fossilised | it's a new plot!

He understood that he was asking a lot of Tony. Having an ex-assassin super soldier who was, technically, on the run from pretty much every world government as well as members of Tony's own team was... awkward. But Tony hadn't even hesitated before he said that, just gave him the option of remaining as if it was no big deal.

"You can call me James."

He had decided it was the name he was going to claim for himself for now. He certainly wasn't ready to be a Bucky again, but he could have his other name and maybe make a human being out of himself.

“You sound like a butler,” Tony said, more than willing to let some sort of humor exist between them. He was feeling better about the whole thing, more or less. Everything was quiet. He had no premonitions. James would be safe here since the Avengers, minus Rhodey, weren’t talking to him. He wouldn’t be alone all the time, he might not need to be so reliant on the alcohol— “But your metabolism has to be pretty out there. I’ve seen Rogers pack away insane amounts of food. You really don’t want this?”

He had scanned Bucky but had been looking only at his head. A full scan would reveal the cause of his inability to eat and maybe even how to rectify that but he had no reason to check for himself.

Helen Cho’s machine could do wonders, thankfully. It was just a matter of directing it to heal the damage done and switch off some of the neurological issues that kept James from accepting food for fear of the damage being put back on ice might do to his system.

There was no more fear of that anymore after all.

He doesn't care if he sounds like a butler, James is the name he's chosen and Tony is the first one that he's given it to. If it turns out to not fit him in the future then he can change it again, he can become whoever he needs to be. But for now there's pizza and a gnawing pit of hunger in his belly.

He shrugs awkwardly.

"I think it might make me sick. I've tried a bunch of food and it all makes me throw up, guess it's something that HYDRA did to me. When I was there, I mostly just ate liquid stuff."

They messed with his brain. They messed with his arm. They missed with the person he used to be. And they messed with his stomach? Tony felt disgusted and shoved the pizza back into the box. “High protein, low fat I’m guessing? I’ve got you.”

He was king of the fruit and spinach smoothie shakes, or had been when he cared about trying to be healthy. That had stopped some time ago, however, but not for any reason other than the fact that scotch and loneliness and manic fits of invention took up the majority of his life these days and he didn’t have the time nor the energy to worry about smoothies.

Tony headed into the kitchen, walking a lot straighter and more confidently than before. It was amazing how quickly his body metabolized and neutralized alcohol. His tolerance was impossibly high.

He’d make something James would be able to eat. He’d try at the very least. He couldn’t have his friend and former Nanny starve to death on him, though it was probably better to perform brain surgery on an empty stomach. He was pretty sure a few sips wouldn’t hurt and then they could get down to business of relieving the pressure from inside his head, complete with some new work arounds he’d been focused so much on.

That was something else that he liked about Tony, the man never sat there and got upset about the things that he was told. He knew that if he had told Steve that HYDRA had fucked his body up so much that he couldn't even eat solid food, then the other man would probably be in tears or beating up a wall somewhere. But Tony just shrugged and moved on, provided a solution.

James swayed just a little when he got to his feet, vision blacking out completely in the eye that it had mostly gone from already, just more signs that he had left this far too late. But he steadied after a moment and followed Tony into the kitchen, watched him make up a disgusting looking shake.

"How long will the surgery take? And it'll last another six months, right?"

“Counting no longer this time. I have the technique down. I installed an upgrade to FRIDAY to help out and super charged Dr. Cho’s machine. I’m going to replace some of the corroded wires with fiber optics. Probably take me about three hours, maybe four? Let’s give ourselves four with recovery.” He shouldn’t be betting himself on the time it would take him to perform brain surgery on his own, unlicensed and accredited. “Maybe slap another hour on there to work on your stomach. I have a feeling that will take multiple sessions since I don’t know how to recalibrate the machine just yet. We’ll see.”

He was ready to go almost immediately, hands steady and eyes unclouded. He’d been drunk an hour ago but it had worn off.

And let’s face it. James was in a bad way.

“Why don’t you lay down on the bed at least?” He said after he made sure that the other man had something nourishing in his stomach. “It can put you out and I’ll get started in a few minutes.” If james has trusted him this far, what was another ten minutes worth?

For some reason it didn't even enter James' head to be concerned that Tony had been drunk very recently, if the other man thought that he was capable of operating on him without killing him then he would accept that as what would happen. But that didn't mean that he was any happier about the machine.

"...do we have to do it in the machine?"

He planted his feet where he was, looking as immovable as a tree on this one point. The point that had almost made him refuse treatment last time.

"And do I have to be asleep? The brain doesn't have any nerve endings, I won't feel it, and you can just-- you can cut without a machine, can't you?"

