fossilised | it's a new plot!

Tony snorted, draping his arm over the back of the chair. “Isn’t that sort of the point of being someone knew? How are you going to know if you, this new guy, like hot chocolate or spaghetti or pizza or caviar unless you, uh, yanno, try it?” He’d eaten most of the cookies, but the Soldier could try that too. Tony had a very well stocked kitchen and freezer because the chances of being snowed in were more than a possibility. He had no intention of starving and the owners of this particular chalet, old and Swiss and about as authentically cute as possible, didn’t really want to have a dead American on their hands either.

He didn’t know what to do with the thanks, so he just shrugged it off. It was easier to ignore whatever made him uncomfortable. Being rich allowed him to do that for years and his own personality, cultivated out of loneliness and genius, just carried it through to adulthood. It didn’t matter that he was technically a superhero. He could still be an asshole.

“Well anyway, I have some new schematics for you to look at. I have redesigned some new, lighter parts for that arm. You’ve got a lot of redundancies and a whole lot of ionized steel in there. I can fabricate better. A whole lot better. I just need a few days.”

Bucky stared at Tony for a moment as if he were speaking a foreign language, before all of a sudden his lips tweaked upwards into a surprise and rare smile. Not for long, it was gone in another second, but it had been there all the same. Because he was right. It didn't matter if he remembered it, he was making new memories, and that did mean not being scared to try things.

So he picked up the hot chocolate again, cradling the mug carefully in his only working hand, and lifted it to his lips. The taste was... incredible. Thick and sticky on his tongue, nearly scalding the back of his throat, with just a hint of bitterness at the end from the rich Swiss chocolate.

"I don't want you to touch my arm," he said, between further mouthfuls of the hot chocolate. He'd see if Tony actually paid attention to his wishes this time. "I don't want to be worked on again."

That smile, warm and bright, was like a punch to the gut. Tony felt his eyes widening and his palms start to sweat. It was nothing he’d not seen before. People smiled at him constantly…but never that genuinely. His heart felt like it was in a vice grip and he pushed the chair back with his legs, feet flat on the floor and now unbent, as if it was safer to be at a full leg’s length distance from the guy that made him feel something like that.

When you’re used to being given into or schmoozed, you just don’t know how to react to something beautiful like that. Tony pressed his index finger under his nose and made a show of trying to comb the cookie crumbs from his beard so that he didn’t stare at Bucky’s joy at tasting hot chocolate. Tony had been proud of that, sure, but he didn’t need to go into an overload of feelings over a smile and a pleasured look of delight.

Was he fourteen again? No he was not. He was a grown adult. This shouldn’t get to him so much.

“So… I’ll just make the parts and you can upgrade them yourself.” Tony wanted to work on that arm. He wanted to make it better, lighter, more comfortable. He wanted to take out the HYDRA and replace it with… Well. Stark. It was selfish and it was weird but Tony always embraced eccentricities. “Or figure out how to regrow a limb. Huh. That could be useful actually.”

"I said no."

Bucky's refusal was firm but not aggressive. Tony wasn't trying to force him into it or take his choice away at the moment, but he needed to understand that there was a level of pushing where it would become uncomfortable and he had to stop. He didn't want the arm worked on or his old one regrown, not for a long time and maybe not ever. It made him feel like a lab rat again, an experiment, and he'd rather keep the pain and weight than go through that.

"But this place-- it's so calm. I don't remember the last time I sat in a house and didn't wonder if someone was about to come through the door. Just for a couple of days, can I stay?"

Though Tony might be pouting at all of his beautiful masterpieces going unused, his attention was drawn away from that almost immediately when Bucky didn’t immediately jump up, find his pants, and bust out of the side of the chalet. The older man blinked slowly, as if he wasn’t prepared for this sort of response, and then nodded. “Uh-- Yeah. Stay as long as you want. Doubt Rogers wants to risk another deep freeze incident so you won’t be bothered.” Itchy fingers, still a little clammy, were wiped from thigh to knee before Tony stood up. “Help yourself, there’s food in the kitchen.”

Alcohol was once again on his mind as he left Bucky alone in the beautiful, dark room with the bright white snow visible through the windows. If it was calming for a guy who had probably never felt safe over the course of the last few decades to just hang out awhile, looking at the mountains, Tony wouldn’t stop him.

