Chapter Text
“Tony,” Bucky moans, reaching out for him with a limp hand that twitches feebly.
Tony hushes, bending over his body, with a washcloth at the ready. “It’s okay. I’m here, Bucky Bear.”
Bucky makes a snuffling, wheezy sound and curls against Tony’s thighs. Tony clucks his tongue and presses the washcloth against his sweat-matted forehead. Promptly, Bucky jolts with a shout, his eyes hazy and red-rimmed, but metal hand gouging a hole in the headboard. He snarls something in Russian, his mouth thinning into a bloodless line, before Tony runs the washcloth down the side of his hairline in a steady rhythm.
He slumps back onto the bed with a high, grating whine that makes Tony’s teeth hurt and his heart ache.
He hates being helpless.
“I don’t miss bein’ sick at all,” Bucky declares, definitively, writhing against the pillow until he gets himself into a position that is somewhat comfortable. “What the fuck is this anyway?”
“We think you caught some sort of superbug when we were busting up that lab last week. Remember, they were doing all sorts of creepy things in test tubes.” Tony shudders at the memory, rolling through his mind in stunning technicolour. “Body fluids everywhere. So unhygienic.”
“Such a baby,” Bucky mutters, fisting his flesh hand in Tony’s sweatpants.
Tony snorts. “Yeah, okay, we can decide whom the baby is after you’ve drunk your chicken noodle soup like a good little boy.”
Bucky eyes the flask that Tony pulls from the bedside table, dubiously. “Did you make it?”
“The sass I get in my own house, in my own room, while I’m taking care of you like a damn good boyfriend, it’s amazing,” Tony huffs.
“Like I said, such a baby.”
Tony scowls. “Just… drink your soup.”
“Sir, Captain Rogers is asking for permission to enter,” JARVIS intones.
Tony blinks. “Yeah, sure, let him in.”
The door slides open with a slick little sound that Tony loves and Steve peeks his head through, just an inch.
“How’s he feeling?” he asks, concerned.
Tony looks down at the sad work of art that Bucky presents, his hand lingering over the bun he had tied Bucky’s hair into the moment it seemed like Bucky would just pull the long strands out by the root out of pure frustration. He settles it on the soft, slightly-damp hair, his thumb rubbing circles into his hot temples.
“Like shit,” he says, grimacing.
“Like I got the shit kicked out of me in an alley defendin’ your dumb arse,” Bucky grumbles into Tony’s hip.
Steve snorts. “Never asked you to defend me, you know.”
Bucky looks up at Tony and sniffles once. “You should’a seen him, doll. Like a fuckin’ beanpole and pickin’ fights over stupid shit. Got his arse handed to him every couple’a days. Would’a been in hospital way more times if I hadn’t been there.”
Tony smiles, unbearably soft, and leans down, kissing him gently on the hairline, unintentionally tasting the salt of his sweat.
“You’re a good friend, Bucky Bear,” he says, sweetly.
Bucky nods. “The best,” he agrees.
“He’s a jerk, that’s what he is,” Steve huffs. “Did he drink the soup or what?” he asks Tony.
“Wait, did he make it?” Bucky asks, suddenly, his eyes as big and round as the moon at its peak. “‘Cause then I gotta go throw up.”
“Fucking jerk,” Steve mutters, glowering at his best friend, much to Tony’s eternal amusement (he just hopes JARVIS is capturing all of this in vivid technicolour).
“Don’t give me that look, Rogers. You fuckin’ burned water; don’t think I forgot!” Bucky warns.
“It was one time,” Steve exclaims, flustered by Tony’s raised eyebrow.
“One time too many,” Tony chimes in, solemnly.
“Oh, shut up, Tony.” Steve scowls, petulantly, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Come all the way up here to check in on my best friend and all I get is abuse. Way to show your gratitude.”
“Poor baby,” Tony mocks.
Steve glowers at him, until Tony sighs, relenting. “Yes, he drank the soup, Mama Bear. You can relax now.”
“Yeah, go away, Stevie; you’re harshin’ the time I got with my fella.”
“See if I worry about you getting sick again, dumbass,” Steve mutters as he storms out of Tony’s bedroom.
“Drama queen.” Bucky rolls his eyes.
“You’re made for each other,” Tony says, dryly.
Bucky looks at him, mock-hurt. “You comparin’ us now? That’s not cool, baby.”
Tony stares down at him, sternly. “Finish your damp soup.”
Tony’s jolted awake when Bucky’s muttering grows louder and louder until it reaches a decibel that he can no longer ignore. When he looks to the side, Bucky is curled into a little ball on his side of the bed, cringing away from an invisible enemy, as if he were about to be hit.
“I will obey. I will obey. I will obey,” he mutters in Russian over and over again.
“Bucky,” Tony says, carefully, but doesn’t touch him.
He’s learnt the hard way what happens if he touches Bucky in the middle of a nightmare.
“Bucky, you’re having a nightmare, honey. You need to wake up,” he soothes.
Bucky’s eyes flutter open, revealing glazed pupils. The sweat beads well on his skin, and he’s shaking from head to foot, his hands clenching and unclenching on the bedsheets below them, which quickly dampens.
Tony’s hand hovers in the air, ready to smooth over Bucky’s brow, but before he can do anything, Bucky hurtles over the edge of the bed and promptly vomits onto the floor, filling the air with a sour tang that makes Tony’s stomach curdle.
“Shit,” he hisses, reaching for a towel.
Bucky cringes at Tony’s touch, as if the soft thread hurts him or perhaps a more haunting idea, in that he’s afraid of Tony, which is something that he’s unwilling to linger on. His flesh hand lashes out and clips Tony’s forearm with enough strength that there’ll be a bruise blossoming there come morning. His metal hand curls around the headboard post and snaps the wood in two.
Tony curses.
Bucky turns stiff as a board, unnatural and painful, before jerking and contorting uncontrollably. He makes garbled noises, his words nothing more than wet, gurgling sounds as if he were choking on blood. His jaw locks and the tendon in his neck becomes ugly and visceral against his skin.
