fossilised | it's a new plot!

Fractured societies were dangerous, and these ones were desperate for any semblance of control that they could get back. That they had recovered the Asset had been such a massive moral boost that they had begun to rest on their laurels, and they had also made sure to take out their frustrations and pent up energy on the one target that wasn't allowed to fight back.

The Soldier wasn't alone when Tony was shown into him, though he was naked and bruised all over. His expression was completely blank, knelt on the floor as a man with blond hair and eyes so pale blue that they almost seemed colourless washed his hair for him in an oddly intimate way.

The HYDRA soldier looked up, jealous of another come to interrupt him. He was the Soldier's handler, the one with the phrases, and that gave him immense importance here. He was, truthfully, just a junior handler who had been in training when HYDRA fell, but there was nobody there now to tell him that he couldn't be in charge.

"What is it?" His Russian had an appalling accent, he was clearly American by birth, probably somewhere in the Southern states.

Tony was furious and without a beard to hide the way he clenched his jaw, there was literally no way to hide that anger growing in the pit of his stomach. James wasn’t his by any right, but they’d come to the understanding that they’d hold hands and play video games sometimes. There was no covenant with any pretty blond boy for hair washing that Tony was aware of and the desire to just shoot the kid in the face was pretty much through the roof.

It made the soldier get to his feet and ask again in a louder voice what Tony wanted.

He used that to his advantage. “I’ve come for the Asset,” Tony said, his Russian far from perfect but it was good enough. He lowered the pitch and the timbre, letting it vibrate through his throat. “What are you doing? There were no orders to give him a handler. I don’t care how accurate your hair color is, you’re breaking protocol. I’ll have this in your file. Soldier—“

And this time, Tony addressed James with authority, pushing down the heartbreak.

“You will come with me. Immediately. There is a mission. Your target was spotted in the area. Where are his clothes? Why is he bruised?”

It was obvious that the kid hardly understood what he was saying and so Tony switched to English, but made sure to affect the proper Russian accent. “His clothing! This is not play time. We are at war!”

The Soldier looked up at Tony out of huge brown eyes, like one of those beaten dogs in a commercial for animal charities, but he didn't move despite the order to. All of his handlers were the same, they all had the hair and the eyes and the words, this one didn't have any of those and he hadn't been given leave to follow him.

The young HYDRA operative rose frowned at Tony, half concerned that he might have actually found himself in the presence of a superior, and half indignant that his prize might be taken away from him. So he shook his head, taking a gamble on it, and replied in English since this goddamn demanding bastard actually spoke a civilised language.

"The Asset is under my command, I'm his handler, so any missions have to go through me first. What exactly is it that he's needed for? You know that he shouldn't be deployed for grunt work."

“Do you believe that I would be here for ‘grunt work?’ No. I would never be sent to this god forsaken outpost unless it was for a damned good reason. Captain America is nearby.” And since Tony had the tech with him, he pulled it s holographic display screen to show Steve Rogers, sitting inside the mini-jet. It was a calculated risk.

Tony stormed forward, his entire attitude making the younger man flinch and draw back. He even rolled down his own sleeves.

“If you had thought that you would be well rewarded for securing the Asset once more, your current attitude is ruining your prospects for any reward at all.” Tony flashed the salute, one meant to intimidate, to ferret out supporters. He even gave a nice, crisp, “Hail HYDRA,” which his junior more or less fell over himself to do the same.

Young men, no matter their affiliation or alignment, were all the same. The puffed at first until the big dog approached and bit their necks.

“As he’s imprinted on you, foolish boy, and we do not have the time to wipe him, you’ll accompany the Asset on his mission. Understood? Now. Get. Him. Dressed.”

Even though Tony was smaller and unknown, he gave off an air of command that came from experience and from years of being the head of his own company, that made the young man leap to obey him. He muttered a command in Russian that had the Soldier rising to his feet and jogging out of the room, heedless as to his injuries and nakedness both.

"Fifteen minutes and he'll be mission ready, sir. We can rendezvous with you by East Gate six, is that okay?"

He really didn't want to go out into the field. It was why he had gone into the training to control the Asset; he wasn't a natural at combat, but he had the delight of psychological torture and the love of being in control that made him a natural to control their living weapon. He wasn't supposed to go near the Avengers, that was supposed to be other people with big guns, but he couldn't argue with a superior, so-- well, he'd just have to hope the Soldier protected him.