He poured himself something to drink, pulled on a parka, and went to stand out on the deck. There wasn’t much of a wind so the air was relatively warm. He left the coat open, sipping on the scotch in his glass, and watched the edges of the sky. Part of him expected to see a lone figure trudging through the snow, but there was no one and nothing save for some trees that weren’t completely covered in white, a snow mobile under a tarp, and a bit of an orange glow at his periphery from the fire that had been lit for him when he arrived that morning.

He kicked at the snow that had drifted onto the porch and then leaned against the wooden support beam. He’d probably go back home tonight and let Bucky enjoy the place on his own for awhile. Rhodey would probably wonder where he was after too long anyway.

Although Bucky had been the one to ask to stay for a couple of days, it likely wouldn't work out that way. He would be calm for the first few hours and then he'd start feeling like a target was painted on him for every extra hour that he stayed still. He would start to wonder when the Avengers might show up, or how long it would be before he got tracked down by SHIELD and what remained of HYDRA.

It was those thoughts that, a few hours later, led him to walk up behind Tony.

He hadn't meant to sneak, but his training and reflexes automatically made him as silent as a cat, an assassin couldn't afford to make a lot of noise. He had bare feet which curled against the decking, though he still wore all the other clothes that were his, a bit grimy and tattered.

"...you put something in my arm to let you find me."

There was no other explanation.

Tony had been back and forth. More alcohol, then more warmth. A snack. A trip to the hot tub (which he decided against because he didn’t bring a suit and he wasn’t really prepared for that sort of post-hot tub shrinkage). Back outside. He dropped his glass and turned to shield himself with his hand when Bucky started to speak, before he wilted against the heavy beam and put a hand over his heart. It was shaking. He had considerable tolerance for thrills but lately, even that was too much.

“Jesus—” He had to catch his breath. “I appreciate that you’re a reformed assassin but that doesn’t mean that you need to practice your craft. I’m putting a bell on you.” Somehow, he was pretty sure that even that wouldn’t do much to keep Bucky from surprising him in the future. He needed a personal proximity alarm or something!

When he was able to think again, and after briefly lamenting the loss of his scotch, Tony glanced back up into almost frantic blue eyes.

“Not your arm. Gotta turn that back on again….I’ll do it before I leave.” He wasn’t stalling, he just tended to have a verbal stream of consciousness. “The wires in your head. I replaced them. Everything I make has a signature that FRIDAY can track. Don’t do anything stupid like trying to dig it out. I’m not going to tell Cap or anyone else.”

Bucky had to realize that. Tony had let himself get beaten up, a fact still visible on his face, rather than give Bucky away.

There was a difference between holding up under one round of beatings, and the level of torture that someone could apply to a man, he knew that first hand. Even without torture, his most dangerous enemy was friendship. Tony might start to feel guilty for keeping this from Steve, might be unable to hold up seeing him worry in silence, and end up caving. It wasn't about a lack of trust, it was about experience.

But he didn't say that.

He just lifted his right hand and threaded it into his hair, feeling the thinner spots underneath where Tony had had to shave bits off to operate on his brain. He'd been good, even managed to make it not obvious to anyone not looking for it, but there were still effective ways to track him down in his head.

"You said it was a stop gap, I'd have to have it done again if I didn't want to die."

Not just once, over and over every few months to stop the build up of a clot around the scarified areas and deal with problems that could happen in such delicate wiring.

"How long do I have?"

More worried about the corrosion than the clots, mostly because the corrosion was what would cause the clots despite using fiber optics where he could, he felt almost unable to affect his usual nonchalance when questioned. He wasn’t just cobbling together tin foil and chewing gum here. He had operated on a living, breathing human being. He’d had his fill of god-complexes, however, and being knuckle deep in someone’s skull hadn’t done anything to his ego but make him feel pretty damned awful. If he thought too hard about it, his heart might shrivel up further than it already had been.

He straightened, jaw set, and refused to look away from his Nanny. It didn’t matter how much he tried to separate that mindless drone from the man in front of him now, he couldn’t quite manage it.

