fossilised | it's a new plot!

Peter was about to learn that having the strength of a spider, which was enough to stop a super soldier arm in its tracks and bring down a giant man, would be nothing compared to the Hulk. A huge green fist connected with him hard and sent him flying, but beyond that his attention wasn't on Peter. If he killed the human, so be it, his prey was in this van that had been stopped.

This was the one that killed Banner. This was the one that he needed to revenge himself on. Tony was right that he was smart, to an extent, he knew who his prey was and he was just going through everyone else necessary to get to it.

He bellowed as he ripped the top of the van clean off to reveal a man, silent with petrified fear, and a woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs. They were both college aged and, if the redness to the man's eyes were any indicator, he probably wasn't exactly in a fit condition to have been driving at all.

Three seconds after Peter landed, unmoving, the armor scooped Tony up where he stood. He knew better than to engage the Hulk. They were in the middle of no where, the Hulk could hopefully come to his senses before anyone else showed up. This van if kids had probably come from a college a few miles away and had t-boned them because they hadn’t expected any traffic on the road. Simple as that. That didn’t mean that they deserved to die. Even if they had just killed Banner.

Iron Man dropped out of the sky and grabbed the remaining kids from the sardine can that was currently their poor car. Up and out he went, all right with the Hulk roaring behind him.

He’d be back.

Once the two were safe, Tony returned for anyone else that the Hulk was menacing. Peter was no longer a threat, still not moving, and so he was more or less ignored. Even by Tony. Iron Man couldn’t risk drawing attention to him right now.

“Hulk! What happened?! I thought we were friends!”

The Hulk hadn't gone far from where he had been initially, eerily still when Tony returned without those college kids that had been his objective. He simply watched as Tony landed, though if he were paying attention then Tony might notice the way he shifted his weight ever so slightly like a predator preparing for the sprint towards prey.

"Where did you take them?"

Far from the one or two grunted words of before, the Hulk had a much larger vocabulary and understanding now. He had goals and plans, he wasn't so mindless as people might believe.

"Kill him, so kill them. Smash them. Where?"

“As fair as that seems, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t know what you’ve been used to but eye for an eye doesn’t fly.” This was a dangerous situation. Tony had never been able to talk the Hulk down before and as much as Tony wanted to hang out with his friend’s alter ego, right now he wasn’t being anything more than the beast people claimed him to be.

And Tony didn’t have time for this either. Peter could be dying in that little rolled up spider ball he was currently laying in. Happy and the people he had rescued were still too close by if the Hulk attacked.

“I took them away. They’re going to be punished but not by us. How about we have a chat about what’s been going on? Tell me about where you’ve been?”

No, that wasn't going to be good enough.

The Hulk was already angry about being back here where people screamed at the sight of him rather than cheered for his strength, where people hated him and loved Banner and he was mostly relegated to being trapped for most of his life behind boring and puny glasses covered eyes. Now this supposed ally had stolen victims that were rightfully his and was trying to argue him down.

No.

He would and could make Tony tell him where those kids had gone. So he ran, full tilt and viciously, to slam into Tony and start ripping the armour off him in chunks.

"TELL HULK WHERE!"

The armor was a lot more resilient than the last time he’d fought through Hulk, but he wasn’t wearing the Hulkbuster supplement and he had never gotten around to sending the refurbished armor back to Veronica. This was going to be an issue, and fast.

Tony couldn’t stop what was happening. He blasted the Hulk with his chest beam but it didn’t do more than send the beast back a few feet so that Tony could get away with at least his limbs intact.

“You can’t go around killing people and I know that you know that!”

There was a rumble nearby. They were only fifteen minutes from HQ. The Calvary has heard and it was arriving, Steve leading the charge in his bike.

Not leading the charge, though he couldn't know it, Steve thought that he was definitely in pole position and he could see the Hulk and Tony facing off against each other not too far away. He was still too far to do anything when the Hulk rushed at Tony again, but someone else was nearby.

Out of nowhere, the Winter Soldier slammed into the side of Tony to knock him out of the way. He looked exactly as he had above Washington DC, all in black leather with a mask over his face and a dead level look in his eyes. Several guns came out and emptied their clip above the Hulk in quick succession, not aiming pointlessly at the monster itself, but at the trees around to send them falling in debris on top of the Hulk.

He knew that he couldn't do much other than distract and slow down the Hulk, but he was here all the same.

