fossilised | it's a new plot!

Tony rolled his eyes. He’d just told this crazy loon that he’d met another version of him who helped him work on whatever weird gift he was forcefully given a few years after he was born. If it was as simple as Loki doing this him or herself, either would have. “Yeah, so I already know you can’t,” Tony complained, helping himself to whatever strange fruit was hanging out in the bowl on one of the tables next to the apples. He just really hoped that it didn’t taste like melon. He was not a fan.

Thumb breaking through the peel, Tony watched Loki, curious to see if he would lose his charm as he had at the Tower all those years ago, when he had gone from amused to furious in the span of a second.

“We need to work together. Well. Need. We don’t, but it would be easier. Pretty sure you want to meet up again with Thanos even less than we want to. Did some bad things to you right? And don’t ask how I know. You know how I know.” He stuck some of the purple fleshed fruit in his mouth and nodded in appreciation. It tasted like chocolate. Very nice.

That first insult rolled off his skin, he wasn't quite the unbalanced and frightened creature he had been when he first invaded, but the second comments did spark his rage anew. It was, as much of his anger was, born from fear and from an unwillingness to display any of that fear as vulnerability.

"You know not of what you speak."

The words were hissed out, as if by a venomous serpent, as he grabbed Stark by the throat and pinned him to the wall. There was something utterly petrified in his eyes, barely hidden beneath the contempt he kept around himself like armour.

"Have a care to what you allow to fall from your tongue lest you lose it; I am the God of Lies, little mortal, and I do not tolerate others stealing my craft."

Tony immediately missed the woman. He was childish enough not to want to deal with any of the crap Loki was throwing his way. He read the anger with a certain glee, mostly because he doubted he could be so easily thrown from a window this time, and because the guy needed to learn from humility for kill thousands. Instead, Loki only demonstrated further contempt.

“I’m an atheist,” he said, almost good-naturedly, taking another bite of the delicious fruit. “So I don’t care what you’re god of at all. But you might be onto something. You’re lying about yourself. We’ve got this weird thing, me and you. It lets me see you more easily. I’ve been having a whole choir of voices in my head whispering about you since you showed up and… Grow up a little, will you? I’m trying to help. If you don’t want to help me, that’s on you. I can do it without you but you’d make the going a lot faster.”

He put the half eaten fruit back in the bowl as if it was a sign that he was about to leave.

He would struggle to leave with Loki's hand around his throat and his back pinned to the wall, ever more furious from the disrespect being shown to him. He wanted to pluck out those Seer's eyes and tear out the tongue that told terrible truths so casually.

"If you truly wished my help, then you would have done well to not make an enemy of me with your words."

He could not allow it to get back to any of the Aesir who survived, especially not Thor, what had happened to him at Thanos' hands. He would rather they think that Midgard and his madness had come entirely from his own pride, rather than they know that he had been tortured and broken so easily.

Well yes. Definitely a struggle not only to leave but to breathe as well. Whatever Tony thought he’d felt for the other Loki was completely and utterly gone now as he grabbed at this one’s hands and wrists. Why did people like to strangle him? This was his third Asgardian strangle hold and he honestly wasn’t pleased by it at all. Tony stood on his toes, anger in his eyes.

“I don’t want your help. I think you’re still on the crazy train and I don’t care what Thor says about you. You can’t be trusted.” Maybe he shouldn’t be in the middle of being choked to go spouting any of this but he can’t help himself.

Tony was never good at self perseveration and it showed.

"Nor can you."

Loki did not know this man and certainly didn't trust him to keep silent as to things he had seen that he really shouldn't have seen. He had little choice but to deal with him in some way. The cleanest way would just be to kill him, but what good would that do him, when numerous witnesses would be able to say that the last place he had been seen was here.

Lucky for him, he had something that could augment his powers, an infinity stone of his own. He reached for it through the Void and brought it forth, a glowing cube of blue energy, and gathered his own magic.

"You will speak nothing of the visions you have seen that concern me, you will speak no word that I would not wish kept secret. Your will to mine."

This just didn’t seem fair. The reactor has protected him from having his heart touched the last time that Loki tried magic on him, but without it, and being just a nearly fifty year old wriggling mortal from the hook of Loki’s hand around his neck, there wasn’t much for him to do but find himself enchanted.