“Preferably, every six months. You might be able to stretch it. If you get a real neurosurgeon in on a consult, you could probably go for a year or two. That device that I used to stitch your skull and skin back together over the panel? It’s only good for that. Skin. Bone…blood vessels. Your brain though? I don’t know. That’s more than just skin. You have implants that take up the majority of your frontal lobe and circuitry that is imbedded in your occipital bone and along your sphenoid. The serum is doing the majority of keeping you alive but metal and tissue don’t really work together and your brain tissue more or less can’t regrow around the splits in the wiring. The little leaks are leading to fluid build up and clots.”

Science was cold and hard. They were standing out in the snow, Bucky in bare feet. But Tony’s gut just kept clenching. He hated being forced to care. The scotch wasn’t doing it’s job.

The names of all the different parts of the brain meant nothing to Bucky. Even though he had been trained in a lot of areas as the Soldier, including some basic field medicine in case he ever became wounded enough to need care before he could reach the technicians, nothing had ever gone beyond a simple how to splint a bone. He hadn't even known that the brain had different bits, and wasn't just one complete mass.

It didn't matter if he didn't understand the technical aspects, because he understood the time frame he was given and the ultimate consequences of not getting the help that he needed on that time scale. He should not, he could almost feel that Tony was desperate for him to give reassurance that he'd find that help every six months, but he couldn't do it.

He didn't know if he'd want it.

So he just nodded and took a half step backwards. "I'll contact you before April 19th," exactly six months away, "if I need you. If I don't contact you by then, tell Steve on April 20th that I'm sorry."

That was a hell of a weight to put onto Tony's shoulders, but it was also a gesture and offering of trust. He was extending this secret to Tony, a chance to prove himself as someone that Bucky could put in his corner.

That wasn’t fair.

Tell Steve I’m sorry. Bucky would come to him for help and if he decided not to, or if something stopped him from doing it, then Steve would be able to get some closure. But Tony? Once again he felt like that fourteen year old kid who, on the eve of his fifteenth birthday, was told that his Nanny was being reassigned and if he needed anything, he should call on Edwin Jarvis. He hadn’t understood, exactly, what to do with the feeling of being left then, but Tony was better at it now.

“You could try writing a letter,” he said, not exactly brushing Bucky off, but he felt stunted, like he’d just been stomped all over and left to pick himself up.

Bucky had told him twice now that he was tired of always being used. Tony could commiserate. Need money? Get Stark involved. Need upgrading? Get Stark involved. Have a problem that your other geniuses on tap can’t figure out? Get Stark involved.

His eyelids lowered and he looked away, pushing off from the beam to step over his fallen glass and step towards the house.

“You might want to think about popping over before the 19th. I can’t exactly put you on my calendar and who knows what mess I’ll have gotten into by then. Use the chalet as long as you want. See you in April.”

Perhaps it seemed like he was being used to Tony, but to Bucky he was putting a whole lot of trust in Stark. He could go to Steve, he could go to anyone before that timeline ran out and get help, but the only person he even semi-trusted to get back inside his head was the man stood in front of him now.

He didn't have the words or the eloquence to say that, so he ended up just standing and watching the other man go. When he did speak, it was when Tony was almost out of earshot, but he would probably hear it, because it would be the first time that Bucky had called him anything but 'Stark' since they had seen each other as Soldier and boy.

"Tony," he said, voice a low and genuine rasp. "Thank you."

Tony paused and lifted his head. It wasn’t that he was in love with the sound of his name, it usually was said as more of a sigh anyway. He didn’t even care that it was Bucky that said his name. He’d been thanked already. It was worthy of nothing more than a shrug. But the younger man was trying. People didn’t tend to go to such lengths with him. So he glanced over his shoulder and smirked, even if he was feeling slighted and stepped on. Neither were mindreaders, after all, and intentions were so often misconstrued. “Yeah, no problem,” he said, before he went to pack.

Back in New York, it was business as usual. Steve was more fixed now than ever on finding Bucky. Tony helped out here or there, not in the manhunt so much as he was curious to find out which inside man happened to trigger him. Bucky was on the news for awhile…and then he wasn’t. The cycle turned over so fast that there was just no room to talk about him.