“Shit, shit, shit. JARVIS, he’s having a seizure!” Tony shouts, fear welling up inside him like a floodgate is breaking. “Call Bruce, call Steve, right the fuck now!”
JARVIS is still and silent for a moment, as Tony watches the love of his life flayed raw right in front of him.
“Captain Rogers and Dr Banner are on their way, sir,” JARVIS tells him, promptly, fear and confusion colouring his voice.
“First aid for seizure, J. Hit me,” Tony says, grim uncertainty crawling up his spine.
“Clear the area of anything that he may be injured on.”
Tony kicks away the bedside tables, sending them lurching into the corner.
“Place something soft under their head and loosen any tight clothing.”
Tony shoves his own pillow under Bucky’s head, barely resisting the urge to touch and smooth back his hair.
“Gently roll the person on their side as soon as it is possible to do so and firmly push the angle of the jaw forward to assist with breathing.”
“Oh, God, J,” he moans. “I can’t move him so easily.”
The rush of self-loathing comes like acid.
“Captain Rogers is on his way, sir,” JARVIS soothes. “He will be able to do so.”
Steve bursts into the room on command, in boxer shorts, his hair wild.
“What’s going on?” he demands.
“He’s having a seizure, Steve,” Tony says, voice thick with desperation. “I need to turn him onto his side.”
Steve stands at attention in a moment, his face going grim and hard. He lunges towards the bed and bodily pushes Bucky onto his side.
“His jaw’s locked. We need to push the angle of his jaw forward so he can breathe.”
Steve nods, his movements careful yet determined.
Bruce enters, just as they’ve loosened his jaw, and he tenses, seeing the scene in front of him. He strides towards the bed purposefully, first checking Bucky’s pulse, opening up his eyelids to see the whites of his eyes.
“He’s coming out of it,” he tells Tony and Steve, lowly.
The relief comes like a car pileup, making everything inside him deflate.
“But I don’t like how hot he is. JARVIS, what’s his temperature?”
“107 degrees, Dr Banner.”
“Shit,” Tony hisses.
“We run a little hot though, with the serum,” Steve says, quickly.
“But not that hot,” Tony snaps. “We need to cool him down.”
“Get rags, wet them with cold water,” Bruce orders.
For the first time, without a single argument, Steve and Tony work like a well-oiled machine to get a good pile of the rags ready for use. One by one, they lay them down on Bucky’s forehead, patting down until the sweat sluices off, even if Bucky shivers at the cold touch and cringes away.
“Dominica Lazarev,” he slurs.
Tony looks up, confused.
“Esme Bateman, Kenneth Ahmad, Marian Beck, Carlton Meyer, Grayson Cresswell, Hassan Santiago.”
“What’s he saying?”
Tony looks up to see Steve’s stricken face.
“I think…” Steve swallows hard. “I think it’s a list of the people he killed as the Winter Soldier. I think he’s dropping into the state he was with HYDRA, when he’d have to give them mission reports. I don’t think…” he shakes his head. “I don’t even think he remembers any of them. Maybe the fever’s opening up a bunch of floodgates.”
Dread crashes in Tony’s stomach. He licks his suddenly dry mouth.
“Salma Orozco, Martina Cowan, Eric Shannon, Leopold Krylov, Adam Zaitsev, Sergio Schiavone, Karin Alvaro, Victoria Rozhkova.”
“Shit, shit. Shit,” Tony whispers. He looks at them, helplessly. “What do we do? How do we pull him out of it?”
Bruce shrugs, equally lost. “I don’t think we can, Tony. I think all we can do is wait it out. Hopefully, his temperature goes down, and the hallucinations go with it.”
“So, we just do nothing? Let him remember, relive all that evil shit they made him do over and over again? Does that sound remotely sensible or fair to anyone here?” Tony asks, incredulously.
Bruce grits his teeth. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he snaps. “None of us have ever seen this before, Tony. This bug never even existed until Bucky caught it. We’re charting new territory here. So, tell me, you have any bright ideas?”
Tony deflates, promptly. “No, no, I fucking don’t.” He shakes his head, bitterly. “It shouldn’t happen like this. He shouldn’t have to linger on any of it, any of that torment and suffering and misery and fucking horror those evil bastards put him through. It’s not fucking fair.” He jumps off the bed. “I’m, uh, I’m going to re-wet these rags. They’re getting a little dry,” he mutters, in an attempt to vacate the current situation as soon as possible, just for a little bit, so he can get his head on straight.
“Mission Report: December 16th, 1991.”
Tony reels to a stop, just in front of the bathroom door. When he turns around, a shuddering sort of stillness hangs in the air, like everyone’s terrified that a pin is going to drop and destroy everything.
Well, everyone except for Bucky, who groans like he’s dying and stares at Tony with filmy eyes.
“Howard Stark,” he pants. “Maria Stark.”
No.
No, that’s not possible.
White noise roars in his ears.
Tony doesn’t even realise he’s shaking his head until his neck starts to hurt.
“Did he just say-?” Tony can’t finish the words; they’re too big, too heavy on his tongue.
Bruce slips off the bed, hand outstretched.
Tony backs away until his back hits the wall with a heavy smack. His eyes drift from Bruce’s pale face, his worried eyes, to Steve, who’s still sitting beside Bucky, lying there on the bed, head twisting from side to side, face drenched with sweat.
Steve flinches away from the look in Tony’s eyes (he can only imagine how he looks now), but his eyes are dark and full of guilt.
It sideswipes him, what Steve’s eyes are trying to tell him, hits him right in his bones, until he feels splayed open, wrecked, like he’s missing all of his skin and bones, until all he can see is that they’ve made an utter fucking fool of him.
“Did you know?” he rasps, past the rush of blood in his ears and the half-formed thoughts in his head and the swooping crash in his stomach.
Steve opens his mouth and abruptly closes it. He slips off the bed, approaches him like a skittish kitten.
