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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Jarvis?”

“With you, Sir.”

Tony huffs a dead laugh, the sound falling cold and flat onto the concrete floor. 

“Have you ever thought about revenge?”

“Insomuch as I have learned and thus considered my stance on every concept to be found within the databases of my initial dataset, yes.”

“What do you think?”

“An idea as human as love, Sir. Perhaps the other side of the coin.”

“I thought that was grief?” Tony asks. He shifts his position finding a new spot for the metal leg of the workbench to press into his back. The chains linking his ankle to the concrete floor clink softly as he moves. 

“Perhaps revenge is a point in the process of grief.”

“You’re trying to console me,” Tony realises. The voice inside his skull goes quiet, Jarvis taking blood samples, measuring hormone levels and reading Tony's heart rate, trying to find the right thing to say. 

“Revenge against whom, if I may ask?”

The shackle is cold around Tony’s ankle, the metal leeching what little warmth is left in his body out into the floor. Jarvis sounds apprehensive in the cavity of his skull. 

“Not for what?”

“I can guess, Sir.”

“You can guess this too.”

“Sir, I must advise against actions that further endanger your wellbeing.” 

Tony scoffs. “Right.”

“Please, Sir.” 

Tony has never heard Jarvis beg. Not when he was messing around with materials meant for the hearts of stars, not when he was cutting around his own body. Jarvis had been a steady sarcastic voice of reason, always there to tell him how high the cliff was he is running towards, the composition of the rocks at the bottom.

But now, here, in some bunker at the ends of god and Nazis only know where, Jarvis begs.

Tony touches his hand to the back of his skull, the raised textured skin behind his ear, where longer hair covers sloppy surgical scars and the bumps and textures of a chip set into his bone. It’s as close to touching Jarvis as he’s come in a decade.

Over a decade.

“What year is it?”

“2014, Sir,” Jarvis answers dutifully, reduced from flesh and blood into a dead ghost buried in Tony’s skull.

Twelve years then. Time flies when you fail to die every day.

“Tell me the levels.”

“Sir–”

“Just tell me. They’ll come or they won’t.”

“Stress can aggravate the progression even further.”

“I’m the most damn valuable thing these clowns have ever caught, they’re not going to let me die.”

“I sense no relief at that statement, Sir.”

Tony hums, his fingers running over the metal of the chains curling like a dead thing from his ankle away to the centre of the room.

“Can’t die yet, I’m not done.”

“Yinsen?”

“Always. Would be the fastest way out of here though.”

“I cannot condone that course of action, Sir.”

“I know, just a thought.”

“In a resting state, your body can process the palladium for another ten hours before the toxicity will damage your blood vessels and lungs.”

Palladium feels like dread in his veins. Heavy and cold. His heart wants to race, beating hard against his throat, choking him before the poison spilling forth from his heart ever has the chance.

Can’t die yet, you’re not done.

“Nothing new in the triangulation?”

“Without any further data, it will be impossible to ascertain where we are, Sir. I apologise.”

Maybe he’s heard it often enough that this news of his doom doesn’t even hit anymore. He’s stuck in a cellar, captured by people he doesn’t know and Jarvis doesn’t recognise. He’s locked inside a Faraday cage fine enough to shield him from God, let alone any of the satellites Jarvis could connect to. The arc reactor keeping him alive is slowly poisoning him, and the only reason he’s survived the last weeks is because whoever has him knows. Knows to give him ampoules of deoxidant designed against palladium. Knows that without regular injections of this, he will die. Knows that he will do almost anything for this.

Like going back to his very roots. Tony smiles, a bit of metal jutting out form the chain slicing into his hand. Blood slowly wells up from the cut, a bright splash of colour against the concrete and grime.

Like building guns, and sniper rifles, and missile launchers with a range and accuracy that would make Rhodey’s bosses drool, body armour and night vision goggle that would be every paramilitary contractors wet dream.

And Tony doesn’t know who they’re giving it to. What they’re doing with it. Who he is building this for, weapons, tools of war and murder and torture. Breaking his vow to Yinsen every day, just to survive.

But he can’t die yet. You’re not done.

“Alrighty. Again, from the top.”

“Sir, please. You need to rest. You are malnourished and dehydrated, I must strongly admonish any attempts at further stressing your body.”

“Calling me old, huh? Fine.”

Shifting to the side, Tony lies back, forgoing the shitty mattress with spine murdering springs in favour of the floor beneath the empty workbench. The floor is cold, but his spine is straight and Tony forces the muscles along his shoulders and back to relax.

“I would never stoop to common insults in times such as these, Sir.” The usual bite is missing from Jarvis’ voice, a warm kindness there that scares Tony more than any blood level readings or analyses of the potential geopolitical impact of the weapons he is building to save his life, one week at a time.

“From the top,” Tony instructs.

There is the little electrical jolt he is used to at this point as the microchip in his skull reloads memory, retrieving data and crunching old numbers they’ve gone over so often the circuits would wear out if circuits were still involved.

The data feeds into his mind not as sound in Jarvis’ voice but faster, an understanding of numbers and scales, running through his situation like running his finger over a data table.

-----------

Time

Last date: 2014.08.27

T since waking: 108d13h

T since last palladium core insert: 59d17h

T till irreversible damage: 11h29m

Connections

Satellite: 0

Radio: 0

Internet: 0

Intranet: 0

Iron Legion: 0

Mark 54: 0

Blood Sensors: 1

Audio: 1

Direct Data Feed: 1

Damage

Handgun: 3

Sniper Rifle: 2

Grenade Launcher: 1

Chest Armour: 1

Night Vision: 3

Escape

Viable means of contact: none

Viable weaponry: none

Viable means of escape: none

Current advised goal: survival

-----------

“Update the new dataset: weaponry. We have a handful of shrapnel, and a screw.”

“Dataset updated.”

Tony lies on the cold concrete floor, something he is entirely too old for, and stares up at the bottom of the table. Whoever has him learned from the ten rings, learned from Obi. They only ever give him parts to make what they want, never more. They’d rather go through the slow process of him asking for parts he needs than giving him a fully functional workshop. So now he’s reduced to hoarding scraps like treasures, hiding them in the shitty mattress, because that thing couldn’t get much worse if it tried.

“I’m cold,” he admits to the metal plate above him. Jarvis doesn’t respond, doesn’t know what to say. The AI stumbling and falling short of the man. Tony lets an arm fall over his eyes, blocking out the ever present lights from above, the metal plate. “I miss you,” he whispers, even quieter, a hoarse rasp that dies in his moth.

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

Tony smiles, the tears seeping into the filthy fabric of his jacket. Jarvis know they’re there of course, he can read the chemical composition of grief and terror and loneliness from his blood.

“It’s alright. Wake me up in two hours, or if anything changes.”

“Of course, Sir.”