Eventually, they did find out who it was that had caused the trouble. Tony tried to stay out of Steve’s personal circle as much as possible, but he ended up heading with Captain America to Siberia. Tony knew all about this place. He’d found the notes about it months ago. He’d come to grips with his HYDRA roots somewhat along the way and was ready, with Black Panther, to capture Helmut Zemo and bring him to justice for using a man like a weapon to distrupt…what exactly? That, Tony hadn’t bothered to delve into.

As Iron Man led the way into the old training center, only to be confronted not by awoken Super Soldiers modeled off of the Winter Soldier, but by their dead bodies, he was not and could never be prepared to watch a video queued up specifically for him.

Watching his father die stung, though he knew Howard deserved it many times over. What he didn’t know, and had never uncovered, was if his mother had deserved her death too. Was she HYDRA or was her business with her husband accidental? Could she had been kept in the dark for so long?

This was a woman that had protected him from drunken rages, had visited him during holidays, had made sure he always had a place to stay at the Long Island mansion…

And he wasn’t ready, twenty years later, to see her killed by his Nanny. He flew into a rage that only Steve Rogers could finally stop…but not before they had ruined their friendship for forever. Helpless, armor ruined, Tony wanted Steve go, watched him throw down the shield…and blurted out something that he just couldn’t help.

“This is probably why your friend wants nothing to do with you. You’re a liar!”

Steve hesitated in his weary stride out of the Siberian base, back rigid, as he took Tony's words like blows to the back. But he didn't think that it meant Tony had spoken to Bucky, just that he was trying to get out some barbs, to hurt him. It did hurt. It made his heart heavy when he had to fight a friend, and it killed him inside to have to walk away from the Avengers and from what the shield represented.

He hadn't even found Bucky here.

All he had found was pain and sorrow, the long rusted evidence of the sort of terrible things that they had done to his best friend. It tore him up inside in the way that no bullet ever could, to know that he had failed to look after Bucky even after all that Bucky had done for him in the past. That was, and always would be, the closest thing to a brother that he'd ever have.

He didn't respond to Tony, he just walked away. But a few days later he made sure to ship him a phone and a letter, an apology for the lies he told and an offer to rebuild their friendship if Tony could ever forgive him and would ever want to do that again. And then he just walked away.

Further weeks past, and whether Tony noticed it or not, April 19th arrived without any sign of Bucky. In fact, it was only five minutes before the deadline of midnight when FRIDAY spoke to him, either to wake him up or to interrupt whatever he had been doing at the time.

"Sir, there is an intruder one floor above you."

Tony hit the cancel button on the phone the moment FRIDAY’s voice interrupted him. He’d been dialing three or four numbers every night since the FedEx for Mr. Stank came. Tonight he’d gotten to the sixth number and was one more away from likely hanging up on a ringing line. He’d have to call tomorrow, or in a few minutes. Or maybe he’d wait twenty four hours before he picked up the phone. Bucky hadn’t come. He’d promised to fill Steve in.

And as much as he truly loathed to admit it, he missed listening to Steve’s overbearing but gentle voice talking to him through an earpiece or pleading with him on the phone to help—. Steve didn’t need him. The Avengers had mostly split apart, which was exactly what Zemo had wanted in payback for the battle of Sokovia... Orchestrated completely but his own pride. And Steve had always been willing to help him fix a mess.

Tony was no stranger to guilt and now it was eating him just as much as the alcohol was, consuming his liver with disease that one day he wouldn’t be able to fight.

FRIDAY again told him about an intruder and Tony, frustrated, slammed down his drink. “Tell Rhodey—“

His eyes caught to clock though. Still a few minutes to midnight.

He stumbled upstairs, lonely and pathetic and drunk, hoping for the best.

Bucky knew what had happened in Siberia, he had been there just a few days after they had endured their fight there and he had completely mined the security feed for the information. He had slipped in and out dressed all in black leather, a silent ghost along the corridors of his past. But he still hadn't gone to either of the men that probably wanted answers from him, or even revenge.

He hadn't been sure if he wanted to live or die.

But six months went by and he hadn't eaten a bullet yet, and somehow even after finding out what he had done to his parents, Tony hadn't sent anyone looking for Bucky despite being able to track him down. The headaches had grown more severe, he was nearly blind in one eye now from waiting almost the full length of time to get this done, but... he was here.