“Tony, listen-”
Tony shakes his head. “Did you know?” he repeats, surprised by his own ability to keep his words steady.
“This isn’t what you think-”
He’s obfuscating on purpose.
“Don’t bullshit me, Rogers,” he bites out, in an ugly tone. “Did you know?”
Steve shakes from head to foot, before nodding, his head cast down. “Yeah, I knew.”
Tony’s hands clench and unclench around nothing. Something fists inside her ribs and undoes itself, and he chokes, the pain flaring hot.
Bile rises in his throat, sour and bitter.
“Did he…” he licks his dry mouth. “Did he know?”
All of those memories destroyed with a couple of words – he can’t even say his name now.
God, he thinks he might die if Steve says out loud the words Tony’s been dreading – if this, if the happiest sliver of Tony’s life, has all been a lie.
“No, no. God, Tony-” Steve shakes his head, vehemently. “Of course not. Of course not. Tony, he doesn’t even remember… he doesn’t know half the shit he did as the Winter Soldier. This fever… it’s just pulling things out of his brain, but I swear, he doesn’t remember any of it. He doesn’t remember what happened, what he did, to your parents. If he did, he would never have-”
Never have what, Steve? Never have come to my home? Never have approached me? Never have accepted the prosthetic I made him? Never have allowed me to get him pardoned for all the terrible shit he did as the Winter Soldier? Never have told me he loves me? Never have fucked me? Never have slept in my bed? Which is it, Steve?
“Though, apparently, you would,” Tony says, bitterly, his lungs still constricting.
Steve grits his teeth. “That’s not fair.”
Tony wants to scream at him, all ugly and loud, like a dying animal in a trap. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me what is and what isn’t fair, Rogers. Don’t you fucking dare,” he seethes.
He tastes salt on his tongue and realises with shame that there are tears, which he swats away, angrily.
Tears only make things worse for him. He wants to be angry.
Bruce takes a hesitant step forward. “Tony,” he begins, soothingly, as if a gentle voice and soft words is enough to fix the fact that he just found the same guy who’s been fucking him for the last eighteen months murdered his parents as a brainwashed assassin.
“Don’t come near me,” he says, fiercely.
He backs away, until he’s scampering into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him, like it’s the last safe space left for him, since the rest of his tower is overrun with people who smile at him and say they’re his friend and use him and use him and use him until they’ve taken all they want and don’t give a shit what they’re leaving behind in him.
There are furious knocks on the door, moments later, and he hates that; he hates that they won’t leave him alone, that they think he’s some child that needs to supervised.
“Tony, Tony, please open the door! We need to talk about this!”
“Tony, I don’t think you should be alone right now! Just open the door and we can sort all of this out!”
Tony leans over the sink and he can’t breathe. He fists his hands through his hair, wanting nothing more than to tear clumps out if it’d stop him feeling what he’s feeling right now. When he looks up, seeing his reflection in the mirror, he sees messy hair, like tumbleweed, and raw, salt-rimed eyes, a gaunt tinge to his face, like his words were enough to empty out life from him.
Wouldn’t that be the funniest end to this terrible cosmic pun his life has become?
“Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!” he shouts, his voice scraping like a dragging chain, sharp, like flinders.
“Tony, please!”
Tony makes an angry sound, which sounds so vicious and biting that it surprises even him. “JARVIS, get them out of there! Make them leave, JARVIS!”
“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replies, promptly, a dark, savage edge to his tone.
JARVIS is the only friend he has left in this place; after all, who wouldn’t take Steve’s side in all of this?
He’s an innocent victim, right?
Tony’s the monster if he blames him. Tony’s the monster if he doesn’t immediately forgive him for inadvertently tearing away the first person to ever love him without wanting something back. Tony’s the monster if he lets this destroy what they have.
Tony’s so goddamn sick of being the monster.
Tony makes his nest in his workshop, once the coast is clear and he can sneak by without alerting anyone to his presence. Or maybe he’s just being naïve, and they all know exactly where’s going; either they don’t give a shit, or they’ve realised that he’s not in the fucking mood for group therapy. Either way, it suits him just fine, and the knot in his chest loosens when his workshop doors close with a slick little click.
He stumbles his way to his workstation, the monitors flickering on without even another word to JARVIS.
Blessedly, they all leave him alone.
They can’t ply him out of the workshop with promises of movie night and pizza and greasy fried chicken and over-caffeinated coffee. This isn’t something they can fix in him; nor do they have any sort of right to. This predates the Avengers, predates even Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. Only Rhodey has any clue of what this particular tragedy means to him, and he calls and calls and calls, trying to make sure that Tony hasn’t slit his wrists in a depressive stupor (he wouldn’t; that’s not what his mother would’ve wanted; his mother would’ve wanted him to be strong, her little patito).
He’s both miserably grateful and viciously annoyed that they’ve left him alone there, to wallow in his grief and hurt and anger – it’s very hard to resolve everything inside him, the maelstrom that he’s become.
After a week, he becomes restless, curious. He had a dumbwaiter installed ages ago, ready for a solo inventing binge that he would never have allowed, but it helps now, when it comes to food retrieval, without having to ever leave his workshop, outfitted with a nice comfy couch and fully-equipped bathroom that is his salvation.
But he needs to know.
“JARVIS?”
“Yes, sir?” JARVIS says, promptly, never one to keep Tony waiting (the only man in his life, since the first Jarvis and Rhodey, to be worthy of the title).
“Show me, show me the footage,” Tony says, suddenly, clearing his throat of the knot.
“Which footage is that, sir?” JARVIS asks.
“From my room, after I went into the bathroom.”
“Are you certain, sir?” JARVIS’ voice is worried.
“Yeah,” he exhales, heavily. “Can’t keep my head in the sand forever, hey, J.”
“Very well, sir,” JARVIS says, in a low, rushed voice.
His monitor flickers with a high, grating sound before surveillance images scroll across the screen.
“Tony, Tony, please open the door! We need to talk about this!” Steve shouts, on the screen, pounding on the door with his big, deft hands.
