fossilised | it's a new plot!

Bucky should have a lot of experience with this, he had spent most of his childhood in fear of Steve's life, but a lot of that was a blur now. Just one unending memory of worry, rather than sharp details that might help him cope with how to sit and wait while someone else he loved was in danger.

He was relieved when the nurse said the surgery had been successful, but that didn't translate too well onto his expression. He still looked as though he might bite through the solid wall as he swept out of the room so that he could pace outside of where they were keeping Tony for that hour, and then was at his side.

He would still be at his side when Tony woke up that day later, but he'd be fast asleep on the chair next to the bed. Steve, stood at his shoulder, would be the one to greet him in a low voice.

"Hey-- welcome back, Tony, how're you feeling?"

Tony felt like he’d been hit with a truck. When he woke up, it was like his entire body was on fire and then dunked in ice. His nerves were coming back to life, and though he’d been easily patched up with Helen Cho’s technology, the bone that they had drilled through was still open and the swelling of his brain, a tissue her technology couldn’t repair, pushing against it, was making his waking life a misery. The sound of Steve Rogers’ voice?

Well that just added to it.

Tony groaned. His mouth was like paper, his tongue rough, but he reached forward to take hold of the guard rail just to have something under his IV hooked up hand.

When he opened his eyes, they were unfocused, the pupils pinpricks, and that was when he started to laugh. It was a dry, horrible sort of sound, one that continued as he wriggled his toes and flexed his fingers.

“Wonderful. I feel wonderful,” he lamented between those oddly crazed laughs and turned his head away from Steve. “Thanks for your visit. Leave cards and candy on the table.”

The laughter was worrying, but he could maybe attribute that to the high amount of medication that Tony was currently on. At least he was awake and coherent, slightly more slurred than usual, but definitely still him. A relieved smile pulled his own lips up and he tugged his chair a bit closer, holding a paper cup of water close to Tony's face.

"I've got some water instead, not as exciting as a card or candy, but I bet you'll appreciate it more. Take some small sips and then you might want to go back to sleep."

They could have their discussion about friendship another time, when Tony had just woken up from brain surgery really wasn't the ideal moment.

"Bucky's here too, if you turn your head just to the left you'll see him. I can wake him up if you want?"

He'd rather not, Bucky had barely slept in the past two days, and God knows how well he slept in general before that anyway. He had to be exhausted to have passed out in a public space like this.

“I don’t want the water right now. And just... Let him sleep.” Tony didn’t turn his head. He didn’t open his eyes and he wasn’t going to sit up to let Rogers try to spill water into his mouth.

What he wanted was to call for a doctor to get some answers on how the surgery went, what other complications he could enjoy, but he didn’t need Rogers running around and waking Bucky up—

God forbid. He couldn't handle Bucky right now. He wasn’t sure he could even handle himself.

“If I pretend I’m still out cold, could you get him to go home?”

"Not a chance."

Steve's voice was warm and fondly amused, though he made sure to keep it quiet in an attempt not to jar Tony if he had an aching head... which, if he had his head cut open, then he probably would.

"He nearly suplexed the last doctor who suggested he leave the room for a bit, but I can keep an eye on him. Don't worry about anything except yourself right now, Tony, you need to rest and heal. The surgeon said everything went well and they got the clot, so you just need to recuperate now."

Keeping his head away from Steve, Tony tried to open his eyes. His fingers tightened noticeably around the metal bar and then relaxed again. There was nothing to be done. No amount of squeezing would let him see anything but vague washes of light and dark. He knew why, but it actually hadn’t been one of the things he’d feared going into this surgery. This, like ending up with Bucky, happened to be one of the strange deviations of this life from the other ones he more or less remembered in bits and pieces. He searched silently for a moment for the whispers to give him a hint of what to do now, but they were gone.

Of course they were gone. It was the clot that had connected them to him, that had given him that rare gift that had been meant to save them all from Thanos. And it was that clot that had taken his sight. Perhaps temporarily, but perhaps not. He had no way of knowing.

“I need a favor.”

It wasn’t for a drink of water. It wasn’t even to spirit Bucky away from here. He turned his head on the pillow and he tried to figure out which hazy bits of fuzzed and graying color were parts of Steve Rogers and which were the medical equipment or the wall behind him. He couldn’t tell and he closed his eyelids again.

“I need my phone. And I need you to wheel him out into the hallway for about five minutes. Can you do that?”

Obviously nobody knew yet that Tony had compromised sight, it was one of the things they couldn't test until he woke up, like some aspects of coordination and speech. But it might well be temporary, the surgery had gone well and he was a relatively healthy man for his age, drinking notwithstanding.

The blur that was Steve shifted and stood up, giving at least more indication of which bits of the room were him and which bits were probably stands of equipment.