As promised, the Soldier and his handler would be at the cold and barred metal gates on time. Now the Soldier was decked out in black leather tactical gear, most of the bruises well hidden, and a whole armoury worth of weapons hung from various straps and belts.

Tony had no intention of telling this twisted little child to go with them. He found East Gate Six with FRIDAY’s help and before he even got there, everyone on the base was calling him Sir and saluting him. Good. Very good. That boded well for this little exercise, if he was really thought to be sent from some other, more centralized HYDRA facility.

Once James and the Handler arrived, Tony looked over the latter very carefully, criticized the way that he held his gun (it was the way he himself would hold a weapon so he knew the kid learned it from movies and not the way a trained soldier would), and rolled his eyes.

“Give me verbal control over the Asset until we complete our mission. You will wait here and prepare the medical bay. Captain America will not go without a fight and the Asset is sure to take some damage before we bring the target in. I do not want us to being our weapon back home looking like he was in a meat grinder,” Tony said, accenting heavily, and watched relief form in the Handler’s eyes. Tony hit on two things the kid wanted... to be recognized as James’s handler and not to have to go and fight.

The kid gave over control to Tony, giving the proper instruction that the Asset was to heed whatever Tony said until they returned here to base.

Well guess what? The joke was on that kid because they were not returning to the base. Tony was going to nuke it.

The controls given were meant to be temporary, but this junior handler was new and inexperienced and didn't think to place in failsafes as he had been trained to. He was meant to implant commands so that if something went wrong, or if he fell into the wrong hands, he would automatically return to a base within a set amount of time.

Not this time, he just gave the temporary command words to his superior and gratefully left for the medical bay before any minds could be changed that might put him back in the line of fire. So now it was just Tony and the Soldier, the latter standing at the former's side as though he were the hired bodyguard once more.

"Ready to comply."

It was the first thing he had said since Tony came in, delivered in flawless Russian as he had been instructed to speak.

Tony wasn't an easy man to hurt, not on the surface, but he felt like he was being punched repeatedly in the gut. It hurt more than it had any right to hurt. It had been his fault, letting James go alone, but it had also been James' choice. James asked him to give him time with Rogers-- But it wasn't Steve's fault either, as much as Tony wanted to blame the man. He looked at Bucky for too long, the blank slate he remembered so well from his youth, and stepped up to the gate.

"Follow me closely. Our mission may change. Be sure to listen to everything I tell you." This was not going to be easy. He knew that. He doubted that the Asset, now that he was given orders to listen to Tony, would buck at those orders, but one could never tell. James' mind was currently not his own. He was locked in there, looking out.

And because of that, despite the cold beneath the coat, and the moment that they moved far enough away from the base, Tony turned to Bucky and said five words to the man. In Russian.

"Remember that I love you." Steve didn't speak Russian, and though he was listening in, it would mean nothing to him.

It had been hours since the whispers bothered him, hours since he'd seen anything bad about to happen. He hoped that everything stayed quiet for now as he guided James across the snow to where Steve waited.

"Rogers is on our side," Tony continued. "Don't hurt him. We need to get out of here. These kids are idiots. So no killing. No hurting anyone. I don't want to give you orders, but this one you need to follow. Okay?"

Tony might think that Steve didn't know Russian, but he would be wrong. Over the last couple of years because he knew where Bucky had been held and he had wanted to look over all of the files and videos himself, he had taught himself the language. Thankfully the serum had made it much easier to learn and retain, but he still wondered if he wasn't as proficient as he might have believed once he heard that.

Love? Tony loved Bucky? It had to be in a brotherly way, much like Steve loved him, but it was still a shock to hear. After all, the man had killed Tony's parents and not that long ago, he and Steve had warred over it. But he made sure to school his expression when the two came up to the little single-seater jet, he was a better liar than they gave him credit for a lot of the time.

The Asset followed his temporary handler without complaint or question. If he were told not to kill, then he wouldn't kill, if he were told not to harm Captain Rogers, then that's what he'd do. He didn't need explanations, he just followed his orders without question.

Steve slid down from the cockpit of the tiny plane to stand in front of Tony and James, trying not to look like he wanted to cry at the sight of him so blank eyed again... at least he didn't know about the condition that Tony had initially found him in.

"How are we gonna do this? The plane isn't big enough for all of us, I don't even think it would hold two of us, and your suit can only hold you."

Maybe Tony and either Steve or Bucky could fit in the plane, but not two super muscled serum enhanced soldiers. And neither of those two could fit in the Iron Man armour either.