Bruce is smacking the door as well, green around the neck. “Tony, I don’t think you should be alone right now! Just open the door and we can sort all of this out!” he says, urgently.
Tony wonders why they all think he’s such an utter catastrophe of a human being that they think he can’t be alone in the fucking bathroom after being told that the man he’s been screwing for eighteen months killed his parents as a brainwashed assassin and no one fucking thought to open their big mouths until said brainwashed assassin blurted it out in the middle of a fever-induced hallucination.
Honestly, it seems a little unfair to him.
“Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!” he hears himself shout from the inside of his bathroom.
God, he sounds like he’s about to have a mental breakdown – although, thinking back to that moment, when he thought his world was flaring up in fire, he could’ve, very easily.
Now, he has a little more perspective.
He’s still miserably angry, hurt, betrayed; right now, he doesn’t know if he’d spit on Steve Rogers if he were on fire (he probably would, because his good heart would win out before anything else).
But he won’t let this be the end of him.
He won’t let this destroy him.
Countless have tried and failed; why should some delusional, self-righteous steroid-infested soldier, and miserable fucking cunt who thought the world would be better or easier for them if his mother and father died bloody and violently get the better of him?
Just because the world thinks he’s weak, foolish, selfish, doesn’t mean he is.
It’s just another recycled tragedy he has to pull out of its box, deal with it and put it back where it belongs again, but he’s more than a sum of all the blows that life has dealt him.
He refuses to let this be the end of him; he refuses to let them win.
“Tony, please!”
It’s Steve who shouted. He had thought it was Bruce.
Even now, he’s still getting these people wrong – fucking fool that he is.
There’s a vicious, raw sound that comes from Tony’s throat, in the surveillance footage, from inside the bathroom – it surprises even him.
“JARVIS, get them out of there! Make them leave, JARVIS!”
“Yes, sir.”
Steve and Bruce keep pounding on the door, shouting at him, wanting to make him listen to whatever shitty platitudes they could come up with – terrified of losing their fucking sugar daddy, he thinks, bitterly, after all, what are they gonna do if I put them out onto the fucking street?
JARVIS edges in then.
“Captain Rogers, Dr Banner, if you do not cease in your attempts to force entry into Sir’s bathroom, or demand his exit, I will take action against you. It will not be pleasant,” he says, coldly. “Please, leave. You have done quite enough.”
Steve looks up at the ceiling, a habit he hadn’t managed to train himself out of even after all these years.
“Please, JARVIS, I just need to talk to him. I just need to explain what happened, why I did what I did.”
But JARVIS gives him no quarter.
“Captain Rogers, it would be better if you and Dr Banner took Sergeant Barnes on your way out. Will his fever now abate, Dr Banner?”
Bruce blinks, as if he hadn’t thought he’d be addressed. He runs his hands through his hair, his neck flushed what looks to be a permanent green, at least for the time being.
“Yeah, uh, we should be able to get his temperature down from here.”
“Very well. It would be best if you took him with you. I cannot guarantee Sir’s wellbeing if you leave him here.”
“Huh, brutal, JARVIS,” present!Tony comments, the words coming out dull.
“I was having a ‘moment’, sir. I apologise.”
“Yeah,” he exhales. “I know what you mean. Is that it?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Rogers and Dr Banner left very quickly afterwards.”
“Is there anything else?” Tony bites his lips, mulls over the words that linger in his mind. “What did he do, when he woke up out of it?”
JARVIS hesitates. “Sir, are you absolutely sure you want to see?”
“Yeah… yes.” Tony clears his throat. “I need to know.”
When the monitor flickers to life, he is pacing around the room that Tony recognises he had been using before he had permanently moved into Tony’s.
“What the fuck did you do, Rogers? What the fuck did you do?” Bucky barks, fisting his in his long hair, unbound, like he’d tear the strands off his scalp if he could. “What-what the fuck, Steve? What the fuck is wrong with you? Why the fuck would you bring me here, of all places, knowing what I did?”
Steve takes a hesitant step forward, his entire face miserable and drawn.
Good, Tony thinks, viciously.
Steve should feel half of what he’s feeling right now.
“Bucky, I can explain everything,” Steve practically begs. “I swear it isn’t like what you think.”
Bucky scoffs, a harsh, fragile little sound that tears through the air, like he’s moments away from crying. “I fuckin’ doubt that. I really fuckin’ doubt that.” He sinks down onto the bed, elbows propped on his thighs. “Fuck, Stevie, what did you do?” he whispers, his voice thick.
“I was trying to protect you,” Steve urges.
Bucky looks at him, incredulously. “How the fuck were you tryin’ t’protect me, huh? How is this protectin’ me? And Tony, who the hell was protectin’ him?”
“I was-I was trying to protect him too. I was protecting both of you,” Steve insists.
“Bullshit,” Bucky snorts, immediately. “I don’t know who you were protectin’, but it sure wasn’t either of us.”
“I just thought…” Steve closes his eyes. “I just thought it’d been so long ago; Tony had moved past it, and I didn’t want to bring up all of it. I know how it fucked with him, his parents dying, and I didn’t want to make it worse, dredging up all of the drama. And you, Bucky, you didn’t even remember, so I thought what good it would be to add another burden you had to carry around? It wasn’t fair to either of you.”
“It isn’t fair to either of us now,” Bucky says, darkly.
“I was trying to protect you both. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with my decision-”
“Agree with your decision?” Bucky asks, incredulously. “Do you even hear yourself right now? Are you that fucking selfish, that much of a fucking monster? You brought me, the mental-case assassin that killed his parents, to Tony’s house. Do you even realise what that means, how fucked up that is?” he demands.
“It’s not your fault!” Steve exclaims. “You didn’t even know what was going on; you didn’t even remember! What good would it have done to talk about it all over again, rehash everything, make both of you relive everything you went through?”
