AN: Yeah, so... I'm sorry for this. I had tears, myself. But I needed this, and I'm sure others need it too after CACW.
It's Monday, and Bucky has been jittery all morning. It could have had something to do with the nightmare that woke them all up at 3 a.m. Probably does. Clint makes decaf coffee and lets Bucky pace as much as he likes.
Eleven o'clock rolls around, and they can both hear Tony exclaim, "Pep, you said this was a surprise! What is a surprise doing in Barton's apartment?"
"You'll see," Pepper insists, in full Tony-requires-a-special-amount-of-patience mode.
Clint opens the door. "Morning Pepper, Tony."
Tony Stark eyes him over the top of his sunglasses. "You do not fit my definition of 'surprise', Barton. You had better have a pony in there."
Pepper smacks his arm. "Behave," she commands. She steps past Clint. "Hi, Bucky. This is Tony, my fiancé. Tony —"
"Barton, do you mean to tell me the guy the Capsicle is looking for has been chilling in your apartment this whole time?" he demands, pointing at Bucky. "Not a great hiding spot."
Pepper rolls her eyes. Clint shrugs and smiles. "Surprise."
"Ha," Tony says, inspecting Bucky. "Good to meet you. Any reason you haven't told Methuselah yet?"
"They said you could help me," Bucky says, speaking up before Clint and pepper get a word in.
"Help with what? I'm a versatile kind of guy."
"HYDRA used some kind of machine to wipe his mind, repeatedly," Clint says. "Nat and I thought maybe you could find it, or that you knew of something that could bring the memories back."
Tony thinks about this. "Maybe," he concedes. "But that'll take a good bit of time. Remember much about that machine?"
"Not really," Bucky says, pursing his lips.
"Let me see what I can find out," Tony says. "Pep, ask Maria if she can dig and see what the government recovered from any secret lairs or whatever." Pepper pulls out her phone. Tony turns back around to Bucky. "If a therapist is what you want, you'd be better off talking to the Falcon. Doesn't he work with Vets with PTSD?"
"Well, I shot at him, so he might not be in favor of that," Bucky mutters.
Tony pops a piece of gum in his mouth and smacks it. "Well, you never know. People change. Right now I could probably do more if I took a look at your arm." He nods at the metal appendage. "You want to do that?"
Bucky looks down at his left arm, frowning. After a minute, he sighs and says, "Okay."
They set up shop in the living room. Bucky's in the recliner, and Pepper holds his right hand while Tony looks over the left. Clint hands him tools. "With all the interlocking pieces, you have full rage of motion," Tony says, "just like your right arm. This is some amazing craftsmanship, considering when and where you probably got it." He examines the point where the skin and metal join. "I think they layered your skin over this metal," Tony mumbles. Bucky bites his lip and frowns.
Tony looks up from his examination. "Hey, you wanna see something?" he asks abruptly, pulling up his Led Zepplin t-shirt over his head. "Two months ago I had a metal arc reactor embedded in my chest," he says, pointing to the mass of scar tissue in the center of his chest.
Clint's eyebrows shoot up. The little circle of light was gone.
"I had it because I was in a bomb blast, and little shrapnel shards were trying to claw their way into my heart. There was, um…." he tries to show dimensions with his hands. "A good three inch deep cylinder embedded into my chest cavity, wasn't there, Pep? She had to change it one time. Remember?"
"Ugh, don't remind me," Pepper groans. "There was puss in there."
"It wasn't puss, it was —never mind. Anyway. I had that thing for three to four years. And I'm still trying to regrow part of my breast bone."
Bucky stares at him. "And you're telling me this because…?"
"I have a tendency to over share." Tony pulls his t-shirt back over his head. "Just roll with it." He continues to poke and prod the metal appendage.
"Hey, Tony?"
"Yep?" Tony tosses back a handful of raspberries. Clint hopes he's spit the gum out some time before this.
Bucky hesitates, opens his mouth —then shuts it. "Just… thanks."