One voice inside his skull falls silent. The rest race on, as always, racing each other to rock bottom. Tony breathes, and tries to fall asleep before any of them hit. He almost makes it, the heaviness of sleep compounding with the palladium, making him feel like he is wearing the armour, the metal dead around him.

And then the screaming starts. Tony breathes in and out. It’s quiet, muffled by concrete and metal doors, by turns and twists in the building. 

“Nevermind, up and at ‘em,” Tony sighs and sits up, shaking out his head and focusing on the sound. It’s the best data input Jarvis has, the echoes and qualities of the sound, pitch and frequencies, reverse engineering some of the layout of this bunker by the screams.

The chip in his skull hums minuscully, microtech computing input from his eardrums, heating up as it does. Tony breathes, not hissing, not clenching up as the chip begins to scorch into his skull. 

Just breathe, come one. You’re not done yet.

In a way, the pain is welcome. It keeps him from thinking too much. From wondering who’s screams are the key to his salvation. What they’re doing to him that’s making him scream this loud, this long. 

There’s no talking with Jarvis then. Any other audio input will distort the data, make it useless. Tony gets to breathe, and sit. Gets to regulate his fear and reactions to the pain from the chip in his skull.

For the hour until it stops.

“Tell me you got something, J,” Tony begs, his hands twisted around the chain. He finally gives in, leaning back and pressing his skull against the metal leg of the workbench. A whimper crawls out of his throat at the sweet cool metal pressing against his head, at the relief.

“Processing,” Jarvis says quietly, and Tony nods, flexing his hand to try to get some of the tension out.

“Palladium timer?”

“Nine hours, eleven minutes.”

Fuck. Glancing down at his hands, Tony wonders when he’ll be able to feel it. He feels like crap, but that is as likely to be the dehydration as the palladium. He wonders what he’ll die of. Whether he’ll know.

That’s a terrible thought somehow. That he might die and not know what killed him.

He can’t die. Someone would find the chip. Someone could get their hands on Jarvis. And he isn’t done yet. All the weapons he’s made, the guns, the armour, the grenade launcher, he needs to get those back. 

And - of course - he is going to burn this entire clown circus to the ground. Either he will die here, or he will scorch these delusional assholes off the face of the earth for ever thinking that they could hold on to the hot nuclear reaction that is Tony Stark.

“Analysis updated based on new data. Further outline of the compound created. Initial material analysis complete. Location analysis progressed to 4%.”

Tony sighs and closes his eyes. God, he’s tired. Hungry and cold and thirsty and just so tired.

“Found a door yet?”

“Sorry to disappoint, Sir.”

“Right.”

“Incoming. About two minutes.”

Fear comes back like an old dog, and Tony stands up. Time to shine.

Chapter Text

****

Today it’s a sniper rifle. 

“Seven kilometres. Needs to break down into parts, the case is 20 by 45 by 13,” the eyes on the other side of the door say. Tony does nothing but listen and breathe, his mind running at the same pace as Jarvis’ audio analysis.

It’s a shame those cretin couldn’t have kidnapped him six months later, when the chip would’ve been more developed. Six months would have been enough time to figure out how to get the neural interfacing to process his visual data. As it is right now, Jarvis is handicapped by being stuck in a silver dollar sized prototype that can interpret the soundwaves entering Tony’s ears and not much more.

They eyes are a cold brown, staring down at Tony expectantly. Tony just stares back, breathing through the heat of Jarvis running the complex auditory analysis process in the back of Tony’s mind.

“Ready, Sir,” he announces quietly, although there is no need for it. His voice vibrates through the hard structures of his bones towards Tony’s eardrums and never really makes a sound.

“Defiance is only easy while you can still stand upright, Stark,” the voice behind the door muses, misinterpreting Tony’s silence. “I would like to see you try in a few days, once the metal in your veins corrodes you from the inside out.”

A russian accent, not unlike the ones Tony knows from business dealings with Obi, an amused detachment that is too consistent to be played. The commander.

“The SI TAC-50, a kilo of steel, ten sheets of carbon fibre, whatever you can get me,” Tony dictates. He knows how this goes at this point. They won’t leave until he gives them the list of materials he needs, wasting both their time and his. And while normally he’d gleefully chat and gloat, he is on a lot shorter of a timeline than they are.

There is murmuring from behind the door, one of their engineers double checking whether Tony’s requests make sense. Generally they do, there is nor much use in asking for extra materials when they never give him the time to really do anything with it.

“Three sheets.” The slit slams shut, and before Tony can argue or think to do anything, he can just vaguely hear Brown Eyes and his squad walk down the hall. He sighs and sits back down on the workbench, the metal cold through his ass.

Three sheets of carbon fibre will never be enough to reinforce all the points at which he’ll have to take the gun apart, which means he’ll have to argue and ask for more, which will take time.

“J, timer,” he asks the empty room, defiantly ignoring the shitty mattress in the corner.

“Four days, 21 hours until irreversible damage, Sir.”

Tony breathes, taking in the cold air smelling of concrete and something rotten, and lets his mind race.

***

Snow and biting wind. It makes the rooftop the Soldier is perched on slippery and the wind creeps into his calculations like frost. Numbers set in ice as the black metal cools against his neck, his face, the sniper rifle becoming part of him, becoming part of the cold.

He has one shot. The world is numbers and movement, probability and arcs of inevitability colliding, settling against each other like a collapsing ruin. It all shifts with his breath, his heartbeat. The only thing about him that isn’t perfect, that ruins him.

The Winter Soldier breathes. His heart lulled into a steady sleep, and he can finally focus. The world narrows down into the small window of it that he can see through his scope, a small snowglobe seven kilometres away. Longer than any shot in history. But a new rifle, a new kind of soldier, and the boundaries of physics are just another set of borders. And the Winter Soldier has been handcrafted to collapse borders. 

Between two beats of his heart, he lays his finger on the trigger. Another beat, he breathes out, and pulls.

The first target falls, the prime target, a president. The Soldier watches his daughter rush to his corpse, shock and brown hair as she looks around, trying to see what happened. The Soldier shoots just past her, grazing her collar bone, and her father’s head explodes. He was given three bullets for two dead. One scarred for life.

One more bullet. One more shot. The Soldier breathes and shifts. One window over, two men rush to the hysteric woman’s side. She’s bleeding, but she won’t die. She’s in shock, the two men - close to her, brothers or fiances, they’ll help her heal and recover, they’ll be her safety in this cruel world - look around frantically. One is stemming the blood rushing from her wound, the other is looking around, looking for the shooter. 

He won’t find him. The Soldier is outside of town, outside of the range of physics and sight. But the Soldier sees him. And he sees his lips move, silently chanting the same two words, over and over and over.

Hail Hydra.

The Soldier shoots. One man slumps over the girl, she starts to scream as the body without head bleeds out over her. The other man rushes to her side.

The fate of a country set.