It was insanity. With all of the Avengers there, the Hulk was surrounded. Not that it mattered. He’d had many opponents thrown at him at the arena, mostly as an attempt to try to equalize a match. It wasn’t always a success, and most of the people that faced him ended up smeared on the dirt and sand floor of the coliseum, but it had always been great fun.

Maybe not so much for the challengers though.

Wanda scooped up Peter to bring him to some semblance of safety as Natasha climbed out of the armored SUV that she and Clint had been riding in. Vision and Sam landed just in front of them, but Steve didn’t bother to give any commands. The others weren’t important, not with Bucky right there.

He threw his shield to knock off a branch that had been loosened with bullets, eyes on his friend the entire time. He knew better than to speak. Or to question.

One moment later a crack of thunder signaled the last Avenger’s arrival. Thor dropped Valkyrie before he landed, grinning and shorn and single eyed.

“Friends! I had not know this was to be a gathering of such magnitude. Hulk! You’ve joined us as well! What is this showering of foliage? Your customs are always elaborate!”

It was the arrival of Valkyrie that turned the tide of the battle. Not because she was any more fearsome than the rest of them, but because she was the first friend that Hulk had made that was all his. She had helped him find something other than anger, become more complex.

He stayed in place and snorted through his nose, a gladiator who knew that he could win but was considering standing down all the same. He suddenly sat down on the ground, still towering over all of them.

"Bring Hulk the killers."

It was more petulance than fury now.

Valkyrie had no idea what was going on. She glanced around at the others gathered in their loose circle, some attending to the wounded, others hardly paying attention to the situation at all, and strode up to Hulk. “I think we’re done for today. Looks like you did all right.” She needed a drink. She always needed a drink. Being here or with friends or even with a purpose didn’t make her feel less like drinking. It sort of made it worse.

They called her by a title. She didn’t have a name. She preferred it that way since the last person to have ever said her name was her wife and now she was dead. It still ate her up.

“We don’t have a big cheering section today, looks like, but not to worry, you were impressive. Hungry? I am.”

Tony felt like the tin man, trying to get himself back together again. He hadn’t expected the Hulk to rage like that at him. He hadn’t expected his teammate to turn. And he hadn’t expected some girl to tame him either. Tony was feeling some sort of way about that. And that he’d gotten Peter potentially killed. And that Rogers was coming over here like in some dream to talk to Bucky.

It had been awhile. He’d not gotten a chance to talk to him at all, not since the hellicarrier. He’d seen him in captivity before Zola caused him to break out, triggered, and then nothing since. Steve was breathing hard. He’d always been so emotional, and now knowing the things that Bucky had endured, it made it always harder now to do this. All he wanted to do was embrace him, but he knew he couldn’t.

“Hey... Hey it’s been awhile...”

Tony hated every ounce of goodness in Steve Rogers all over again. Just like he hated that girl. They were taking his friends from him, the whispers said. Hundreds of memories of past lives in dead universes couldn’t all be wrong.

Bucky hadn't come here for the Hulk or for Steve or for any of them except Tony. He had seen the armour leave the Tower at top speed, he had been in the room with it when it had suddenly powered up, and he had made FRIDAY tell him what was going on. It had probably been a really stupid idea to tool up and go after him, he knew that he wasn't stable when it came to fighting, but he still went.

Now that the fight was over, he felt like the real him was buried. Like he was hurting and yet everything was muted behind the Soldier. His expression was blank even as Steve approached him, his voice a low rasp of Russian, again the most comfortable language for him when he couldn't think properly.

"Stop. Don't."

No, this was wrong, he needed to move. His eyes slid to Tony, a desperate plea in there to somehow make this stop. He had come out of his safe space to try and save a friend, and now everything was crumbling.

With Peter hurt, and Bucky losing himself, Tony was torn. He couldn’t exactly help the kid he was mentoring right now, though. His best bet was back at HQ where Helen Cho, on staff, would be able to fix him up. If he wasn’t dead. Tony’s face showed his horror but it was covered by the faceplate of his beaten up suit.

The quintet that Bucky would have had to take, the experimental one that flew almost as fast as his armor, had to be nearby. His armor could still fly. They could get away. Tony, limping, stood in front of James and lifted a hand towards Steve. It wasn’t a threat. It was a gesture to stop him from coming closure.

“I’ve got this, Rogers. Handle Parker. I’ll be back to check on him.” Everything was a mess. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. To James, and in Russian, which made Natasha’s ears perk up, Tony muttered for James to retreat. He’d cover him. “I’m sorry, Cap.”