And this would be a problem. Much of the help that could come for Thanos had literally everything to do with Loki.

Light from the tesseract rose like icy snakes from the cube and floated into Tony’s nose and down his throat. All he’d done was come to meet some guy who was supposed to be one of the most important people in his life. But, true to his own life, that guy was a dick.

It was the best solution that Loki could think of. This would prevent him from going and informing Thor such inconvenient truths, such as what had happened to Loki at the hands of Thanos and the Chitauri before he used his silver tongue to save them. It would stop him from revealing that Loki had the Tesseract, thought to be destroyed with the rest of Odin's vaults when Asgard fell to Sutur.

He allowed the glowing blue cube to sink back into the pocket of the Void he kept it in, and then released the mortal from his grasp to take a step back.

"You would do well to leave my presence now, mortal, we have little else to discuss."

It wasn’t often that Tony was left so frustrated and impotent and he planned on getting Loki back the best way he knew how at the moment. He wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone about this, but he wouldn’t have to if he dug up enough dirt and left evidence everywhere. The slight hum of voices, of new and interesting strings to follow, was actually a comfort as he left the ship and blasted back to where James waited.

“I would love to tell what what happened, but I can’t,” Tony muttered the moment he saw Bucky, mostly to stop the man from reading into his anger. “I literally can’t, not figuratively. And I can’t tell you why either.” Loki was smart….but also not all that smart.

He tended to react with too much pride, without enough thought, and what ought to have been a way to bridge a gap between his own knowledge and Loki’s skill was turning into a big old childish mess. They ought to have been working on a solution to Thanos, and now, instead, all Tony could think about was getting to Loki.

“I’m going to have to work on this for awhile,” he said, moving a hand to the small of Bucky’s back as they walked. “Can you rouse me in a day and make me eat something? And if Rogers calls, tell him I’m busy and put him on hold.”

Bucky hadn't done much with his day. Though he likely should have gone to see Steve, he didn't, he had spent his whole day talking with FRIDAY. He knew that she was an AI, but she was soothing to talk to because there was no way that she could present a threat to him, and he even sort of considered her a friend now.

His brow furrowed in concern the longer that Tony went on, and he eventually just caught him around the waist and planted his feet hard on the ground to keep him still.

"I believe that you can't tell me why, but you're really smart and so I don't believe that you can't find a way to wriggle around that."

He was scared, truthfully, that HYDRA had somehow got to him. He knew, after all, exactly what brainwashing was like.

Tony looked at Bucky with a moment of annoyance that dissolved immediately into warmth and affection. He set his hands up on Bucky’s shoulder and his bicep, knowing full well that this was more like a dance move and that he was making himself the female component in that dance, but it pleased him to be held this way and spoken to this way enough that it didn’t do more than flash through his mind before exiting.

“Where did I just go?”

The answer, which Bucky gave, was that he’d gone to see Loki.

“And Loki is a sorcerer.” That wasn’t something that he couldn’t say, it was a point of pride for the alien. “A sorcerer who has a track record of doing something in particular to people that go against what he wants.”

Such as mind control. Of a sort.

“Especially when it has to do with something he’s trying to get his hands on.”

Like the Tesseract, for instance.

Tony tilted his head to the left, sighing at the thought. “I’m probably not going to get any help so I have to do this part alone. And then…when I get some answers… I hope you’ll help. It’s not HYDRA,” he tacked on. He could see that fear.

Bucky hadn't been around during the first Loki crisis, HYDRA hadn't seen a need to unfreeze him although he likely would have been deployed if the Avengers had failed to stop the invasion as quickly as they had. But he had done a lot of research during his time on the run, and so he gathered what Tony was talking about quite quickly.

His expression darkened, anger making him look dangerous even as he kept Tony in his arms with a strangely tender touch. To think of anyone using mind control on people that he cared about was abhorrent.

"I'll make sure he understands not to do that again, but we need to find a way to get it out of you. Isn't-- I read somewhere that Barton was under his control once, how did he get out of it?"

He wouldn't particularly enjoy cognitive recalibration as a method either.