**

The workshop is fucking cold. Just– freezing. Evil can’t be fucked to pay for heating apparently.

At least the tools at top quality. Or… as top quality as you can get without Tony’s millions and willingness to modify things himself until the work perfectly. They might not care if Tony loses a toe of a whole ass foot to frostbite, but they care for his hands. What they can do. What they can make.

It’s so much like Afghanistan Tony almost feels at home really. At home in hell, sure, but still. The familiarity is all the comfort that is afforded to him. Familiarity of the cold, familiarity of the constant threat of another beating or worse, familiarity of not his tools in his hands, doing his work. The familiarity of the work. Always what he’s been good at, always what he’s been best at. 

A charcuterie of gun parts lie before him on the workbench like entrails, all neatly organised to go together into something monstrous, murderous. It’s some of his best work to date. Of course it’s compared to the Jericho and all his work before the last cold cave with maniacs holding guns to his head, shouting at him in languages he’s now picking up under threat of death. So it’s not a fair comparison. Holding the new handgun he’s improved up next to the Iron Man gear is also not fair to the gun, the Iron Man weapons are made with the tech of the week after tomorrow, unusable to anyone but him.

This here is different. A high tech handgun, improved for precision and firepower, with no regard for recoil, as per the instructions grunted at him by that thrice damned commander. A magazine that can adapt to a collection of different rounds, and as much muffling as the laws of physics allow in such a small tool.

It’s good work, brilliant, and Tony has no idea for whom. Well, the goons outside, duh, but beyond that. They’re not letting anyone talk to him, just an unidentified series of grunts with masks and goggles bringing him trays of cold food, tools when he requests them, palettes of water into the workshop, his cell whenever he is between projects.

“Sir, incoming.”

The chip is the smartest in the line of ridiculous decisions that are his life. He may have destroyed the Iron Legion, a last desperate attempt to untangle himself from his iron casing, to save the relationship with Pepper, but it still failed. He and Pepper did, and trying to be a human apart from the armor. At this point the armor is in him, sensors and Palladium, and the chip at the base of his skull, just below his ear. The chip that is now his last line to the outside world.

“The commander, two guards,” Jarvis informs him, doing the gait analysis of sounds Tony’s body is registering but that are still too soft to reach his brain. But Jarvis isn’t limited by squishy human biology, and while the assholes that captured him were smart enough to strip him of his phone and clothes and everything on him, they didn’t strip him for parts.

Tony considers the gun in his hand. He can now also pick up the footsteps, heavy boots. He could. They never give him live ammunition, but that doesn’t matter, he could make it work. Could kill the commander, could kill the guards. Hell, this was the mistake the Ten Rings made back in Afghanistan. Gave him tools and metal and a power supply. This time around he doesn’t even need to build the arc reactor.

But much as he is loathed to admit it, this bunch is smarter. They never give him enough to work with, there’s more cameras in this one lab than in all of Stark Tower, monitoring Tony’s every breath and blink. He can’t build a suit here, not now. And even if he could kill the commander with the guns he keeps demanding, even if he could shoot every single fucker in this damn facility in the head, he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know how far he’d have to go.

And he wouldn’t get very far.

“Sir.”

Tony puts down the gun and walks over to the far side of the room. He doesn’t kneel, although he knows he will eventually. The metal bracelets they snap around his wrists, ankles, and neck whenever he is in the workshop are cold and heavy. The collar is too tight as he swallows and evens his breathing.

Beeps from the door, the churning of metal mechanisms as the two electronic locks, the safe lock, and the mechanical bolt open. 

The commander steps through. Tall, blond, maybe handsome if Tony’s standard for this kind of face wasn’t the All American Wonder. The commander looks like someone smudged a photo of Steve Rogers as it was drying, a witness portrait drawn by an untalented artist doing this as his third job based on witness reports from across a crowded dark bar.

“Stark.”

He’s the only one that speaks to Tony. The only one Tony can speak to without immediately earning himself a boot to the knees. The only source of data Tony has, other than the materials the two goons are carrying to the workbench.

The commander ignores them, his cold eyes fixed on Tony. A standoff. Tony knows the rules, and like every time, he’s not following them.

“Kneel,” the commander instructs, in case Tony has forgotten. He hasn’t, and he doesn’t, locking his knees. The commander takes a slow step forwards, his hands neatly held behind him, inspecting Tony like a butcher might observe an interesting carcass.

“If you enjoy the thrill of meeting your deadlines with the additional handicap of these petty little rebellions, perhaps we can move up the timeline. If the deadlines so far are not stimulating enough for our little pet genius.”

“Fast, cheap, good, you have to pick two,” Tony quips, bracing himself for the shock. It comes, it always comes.

The commander smiles, a horrifying thing that makes Tony think of a shark. He takes Tony’s face in his gloved hand, tilting it to the side so the neon light of the cell catches the cuts and bruise from his last visit.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. Kneel,” he hisses into Tony’s face, spittle landing on his cheek. Tony jerks his head out of the commander’s hold and glares up at him.

“Does your girlfriend fall for that?”

The commander doesn’t say anything. He takes a step back and that is all the warning Tony gets, the safety distance before the commander presses a button on a remote in the pocket of his uniform. Electrical current just weak enough not to fry the chip in his brain courses through him.

Tony knows what happens. Maybe a coping mechanism, maybe a side effect of genius, but he’s always looked to learn everything about what his body is going through. Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses, concussions and bruises. Panic attacks. Electrocution. 

Palladium poisoning.

His muscles lock up, the signals his brain whispers to each strand for movement now blaring through his entire body. He knows to keep his tongue back when the commander steps back, his jaw clamping down with enough force to bite clean through it. The pain comes with cold fire, burning through him and burning his thoughts out of his head. Tony screams, and doesn’t have it in him to be embarrassed anymore. 

It’s been months. 

He fought at the start, struggled and refused. But no matter his IQ, no matter what he could make with the scraps and tools they bring him, it all fades in the pain.

It only lasts a few seconds, the commander doesn’t want to damage his most precious asset.

“The new plans are in the crate. You have four days.”

But that’s not the only kind of pain these assholes know.

The commander steps back, the cue for the goons. Tony wonders if they’re grinning beneath their masks. One of them cracks his knuckles. That one is definitely grinning. 

He screams when they start kicking him, air and sound punched out of him. They stay clear of his hands and his head, but that’s it. The only mercy afforded to him is that granted to a tool. They won’t damage him. But they will hurt him, happily. 

The commander watches and listens, and between grunts and screams of pain, Tony wonders if he enjoys this. Probably not. The commander watches the beatdown with all the interest of a man watching his car get washed. Tony watches him back. Gives Jarvis as much information as he can before a kick to the kidneys has his whole body alight with pain, closing it’s eyes, curling inwards.

At some silent signal the goons step back and the commander gets up.