It was the first time he’d said that, incidentally. He just couldn’t do anything more right now.

Even with Tony covering his retreat, Bucky knew that this was the end of his little bubble of safety. It had hardly lasted any time at all, and now Steve would know for sure that Tony had something to do with hiding him and it wouldn't be long before the real world intruded on him.

He swallowed hard and then took off running in the direction of the trees. He heard Steve call out after him, voice broken and desperate, but he didn't follow. Instead, he just faced Tony with an expression that looked more beaten down than he had ever looked before in his life.

"You-- His safe space is with you?"

That hurt so much.

“There’s a lot to unpack with this one, Cap, and you’ve just got to trust me on this one for a little while.” He didn’t have the same pleading anger he had shown with Bruce in the quintet. That would have hurt Steve more, if that was even possible. “I still want that dinner.”

Tony fired up the cracked reactor, the repulses sputtered, but he took to the air just the same, fighting to compensate for the pull on his limbs. It didn’t help that he felt as if his left leg was injured. He was having trouble fighting the phantom pain and by the time he crashed into the roof of the Tower, he couldn’t get it out of his mind that it was hanging by a threat, encased only by the suit, even if FRIDAY said he didn’t sustain more injury than a few shallow lacerations.

Steve didn't fight him on it, but the look he gave Tony before he disappeared was one of genuine bewildered sorrow. He didn't follow, though god did he ever want to, he went to deal with Parker as he had been asked to. Luckily, despite being tossed by the Hulk, the kid only had a few fractured ribs and a concussion, he'd be fine once he came to and with a while to rest.

Bucky was sat on the roof when Tony crashed down almost next to him, still masked and tooled up ready for a fight, still utterly blank eyed. The fight was a bad idea, he had to tap into too much of his training to easily separate himself from the Soldier.

Bucky could keep hold of his blankness for a little while. Tony was too busy writhing around trying to get the releases on his armor off so that he could see the mess his leg was in for himself. The whispers were too loud, the memory had clouded over reality, and it took a few moments even after that to see that he was fine. Beaten up and bruised, yes, but ultimately he was all right.

Tony heaved, laying on the roof in the remains of his armor, spread eagle, and glanced up at James, finally.

“James, are you in there?”. He had to settle his friend and then get back to HQ. Sometimes Tony wished he was more than one person. But then he’d probably just sleep with himself and get nothing done anyway.

James watched as Tony heaved and panicked, his breathing obviously short and too shallow, but he didn't move or make any indication that he wanted to help, he just watched. He still couldn't quite get his head around the idea that he had left his safety and his privacy in order to try and save Tony.

"She said you were in danger."

The words were quiet and level, almost a report to a handler rather than an explanation to a friend.

"I couldn't lose you, even if Steve was there."

He was still breathing hard. It took a lot out of a person to have a panic attack and Tony still had residual feelings of his leg being messed up, resulting in him walking with a limp for the rest of his life. He wasn’t even sure what that was about. The Hulk has been pulling at his arms and his chest, not his legs. Tony stayed on his said. He watched James, from wrist to shoulder at least since he didn’t feel like lifting his head, and then reached out, tentatively, to touch the other man’s outer knee.

His fingers did not connect, however, as he had stopped himself two inches away from James and left his palm face up with his fingers curled in on each other, resting on the marked landing pad.

“Thanks.” It wasn’t often that people came to his aid. He didn’t need them to, but he’d been on many a solo run into danger and he never anticipated there being anyone beside him but himself. And sometimes Rhodey. War Machine hadn’t even arrived as quickly or with as much passion as Bucky had. “Thanks for... saving me. Again. You’re getting really good at it.” He had switched back to English to get Hames acclimatized to it again. This was not a fun process.

It wasn't a fun process for either of them. A part of him wished that he could have stayed behind and not cared so much if Tony got ripped apart by a rampaging Hulk. He could still have been barefoot and in the sweatpants that got delivered for him this morning, soft and warm and casual, instead of tooled up in full gear with his mind feeling like someone had wrapped barbed wire around it.

It was good of Tony to not have questioned where he got all those guns and how he'd smuggled them into the Tower without being noticed.

"He knows now," Steve, he meant, obviously. "You can tell him, I don't want to cost you your other friends."

“He knows but he is going to leave you alone. He’s a good guy.” Tony hated to admit it but he was. Steve was down right perfect in literally every single way and that just wasn’t right. How could anyone compete? How could anyone else ever have a chance?

