ocean rolled through the partially opened windows. It was a little chilly out but Tony just wore layers. He thought the scent and sound might help James recover a little.

After a time, Tony rolled his head back onto the pillow.

“This probably is going to sound crazy... but can you wash your hair? I’m not saying you’re dirty or anything but...”. That agent had sickened and angered him. “You’ve has some real creeps messing it up.”

It was probably a good thing that Tony hadn't come in earlier or he would have been asking him to brush his teeth and wash down his throat too. Better not to mention that, he had already been humiliated enough by having Tony see him naked and bruised and submissive like that, he was lucky that the other man still wanted him around at all, let alone still wanted to touch him.

"Yeah, I think I could manage that."

Even though his expression was still neutral and his voice still relatively expressionless, he obviously wasn't the Soldier any more, he had himself back for a given extent of himself.

"...thanks, Tony. You helped me remember, I owe you."

“You don’t owe me anything,” Tony said immediately. “I think this is one of those things that comes with the territory. I get into trouble and you save me. You get into trouble and I save you. And sometimes Steve can come over and hang out.” Tony wasn’t the only one that had done the saving after all! He didn’t want to give Rogers too much credit but he might as well give him a little!

Tony tightened his grip ever so slightly before he glanced in James’ direction.

“So I have a confession...” He didn’t know about the forced blowjob. And yeah. James would have to go for a whole detox if that was the case. What was it with Nazis and rape anyway? “Don’t get mad but I eh... I didn’t save anything for you to get revenge on. I’m only a little sorry about that.”

Tony had issues looking at himself in the mirror sometimes because of all the death he had caused. But in this case? He looked damned good.

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