It was a good thing that Steve didn’t really read into the way that Tony had barked orders at the young agent to get Bucky properly dressed. He wanted to keep that to himself. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t let whatever degrading things had been done to him in the last day and a half to be spread to the world.

It didn’t matter if some of the videos still being passed around online had been much more hard core than some bruising and some hair washing. This was so much weirder. And so much more personal. And Tony really was going to come back here and kill these people.

But first?

“Air drop ready? FRIDAY?”

“Yes Boss, just over the hill and waiting.”

Tony had done more than fixed up Steve Rogers’ shield. He’d done more with his time than just create a hundred new suits to replace the ones he blew up. He’d also been hard at work doing what he should have done for his teammates instead of putting the armor around the world.

“Cap. Meet Iron Cap,” Tony grinned as they stood on the top of the hill to see the red white and blue armor glistening in the heavy sun. “Let’s hope you didn’t put on weight in exile.”

"Whoa."

Despite the situation and how much his heart was currently aching for his best friend's predicament, Steve couldn't help but be impressed by the armour that landed in front of them. He had never particularly wanted a suit like Tony's, but he appreciated what the gesture meant and stepped up to it without hesitation.

It closed around him and a large HUD display lit up, labelled: SIMPLE MODE FOR GRANDPAS. With the controls labelled things like "press to go fast" or "up". He snorted and tilted his covered head towards Tony.

"Smart, thank you. Are you going to take your suit and-- order James to take the jet, or are you going to try and squeeze in there with him?"

And the amusement was gone right away. Nobody should ever have to order Buck around again, not even for his own good, everything should be his choice. Honestly, he didn't even like the idea of him on the Avengers team, he felt like Bucky had been fighting for seven decades and if anyone had earned retirement where his only problems were sleeping in late and what pie to eat, then it was him. But again, that wasn't his choice.

"We need to get him secure and then we need to come back here and deal with this base."

Because he also wanted to kill them all.

“That’s not James,” Tony said, frowning. “But I will be ordering the Asset to follow us to a secure location.” To Maine, actually, since that was the place that they had just left where James said he felt safe and were all of his boxes from the Tower not already unpacked had been brought over. Tony had gifted the house to the other man so that he always had a place to go, if he wanted it.

It would be better to try and rehabilitate him there.

Tony had seen James come out of a trigger in a few hours but he had no idea if having someone to imprint on instead of just issue commands would make any of the difference. He didn’t know if James just needed time and autonomy to escape his mind...

But what he did know was that Tony was going to try anything he could to get the man some help.

“You’re welcome to come back with us, Cap. FRIDAY can pilot you so that you don’t crash into the Atlantic again.”

"I'm never gonna call him that."

And he hated that Tony had, especially if he supposedly loved the other man in some way. He should always be James or Bucky or whatever name he chose for himself, not the designation that some evil child of the Nazi regime had given him. He wasn't the Asset or the Soldier, he just wasn't.

"And I'm pretty sure that I can manage it, thanks to these grandpa controls."

He just sounded dry and still unamused as he set the repulsors going and lifted a little way off the ground. "I'll follow you to where we're going too, then."

They were just going to have to have a disconnect in ideology. The man following him wasn’t James. He was a shell, not even the Nanny that used to follow him around as a child. Tony couldn’t actually bear to give James orders. Not after everything. And so he needed this disconnect to do his job and rescue the guy under the mask, his first and longest friend.

And yeah. He knew it was faulty logic. His friend had actually just been this automaton for much of their time together. Tony himself layered on a personality that honestly hadn’t been there.

It was what it said on the tin. And nothing more.

As Steve tried out the controls, lifting off, Tony turned back to that blank eyed stare and felt his heart crumble.

“We’re heading to James’ house in upstate Maine. Get into the mini-jet. Coordinates are already programmed in. I’ll be taking care of last minute business here.”

Steve would be too far away to stop Tony from blowing up the facility by the time that Iron Man was launching missiles and the mini-jet would not be broadcasting what was about to happen. It flew hard and fast away from the scene and Tony listened for FRIDAY’s go ahead that James had idea what was going on. He’d hovered overhead just long enough to draw most of HYDRA out before he started.

That blond agent got it the worst. He would be unrecognizable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because those notebooks sounded both incriminating and helpful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hated that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have to know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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idk why I wrote brown when I know his eyes are blue

i read it as brown eyed dogs anyway!!

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