He sat up a headache, but the voices were back down to a manageable buzz now that he knew he wasn’t horribly disfigured. They had nothing else to go on and the memories pushing their way through his troubled mind had ceased for the moment.

He did, however, double check his leg again. Just in case.

He decided not to ask about the weapons. And he wasn’t going to ask where he’d gotten the uniform from and where he had stashed it. He was, however, going to spend the next few days reprogramming some of his security measures. Bucky kept him on his toes.

“I don’t want to be mean about this, James, but I don’t want my Nanny back. So I need you to let me help you get out of this funk. Especially with all of that eyeliner. We really need to talk about modern fashion. Are you hungry? Looks like it’s just going to be us for awhile anyway. Might as well get a good carb binge in.”

It wasn't the same.

Steve knew that he was here now and, even if he didn't come and find him personally, it would feel like he had a target on his back. The longer he remained in isolation, where Steve knew that Tony was seeing him and he wasn't being allowed to, the more it might put a strain on the relationship between Steve and Tony. He didn't want that, and nor did he want to feel guilty for not talking to Steve. Those hurt blue eyes were already going to haunt his nightmares.

He exhaled heavily and then switched to English with a significant amount of effort, voice still far too emotionless but at least stepping in the right direction.

"Yeah, we should eat something before you have to go back. I'm sorry if I made things worse."

It occurred to Tony then and there that Bucky would not be here when he got back. “I have life model decoys. And a telephone. I don’t need to go back right away.” Peter would be all right and Tony wasn’t much of a hospital visitor. Not when people were awake enough at least. He preferred to see them when they wouldn’t remember he was there.

He wasn’t the most graceful man pulling himself out of the pile of junk on the roof, but when there was the sort of wildfire in your eyes like there currently was for Tony... what did a little grace matter?

“I have other places. Homes. Safe places that are off the map and off the grid... you don’t have even have to tell me which one you pick and it’s pretty obvious you can get around my systems and my security— Just don’t leave without a good place to stay. I’ll even let you take DUM-E for company.”

It was the equivalent of a child promising his favorite toy to someone he liked.

"Stop it."

Bucky pushed himself properly up to his feet and, in contrast to Tony's stumbling movements, he was always graceful. A mixture of his natural muscle, his training, and his serum made sure that he was always in complete control of his movements, like a large predator feline.

"Stop always thinking I'm about to leave you. It's hard enough to fight to stay without you pushing me to leave, so stop it. I exposed myself to Steve to try and keep you in my life, I'm not running."

Tony needed to learn not to expect the worst, or he'd become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Tony’s life was built around expecting and then coping with the worst. That wasn’t fair, of course, he had pretty much everything, but he also had a thousand of lifetimes alternating turns to mind rape him with whispers about potential outcomes and in each and every one, he was usually left alone. It was just something to expect.

“I’m not pushing—. You know what? You’re making me feel like a love sick teenager desperately wanting his Instagram crush to notice him. So we’re just going to stop there.” It did help that James set his mind so readily at ease too.

Even if he was an asshole about it. Tony appreciated it.

After a little something to eat and asking James not to shoot anything while he was gone, Tony took back that lighter, single person quintet he’d been working on back upstate to HQ.

Thor, Valkyrie and the Hulk had left to return to the ship now too high above the Tower for anyone to see. Scott and Sam had gone with them to discuss what was to happen with the Asgardians, much to Scott’s delight. Natasha, Rhodey and Clint had already headed to DC. And that left Peter (forced to sleep because once the machine had helped to heal him coupled with his already incredible healing ability, he’d woken up and talked everyone’s ear off), Wanda and the Vision who were making up in their own awkward way.... and Steve Rogers.

Tony had brought pizza and beer. It was a shit dinner but they needed to talk. James had given him permission to after all.

Steve did everything that he needed to do with perfect efficiency. He got Peter stable and fixed, he saw off the others to the ship and to DC, and he got the place cleaned up. But his heart wasn't in anything, he felt like someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his lungs until he couldn't breathe.

Bucky was here. He was nearby, he was with Tony, and he still didn't even speak to Steve. He just fled from him like Steve was the monster that he feared more than anything, something that made him want to weep.

He looked up when Tony appeared, appearing as if he had aged fifty years overnight, something utterly sorrowful in his eyes. He tried to smile at the same, but it seemed hollow.

"Hey-- hey, Tony."

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