“That doesn’t fuckin’ matter; I still fuckin’ did it,” Bucky snarls, jumping to his feet and stalking over to Steve like a loping panther. “You don’t get to make that choice for us, you get that, Rogers. It’s not your fuckin’ choice to make. Tony and I deserved to make that choice, and you took it from us ‘cause you thought you knew best. Well, you fuckin’ don’t. You fuckin’ don’t, and you are not the centre of the fuckin’ universe, not even close. This isn’t even fuckin’ about you, this isn’t your fuckin’ tragedy, and you still managed to insert yourself into somethin’ that had nothin’ to do with ya and fuck everythin’ up.”
Steve deflates, curling on himself, as if to protect himself from the vitriol, and runs a hand over his face.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I fucked up. I just… I didn’t know what to do. I needed to bring you some place. And Tony offered, and I swear, I didn’t think the two of you would get together, and I was terrified of ruining it for you two, because I love you both. You both deserve to be happy, and I thought… what harm could it do?” he says, weakly. “If you two were happy, why should I ruin it?”
“But you did. You did ruin everythin’, Stevie,” Bucky moans. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”
In stunning technicolour, Tony can see as Bucky (there’s no point in still calling him he, not after what he just heard) starts to cry.
It hurts like sharp teeth biting through his skin, and he wraps his arms around himself, like it could stop his heart from falling out of his chest with a wet squelch and crawling out towards Bucky, like that’s where it belongs.
Bucky laughs, hollow and wet. “God, he’s never gonna talk to me again, is he?” he muses, dully. “I mean, I always thought I’d lose him. Look at him, fuckin’ gorgeous genius billionaire and me, the guy from shitty old Brooklyn who worked at the fuckin’ docks to make ends meet. Oh, and not forgettin’ the hundreds of people I offed as a brainwashed toy assassin for a bunch of Nazis and Commies. But never ‘cause of somethin’ like this.”
Tony feels the words hit him like a blow to the gut, knocking the wind right of out of him, and immediately feels like shit, because Bucky Barnes murdered (was forced into murdering, his mind spitefully corrects) his mother and why the fuck should he be guilty over anything here?
He’s the fucking victim.
Bucky looks down at his upturned palms and his face contorts into an expression of such self-loathing that Tony wishes he could reach into the screen and smooth those lines out, make him happy again.
Fucking pathetic bastard you are, Stark.
“How d’you get over this, Steve?” he asks, roughly. “How d’you forgive the guy who killed your parents?”
“It wasn’t you,” Steve says, weakly.
Bucky smiles, mournfully. “But I still did it,” he says, firmly. “And now, Tony will always know I did it. Who knows how many years he could’ve had with his parents? And I ended that. Whether or not I did it of my own free will is beside the point. Howard and Maria are dead; it was my hands that killed them, and Tony knows it was me. That’s all that fuckin’ matters.”
Steve runs a hand over his face, his cheeks splotchy, his eyes red and wet. “I’m so fucking sorry, Buck,” he whispers. “I’m so fucking sorry for ruining this for you, and for Tony. I’m so sorry.”
You should be.
Bucky makes a rough sound. “No point in blamin’ you, not really. If I hadn’t killed Tony’s parents, none of this would be happenin’, right?”
“None of that’s your fault!” Steve insists, the anger returning swiftly, “What you did, all those years, it wasn’t you, okay. It wasn’t you.”
Must be easy being you, Steve, so sure of yourself all the fucking time, Tony thinks, bitterly.
“You’re right, it wasn’t me,” Bucky agrees, his voice thin. “But I still did it. And now the man I love most in the world may never talk to me again. How’m I gonna live with that, Stevie, huh?” He looks at him, desperately, like his body is as heavy as a graveyard. “How do I fix this, Steve? Tell me what to do.”
“Off,” Tony rasps. “JARVIS, turn it off.”
The screen turns black with a low, grating whine, and Tony leans back.
The grief is still there in his body, hungry like a disease.
“If you are amenable to viewing this footage, sir, I believe it may be time to inform you that both Colonel Rhodes, Miss Potts, Dr Banner, Thor and Agent Barton have left you countless messages,” JARVIS prompts, cautiously. “They have all expressed their vehement disapproval and anger on your behalf as to Captain Rogers’ actions.”
Something warm unfurls in the pit of his stomach.
He digs his fingernails in his thighs.
Maybe only Steve had known about it, after all. Maybe they really were his friends.
“Sir, Agent Romanoff is approaching the workshop. Shall I allow her entrance?”
Except for Natasha. Natasha had known. Natasha knew everything about all of them.
She knew the exact night when Tony and Bucky had sex for the first time, and grilled Bucky extensively about the encounter afterwards, curiouser than even she liked about the veracity of Tony’s sex god reputation.
She had been pleasantly surprised.
All he felt for her now is an acid rush of betrayal and hurt and anger.
“Let her in,” he says, coldly.
There would be no escaping this conversation, and it was better to do it on his own turf, than let her have any sort of leverage over him.
To think he thought she was his friend – it’s kind of laughable, now that he thinks about it.
Natasha slips inside the workshop, quiet as a cat, loping forwards.
“Romanoff.” He inclines his head.
Natasha’s face flickers with hurt at the cold address before smoothening out. She wrings her hands together. “We’re all worried about you, Tony,” she says, quietly.
Tony raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure,” he says, dryly.
Natasha takes a step forward, meeting his heavy gaze head-on. “Look, I heard what happened and I just-”
“Before we go into this shtick, I’d like to confirm something first,” Tony cuts in. “Did you know too?” he asks, carefully.
Natasha opens her mouth.
“Before you answer, you should know that the way you answer will determine how this interaction and any other future interactions between us go,” he says, smoothly.
Natasha’s mouth falls shut. There’s a hint of a pink tongue, as she licks her lips.
He wonders if she were about to lie to him, straight to his face – right now, he wouldn’t put anything past anyone.
“I did know, yes,” she answers instead, her voice low.
The pain flares up hot, so much that he thinks he’s dizzy with it, and he wonders how he still manages to be surprised by the shit that people do to him, the knives they slide into his ribs and spine.