“I expect great things from you, Stark.”

There is a quiet click as glass meets metal, and Tony’s entire body hones in on that sound. He manages to pry his eyes open to see the commander place a glass cannula with a transparent liquid on the workbench. Steady, still. 

“Good luck.” The commander presses the button, and electricity burns through Tony’s body. He leaves, the goons in tow. The door locks, and the shock from the door slamming shut is enough to holt the cannula into movement. Into rolling towards the table edge.

No!

Tony screams, but he gets his arms to move, to push his spasming body up against the wall. The glass vial is approaching the edge of the table, the thin glass about to shatter on the stone floor. He can’t wait this out, the cannula is falling in two seconds, the shocks will go on for another five.

Tony doesn’t so much jump as he stumbles and falls. There is no hope of reaching out and catching the vial. He falls hard on the stone floor, his shoulder hitting the metal leg of the workbench, the pain an insignificant addition to the fire of the collar and the shackles.

But it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the cannula falls on him. It lands in the crook of his elbow, rolling out of his grasp and onto the stone floor. The liquid inside sloshes around, the cannula rolling in uneven jerks over the stone tiles. The medicine that will halt the progression of the Palladium poisoning. Without this he has three days before all thoughts of work and beatings and electroshocks are the least of his problems.

The electroshocks abide, the collar and shackles back to being cool dead metal around his body. His body relaxes slowly, the muscles giving up on their tension and relaxing into the pain that comes now. Tony groans.

“It’s over, Sir. Recommended administration time: 23 minutes to avoid further damage.”

Tony closes his eyes. “Right,” he exhales. Twenty-three minutes to lie here. Well, twenty minutes. He knows where he put the syringe, the clean needles, but he still needs to get to it.

Twenty minutes then.

Then back to work. Back to building whatever new ridiculous concept the commander has dropped off. For whoever is stupid enough to use it.

*

The mission is easy. An opera house, two bullets, five men dead. The Soldier doesn’t know who they are, and he doesn’t need to. He’s done his part and is gone before the overture is finished. The gun was powerful enough to rip two men apart with one bullet, the recoil only survivable by firing with his metal arm. The structures there compensate for the recoil just enough that the arm doesn’t tear out of the socket it’s set into.

It hurts all the way back. The Soldier barely registers it.

He heads back to the extraction point through subways and dark streets, no camera ever picking up on him, accidental disinterested glances running off him like water. It’s smooth, it’s easy, he’s two hours early at the point, stepping into the back of the van that will take him back to base. 

And he is met there by two men.

“Get in,” one commands. Native Russian, confident, a stripe of ink beneath his collar, a Hydra tattoo. The Soldier follows orders.

They go for the arm. Two magnetic brackets powerful enough to rock the van snap around the arm and pin the Soldier to the side. He kicks, struggles and tears, a screaming of metal as the van is torn asunder. But he’s just a little too slow. They know him, they know how he fights, they know to stick to his right.

A needle jams into his neck, something cold slammed into his veins. He feels it immediately, his body growing slow and heavy with each heartbeat that carries the poison further.

It’s a slow loss then, entropy and biology grinding him down. He does what he can, breaking bones and a jaw, but in the end the machine succumbs to the weakest parts of him, the flesh failing and falling.

And then the real terror begins.

Chapter Text

The commander is back, his fucking circus of goons behind him. Ready with the collar and the shackles, ready to take Tony to the workshop.

“Good, you’re awake. Tony Stark never sleeps, eh?”

Tony scoffs and relaxes against the wall he’s leaning on. “Nah, things are just getting good! The migraine is setting in and you can finally see the blood really denaturing.”

Tony gestures at his neck with fake cheer. The Commander looks, seeing the first signs of the palladium poisoning making themselves known again.

“If we wanted you dead, Stark, you would be. Now enough with the hysterics, you have a new task. To the wall.”

“Kinky,” Tony quips and goes ignored.

“Get him ready,” is the bored command from behind him, and Tony braces. Soon enough a hailstorm of fists and boots try to force him down, force him to kneel. Tony fights back, throws a few punches of his own before a swift kick has his knees knocking against the wall and he stumbles. He leaves it be then. Doesn’t want to risk a kick to the back of the head, to where his only lifeline is embedded in his skull.

“So, what am I making up for this time? That your goons can’t shoot or get shot? Here’s a thought, you hire professionals and you can let me go.”

No response from the commander. Tony is hauled up and dragged out of his cell by the goon circus. “How familiar are with technology of the past?”

“Typewriters or printers, what are we talking here?”

He doesn’t get an answer until they have stopped at another door. The commander himself opens this one, revealing the workshop. It’s been rearranged, workbenches and toolracks moved to make space for a massive metal contraption bolted to the concrete floor in the centre. Something that once might have been a chair. 

Sitting in the chair, held down by the metal monstrosity on top is a man. A man Tony recognises.

“Sir.”

“Soldiers,” the commander finally answers dramatically.

“James Barnes.”

“No,” Tony whispers, his eyes darting over what has become of his childhood crush, his childhood hero. The man is barely recognisable. Tony doubts he could have recognised him if not for the hours he’d spent watching footage of Barnes and Rogers, trying to learn, trying to live up to something he could never reach.

The commander grins, misinterpreting Tony’s whisper. “Scared to get your hands bloody, Merchant of Death?”

And to think he once used to think that moniker was cool, Christ. Despite it all, Tony has a lot to be thankful for to Obi. Dunking him in the icebath that was Afghanistan and waking him up to the reality of what he was doing is definitely one of them.

“The arm, Sir. This is the Winter Soldier.” And this is Hydra. Brilliant.

Next they’re gonna make him build lasers for Nessie. A jetpack for the Yeti.

“I’m not touching your assassin. ”

The commander scoffs. “Is that the line? You know the incentives.”

Tony swallows, his throat working against the collar. “You can fry my until you smell the beacon, no. And the line was weapons. I don’t do that anymore.”

“And yet here you are,” the commander says with a smile, looking down at Tony’s neck, at the grey veins beginning to show there. Tony wishes he was taller. It wouldn’t help, but at least then people couldn’t literally look down on him while trying to intimidate him. “It seems like you will have some more time to consider your stance. Just make sure you don’t consider for too long. Once the asset is operational again, you will get the next dose.”

Tony feels the anger pouring through him from a dozen different sources. Jarvis feels it too.

“Sir,” he whispers against Tony’s skull.

“Good luck, Mr. Stark.”

Even the commander looks surprised when Tony doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t do anything at all but glare at him and his circus as they leave.

The door to the workshop closes. Locks.

And Tony is left alone. With the Winter Soldier.

“Breathe, Sir.”

Right, he should. He really should. Easier said than done though through the sudden vice grip of fear on his chest.

Stark men are not afraid, son. Starks are made of iron.

Tony turns around. To the monstrosity of a chair. To the monstrosity within.