"I try and move him and he's going to wake up, Tony, but I think he's out enough that you could make a call and he won't hear. I can go out into the hall to give you privacy, but if it's something that you need fetching or doing then maybe I can get it done for you?"

No that he didn't trust Tony to not try and discharge himself, except... he absolutely didn't trust Tony.

Tony didn’t trust that Bucky was asleep at all either. He didn’t trust that the man wouldn’t wake up and blame himself. Or wouldn’t leave once he found out that Tony was about as useful as pea soup splattered on the sidewalk. He counted to three, once more trying to reach out for something, for anything to give him some hope, and once again being treated to silence.

Silence.

He hadn’t experienced that since he was a child, and as he couldn’t remember what that was like, he might as well never have known it at all.

So what languages didn’t Bucky speak? The thought occurred to him that he could transmit in binary, but that could take hours to get a sentence out. The following thought was that he was so damned relieved that he even knew binary now. His mind was intact even if his sight was not. Not that it mattered. He was still ruined.

“You know what, never mind. I’ll wait until he wakes up to shoo him out.” He needed privacy. He wanted to speak to the doctors but he couldn’t let James know yet how bad it was. “But I still need my phone. And my clothing. Don’t give me the brain surgery speech. I don’t want to wear a hospital gown.”

Not that he was. Tony had been dressed in a soft cotton button down and his sweats. He facility knew he didn’t do hospitals.

"..."

The silence that came after Tony's words would probably be pretty telling. People often thought that Steve wasn't that intelligent, they only saw his muscles or his manners and never thought there might be more under the surface, but he was smart. Maybe not a genius like Tony or Bruce, but definitely smart enough to notice when someone says they're wearing something that they should be able to see that they're not.

"...you're not in a gown, Tony."

His voice was a mix of concern and gentle firmness, he knew that he would be scared if he had woken up and something might have gone wrong, but it was important that Tony trust them and not hide this.

"Is there something you want to tell me?"

Tony’s hand smoothed down the front of his chest. He did tilt his head as if to look and made a fairly convincing sigh. “Just woke up three seconds ago. You can forgive me for being disoriented.” And Tony was feeling pretty disoriented because he could hear Bucky breathe but he couldn’t see him or pinpoint where he was in the shapes of dull gray. He couldn’t even see Steve when he was standing still so rather than search for a direction to point his face, he closed his eyes and rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Shouldn’t a Doctor be in here welcoming me back to the land of the living?”

He hated how perceptive Steve was. Unlike most people, Tony didn’t think he was dumb or a jock. He knew he grew up dirt poor and sick. He knew the toughness came from a lifetime of being misjudged. But he also knew that everyone else on earth was an idiot compared to himself.

And he just wasn’t thinking clearly. He was too afraid.

“But that said, I don’t really want to talk anymore. Everything hurts. Even if I’m in my sweats. Thankfully. Someone listened for once.”

Steve wasn't entirely convinced, but he was willing to give Tony the benefit of the doubt for now. If something was really wrong then he wouldn't be able to hide it for long, the doctors would need to know and then they could help him. Then again, maybe he was just tired and disoriented.

"Okay, Tony, just-- try and get some sleep, like I said. I can look out a doctor for you when you next wake up, but I think it's for the best that you try and rest some more right now."

After any kind of surgery, let alone brain surgery, the body needed sleep to help it recover from such a trauma.

Maybe if he fell asleep, his head would right itself and then everything would be all right again? He could only hope. Sleep, however, all but refused to join him and he ended up blankly staring at nothing for a good twenty minutes after Rogers finally left. He was probably out in the hallway, the asshole.

When he did sleep, it was fairly restful. No voices. No dreams. Nothing.

He woke again slowly, mouth still as dry as a desert, to a nurse checking his pulse. He couldn’t tell that she was also trying not to stare Bucky down, afraid he would make a move to hurt her.

“Are you the doctor,” he asked, unable to tell if the person next to him was in a white coat or not.

“No Mr. Stark. I’m Hannah. I’m your RN. Let me get the doctor for you.”

At least Bucky wasn't wholly ignorant as to what was going on, Steve had quietly told him of his conversation with Tony and what he suspected might be true from what he had seen. Bucky, of course, had hoped that it wouldn't be true, and he leaned forwards as soon as Hannah left the room to go and fetch the doctor.

"Tony," he said, a soft voice only for him. "It's really good to see you awake again, are you-- can you see me?"

Maybe he should have asked in a more subtle way, but Bucky and subtle weren't natural bedfellows anymore. If something this major had happened, then he needed to know up front so that he could figure out how to help.

Tony had exactly one shot to get this right and he lifted a hand as if to place it on James’ neck or cheek. But as close as the other man was, the longer he stayed still, the more impossible it became for Tony to know where he was. His hand missed, not by much, but he failed to connect with any part of Bucky at all.

It made the older man swallow.