When Tony got up to the floor above, he'd find Bucky sat cross legged on top of a table dressed in jeans and a faded blue hoodie with the Iron Man arc reactor on the front of it. He had a mouthful of cereal, and the box cradled in his metal hand.

Swaying in the doorway between the hallway stairs and the lab, holding on with one hand, Tony watched Bucky chew methodically for several long moments before his feet moved him forward. Six months was a long time, he decided, his drunken mind listing days and hours and minutes in ever increasing increments as some sort of attempt to seem more lucid than he was.

“You can’t wait until the last minute. It gets worse exponentially every day that passes. And I can already tell that you haven’t been taking care of yourself. Look at you— Good fashion sense but bad eating habits. You’re picking out the sugar bits aren’t you? When is the last time you washed your hair?”

Drunk and lonely Tony wrapped his arms around Bucky the way he used to as a kid. And he knew it was ridiculous, that was probably the worst part. This sort of weird clinging wasn’t going to win him friends and any influence he had would be opposite of what he wanted.

“You’re an idiot,” he murmured. It was directed towards himself.

The last six months had been a steep learning curve for Bucky. He had come to realise that, even as he got back more pieces of who he used to be, that he would never be fully rid of the Soldier either. He had trauma and panic reflexes and a mess of issues that even the most trained psychiatrist in the world would have trouble with. He remembered Steve, he remembered parts of himself, but he was still a different man.

He had expected a pretty different reaction from Tony.

He hadn't known if in coming here he would be shouted at or even attacked, but he sure as hell hadn't expected a surprise hug from someone drunk as a skunk. So he went still for about ten seconds, before one arm lifted to loosely and awkwardly pat Tony on the back. Not pushing him back, but not knowing how to react either.

"Wasn't expecting a hug," he said, and his voice was enough of a rasp to suggest that he probably hadn't spoken in weeks before this.

“I’m not hugging you,” Tony said with lame stubbornness. “I’m yelling at you for your life choices, aren’t you paying attention?” That didn’t mean that he let go, however. The scratch of his cheek along the edges of his beard rubbed against Bucky’s ear from stubble having grown since he shaved that morning. He smelled of scotch and sorrow and too much pride, which lingered when he did pull back, bracing himself against the table before he could get to a stool.

Bucky would have to let the man sober up a little before he went tinkering around in his brain, despite the fact that Tony had used a large portion of the last few months trying to extend the hardware he would be using for Bucky’s eventual return that might provide some extra relief for the future. He was no neurosurgeon but he was an extremely quick study and six months to Tony’s brand of genius, when not completely bogged down by voices of memories he’d never actually made weren't sopped up by the copious amounts of alcohol he regularly consumed.

His face was red and his eyes watery, looking for all the world like he might burst into tears at any moment. There was a kid inside of him that was just so relieved that his Nanny wasn’t dead that it was overpowering what it meant to be a man these days.

“FRIDAY, put the coffee on,” he sniffled, pressing his hands together between his knees. “And order a pizza. Extra grease. Two pizzas. Extra large.” He knew Bucky would be able to pack it away. “Give me a few hours,” he said to his Nanny. “How bad is it? No. I don’t want to know. You did it to yourself. You almost forced me to talk to Rogers.”

"You should talk to him anyway, he probably sent you that phone for a reason."

It wasn't that Bucky had spied on Tony, and he definitely hadn't spoken to Steve, but he had spied on Steve a bit after he had seen what happened in Siberia and worked out that the other man had walked away from everything that mattered to him. Idiot. Bucky had just gone to make sure that he wasn't destroying himself in a hole somewhere, and he had heard the other man talking to Falcon about Tony.

He was fairly sure that if Tony asked them back, they could probably figure out the mess with the Accords. Nobody actually wanted the Avengers gone, especially not ones like Captain America.

Bucky hadn't moved from his position cross-legged on the table, but he watched as Tony swayed his way backwards, watched at the tears gathered in his eyes.

"I came here tonight thinking you might refuse to help me, I know what you saw in Siberia."