The body is limp and still, and for a moment Tony wonders if it’s dead. Surely whoever has him doesn’t expect him to reanimate the dead. At this point in his life Tony is willing to believe that Necromancers exist, but he’s not one of them, rather famously so.

“Low but steady vital signs. He seems unconscious. The machine seems to be a modified Hulk-cell, an iteration on the v2 prototype.”

“Why do they always steal the bad shit?” Tony mutters and forces himself to approach. It’s easier now, knowing the Soldier won’t see him. He won’t see the eyes that saw his parents last moments.

“We protect it less because you deem it less valuable.”

Tony huffs. “Fair. What am I looking at, J?”

“The Winter Soldier.” Tony is about to snap. “Seargant James Buchanan Barnes, Howling Commando. Unconscious, bruises and further non-lethal injuries. A… non-functional prosthesis.”

Tony turns his attention to the arm. Or what’s left of it. A twitching dead mess. Unbidden, out of nowhere, Tony thinks of what’s left of his mother. A coffin, white roses, a limp hand hanging from a coroners table just like this.

“I can’t do this.” The admission escapes him like a gut punch and Tony stumbles back, away from the chair and the body and the monster. 

“Breathe, Sir, please,” Jarvis reminds him once more, and it’s harder, his heart racing.

“Shit,” Tony hisses, recognising the panic attack the moment it really hits. His vision narrows, his heart beating like a jackhammer in his throat. 

So he sits down before his legs can break beneath him, looks down at the floor so the room stops spinning and forces his breathing into the pattern Jarvis gives him via gentle audio cues.

“I’m not doing this.” It’s the first thing that escapes him as soon as he has the breath to utter the words. “Not him.” Not Hydra’s pet assassins, not their monster in the darkness. Who knows how much blood is on those hands, caked into that arm. How many more fixing him will enable them to kill.

“Of course, Sir. Breathe, please.”

“What’s the timer?”

“Sir–”

“I don’t care, Jarvis. Give me the time.”

“16 hours, 43 minutes. You have time, Sir. But the elevated heart rate and cortisol levels are affecting this estimate.”

“I know. Okay, count.”

Jarvis doesn’t count, but the audio cues resume, a quiet beat he tries to match with his breathing. He does what Jarvis wants, breathes in for three counts, holds it for four, breathes out for five. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Until the walls stop coming for him and the floor is cold.

“What’s the plan, Sir?”

“I’m not touching the Winter Soldier.”

“I think he is in pain.”

Tony scoffs, a loud coughing sound that echoes in a workshop filled with metal and cold concrete. And two bodies.

“You think? Whose side are you on?”

“Apologies, Sir.”

“This is longer Bucky Barnes.” No matter that he still looks like it. Like the man Tony looked up to most of his life as soon as he learned that trying to be like Steve Rogers was hopeless. “I’m not giving Hydra their favourite toy back.” He stills. “Hydra. This is Hydra.”

“Likely, yes.”

“Does that help us?”

“He’s waking up, Sir.”

Tony looks up. There is no movement, but he trusts Jarvis with his senses so much better than he trusts himself. He pushes himself up against the wall and ignores the fear that is making his heart race again. Fuck the time, if the Winter Solider is awake his remaining time alive is in the minutes.

“Status,” Tony breathes, and the processor in the back of his skull starts running hot as Jarvis reaches out actively to the input from his ear drums and eyes. The wires running into the backs of his eyeballs itch. Tony tries not to think about them.

“Wounded, nonlethal. Drugged, I estimate he will be fully conscious in two minutes. Please approach further for further inspections of the arm while he is still waking.”

Tony does so. Normally this would earn him a snarky comment - Tony Stark, doing as he is bid? Sir, do you require medical attention? - but things haven’t been normal for weeks, maybe months. That’s a never-ending debate between Jarvis and him. When was Tony’s life normal? When was the last time he felt safe?

Tony knows it doesn’t matter. He can never go back. There is only forward, and due to so many factors within and outside of his control, forward always means down. The processor runs hot and Tony feels himself begin to sweat, the chemicals the processor can produce stimulating his sweat glands to cool the chip before it gets damaged.

“It’s… Based on the estimate of the internal wiring and construction, some key parts have been damaged. Without removing the paneling and further scans, it’s impossible to tell how much is damaged.”

“Which doesn’t matter, since I am not helping him,” Tony hisses, trying to be silent just in case the man inside the machine bindings defies Jarvis’ predictions.

“Of course.”

Something about Jarvis’ tone is off. It nags at the back of Tony’s mind like the chip does, heavy and persistently refusing to blend in with the unawareness of the rest of his body.

“You want me to help him.”

“I want to be of assistance,” Jarvis says, sounding more like he did in that first year than he ever has since then.

“Bullshit, don’t do that. Why?”

A long silence follows. Tony listens to the breathing inside the machine, a strange pattern going from erratic quiet pants to almost still steadiness.

“He’s in pain, Sir.”

And that there sounds nothing like the first young days of an AI and everything like Jarvis, actual Jarvis. The grief comes hard and fast, a missile trike out of left field, and Tony’s body remembers how to deal with this before he can even think. He winces, cowers, and because he is still alone for to minutes and fourteen seconds, he just lets himself crumple and ride it out.

“Apolgies, Sir.”

“Don’t, please don’t,” Tony whispers, his fingers digging into his ribs, the pain blooming as a distraction to that in his chest.

“Is there anything I can do to assist?”

“I–” He doesn’t know. He wants to say yes, he wants Jarvis’ help, but the old Jarvis, the real Jarvis, the Jarvis that he’s watched sink into the ground. So often this Jarvis he made has been a double edge sword, the AI a kind presence when there was no other. Reminding Tony that there was - is - no other. Nobody else. Nobody that’s coming, nobody that cares. Which is just fine, it’s by design. Nobody else that can get hurt the way Pepper did, Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and Mia and Mom and everyone else. Nobody else that can be held against him.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Jarvis doesn’t question his sudden change of heart, he says nothing while Tony looks at the Winter soldier and the chip in his skull runs hot.

“Three broken ribs, internal bleeding, bruising. A fractured tibia and a broken ulna. The damage to the arm–”

“Prosthetic.”

“Sir?”

“It’s a prosthetic. I… I’m not helping Hydra’s attack dog.”

“Should I stop, Sir?”

Tony takes a deep breath. Fine. Survive, Sir. Fine. “Bucky Barnes, Howling Commando. It’s a prosthetic for a vet.” 

A long silence. “I’m not sure this line of thinking is advisable. It will be impossible to maintain.”

“Do you want me to help him or not,” Tony bites back.

“I don’t want you to die, Sir.”

“Ditto, buddy,” Tony sighs. He forces himself to his feet. One step at a time he approaches the chair. An assassin, serial killer, murderer, monster trapped in it. A man that looks like charm and heartbreak in all the ways Tony had thought he was over. Tony tries to believe what he’s saying. “Tell me about the damage to the prosthetic. I can’t help with the rest.”