"No problem, Tin Man."
Something's been eating at Bucky all day. He's nervous, jittery. Not like someone about to go off or unhinge —Clint knows those tells; hell, he's got 'em himself. Just —nervous.
Nat, back from her day excursion, is with Pepper off in the kitchen, talking about what to make for supper. The debate rages between fettuccini alfredo and enchiladas, but the fettuccini might be getting the upper hand. He's sitting at the table, pretending to read the newspaper. He's sure Tony and Bucky both know he's pretending, but there's no where else for him to really go in the apartment, since none of the men want to stick an oar into the dinner conversation, and they all know it. He turns the page in the Sports section and waits for the other shoe to drop —dinner, or whatever is boiling inside of Bucky.
Tony cleans off tools and sticks them back in his briefcase, while Bucky shrugs his shirt back on. Staring at his hands —one flesh, one metal —he comes to a decision, and looks up through his hair at Tony. "I have to tell you something."
Stark just raises an eyebrow, polishing a wrench that Clint is pretty sure he never used today. "What's up, Tin Man?"
Bucky sets his face. "It was me."
Clint wills himself not to move.
"What was?" Tony says, packing the wrench away.
"I killed your parents."
Except for the hum from the kitchen and the burble of the stove —Natasha has bowed out gracefully and allowed Pepper to put the fettuccini in the pot —the room is silent.
Bucky sits, coiled like a spring, ready to flinch away from whatever swing comes his way. Tony just sits, blinking like an owl. Like he's not sure he heard the man in front of him right. Then suddenly, Tony slumps back in his chair, passes a hand over his eyes. "Well."
"Didn't you hear me?" Bucky whispers. This is not the reaction he expected.
"I always knew their deaths weren't an accident. They were never consistent with a car crash —God," Tony's voice breaks off, and he scrubs his face with his hands. "I —mm. God," he whispered again, like a prayer.
After another moment, he says, "Never got along with my old man. We always got into it —always. Mom would have to break us apart. She was the only one who could reason with Dad when he was being especially pigheaded… but you knew him," Tony mumbles, "Was he always that way?"
Bucky stares at him, swallows hard, shivers.
"Mom was the one I got along with —she was there —I guess I was a mama's boy. He used to get on to me about that, too." He exhales a long, shaky breath.
Tony finally looks —really looks— at Bucky, the way he sits, ready to fight or dodge the blow that might come his way. That he expects to come his way.
Tony clears his throat. "Thank you for telling me, Bucky. I—" He clears his throat again.
"You can hate me," Bucky says in a low voice. "You should hate me."
Tony stares at him blearily. "It's not your fault."
Clint's throat closes. Bucky is crying.
Tony hesitates for a second, but then pats the ex-assassin on the shoulder. "I know, kid," Tony mumbles, rubbing his eyes. His fingers come away wet. "It's just…nothing anybody can do. About any of it." His face screws up, twenty years of grief bubbling back to the surface.
Damn if Clint isn't experiencing some burning in his eye sockets, too.
"Who wants garlic bread?" Pepper asks, pocking her head out the kitchen door. "Oh…."
"I do," Tony says, rubbing the back of his hand under his nose.
Pepper takes the tissue box and sits down by the two of them, silently handing out Kleenex. "Is everything okay?" she whispers, leaning her forehead against Tony's.
"Yeah," Tony whispers, clearing his throat again. "You know, just regretting going to that grief counselor when you mentioned it two years ago."
"Never too late." Pepper kisses him on the nose, and then moves to sit by Bucky and rubs his back. "How 'bout you, Bucky?"
Bucky shakes his head, making no effort to wipe away the tears that are still falling.
Clint finally unbends, folds his newspaper, and wanders into the kitchen where Natasha looks up from the stove. Coming up behind her, he wraps his arms around her and rests his head against hers, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. Dinner will keep for a while.
I'm captain of the 'let men experience honest emotion and catharsis 2kever' squad. Let me know what you think.