fossilised | it's a new plot!

"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.

“Put it on hol—“ Were the words out of Tony’s mouth at first, just before FRIDAY told him the call was coming in on the burner phone. He didn’t know why he had kept it along with the note, but he left the room immediately only to duck back in and assure James that he was going to get rid of him and he wouldn’t tell on him.

It was weird and childish but incredibly loyal. Many might see that as strange, but James was his Nanny. He looked exactly as he had looked when he was a boy and it was that man that had built trust and loyalty into Tony... and no other. So there was nothing left to do but to follow through. It made sense in Tony’s mind... and most of the other whispers in his brain agreed.

And that, for the first time, was comforting.

He picked up the phone from FRIDAY, who had answered to keep it from going to voice mail and bid the Captain to wait for his intended recipient. Tony paused for a long moment and exhaled his ‘yeah?’ as if this call was a nuisance and he hadn’t been half dialing every single day prior to James coming back into his life.

At least he didn’t follow it up as he might have liked with a ‘what other news have you been hiding from me?’ He just waited. Steve and he had a confusing relationship and this time it was more tense than ever.

Steve might prefer people to be up front about themselves and their feelings, but that didn't mean that he was totally ignorant when it came to dealing with people that weren't. He had started to understand the language of Tony, the one that said that even if he sounded annoyed to hear from Steve, the fact that he had kept the phone and had answered it at all meant that there was some hope for reconciliation.

"Hey."

Steve's voice was rough and he sounded as if he had been drinking. Not that drinking would do anything to him, but he was exhausted. He hadn't slept in about fifty hours, and he had spent a hell of a lot of that time crying. They had found a HYDRA base, abandoned, and it had given him a lot more input on what had been done to his best friend. He'd been feeling sick ever since.

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling a little foolish for having called. Not that he would make the comparison himself, but he sounded like that depressed ex that drank too much and then called. "I know I said that in the letter, but my Mom always taught me that a real man apologises face to face. I can't be face to face right now, so this is the next best thing. I know it won't make up for what I did, Tony, but you're my friend. I just didn't want you to have to deal with that."

Tony was terrible at comfort and he was even worse at this. Steve Rogers wasn’t a guy that sounded like he got emotional. He was the man with the plan, he was the Hilter Puncher, the sensitive but strong type. Tony had idolized him for about as long as he had been saddled with a Nanny. That all of this had happened, that he had fought alongside of his hero and that his Nanny now called him friend, these were issues that Tony couldn’t wrap his head around. Give him numbers, give him equations and problems to solve or fix and he was happy. But this? Good God, he couldn’t deal with it.

“Your mom taught you a lot more than mine taught me,” Tony said, though the dig wasn’t there. He knew Steve’s history. He knew that their lost their mothers at about the same age, that they were orphaned at about the same age, but times had been different and their circumstances were even more so. Tony wanted for nothing save for affection. Steve had all the affection in the world but was poor as sin.

Their spectrums diverged so much that they came back together again.

It was awful. It was perfection.

Tony leaned against the wall and then sat down on the floor, his weight pulled by gravity as if he no longer had strength in his legs.

“What happened to you, Cap? You sound terrible.”

He really shouldn't be doing this with Tony, of all people. Sam, perhaps, or Natasha would be a better bet to talk to when his feelings pertained to the man that killed Tony's parents. But maybe he needed it to be Tony, he needed his friend... former friend?... to understand just how it hadn't been Bucky that had killed his folks and why Steve would try and protect him.

"I found a HYDRA lab, abandoned a long time ago, it was specifically for training the Soldier. The things they did to him, Tony-- I don't even know if I'd still be breathing if it was me. You know-- Buck was always there for me. When I was sick he'd find a way to afford the medicine, I bet he swiped more than some of it. He took extra shifts so we'd have money for heating when it got so cold we could see our breath indoors. He always tried to find me a dancing partner too, and he never-- God, Tony, when I had nothing else, he was there. He never let me down, and I can't stop letting him down."

His breath hitched. Maybe he was just a little drunk, having found some 100% proof vodka that would likely be lethal for anyone else.

"He's out there somewhere, probably scared and alone, and it's killing me. Maybe he's even ashamed of what he did, or what they did to him, men-- men in my day were taught to be ashamed if that sorta thing happened to them. I just want to look him in the eye and tell him that he'll always be my brother no matter what, Tony-- I don't want to lose you too. M'sorry."

“You’re drinking without me,” Tony said as if this was the whole problem. He couldn’t commiserate with Steve about any of this. He couldn’t say that he already knew what happened to Bucky. He’d seen some videos and found some files describing the best way to break a man. He couldn’t even say that the techniques used on Bucky had been originally developed to use on Steve either or that the pain Bucky suffered was out of frustration to have a super Soldier since the Allies did.

A perverse part of Tony wanted, more than anything, to tell Steve that. He could hear the grief in his voice and he wanted it to expand.

You loved him once—

Twice.

Many, many times.

Tony closed his eyes, took a breath that was audible over the line, and told the whispers to go away. He found Steve Rogers stupidly attractive, but that was not the same thing as love. People like Tony couldn’t love. He thought he was in love with Pepper but she pointed out all of the ways in which that was not and could not possibly be true.

And he trusted her because she did not display psychopathic tendencies, was not a megalomaniac, and actually proved that she was capable of caring about people outside of herself.

“Where are you?”

"Marrakesh."

Maybe it was stupid to give Tony his location. He was, after all, supposedly still working with the authorities on the side of the Accords that he had helped get into place, which meant that Steve was a fugitive. Telling Tony his location could lead to him getting arrested and detained.

But he didn't care right then. He was drunk and heartsore; where Tony might not think himself capable of love, Steve knew that he was. He loved deeply and completely, and often ended up hurt because of it.

"Got a lead someone saw him out here, but it wasn't him. S'never him."

“Got an idea, Cap.” Steve had left the shield behind, mostly at Tony’s childish demand, but he had given up being Captain America in that moment. It din’t mean that nicknames couldn’t die hard. “How about you come home. You stop looking and just stay put so he can find you when he’s ready. How about you work on making sure that his name gets cleared when he is ready?”

He didn’t think Steve would read into any of that. Tony didn’t believe that a drunk Steve Rogers, heart hurt and impaired, would put two and two together that Tony might know something.

Not after that fight they had. No one would ever think that Tony would house the person that killed his parents, but that was only because no one knew the truth about Tony’s parents. And no one ever would. Tony had scrubbed as much as he could from the world.

“If it’s as bad as you’re eluding, maybe he’s just not ready to be found. And you know he has the skills to stay hidden if neither of us have run across him yet.” He didn’t mind lying to Rogers. Tony was so good at it.

Steve snorted, a little of the snarky little scrapper that he had been before the serum poking through. That guy was still there, but he usually didn't show it these days, there were too many people who only saw the title and what that represented and he didn't want to tarnish it by being sarcastic when they expected purity.

"Sure thing, Tony, and what home would that be? I'm a fugitive, remember? Didn't sign those Accords and tried to look out for my friend and now what? Now I'm not even welcome in my own country."

Tony had done that.

Sure, the governments had been worried about the superheroes, but they probably never would have acted on it if Tony hadn't had a fit of moral guilt and decided that he needed to be controlled and punished. Now look, everything was broken and he had no way to fix it.

"Can't work on clearing his name if mine is mud."

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