“For what it’s worth, Sir, I do believe repairing the… the prosthetic will allow the serum to redirect it’s focus from pain management to healing.

“Peachy,” Tony grinds out.

“Damage to the shielding, salvageable. Several servos likely misaligned. Damage or destruction of cables and wiring. Further analysis impossible without visuals.”

The body stirs and Tony tries not to jump. For a moment while the Winter Soldier wakes, Tony considers whether it is too petulant a resolution not to be scared of the thing that murdered his parents.

And then the Soldier opens his eyes and Tony decides that fear is fine. He can work scared, he built the fucking Mark 0 scared. He can do this scared.

The Soldier’s bright blue gaze finds him immediately. He doesn’t struggle, he doesn’t move, and after a moment, he doesn’t even look. He makes an impression of relaxing into his bindings, his eyes fixed on some spot in the distance behind these dismal concrete walls. His face is empty, his body tense as a storm.

“Showtime,” Tony whispers, and nothing happens. The Soldier doesn’t move, and the fear doesn’t go away. Alright.

“Hey there.”

Nothing. 

“Do you talk?”

“Ready to comply,” the Soldier responds in fluent Russian, his voice dead and even. Fantastic. No way in hell he is ever getting this done with a language barrier on top of trying to trick his mind into not panicking about helping out the man that killed his mother.

“Can we do this in English,” Tony asks in his own rusty Russian.

“Ready to comply,” the Soldier repeats in English without missing a beat, same steady empty voice. Tony sighs and runs a hand through his hair. This is going to suck. The gesture earns him a glance from the soldier, a flick of his eyes before the face is schooled immediately back into empty passivity. Alright, maybe not quite so empty.

“Here’s the deal,” Tony starts, “I’m a mechanic. I’m going to fix your prosthetic, and I need you to not kill me when I touch you, alright?”

“You’re not my mission,” the Soldier says with a slight hint of confusion. Tony barely hears it. He is trying to keep his panic in check, his mind on track with a step closer to the Soldier, his fear spiking into the high heavens and burning everything else in it’s wake, including the grief. This is going to have to work, he’s not going to get any further assurances. But then:

“You’re Tony Stark.”

“You know me?”

The Soldier looks at him. Blue eyes, searching Tony’s face. Searching for something and coming up empty. “No. You’re known.”

“By Hydra.” Well that’s a terrifying thought, although not an surprising one.

“By everyone.”

Tony grins, falling back into his media mask as easy as anything. “This didn’t strike me as the kinda place with a lot of TV time.” Or TVs.

The Soldier doesn’t smile, but Tony wonders if it’s a near thing. “Also by Hydra.”

Tony chuckles until a wave of nausea creeps up on him. He needs to get a move on if he wants to keep his promise to Jarvis.

“You gonna let me touch that arm, Soldier?”

The Winter Soldier stills. He looks back at the wall, everything empty. Preparing for pain, Tony realises. He also realises he’s not going to get an answer.

“Alright. Just… tell me when I’m hurting you, okay?”

Again no answer.

“Timer,” he breathes as he turns away towards the workbench, picking the tools he’ll need to dismantle the plating and grabbing a rolling chair for himself together with a little cart to keep the tools and pieces on.

“16 hours, 37 minutes.” Even Jarvis is quieter. The wheels of the chair and cart rattle over the concrete floor as Tony drags them to the chair bolted into the ground. The Soldier tenses impossibly further as Tony sits down next to him and doesn’t acknowledge him, staring stubbornly at the wall ahead.

Tony considers working in silence, keeping his trade secrets to himself in case Hydra is listening. But he thinks better when he can do it out loud, and for the first time he can do so without seeming insane, talking to noone.

“Alrighty, let’s go. I’ll have to take off the panelling first, see what’s wrong. Actually, now that you’re awake, can you tell me what’s wrong? They didn’t tell my jackshit when they tossed me in here.”

No response. Fantastic.

“Sweetheart, you’re gonna have to give me something. I can either fish around in there until I find something and fix it, but all this will go so much faster if you tell me what’s up.” Still nothing. Tony looks down at the tools in his hands. In the corner of his eye he can see the first grey veins beginning to marble his shoulder. He looks away. “I don’t have long enough to fuck around and find out, Snowflake. You have to help me,” he admits quietly.

The Soldier looks up carefully, but when Tony doesn’t do anything, he swallows.

“It hurts,” he whispers, as if the floor might open up and swallow him if it heard. “The wrist it– wrist and underarm. Back of the shoulder, connector to the shoulderblade. More detailed reports not— not possible. I can’t tell what it’s…” He grimaces, clearly trying to distinguish between pain signals he’s been ignoring, too overwhelmed to make anything of it.

“That’s great, yeah. Underarm, wrist, back. I’ll start there. Let me know if anything changes, better or worse, alright? Talk to me, best as you’re able.”

A curt nod and pressed lips, and Tony just needs to start.The Soldier isn't moving, won’t give Tony anything. 

That all changes once Tony touches the arm.

Tony takes off the first panel and the Soldier sucks in a deep breath, the barrel of his chest pushing against its bindings. Tony waits for a moment but it doesn’t stop. He gets nothing else, the Soldier stares ahead, his eyes fixed on concrete, blank and dead, his body panicking and nothing lighting up his eyes. Tony tries to turn back to the arm, take off more panels. 

The arm is still, courtesy of the iron grip the chair contraption has on the rest of the body, on the arm. But Tony can see the squirming out of the corner of his eyes as he works, he can hear the Soldier’s panting breaths.

“Breathe, buddy, you need to talk to me. I can stop if I’m hurting you, I can figure out something else.”

Nothing. Fucking nothing.  Fuck, Tony can almost smell the panic, and he’s getting nothing.

“Readings match your panic attacks, Sir. Not further injuries detected,” Jarvis whispers into his skull. 

Great, just great. He hasn’t even done anything yet.

“Okay, how about you just do your thing, tell me if I’m hurting you. I’m just gonna keep going. So far I’m just removing the panelling, nothing structural yet. Just need to see what I’m working with.”

Tony works while he’s talking, his voice doing nothing to drown out that panicked hacking breaths of the man before him. A man, just a man. Just a prosthetic.

“Christ, what the fuck is all of this,” he mutters when he finally gets visuals on the internal workings of the arm. He tries to keep his gaze locked on one part at a time, if he looks around too fast the wires in his eye itch. And Jarvis can’t use the blurry intel his brain can parse out, but the burgeoning technology of the chip can’t. Not yet. If only he’d had just a little more time, a few more months.

Whatever. He looks at one part at a time.