Tony sucked on his lower lip for half a minute before he turned his head to look back over his shoulder at James. “Your brain has no nerve endings, but getting to your brain…? Yeah, that;s going to hurt. We went over this last time, that’s why you got so pissed off at me. You need to stay still. The machine can keep you awake and numb the area though. That should keep your head from moving. But you do have to lay down on that bed. It keeps you alive for me and patches you back up after. I can’t do that myself.”

And all it would take would be one little squirm and James could die or be unable to move or walk… Tony wasn’t ready to take care of a paraplegic. And James wasn’t ready to let the only person who would, Steve Rogers, into his life.

He turned his hip to the counter and folded his arms over his chest.

“We don’t have a lot of options here. But I won’t strap you down. You’re not locked inside. It’s nothing like a wipe. And you can talk to me all you want during the procedure…except don’t. I need to get my jazz on.”

"It's the machine."

He has just spent so much of his time feeling like a laboratory experiment, he didn't think that he could manage to set himself down in one again, even if he knew that logically it would help him.

"Please, I can heal naturally, and I can stay still even through pain."

He knew that he was asking a hell of a lot from Tony here, the man wasn't a proper surgeon and he was asking him to become one with an awake patient and no kind of assistance other than the scan data that FRIDAY could provide.

Pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth, Tony felt a pull in each direction. What James wanted could kill him. Tony had had enough blood on his hands to last an entire lifetime. It didn’t seem right to be told that he was going to operate on someone who, after decades, finally thought of him as a friend and that the chances of killing him were pretty damned high. But on the other hand, he understood how James felt. He knew about panic. He knew how bad it could be. And he knew that he would give anything most of the time to escape it.

“Don’t blame me if I kill you,” Tony said after a moment. “Uh…you can help me spread the tarp.”

Without anesthesia, Tony cut away the flesh around the plate that let into James’ skull. The blood was copious but at least he didn’t have to drill through bone. The sick sound of gooey, wet skin and hair attached to metal swinging back on itself caused Tony to have the music volume raised. He couldn’t stand to listen to it.

“How’re you doing down there?” he asked, jeweler’s glasses over his face and fingers already pushing aside clumps of clotted blood so that he could see the connections of brain to electrodes. “Try to stick to English. I’m a genius but translating while I’m trying to stay mellow will just ruin my flow.”

Although the pain of someone cutting through his scalp was intense, James never moved even a muscle. He was well practised at staying perfectly still, though it might be better if the reasons he could do what normal men couldn't in this situation weren't examined, the training to make him capable of such things was far less pleasant than this.

"It's weird, I can feel you tugging."

It was a bizarre sensation. Not painful, but just invasive and vulnerable. It was better to have this done while he was awake and not objecting, though, it made it so that he could focus and keep himself in the moment.

"You should get qualified as a surgeon, you obviously know what you're doing."

“Engineers don’t get doctorates,” Tony said, squinting into the cavity he had just cleared before he flushed it with water. FRIDAY rescanned the area and he went back in with a suction tool to clear up some more space for him to work. It took twenty minutes to remove all of the blockages from the electrodes and he went to work immediately rethredding the wires. “No more metal. This should hold you for eight or ten months. Can’t do anything about the clotting, you’ll need a real neurosurgeon for that, but I’m going to keep it from clotting over your optic nerves. You’ll get back of the head headaches instead…”

Which would be a blessing. James could keep his eyesight. And maybe that area would be able to heal on it’s own? Tony didn’t know. He just hoped his healing factor would do it’s part to keep him from any infections.

As he hooked up and cleaned out each subsequent area, he tested the new plastic out, making sure that James could answer questions accurately along the way so that he didn’t have to worry about even more memory loss than he was already suffering from.

“What else do you have in there about me anyway? Maybe something happier than you trying to rescue me to your old house from the war.”

James was a lucky man, if he didn't have the bastardised serum then he would already be dead, but if by some miracle he had lived this long then there would have been no hope for recovery in the already damaged portions of his brain. But his eyesight would likely return properly, and he would be functional until the next time he needed to let Tony dig inside his head.

The only thing that could mess it all up would be a rogue blood clot. But even with the best neurosurgeon in the world and the most successful by the book operation, a clot could form months down the line and cause a stroke.

"I remember that you treated me kindly, you never hit me and you didn't yell that often. I remember that you had a workbench of tools that you hid from your Mom, and when I told her that I had no idea where her new screwdriver set had gone it was the first lie I had ever told as the Soldier."

“So you’re the reason that I’m a troublemaker,” Tony said easily enough. Most of his tech would be able to track blood clots and feed back to FRIDAY data about their growth, but that didn’t mean that he could catch them all. The body was not predictable, and even with Tony’s intense and thorough ability to screen James, there would be no way to stop a quick clot or having one break off and get stuck at the worst time.