He shakes his head. “I knew you knew,” he tells her, smiling a little. “I think I was just hoping that you would tell me something different. Stupid, I know, right?” he laughs, harsh and cold. “They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result. I’m probably insane at this point, wouldn’t you say?”
Natasha takes another tentative step forward. “I can explain everything,” she urges.
“I’m sure you can,” he concedes. “I don’t think I want to hear it, though. I feel like if you said anything at this point, if you tried to explain yourself, if you gave me excuses, it’d just be you manipulating me to smooth all of this over, right?”
Natasha bites her lip. “I’m your friend, Tony,” she insists.
Tony’s brow furrows. “See, I think you believe that, but at the same time, I don’t think you know what friendship is. I think you understand priorities and that’s exactly what you did here. I think you prioritised something else over me and my feelings and my grief and my mental health and my fucking right to know how my parents fucking died. I don’t know what this great important cause was that you decided was more important than me. I don’t know if it was protecting Steve’s feelings, ensuring Bucky’s recovering, protecting yours and the rest of the team’s livelihoods, considering you live in my house rent-free and eat my food and sleep in my beds and use my money and get me to make you shit so you people can fight the good fight, right? Maybe it was a mix of all those things. Was it a mix?”
Natasha swallows hard, like she’s legitimately and honestly lost for words. “Is that really what you think of me?” she blinks, like she’s blinking away tears.
He doesn’t buy it for a second.
“Tell me if I’m off course, here?” he prompts. “Am I? I don’t think I am.”
“I was protecting you. I know it doesn’t seem like that from where you’re standing, but it’s the truth. I just… I knew what your parents’ death did to you, and I didn’t want to make it worse for you. I didn’t want to rehash everything, not when you and Steve and Bucky were getting along so good. I didn’t want to ruin another good thing in your life, Tony. You’re my friend, my family; I was protecting you because I love you and you’re my family.”
Natasha looks at him, her eyes wide and blue and begging.
He remembers how good a fraud she is, how invented she is, and every fraction of an inch of good will that he might have had for her ebbs away.
“You and Rogers really are made for each other,” Tony snorts. “You have the same shitty, delusional fake excuses.”
“That’s not fair, Tony.” Natasha’s voice rises. “We care about you. Maybe our execution wasn’t good, but everything we did, we did it because we care.”
“If this is how you care about someone, I don’t want to know how you hate, Romanoff,” Tony says, firmly. “You made the wrong call, you and Rogers, and now you have to live with the consequences.”
“You haven’t kicked us out yet,” Natasha says, quietly, like she had been expecting it of him.
He hates that it still hurts, her low opinion of him, and wonders why the fuck she (they) would live in his fucking house, eat at his fucking table, use his goddamn money and tech to fund their entire existences if they thought so little of him.
Tony shrugs and smiles, a little too sharp to something kind. “Maybe I’m just a better person than you,” he says, lightly.
Natasha bites her tongue before the retort slips out.
He knows that she doesn’t think he could ever be better than her in something, even with her ‘red ledger’; Natasha has always broken him down to bones and flesh and sins and found him wanting. Just because they were Avengers, just because they lived in the same building, just because he was practically her sugar daddy, doesn’t mean that her original opinion of him changed drastically.
She may have adjusted it a little bit, here and there, but people like Natasha always hold strong; they very rarely waver in judgment, and she was never going to truly change her mind about him ever.
“Is that what you want to be, Tony? Better than us?” she says, her voice soothing, like she’s trying to get him to admit that he’s not innocent here.
“I am better than you,” he repeats, slowly. “I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, sure, but I’ve never leached off someone, while hiding the fact that said someone was fucking the man who killed his parents.”
“Bucky didn’t kill your parents, Tony, not really,” Natasha says, gently. “Remember? He was brainwashed by HYDRA; it’s not his fault, any of it.”
“I know that, but my parents are still dead. And if Bucky’s innocent, what’s my mother, Romanoff? Is she a victim? Is she innocent? Did she deserve what happened to her?”
“It was an unfortunate-”
Tony takes a step forward, his fists clenching. The anger rails hot and hard. “My mother was a living, breathing person, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Tony-”
“She was a good person. She was kind and fierce and beautiful. She was a hell of a lot more innocent than any of you, and she’s dead now. Do you have any fucking idea how that makes me feel?”
“It’s not that simple-”
“My mother is not a fucking plotline for you people. She isn’t something just there to make Steve’s man-pain more valid, to make Bucky’s story more tragic, to make your stupid fucking decisions more reasonable. Do you understand me? My mother is not yours to touch. Now, get out of my workshop.”
“Tony, don’t leave it like this.” Natasha practically pleads. “You need to fix this, with Steve, with Bucky, or you’ll regret it later on.”
“We all have our burdens to bear.” Tony shrugs. “Get out.”
“Steve thought he was doing the right thing. He’s not a bad person. You know that, Tony!”
“You’re right.”
Natasha’s eyes gleam with hope.
“Steve is kind, so very kind. He’s just, apparently, not kind to me.” Tony folds his arms across his chest. “Now, for the third and last time, unless you want me to sic JARVIS on you, get the fuck out of my workshop.”
“Did you find anything, J?” Tony asks, wearily, letting his chair spin in concentric circles around the workshop.
“Yes, sir,” JARVIS answers, haltingly. “It appears that there is a video.”
Tony goes taut and he sits up. “What video? A video of what?”
“From my perusal of its contents, it appears that there was surveillance footage from a traffic camera in the area of the incident that befell Mr and Mrs Stark, sir.”
Tony’s nails dig into the chair, white noise roaring in his ears. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s surveillance footage of my parents’ murders?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“And you found it?” Tony clarifies, carefully.
“Yes, sir.” JARVIS pauses. “Would you like to view it?”
Tony looks down at his upturned palms, splayed on his thigh.
He looks up.
“I want to see it.”
“Are you certain, sir?” JARVIS asks, haltingly. “I predict an increased state of anxiety and depression and stress upon viewing. It will not be conducive to your health.”