“Y’know, given that they built this – what, in the fifties? Impressive. Just wish they’d replaced it at some point.” It’s old, all so old. But in this case that’s a blessing. It means the rudimentary tools Hydra has deemed it safe to equip him with might be enough. He doesn’t have time to build his own tools down here.

“Beginning analysis. Please hold still, Sir.”

Tony does. He stares at the servos, the wiring.

“Relax you hand, Snowflake.”

Nothing. Tony sighs. Keeping his eyes fixed on the same spot he feels blindly for the metal fist and tries to coax the fingers there to relax.

The Soldier hisses, trying to eat a scream. Fuck the analysis, Tony looks up, trying to see in the man’s face if he’s hurt him. Nothing there either. His eyes are blank, his face dead, staring ahead. 

“Hey, what’s happening. This will go so much smoother if you can tell me what’s happening, Snowstorm.” Tony is getting annoyed. He can hear it in his voice even before he feels it.

“Sir, back on the arm, please. The timer–”

“I know, the fucking timer,” Tony hisses. But he needs to see the arm in a relaxed position, otherwise he’s running into the danger of fixing the tension into the arm when he starts fucking with whatever is wrong.

For one of the smartest people on this planet, Tony knows he’s pretty stupid. Or rather, impulsive. Rhodey and Pepper can both run laps around him because they take their time, they think. Tony doesn’t. He reaches up with his free hand and puts it on the Soldier’s shoulder, where metal meets flesh in a bubbling gnarled mess of scar tissue and metal.

The Soldier fucking whimpers. A jolt goes through the chair, the monsters strength pushing against the metal, jerking to do something . Tony tears his hand back, both hands away from the murder machine, his eyes welded to the Soldier’s face, trying to anticipate whatever comes next. 

Nothing comes next. The Soldier pants, his eyes pressed shut. Something that looks like tears runs over his face, though Tony quickly reclassifies it as sweat or something else.

“Sir. Please look at the arm.” Swallowing and smothering every instinct in his body to keep his eyes on the predator in the room, Tony does. Huh. The hand is relaxed. The metal appendage hanging limp in its shackles. “Proceeding with analysis.”

Chapter Text

The damage isn’t extensive, a few frayed wires and some actual breaking of parts around the shoulderblade. It’s the thinking about it that’s hard. Listening to the Soldier breathe, holding his breath for minutes at a time when Tony touches him, shuddering sharp exhales whenever he stops. Pain or relief, it sounds the same. He can tell the Soldier is trying to keep it together, there are grunts where screams should be, shudders where the other man is stopping himself from thrashing against his bonds until he bleeds.

It fucking sucks.

Tony keeps talking to him. “Come on, work with me here, Snowstorm. With my wit, your disarming charm, we’ll make a great duo. Hah, get it? Disarming. C’mon, that was funny.” He talks and talks, not really sure what. His mouth moves while his eyes are on his hands, on cables and electrical tape, on screws and soldering wire and clippers.

At some point the Soldier screams. 

Maybe that’s what does it, maybe it’s everything else. Tony cuts a wire and the Soldier screams and Tony falls off his chair. Shock or a muscle spasm, exhaustion or oversensitivity. Any/all. The sound spears through him and Tony flinches away, pressing his hands over his ears, dropping the screwdriver he was holding. It’s the scream and the exhaustion and the constant fucking fear.

Does he know the Winter Soldier, of fucking course he knows the Winter Soldier! It was his job to keep up to date on all threats the Avengers might be facing, it was his job to keep his team equipped for all circumstances. Even if those circumstances were dead ghost stories.

Does Steve know? 

A wave of nausea derails the thought faster than it came and then Tony is doubled over himself, gagging empty nothing onto the concrete. 

“Sir,” Jarvis probes softly and Tony winces, even that sound too loud.

“I know,” he whispers. He loses track of time while working, and he’s sure all of the talking and taking considerations for the Soldier’s panic and pain have slowed him down. “Timer.”

There is a hesitation before Jarvis answers. “Four hours, 23 minutes.”

“Fuck.”

“Estimated workload: Three hours.”

Which means he needs to shut up and put up. Work and work and not stop or his heart will stop.

“Stark?”

A quiet voice from above. One Tony hasn’t heard in a while. When he looks up he sees the Soldier peering at him from between the metal clamps holding him down. Concern shining in those ice blue eyes.

“All good. Momentary setback.” Tony pushes himself up before he is even remotely ready to stand, sways towards the chair and plops himself back down. He fishes for the screwdriver he dropped. “Keep talking to me, Snowflake. How’re you feeling.”

“You’re dying,” the Soldier says instead. Tony sighs.

“Been dying most of my life, darlin’, nothing new there,” he says with a tired grin. “C’mon, we can get you fixed in record time and you can go back to killing puppies, or whatever it is they have you do.”

The Soldier looks away, his gaze distant. A muscle in his jaw ticks. Sore subject. But no longer as dead as before. Either the assassin is warming up to him or the pain is getting better. Tony considers what the cautious approach here would be.

Three hours, four hours and twenty minutes.

Fuck caution.

He takes his screwdriver and starts poking against the wires he’s been fixing. “Does that hurt?”

Nothing. Next wire.

“How about here?”

The Soldier breathes, gives him nothing. 

Tony moves on to the underarm, repeats the process. He earns himself a clenched jaw when he taps the screwdriver against the servo he replaced there, but he decides that’s because of the strange feeling of metal tapping on metal that the Soldier must be feeling in his bones, rather than any kind of pain. He closes the panels behind him as he goes.

Last up, he runs his screwdriver over the exposed machinery of the shoulderblade. It’s awkward, he has to sit on the floor and look up for this. He has to ignore the parts of the machine melting into the body, the cruel craftsmanship, the infection, the dead meat. That’s none of his business. The shoulder blade is, the conductors, wires, and servos there are.

He runs his screwdriver over them. The Soldier above him tenses and screams, and Tony gets a front seat view to all of the parts of the monster moving together, working together as the monster becomes an animal and tries to escape the pain.

Fails of course. He’s stuck, like Tony is, with his fading vision and failing strength. The palladium has made it to his brain, to his heart and lungs. 

Stellar.

“Sorry,” Tony rasps and blindly reaches around for the tweezers and soldiering kit on the tray. Reaches right into the soldiering kit, his reactions too slow courtesy of the metal running through his veins. He winces back too late, a burn blistering on his fingers.

Just fucking stellar.

“Okay, last bit, buddy. Promise. Just need to get this replaced. It’s gonna suck, but then it’s over.” His voice sounds far away now, and he wonders if maybe Jarvis also gets affected by the palladium. If his estimates were wrong.

He considers for another moment just failing. Falling back and watching these beautiful old mechanics work and struggle above him as he fades. He could do it. His will is set up, nobody at home would miss him, there is nothing much to miss. Hell, there’s even a subroutine for the one remaining Iron Man suit so that Jarvis can run it for world saving stuff in case of his death or incapacitation.