There was only so much that Tony could worry about, however. Sometimes taking nature in stride was the only way one could get through the day.

“I want that in writing. You decided to have a little break out of the brainwashing to let me be a terror and that’s why I am the way I am today.” Tony had no idea that it was Bucky’s acquiescence to Steve when they were younger that had triggered the whole thing. Steve Rogers, cute and small and blond and sickly, had always been the mastermind.

Bucky just followed him and covered for him so it was easy just to do so for Tony too as a sort of muscle memory.

“Hey, can you move your toes still,” he said almost suddenly. “I want to make sure I hooked this up right and you don’t think ‘move my toe’ and end up pissing your pants.”

For some reason, James didn't question at all if Tony was qualified to perform this kind of surgery and, even if it might lead to his death, he didn't feel that it would be a risk badly taken. He trusted Tony more than pretty much anyone, except possibly Steve and he wasn't prepared to admit his feelings regarding Steve yet because they scared him too much.

Obligingly, he wiggled his toes which were bare at the moment, and then his fingers too as if to prove that all his extremities still worked, without moving his head or neck even a moment.

"You didn't hesitate before you said I could stay here, why was that?"

Not that he wasn't grateful, but he was still trying to understand Tony.

“Are you trying to analyze me while I’m knuckle deep in your brain tissue?” Having James talk to him while he did this surgery was important, but there were questions he really didn’t want to be answered. Trying to come up with a reason that wasn’t lame seemed just as impossible too. “It’s just me here. That’s a lot of space. And you’re probably a little like a cat, which is evidently something I should get to prove that I can be a mature human being and care about the welfare of another person. I told her,” he said, not realizing he had done so as Bucky was easy to talk to, “that usually you start off with houseplants and I’ve kept all of them alive but she shot back that the plants are fake. And they are. I also somehow killed a cactus—. Evidently that’s hard to do. But anyway, you’re resilient. And better company than a cat. And I doubt you shed. Plus? No litter.”

Tony shrugged and did something that made James’ eyes brighten immediately. A sickness sound of tissue and blood followed, another addition to the paper plate he was using to collect the gunk from inside his skull.

“What does it matter? You get a place to stay, Steve Rogers free. And I already know you’re pretty good help around a lab. Win-win.”

A lot of that was total nonsense, but that seemed to be the way that Tony spoke. He actually remembered watching the evolution of it, a smart kid that started to talk constantly in the hope that someone would listen and to mask how much the silence and indifference hurt.

"I just wanted to know."

At the opposite end of the scale was James, taciturn and not given to nonsense, not given to much of anything. He didn't lie, he just bluntly said whatever was on his mind and went with it.

"I still don't really understand why I trust you as much as I do, I guess I kinda hoped that you might have some of the answers."

Tony didn’t stop working. He did give a small pause, however, his hands seemed to still for just a moment. He tied off what he was working on and then leaned down over James’ face and wrinkled his nose. “Most of what I remember is you protecting me or reading me stories or taking me out for whatever my parents were too busy for. I remember a lot of nights of you just standing in my private room at Grantchester… But that’s honestly about it. I don’t have clues for who you used to be. I only knew the Soldier and he was all right, if you like short, dark and stoic.”

There was more to it than that but Tony saw blends of gray without the hard black and white edges other people might be used to. And that suited him fine, even if it didn’t for everyone else. At least he understood the correlations. He just chose not to focus on them. Tony preferred to do things his way and only his way. Anyone that didn’t follow his ordered chaos could get out.

Even his Nanny tended to conform to his antics, though Tony now knew that it got the Soldier into trouble and put Bucky through a lot of pain.

And all for nothing more than doing his job.

“There’s only one person alive that knew the guy from before HYDRA body-snatched you. And he’s not me.”

It was as good a reason as any. He doubted that there were many people alive who could say that they had fond memories of the Soldier, he was usually a cause for nightmares, a ghost that slipped past security and managed to snuff out lives even when they were ready and waiting for him.

He hummed in acknowledgement but simply fell silent again until the surgery was complete. He kept his word not to move at all, even when clots were removed to alleviate symptoms or occasionally snip into pain where his scalp was touched in its careful peeled back state.

Only when it was all done did he attempt to sit up, and immediately fall sideways as though he were drunk. Even a man pumped full of super soldier serum wasn't going to be capable of moving around immediately following brain surgery.

“So that was smart,” Tony said, half jovial and half exasperated. “Just lay down for awhile. You didn’t let me put you in Cho’s machine so you’re going to have to wait for your blood to heal you up and that’ll take-- FRIDAY, what’s the calculation on that?”

“About two days, Boss.”