“Not that well,” he said, still in half denial, still willing to lie as much as he could through it. “I’m guessing there’s swelling. It happens.” But not with Cho’s machine. It couldn’t. Soft tissue was regrow. There was nothing to cause swelling save for maybe the hole in his skull. Tony could cling to that hope. “I don’t need to see you to know you’re frowning though.”

Bucky felt his heart sink and he reached out to catch the hand that had missed his face, so that he could gently move it into position on his cheek. He tilted a face covered in stubble into a calloused palm, trying not to let himself get too upset about it. Tony would need him to be strong now.

"That's... not exactly an impressive guess, I'm always frowning."

It was kind of his thing.

"It's okay, whatever it is, I'm here. We can work out what we need to do after the doctor has spoken to you and we know more about how permanent this is, okay?"

Tony had expected the worst when it came to Bucky, but he found himself biting his lower lip as his fingers cupped the other man’s cheek. “I’ve seen you smile,” Tony said by way of explanation as to how he was not cheating, thank you. “And I’ll see you smile again.”

It was a promise in a way, but also a threat. Tony wasn’t playing games. He might not be able to see but he was going to figure out a way to make sure he did again.

He was useless without his eyes.

The doctor, however, didn’t have a great outlook for Tony’s determination. There was no swelling, no clot, no loose bone fragment. The issue wasn’t in Tony’s eyes at all, not in the optic nerve either. It was just the roadmap of his brain.

“The tissue we removed was the only reason you could see in the first place,” he said, which made Tony frown.

“Anatomy doesn’t work that way.” Except, of course it did. The brain controlled everything. One little nick here and you forgot your childhood. A bruise there could stop you from walking.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sta— You need to lie down!”

But Tony disagreed. He pulled the tubes from his arms and struggled to get up. He needed to go.

Even if the nurse or doctor wouldn't be able to stop Tony from getting up, Bucky would. He set his metal hand on Tony's shoulder, so he'd be sure to know who was holding him down even without seeing him, and pushed him right back onto the bed.

"You need to listen to the doctors, you just have a serious operation. I get it, you're scared, you want to find a solution, but that can wait. Jesus, Tony, you could probably learn braille in about ten minutes and carry on like you never stopped."

Sure, it would slow him down for a bit, but Bucky didn't see that this would stop Tony completely. He would learn braille, FRIDAY would be programmed to assist better with voice commands, he'd easily learn how to tell the difference between different tools with just touch. No way that a genius like Stark would ever let something like this slow him down.

As long as he had his mind, he was okay. He would be okay.

“What else can you do for me?” Tony wasn’t just directing this at the doctor, or at James. He wasn’t quite shouting either but he really felt like he was going to start at any moment. “Can you answer that?”

“The brain is a remarkable thing, Mr. Stark—”

Tony couldn’t listen to that. He was doing his best not to freak out here, but he was losing his cool rapidly, like water moving into a rolling boil. “He him out of here, James,” Tony asked, pleaded really. “I can’t handle idiots right now.”

And maybe he was an idiot himself this time but it didn’t change the fact that he needed to grieve a little bit. And he really needed someone to actually take his fears seriously and not have him just wait and see.

The pun wasn’t as amusing as it might have otherwise been.

"Yeah, just-- just stay in bed while I do it."

It was half order and half request, before the weight of Bucky's metal arm disappeared and he turned to face the assembled medical staff. Tony might not be able to see what was going on, but he would surely be able to picture the scene in his mind. Bucky's amazing talent for looking terrifying as all hell without altering his facial expressions at all, a quiet 'request' for them to get out, and the scrambling of footsteps.

Only when they were alone again did Bucky come back and sit on the edge of the bed, making it dip under his weight.

"...I'm here."

It wasn’t until they got home to the mansion on Long Island thst Tony realized how decistatinf this suddenly was. He thought he knew the rooms, the layout, but all he knew how to do was bump into something or other. It was instantly frustrating. Especially because his sight hasn’t yet indicated that it might come back one day. If everyone was lucky. The doctors didn’t give a prognosis either,

But Bucky? Bucky was wonderful. And in a way that made things a hundred times worse. He was put to bed and had everything he could ever want fetched for him but that didn’t change a thing.

“You’ve got better things to do than look after an old blind man,” Tony grinned, eyes unfocused to the left of where Bucky was standing. “We could watch Netflix and you could tell me how hot everyone is on a sliding scale?”

"Maybe later."

Bucky wasn't the best at his own emotions, but he knew how to read other people and he was done with this fake grin of Tony's, done watching him pretend like none of this was getting to him, like his pride would make him explode if he admitted for even a second that he needed help.

"Right now, you're gonna cut the bullshit. I have nothing I'd rather do than be with you, told you that I loved you and that ain't gonna change. But this is a big change for you; you're pissed, you're scared, and you need to own that."

He hesitated, a hint of rueful amusement entering his voice. "Trust me, I speak from experience."

it's a new plot!

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