Would be a good deed, to be honest. Tony Stark, gone. The Winter Soldier, less functional. He could consider it.

“Sir?”

And there it is. The crux of the whole thing. He can’t leave Jarvis alone.

“You’re just a machine,” Tony whispers. The Soldier above him stills, the pain finally stopped.

“Please, Sir.” Jarvis doesn’t plead, or beg. He’s sarcastic and funny and he loves Tony so so much, man and machine both. Tony knows this. He fucking feels it in his very soul. And he can’t leave him behind.

Tony sighs. “Fine.” he pulls down the clippers to the floor with him and gets to work. The Soldier struggles to stay still, Tony tries to give him time to breathe, to recover. But his vision is closing in, his arms are getting heavier by the minute. Soldiering above his head isn’t as easy as it used to be when he was seventeen and fixing Rhodey’s car.

Nope, don’t think about that. Not right now. Not ever.

“Sorry, Snowflake, this is gonna fucking suck. Breathe in for me.”

The Soldier does. A deep breath, the mechanics above him shift as the body shifts. It’s beautiful. The skin pulls against the metal, expecting it to yield. Small tears open when it doesn’t.

“Okay, breathe out.”

A rush of air. Tony pushes the connectors together and presses the soldering iron tip against the seam. There is a shudder in the breath, a wince, the Soldier keeps breathing.

And then it evens out. The wall of muscles and metal above him relaxes. Tony drops the soldering iron so that it won’t burn a hole through him when he passes out.

“Talk to me, Snowflake,” he rasps. There is an effort to crawl out from underneath the Soldier somewhere. He ends up against a wall somehow, his body a squiggle against concrete. A flash of blue when the Soldier’s eyes find him.

“Nothing,” the Soldier whispers. “There’s nothing.”

“Mhm,” Tony grunts, trying to keep his eyes on the prize. Trying not to fall over. Probably would look back. “Good or bad?”

The Soldier doesn’t answer, he just breathes. Looks up at the ceiling and breathes. There is a shimmer in his eyes and in the fading light of Tony’s consciousness, he decides to jot it down as relief.

Job well done. Time to die.

Chapter Text

It’s strange when the other arm hurts. The Soldier is so used to his metal arm hurting, small pangs and electric shocks coursing through him whenever he moves. But not since the day with the mechanic, the man that collapsed while the Soldier was high on relief unlike any he has ever felt.

Now its the weaker arm, his right arm that hurts. Broken at some point before, some mission before. They’d stuck him in the cryo cell with it and ever since then, movement means pain.

Allright. Nothing new. It looks odd too, bones shouldn’t bulge out like that, so they’ll fix that next time they send him out to any missions where he needs to look the part. Not this one though.

Bucky is on a landing field in the middle of nowhere, far enough out from the base that he couldn’t walk back without provisions. Which is fine, plenty of helicopters he can charter, a jet. Another jet he would need about a minute to figure out, a delay he might not be able to afford.

If shit goes south. For once, that’s not what he’s here to cause. There is a strange relief that comes with that knowledge, he’s not quite sure from where. He does know that at no fucking cost can he let it show. The worst will happen if he lets it show.

With him on the landing field is the mechanic. He looks so small next to him, slight and smaller than him, and just a man. He looks… sick. Not as sick as he did when he was carried out by the handlers last time James saw him. Mostly he looks hardened. There is an anger and quiet spite to him that hadn’t been there before. The Soldier wonders what happened.

“Ah, my favourite customers!” The dealer swaggers out of the jet Bucky could charter, mink pelt coat and sunglasses shining gold in the light of the weak kazakh sun. The Soldier suppresses a shudder. Some people shouldn’t be this pleasant to kill, or at least contemplate killing.

But that’s not what he’s here for.

“What can I help you with today?”

“You were given a list?” The mechanic stands tall and speaks, and suddenly Barnes struggles to see the weak dying captured man slumped against the wall of the workshop. The way he speaks, the cold demand in his voice, the iron in his eyes, he looks a lot more like the business tycoon the Soldier knows the mechanic actually is.

Was. Before Hydra got their tentacles on him. Now he’s a mechanic, wearing the person suit of something untouchable. A fragile facade of glass, but for now it’s shining bright enough to blind the dealer.

“Sure did. Expensive toys you want, but it’s all here. Go feast your eyes upon this bounty,” the dealer boasts with a wide grin. A grin and boast that stumbles when the mechanic actually moves to do so. The Soldier follows.

Your mission: Keep Stark safe, and from getting his hands on anything that can allow him to escape or blow us up.

The dealer scurries out of the way, avoiding the Soldier’s stare, the poisonously cold aura he exudes. The mechanic - Stark - glances back at him once, then seems to decide on just ignoring him. Lucky for James. He gets a front seat view of Stark’s skills, and this time he can actually appreciate it. There is a strain of him that deeply regrets that the last time he got to watch the mechanic work he was so out of his mind with fear and pain that he couldn’t have loaded a gun, let alone followed the mans nimble fingers and clever eyes that now undo latches of crates and open chests, picking up tools, materials, and machinery Barnes does not know but is itching to see work.

Stark works his way through the whole palette, and the Soldier relishes the way this makes the dealer sweat. This is fun. This is really fun.

So fun he almost doesn’t notice the strange part in all of this.

Stark is smart, to the point that the word might just be an insult to what he is. And he is complying… Not with the dealer, Barnes has the feeling that Stark respects the man about as much as he himself does, which is to say paying him the same regard that you might pay a beetle in your cellar. But with the Handler. With Hydra.

And the Soldier isn’t as delusional as the Handler is, he has no doubts that with the tools before him, with the things strapped to the palette currently being attached to the helicopter they arrived with, Stark could– well, maybe not take him out. But hurt him. His arm is fucked, his flesh is weakened. Stark knows. He keeps glancing at the arm, at the dent where the bone didn’t heal right in cryo.

Why isn’t he trying to run? Why isn’t he trying to get help? 

Stark is an Avenger, he could have a whole cavalry of superheroes here to help him with a single well placed call. Why is it so quiet?

The Soldier watches Stark as the helicopter takes off, sitting quiet and focused in the back of the chopper. He’s not scared of the guns held in the hands of the handlers around them, he’s not afraid of James. He’s calm. Steady. At home surrounded by the metal he designed, the weapons he forged.

Something is wrong.

The Soldier stops looking. He fixes his eyes on the outside, sweeping the landscape for threats, his metal hand settled on the sniper rifle he knows Stark improved. 

Pretending he noticed nothing. The binds that hold him are not something he can fight, he’s tried, and he doesn’t remember, but his body does and all it knows is dread. But Stark might. And at the very least, James wants to see what he will do. It will blow back onto him in fire and flames, of course.

That’s fine. Pain is nothing new. 

But this quiet intense hatred beside him is.