It was good to have someone on his side. Tony didn’t tell Bucky not to be ridiculous or not to put himself in danger. He liked that someone wanted to stand up for him, that someone had his back, and if they were going to work on this being a partnership, this was the way that they should be reacting towards each other. Tony felt fully confident in what Bucky said. It wasn’t a shallow promise. If anyone could protect him, or could help him, it was this man right here, the one with the delightfully possessive hug.

“I think Romanoff hit him really hard on his head,” Tony said. “Please don’t do that. Oh, that reminds me, I might have a blood clot in my brain that I need to have scanned for.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that out loud and he immediately touched Bucky’s cheek to stop the worry from starting.

“You always have brain clots so don’t get started on me. I just want to be cool like you.”

"That's different."

Tony's attempt to forestall any worry wasn't going to work, he knew that their situations were very different. Bucky had the serum to help him survive this crap, and it came in regular intervals because of the mechanics inside his brain. Normal blood clots were unpredictable and deadly to most people.

"If you think you might have something like that, then we need to get you scanned and sorted as soon as possible."

That had now become priority number one.

“The second I have a second, I promise I will,” Tony said, a little annoyed with himself for having said anything. Why did he have such a hard time keeping his mouth shut? Tony wasn’t going anywhere though, not with Bucky’s arms around him, not with those dark blue eyes staring daggers into his soul.

Tony rolled his eyes.

“FRIDAY, thorough scan focused on the occipital and stem portions of my brain. You’re looking for a shadow or a deviance that probably won’t look like much.” FRIDAY said she’s start the scan now, but there was a snarkiness to her comment, as if she didn’t do a thorough job of scanning her Boss constantly already.

And yet, there is was. That shadow. That lodged clot just waiting to be broken off.

Tony rolled his eyes.

“Don’t suppose Banner is still Hulking out...?” He did not want brain surgery.

If Bucky had harboured any further unsure scepticism about the validity of Tony's talent to see future events, it disappeared when the shadow on his brain was verified. That wasn't something that could just be guessed. He felt a coldness pass over his heart, a fear of losing one of the precious few things he had gained.

"Banner isn't a surgeon."

Bucky didn't care how much Tony trusted the man, he wasn't a qualified surgeon and he wasn't about to let anyone but the best operate.

"We need to contact a hospital and get you admitted. Forget everything else, you can't help with the invasion if you're dead."

“I’m not a surgeon either,” Tony complained but Bucky was already off thinking he could save the world by saving him. Tony had to march after the other man, not overriding any commands but certainly giving Bucky a sort of what gives face at whatever he might be doing. “Listen to me, I don’t want just anyone in my head. One little nick and whatever I am could be gone.”

There were points where he had an aneurism and died in his sleep. There were points where it never dislodged and he was fine. And in at least half of the scenarios he could see folding out in front of him when called, he lost his intelligence. He could function as a human but he had trouble speaking. Or he had a stutter. Or worse, his hands refused to cooperate.

“James— This is too big. It’s too much. Will you stop and listen?! If something goes wrong, I’m going down anyway.”

He’d kill himself. He knew it immediately even without the visions telling him that he would.

"It won't go wrong."

He stopped and turned to look back at Tony, heart in his throat and a pleading look in his eyes. Had Tony already seen that this was pointless? Did he know that the clot would kill him, or that any surgery would go wrong? Had he already resigned himself to dying from this?

It couldn't be.

"Tony, please-- You can't walk around with a ticking time bomb in your head, not now we know it's there."

He shouldn’t have said anything. He should have left it go. Sometimes he wished he could learn to think before he spoke but that obviously wasn’t happening any time soon and the cat was already out of the bag.

He was just scared. There were success stories but mostly there were complications. And Loki wasn’t in his life to make sure he pulled through with Asgard’s help. Relying on someone he absolutely hated wasn’t what he wanted to do either, and given his last encounter with the trickster, it was a moot point.

He and Steve were barely talking. Banner was gone again. The world was going to shit and now he was going under the knife?

He was just having trouble looking at Bucky and saying no.

“Let’s see if we can book at least a halfway decent surgeon?” he offered, but since his name was gold and money was no object, finding a slot on the best surgeon’s table was annoyingly easy and FRIDAY already had an appointment for him and an OR spot for that evening.