“I want to see it,” he says, dully. “I want… no, I think I need to see it. I’ve imagined the crash so many times. I want to know what really happened to them.”
“Very well, sir.”
His monitor flickers into existence.
There’s a road he knows all too well – he sat on the edge of that road and drank himself to unconsciousness, more than once, in the months that succeeded his parents’ death.
Their car careens from out of the frame and crashes right into the tree, the metal warping and the glass shattering like pinpricks.
Tony’s flinch is nothing small.
But he watches. He watches as a motorbike rolls into view, comes to a stop just in front of the wreckage, and a figure steps off it.
He knows it’s Bucky. He’d recognise that gait anywhere.
Bucky (no, he can’t call him Bucky; he’s the Winter Soldier here) stalks forward to the car.
His eyes look dead. His hair hangs over his face, limply, like it hasn’t been washed in weeks, in months. There’s no emotion, no sentiment, no understanding in his eyes – he’s numb to it all.
If Tony could, he’d find every single HYDRA cunt that did that to him and feed them their lungs – at the same time, his stomach churns with disgust: this man killed his mother.
The Winter Soldier wrenches the car door open on the screen. His father falls out, unceremoniously, landing on the ground in a heavy thump. He crawls forward (he’s only ever seen his father proud – crawling somehow seems wrong on him). There’s blood dripping from the wound on his hair, staining his grey hair a garish brown-red.
“Help my wife,” he moans. “Please. Help.”
The Winter Soldier fists his hand in his father’s hair, hefting him up off the ground, staring at the way the blood congeals on Howard’s face.
Howard blinks, his gaze unfocused. “Sergeant Barnes?” he mumbles.
Oh,
Tony hadn’t realised Howard had known.
“Howard!” Maria sobs from the passenger seat, trapped by her seatbelt.
Tony jerks in his seat, fingernails claw deep into the meat of his thighs, when the Winter Soldier starts pounding his metal fist into his father’s face. He sees red, red, red, until his father’s skull caves inward and he collapses to the ground, the light ebbing from his eyes.
“Howard!” his mother cries out again, her voice rasping like a dragging chain.
The Winter Soldier hauls his father’s corpse and places him in the driver’s seat, so his mother can see with aching visibility what’s been done to the love of her life. The Soldier rounds the car, and Tony knows what’s about to happen, knows it in his bones.
It’s like one of those horror movie gore scenes – you know it’s happening, you know the serial killer’s about to pull out the intestines of the young busty heroine, you know you don’t want to look, but you can’t take your eyes off it – it’s horrible, yet affirming, at the same time.
So, he watches, he watches as the Winter Soldier wraps a hand around his mother’s throat. She’s silent like a baby bird, even though it hurts (Tony knows it hurts), even though her lungs are burning and squeeze a little too tight, even though her throat spasms and there’s a wet ripping sound when blood cells burst.
She dies like that, silent, and her neck goes loose and rolled when he finally releases her from his grip. It feels like it was easy, it was so easy for her to die there, it was so easy for her life to end, without ceremony, without drama.
She’s dead in this video, and it’s a fact.
The Soldier leaves them there, in the car, doesn’t spare them a second glance, knowing that he’s done his job. He strides over to the other side of the car, in full view of the surveillance camera, and pulls out his gun. His face is as blank as Tony’s dead mother’s and that terrifies him just as much, sickens him just as much. He stares down the camera and shoots.
The screen goes black.
Tony wrenches himself away from the monitors and out of the chair, and fists his hands in his hair. There are no tears; he’s too tired and wrecked for tears; he can’t linger on anything but the acid rush of sheer loathing and helplessness.
He can’t help but remember the last time he and Bucky had sex, the way Bucky spread his legs over his arms, how his big, deft hands had touched him so carefully, like he was precious, how he’d made him come like a seventy-car pileup until he was just a mass of flesh garbling out unintelligible noises. He imagines those very hands that he had kissed, traced scars on, and imagines them choking his mother until her eyes fill with blood and she gasps her final breath and dies in that fucking car.
He doubles over and vomits right onto his workshop floor.
The air around him is rancid and he feels dizzy with it all. He wipes his mouth in disgust. The bots roll towards him, intent on helping, but he shakes his head, wearily, and shoos them away.
This is his mess to clean up.
He finds a washcloth, dampens in and gets on his knees, mopping up the mess, hyperfocusing on the rhythm of his hand and the cloth moving back and forth.
That’s how Rhodey finds him, cleaning sick off his floor.
“Sir, Colonel Rhodes is approaching the workshop. Shall I allow him entrance?”
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and leans back on his heels. “Yeah, why the fuck not.”
The door gives away with a slick little click and Rhodey slips inside. Tony turns around, and the two of them just stare at each other, until Rhodey’s nose scrunches up.
If he were in a better mood, Tony would laugh.
He knows Rhodey makes that face when the reek of cheap alcohol and vomit finally hits him.
“You okay, man?” Rhodey asks, carefully.
Tony slides to his feet and makes his way to the sink to throw out the washcloth and disinfect his hands.
“I’m fucking great, Rhodey. Fucking great,” he mutters.
“No. No, you’re not,” Rhodey says, gently, and he can hear the pad of footsteps.
“I’m fine,” Tony insists.
“And that’s why this place smells like the morning after a kegger at a frat house?” Rhodey asks, sceptically.
Tony rounds on him with a fake smile plastered across his face. “I’m a drunk, man. I’ve always been a drunk. This is me just living up to the hype.”
“I don’t think so.”
Tony raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah, I think you’re sad, and I get it.”
Tony snorts.
“I know what happened.”
Tony tenses – the last thing he needs is a lecture from Rhodey.
“Dr Banner rang me up, asked if I was free to come down, told me what was going on.”
“Yeah, I’m sure everyone’s having loads of fun airing my dirty laundry all over the tower,” he says, bitterly.
“It’s not like that at all, man,” Rhodey argues. “You’ve got friends here, people who care about you. Yeah, Rogers and Romanoff are arseholes, but not the rest of them. The rest of them love you.” He pauses. “But this isn’t about them. This is about you, and what happened.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How’re you doing?”