“Two days,” Tony repeated, as if he had already known. “Two full days, which is better than the months it would take a normal person. So lay down. I’ll get you something better to eat than a kale and spinach smoothie. I have some protein shakes that aren’t entirely made of chalk.” Tony lightly pressed his hand to James’ shoulder to force him to lay on his back so his wound could drain properly and, having already removed the gloves, told DUM-E to carefully dispose of the plate. “I will dismantle you personally, screw by screw, if that gets on my carpet.”

Luckily for DUM-E, it did not.

When Tony returned, he had the shake as promised and a blanket thrown over one shoulder in case James was cold. He didn’t know how super soldiers regulated, but Tony kept things cool in the tower. He had a lot of computers and robots to care for.

James wasn't used to just staying prone on his back as though he were an actual patient. The Soldier had always been ordered up and about as soon as any maintenance had been completed, he wasn't allowed to languish in bed like an actual person in need of care. So this was... well, it was half nice and half really disconcerting.

His eyes flicked to Tony's face when he came back in, and pushed himself up enough to be able to take and drink the smoothie without spilling it everywhere, or having another falling incident.

"So how come engineers don't get doctorates? You've been inside my brain twice now, and I'm still breathing, pretty sure that qualifies you as a surgeon."

“You don’t have to keep going, that’s why,” Tony said, unamused by the blood and gore that caked James’ hair and neck and the whole bed he had been laying on. He was not very keen at all about bodily fluids getting stuck all of his stuff. And blood was hard to wash out. That’s why he tended to buy doubles of his suits. His kidnappings had become less frequent, but you never knew when you’d be jumped and stolen away while wearing one of your favorites. “You get your masters because evidently you need to have that foundation, and then everything else you learn as you go and pick up through your work. I did a little stint as a double major at MIT for physics, but it gets boring and…thinky. Theoretical physics is really boring and you never get to do anything flashy with it.”

Unless you were Bruce Banner. Then you harnessed the power of gamma rays to make yourself into a rage monster. Pretty high marks for that, Tony thought to himself as he half draped and half bunched the blanket over James. He wasn’t the most physically affectionate or caring person, that was for sure.

“School was always boring anyway. I wanted to be done with it. I taught myself everything I need to know anyway. Like that brain surgery you’re giving me good reviews on? YouTube tells you everything.” It was more complicated and impressive than that, but Tony usually downplayed himself. He might host giant Expos where he arrived like a movie star or a sports legend, but he came out as more of a spokesman than he ever did as a brilliant, troubled genius.

And that’s how he liked it. The more frivolous he looked, the better his mask was.

“I’m not proud of being a chip off the old block, Jimmy. But I am. I’m not a doctor. I’m a mechanic. And the only reason I can fix you up is because there’s a lot of inorganic parts in there. That’s all.”

"You're a doctor."

James wasn't usually one to argue someone's life choices; or, he hadn't been in recent years. Perhaps that was a spark of who he used to be poking through, because he used to be the sort of little shit that would get up in everyone's business and tell them how they should be doing it to be better.

"If your hands heal someone, then you're a doctor. You saved my life twice, you operated on me, that makes you a doctor. Maybe you're a mechanic too, but don't ignore the talents that you have."

There weren't many people who tried to boost Tony's ego, they usually believed it was sizeable enough, but here they were.

It was weird. The words, sure, but the way they made him feel even more so. Tony accepted compliments like anyone else might accept the mail coming on a daily basis or the fact that sometimes there were clouds in the sky. But this was different. James wasn’t just saying what he already knew, praising what he had been praised for s hundred times before, he was boosting up part of Tony’s overinflated ego that had gotten flattened in the journey he took from child to young adult.

It was both amazing and frightening. He stared at James as if he had two heads before propriety caught up with him and he rolled his eyes in response.

“Uh... I don’t have time to argue with you and you probably don’t have the blood pressure to argue with me so fine. Whatever you say,” he shrugged and left James to finish up his meal and maybe get some sleep. Tony wasn’t holding his breath on that one.

But he did resurface about two hours later with another shake. He’d seen Steve eat. He knew what James needed to survive and he could see how malnourished he had become. Besides.

Pushing fluids was a doctory sort of thing!

James slept for that whole two hours, rigid and still as if he had even been taught how to sleep in the most unobtrustive way, and he woke up the second that Tony entered the room again, going from asleep to awake in the blink of an eye. He didn't go for Tony, though, not when he saw that he wasn't a threat, he just accepted the shake and drank it obediently.

It would be after that session of fluids that Tony would get a call he probably wasn't expecting.

Steve had vowed to himself that he would let Tony come to him. He had done a terrible thing by keeping the knowledge of who killed Howard and Maria to himself, that he had been trying to spare both his best friend and his teammate was irrelevant, he had still lied when it had been important not to. But it was late where he was in Marrakesh, he was tired, he was heartsore... and so he called Tony.

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