I'M BACK. ish. Back-ish. Long weekend.
EvelynHunters, thank you for the review! Sorry there hasn't been more on Bucky and Nat. ...much to my irritation, he's too unstable right now to do much in the way of remembering but hopefully that will stabilize, sorry rambling ... late nightish.).
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Stark was knee-and-elbow deep in what looked like the upside-down undercarriage of a tank but actually proved to be a massive suit of armor. Steve appeared to take this in stride, though he did skirt the twin garbage-can sized hands, supermanned in front of the torso. Deep turquoise fires glowed deep in them.
"Stark!" Steve called loudly. It echoed through the armor.
"Y'know, I thought I made it clear Avengers ID's were not to be used to bypass 'do not disturb' signs unless something was on fire," Stark snarled, head invisible in the machinery.
"I could set something on fire," Steve suggested. "Bucky?"
The soldier's attention was wavering; it had been a very long, very chaotic day, but he knew this joke, at least.
"…'cn set something 'n fire."
"You brought—oh God." Stark stuck his head up out of the machinery and eyed the two of them. Grease covered his face, his hair looked as if it had recently suffered through a wind tunnel. "What's wrong now."
"The arm. It's—"
"Told you. Told you, told you, told you." With each mutter came a movement: one foot on the casing, the jump down, the stride over. "That's what you get for employing crap HYDRA tech on your super-soldiers. Pop it off, we'll take a look."
Bucky… hadn't expected that. Should've, but hadn't.
"I'm not taking it off."
"It's a dead limb, Barnes. I can't charge it on you."
"They did."
"No they didn—what do you mean they did?" Without asking, Stark grabbed the arm, lifted it, checked out the wiring and the energy source, flicking at it idly. Since the arm was dead, Bucky didn't stop him on instinct – which was a very, very good thing for Stark. "Okay, no, they didn't. They would have to run a charge through it for at least six hours every couple of months."
"So?"
"You're telling me they had you basically lean on a low-power electric fence for six hours every two months?"
He was too tired at this point to recall much, but he did recall this. "You made weapons. Weapons take…" Pierce had called it something, Pierce had called him lots of things… "Forging."
"Whatever. I'm not charging it on you because the only thing I have recharges it fast. It'd kill you. So, off it comes."
He thought about protesting – it's my arm, how are you going to get it back on, am I going to get it back on, what if I don't know how, without it I'm not the winter soldier I'm not Bucky I'm not anyone without it…. But complaining had done nothing over the years so he said nothing now. He just shook his head and let Stark, groaning and complaining, lead them to a further back portion of his lab, moaning about how shirtless assassins weren't allowed in his lab except, well, one, but Nat was elsewhere.
Stark stopped beside a medical-looking cot and slapped it with his hand. "Up. Gotta figure this out the hard way."
It didn't look like the chair, so he got up and sat. Steve lingered nearby, nervous but letting Stark do, more or less, whatever Stark wanted.
"Okay. So. To slow it down to 1940's tech which, for the record, is like trying to put your iPod's playlist onto a floppy disk, I'm going to run it through the same level of computation Zola was using."
"Explaining isn't your speed, Stark." Steve sounded puzzled. Bucky wasn't looking at them. "Why the lecture?"
"Look, I never did anything crazy to the magnet in my chest while it was still in me. Nothing that didn't need to be done. And Pepper usually did that. This thing? If it blows back, it could infect his whole system. I got whole body scans when he came in, I wouldn't even consider doing it this way if it weren't for him insisting."
Bucky could hear Steve's attention turn to him. "Buck… are you sure you don't want to take off the arm?"
If it got taken off and, at any time, he fell asleep, he might never get it back. Stark wanted the arm. The Winter Soldier had heard need and interest in enough voices to recognize that. Stark wanted to be able to replicate the arm or maybe he just wanted to replace it with his own, superior technology, but what if that was a way to tie Bucky to him too? People wanted the asset.
It wasn't hubris; it was fact. Attempts had been made, offers had been proposed, his opinion was not relevant. Losing the arm meant losing much more than just an arm.
"It stays," he said bluntly.
"See? Crazy." Stark plugged a cable into the charging socket of the arm, rolled his eyes, and walked over to a monitor hooked up to a giant box. "You're lucky I didn't hollow this thing out for Barton's pet badger yet."
"Dog." Steve's reproof was amused. "He has a dog."
"Whatever, it pees on my carpet and gets in my lab. Goes in a box."
The computer made a whooshing noise and came on. Steve glanced over at Bucky, who glanced in turn at the cable. The arm was dead as ever. He closed his eyes and waited for what invariably accompanied 'charging.' Then a pulse came through, faint at first, then growing in power. Bucky relaxed when it leveled off, a constant and steady thrum of power that didn't hurt. Accustomed to pain, he never felt the sting of a needle in his neck.
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Steve arranged the unconscious assassin on the cot then glanced over at Stark. "…he is sleeping, right?"
"It's going to take eight hours to get that thing charged at this rate. At that dose, he should sleep ten. Biometric scanners said enough of the drugs are out of his system, he'll be fine. Doc's going to come in and put in a monitored IV so he'll start getting nutrients. We've got bigger problems." He pulled up a screen above the ancient computer, showing a map of the city. "I sent Banner to go get shwarma. He never came back."
"Stop joking, Stark. Where is the doctor?"
"Possibly? With our psychoterrorist. Banner's Avengers ID was last sighted heading west. No reports of a big green guy but Banner's gotten good at turning his card off when he needs to. Whiiiich is all the time. He was concerned about Faustus getting away and about Prisoner-Zero over there when he left. Plus…"
"Plus what?"
The door to the lab creaked open. Both of them turned to look – and watch as a yellow dog of indeterminate breed nosed its way into the room and padded over to them. Stark sighed heavily.
"As you can see, Barton went with him. And if there's anybody with a bone to pick about mind control, it's Barton. Working together, they could take this guy out before we ever get a hold of him."
"Do they know about the triggers?"
"Yeah, so they'll do their best, but if Banner makes a sciency-enough argument for killing Faustus, or just HULK-SMASHES him, Barton isn't going to be able to stop him."
"So we have to go."
"'We,' being…"
"Me, you, Buck-"
"Someone has to hold down the fort. Nat's out on business, Pepper has been stuck at Stark Industries in talks with Kronos. Last time I ditched her with an unconscious assassin, she sent four suits out with the dry cleaning. 'Suits with the suits'. They still haven't come back. AND she told Nat dozens of stories on their damn sleepover."
"So me and Bucky."
"Cap. He's not stable. And you haven't slept."
"He's getting better. And I slept decades. I think I'm good."
"Yes, but in the meantime, you gotta take somebody or I'm not giving you Barton's position."
"Sam." Steve chose on a whim but it was really the only logical choice. Sam was good with people. Sam had calmed Bucky down last night when Steve's opening act, after decades apart, had been (necessarily) to try and incapacitate his friend. Multiple times.
He glanced back at Stark, who had crossed the lab to greet the doctor coming in with the IV. Maybe it was better Stark wasn't coming. Everything in Bucky's body language had said the man was terrifying and, even if they were going on a hunt for Banner and Barton, maybe it was better not to take someone terrifying to an assassin.
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whoops. yeah. y'know when it's the holidays and work explodes and uh yeah. At least I know where, uh, this is going. Holy crap, Banner and Barton were not supposed to go multiplayer and run off.
Reviews are happily read!