“You know, as expected.” Tony’s smile is too toothy and too sharp at the edges. “The guy I was fucking apparently killed my parents in cold blood, but it wasn’t actually him because he was tortured and brainwashed by a bunch of Nazi terrorists. Oh, and I found the video.”
Rhodey’s brow furrows together. “The video?”
“Yeah, there’s a video of my parents being murdered,” Tony says, casually. “I watched it.”
It all feels like an out of body experience.
Rhodey’s face is alight with horror. “The fuck do you mean you watched it? Alone?”
Tony shrugs.
“Tony, you gotta know what a bad idea that was,” Rhodey groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I had no other choice,” Tony says, quietly.
“You could’ve called me, Pepper, Bruce, anyone. Just… not watched it alone.”
Tony shakes his head, his neck cracking with the effort. “No, no, you don’t get it. You don’t get it.”
“Get what, Tony? What don’t I get?” Rhodey lowers his voice, like he’s talking to a wounded animal.
“I had to watch it, on my own. She deserved that. She was owed that from me. I had to, Rhodey. I had to.”
Tony’s shaking head to foot, his voice choking.
“Who did, Tony? Who?” Rhodey asks, worriedly.
“My mum, Rhodey.” Tony finally lets his composure slip, finally lets all of those bridges fall, and sobs a hurt little noise that makes his lungs constrict. “My mum. I had to watch it. She deserved that at least from me.”
“Shit, Tony.” Rhodey approaches him, carefully, and places his hands on Tony’s shoulders. “Tony, oh, Tony.”
“My mum,” Tony insists, lingering on those two words.
“Your mum loved you, Tony. She wouldn’t want this,” Rhodey urges. “She wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself.”
Tony wrenches himself from Rhodey’s grip and stalks away. “That’s the shit people say because grief is fucking inconvenient to them,” he says, scathingly. “Don’t fucking insult me with that shit. Maybe it’s not healthy, maybe it’s not fucking proper, but I dare you to find a better coping mechanism for the problem I got, Rhodes. I dare you.”
Rhodey grits his teeth. “Okay, fine, but where do you go from here, Tony? Drink your entire stash, and then what? It doesn’t change what happened. It won’t make you feel better. And it sure as hell won’t bring your parents back.”
“I’m very much aware of that,” Tony says, bitterly. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, I get it.” His voice grows soft and weary. “You’re worried about me. I appreciate it; you have no fucking idea how much I do. But I’m asking you, as my best friend, to just let me get through this the way I want to. I’m not… I’m not gonna drink forever. I just… fuck, if I go up there, I have to see all of them. I have to see Rogers and Romanoff and… Bucky, okay; I have to see Bucky, and I’m not ready for that.”
Rhodey reaches for him, pulls him in close. “You don’t have to be, you know. You can be angry. I just… I don’t want to see this become your whole life.” He shakes his head. “Look, if you want me to, I can go up, in War Machine, and beat the shit out of Barnes if it’ll make you feel better, but no offence, it’ll make me feel like shit because he is a brainwashed POW. But Rogers and Romanoff? Yeah, I can do that real easy,” Rhodey muses. “Delete, bitch.”
Tony laughs, all choppy and stunted, but it’s the closest thing he’s had to a real laugh since this clusterfuck began.
God, he loves Rhodey.
“I’m trying,” he says, his voice muffled by Rhodey’s shoulder. “I really am. I just… I don’t how to separate it yet.”
“Separate what?” Rhodey asks, settling his large palm on Tony’s hair.
“I watched Bucky kill my parents. I won’t be able to erase that image from my head ever again, but I know, logically, it wasn’t him, not really. I just can’t separate Bucky from the Winter Soldier. Not yet, at least. I can’t go upstairs until I have.” He looks up at Rhodey, with big eyes. “Please say you understand.”
Rhodey is the only who can understand. Rhodey is the only one in his life that was actually there when his parents died, when Jarvis (the first Jarvis) died, when he wanted to crawl inside the coffin with all three of them because it seemed easier than living a life without them.
“‘Course I understand,” Rhodey sighs. “I just… I worry about you, okay. I wanted to give you your space and I did, but I couldn’t just let you wallow on your own like this.” He shakes his head.
“You shouldn’t have to worry about me if I were an emotionally stable and healthy human being,” Tony snorts, guilt churning in his stomach. “I’m sorry. I should’ve… fuck, I should’ve reached out or something. I just couldn’t deal with people yet.”
“That’s okay, you know,” Rhodey says, gently, cuffing him lightly. “You don’t have to have it on all the fucking time, Stark. Just, you know, in future, let us know you’re alive and what’s going on, so we don’t storm the place.”
“I heard all your messages,” Tony says, roughly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I should’ve responded. I’m sorry.”
“S’okay. Again, just don’t leave us in the lurch. Man, you have no idea how many people got your back, do you?” Rhodey shakes his head, fondly.
Tony shrugs and musters up a shaky smile for him. “Still getting used to it.”
“I can see that.” Rhodey pauses, squeezing Tony to him like a vice that lets Tony stop breathing and just relax for a moment. “So, what the hell have you been doing down here this whole time?”
Tony ignores the way his hands shake when Rhodey releases him. “Uh, I’ve actually been tinkering with the armour a bit. Came up with some ideas I want to implement in yours and mine; wanna take a look?”
Rhodey nods, immediately understanding what this distraction means for Tony in this moment, and Tony feels the weight of his kindness like a blow to the gut – he will never stop being astounded at what an amazing human being James Rhodes is, even on his deathbed, he thinks.
“Yeah, ‘course. What’ve you got, man?” Rhodey says, without missing a beat, without even questioning Tony on his emotional baggage or his currently shitty mental state.
Something loosens in Tony’s chest and he drags Rhodey to his monitors.
Even if his world is flaring up in fire, he still has Rhodey.
He’ll always have Rhodey.