He was not going to discuss his complicated and often times uncomfortable relationship with Steve Rogers. It was hard enough to be around a childhood hero without having him be nice and understanding too. It would have been just so much easier if he had been a jerk—. But then he wouldn’t have been Captain America—. Tony wasn’t going to get into it with Bucky, though. His Nanny was bias and evidently still keeping up his spying skills. And Tony was better off putting his head in the sand to anything he didn’t care for. Just like every other healthy American did.

Since there was no point in addressing the Cap issue and he couldn’t just sit there in silence, Tony shrugged at Bucky. “My dad deserved worse.” His mom... Tony didn’t what to know what she deserved. He believed that both possibilities (she was HYDRA or just complacent) were possible. But there was no way that she didn’t know what his father was doing. Not when she went with him almost everywhere.

He frowned at Bucky, hard.

“And it wasn’t you. It wasn’t you but Rogers knew that my parents didn’t die in a car accident and he never told me. He’s always on be about being fully truthful— I get it. He’s human. He’s capable of deception. But I wasn’t ready to see that. And I wasn’t ready for it to be the Soldier. And I was so... I’m still so mad every time I find out something new about what they made you do.”

It wasn't the brilliant grin that he had given Tony after being introduced to hot chocolate, but Bucky's lips still pulled upwards into a warm and genuine smile for a few moments. All of his expressions were genuine, he had lost too much of himself to be false or bother with lies, he couldn't pretend to be someone else when he still didn't really know who he really was.

He didn't say anything to that, just let that smile linger for a few seconds, and then slid off the countertop, somehow silent even in combat boots that weren't even laced up properly.

"You should stop looking into it, you'll never scratch the surface of what the Soldier did and you'll just spend your whole time angry. And drunk."

Apparently.

Waving a hand at that assessment, Tony snorted as if his concern was pointless. “I like being angry.” And being drunk was the only coping mechanism he knew that worked. Coke was pretty good too, but not nearly as socially acceptable as it had been in the 80s and 90s. It tended just to make him manic anyway and he was naturally manic enough without the help.

Pressing a thumb against his eyelids, Tony sighed and watched Bucky move. He seemed fine but he knew that couldn’t be possibly true. Not after the projections he’d had FRIDAY make based on the scans that had been done a few months before.

That Bucky was even capable of moving was pretty spectacular.

“I like being drunk too. Not usually this drunk but—“ Well he didn’t know what Bucky remembered about his voices. “Rogers just drives you to it. And no. I’m not calling him. You call him. He’d rather hear from you.”

Bucky did remember the voices. Of all the things that he recalled over the past six months, bits of his time as Tony's bodyguard were some, and he remembered the voices that sometimes scared him and gave him horrible headaches. Coping with them using drink was not a good plan.

"Pretty sure he'd like to hear from you too."

He said it mildly and gestured for Tony to take a seat on the couch a little way from where they were both stood. If Tony were looking closely then he might notice that one eye focused more sluggishly than the other, indicating a lack of sight there, but he covered any other problems exceptionally well.

"You can't do anything while you're drunk, so sit down."

“I’m going to get coffee and pizza and then I’ll patch you up and send you out again. Nanny 3.0. You’ll be fine again for awhile. I got an idea or something to relieve the pressure going on with your eye, to shunt some of the clotting. We’ll see.” Tony talked his entire way to the couch, moving a little more gracefully than one might expect as he pulled down a Periodic Table throw blanket that was the only thing he had left of when Banner was staying here with him.

Just another person he liked who left. And over a stupid girl of all things. Tony was not thrilled with Natasha chasing his second favorite person away. And he was even less pleased that his trail had gone completely cold.

Completely. Not even Bucky could hide from him but the second leading genius of the world had evidently figured out how. Fuck him.

No no. Tony didn’t mean that. He let his head fall back as he frowned at Bucky, counting the seconds it took for his eye to focus on him again. He had to be in pain but he didn’t show it. That was something Tony had always admired. And that was why he tended to keep his own pain to himself.

“Maybe we should invite Steve over for pizza and talk to him together,” Tony suggested before he laughed. “Yeah. Not going to happen. Why ruin a perfectly good night? FRIDAY, tip the delivery guy a few hundred to just leave the pizza with DUM-E?”

“Was already the plan, Boss.”

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