Bucky had already known that he liked FRIDAY, the artificial intelligence had always been kind to him and didn't have a physical body to threaten him with. She had helped him gain mastery over his own space, get new clothes, and generally feel more human. Perhaps it was because she was an extension of Tony, a manifestation of his genius, that he liked her so much.

But now he liked her because, even though she was a construct of Tony, she was willing to piss him off when it was for his own good.

"Good, book it, this evening works great. Tony, pack a bag, night clothes and whatever else you think you might need. Nothing else. I don't care what else you're working on, I don't care about Thanos, or Loki, or anything but you. Got it?"

Guy gives him and handjob and now he’s getting brain surgery to appease him.

That wasn’t really how Tony felt but he wanted to hold onto the the cynicism for as long as he possibly could do so. His heart was aching fericely, less out of fear for himself and more out of fear for what might happen to a man who wasn’t equipped to care fo himself much less anyone else. He lightly touched his arm without saying anything and headed up to his room.

“FRIDAY, I need a Will. Immediately.” She let him record it quickly and he finished it all in one take without writing anything down. Hopefully no one was going to have to see it but one never knew. “And if something goes badly... well that’s where you come in, my girl FRIDAY. I can’t ask James to do it. So I’m going to do it myself. If I wake up and my parameters fall below this level.... and if I can’t do it myself, send a bubble into my heart through the IV. I want a DNR on file if I’m a vegetable.”

“All right, Boss.”

He didn’t need to pack. He was always packed. But he touched his hand to the reactor in his arm and sighed. He didn’t bother to follow any threads. He already knew the possibilities.

Bucky would have been devastated if he knew that Tony was making a will. He had been alone for so long, and even now he felt oddly alone. He knew that he had a bunch of people who wanted to help him, and at least two who greatly cared about him, but he felt as though he wasn't entirely a part of things a lot of the time. He struggled even to feel human some days.

Tony had been the first friend that he had, the first person that he had kissed that he had actually felt something for beyond just a way to spend an evening with a frivolous girl, and he didn't want to lose it. It wasn't fair to gain something, finally, and then lose it.

He would be ready at the door to take Tony to the hospital like the bodyguard he had been years ago, glaring at every doctor and surgeon's assistant who even looked at him, despite them doing their best to put their billionnaire patient at his ease before he went under the knife. Only when the surgery actually crept up on them, did he lean down and press a fierce kiss to Tony's forehead.

"You can't die, I need you. I'll be here until you get back, okay? Right here."

Bucky would be alone for a long, long time. A brain surgery wasn’t easy to begin with, and with a brain like Tony Stark’s there was absolutely no room for error at all.

No one bothered to come out and tell the waiting man what progress they were making. He was just an employee for all they knew, though as the nurses watched him sitting and waiting in the same position, the man who brought down the Accords, the Winter Soldier, was becoming more and more obvious.

They gave him a wide berth after that.

Strangely, it was Steve Rogers who would approach him some twelve hours later. He’d tried to call Tony and FRIDAY, suspecting that Bucky might need someone, tipped Rogers off to location and time.

He was in blue jeans and sneakers and a bright white T-shirt. “Hey Buck...?”

It was probably for the best that the nurses and other staff gave him a wide berth, because the more he worried, the less human he felt he became. The urge to grab some of them as they passed and impress on them just how important it was that they do everything in their power, or to just demand answers as to what was happening, was insane.

After this long, he wanted to break into the damn OR and stand in the corner so that he could watch and make sure that the surgeon was doing everything that he damn well should be doing.

At least Steve got there before that could happen.

Both the person that he wanted to see the most and the one he wanted to see the least, what with how confused he was over the love he felt and the how he should reconcile it with who he should be with. It didn't stop the initial feeling of seeing him being one of relief, and for a moment he looked vulnerable.

"...what if he dies, Steve?"

“Never really thought of you as a glass half empty sort of guy,” Steve said, keeping s chair between them in the waiting room. He was doing his best to be a good guy here, to give everyone their space, but it was natural for him to gravitate towards Bucky and now he knew, at least partially, why.

He’d never thought he would end up with the other man. It never even crossed his mind. So this wasn’t a hardship, knowing he was with someone else. What hurt was that he had no idea if he’d even be allowed to be this guy’s friend again. And friend...

That was the only thing he was worried about being today.

“If anyone can survive this, it’s Tony. And we both know that.”

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