Oh my god. The Winter Soldier. Literally the best Marvel movie I've ever seen. I may have gone to see it twice. Agh, it was sooooo good.

"Hey, Spangles." Tony Stark leans in the doorway of the hospital room, wearing a black t-shirt with some band Steve vaguely remembers Tony forcing him to listen to.

"Hey," Steve rasps, sitting up.

"Jesus," Tony mumbles, looking at him critically. "When Natasha told me 'he's pretty banged up', I assumed she meant by mortal standards. You look like shit, Cap."

Steve laughs. "Thanks. You look the same. Down to the shirt."

"Hey, this is new," Tony defends. "You're thinking of my other ACDC shirt. This one's for a completely different tour."

Steve chuckles, and Tony sits down in the armchair by his bed, propping his feet up. He spots his chart and grabs it. "Steven Grant Rogers, oh, look they've got your actual age on here- let's see, four gunshot wounds, one stab wound, a concussion, four broken ribs, twenty four stitches to the face and knuckles, bruising and physical exhaustion. Oh my fucking god, were you fighting Godzilla?"

"I wish. Bu- The soldier, he's not one to cross."

"I know," Tony says simply. "I mean, I actually know. They've got his picture on the news, a really shitty one anyway, and once I got JARVIS to enhance it, it was obvious it was him. Are you alright? What the hell's going on? Hill and all the bigwigs are dodging me hard. "

"HYDRA."

"I know that, everyone knows that. I meant the tech on Barnes. How's he alive? Is he like Nat?"

"Oh, there are similarities," Steve says. "Mother Russia."

"I mean, is he free thinking? That makes a hell of a lot of difference here."

"No. Or he wasn't. I think they've lost control over him. He stopped. He saved me. For a minute, he didn't want to complete the mission."

"The mission?" Tony ask.

"Me. He told me that I was his mission."

"Ouch," Tony sympathizes. "Rhodey once told me I was the worst friend anyone could have and that stung, that one must've really hurt."

"Didn't feel good," Steve admits. "I don't know much. His arm is gone, I mean gone. They've replaced it with a metal one."

"I wonder what alloy," Tony muses. "Vibranium would probably be ideal if- sorry. Science thoughts."

"They had Bucky for a while in the war. I pulled him off an experiment table, saying over and over his name, rank, and serial number." Steve stared at the IV in his arm. "Zola was experimenting on him. He's got at least something like me in his blood. I never though he would survive the impact..." his voice trails off.

Tony grabs his arm. "Listen up, Cap. It's not your fault. What were you going to do, jump into that canyon after him?"

"If he survived, so would I," Steve argues.

"Yeah, maybe. And you had a job to do, a country, the whole goddamn world to save, and a tight timetable."

"I shouldn't have let him fall to begin with!"

"You didn't push him off the train. You tried to catch him. You can't keep blaming yourself for something that literally happened before I was born."

"Easy to say, hard to do," Steve admits. "I thought I was getting there, but now...seeing what they've done to him-"

"You didn't do that, they did," Tony reminds him. "And we'll get the bastards for it, I promise. I'll let you go Cujo on their asses. But first you gotta get yourself better."

"I'm healing pretty fast," Steve replies. "Might not even scar. Not sure. I've been shot a few times before, you know."

"Well, I once scraped my knee riding my bike," Tony deadpans. "And I still limp to this day."

Steve bursts into laughter.

"You're going to be okay, then?"

"Yeah, of course." He sounds confident, and that's relieving. "Your concern is kind of touching, Stark."

"I won't lie, when I first met you I thought you were a sparkly bag of bullshit and I really wasn't a fan, but now you're really important to me," Tony says seriously. "Let me know if you need anything."

'I'm going after Bucky," Steve says, "and I'll probably need your help. Connection, resources."

"So done. You want to borrow Stark4? I know you like a classic car."

"No way, what if I wreck it?"

"Mr. Responsible Driver, in an accident? Please. Besides, I've got plenty of resources to fix it. Ooohhh, do I get to hack stuff? I love pissing off the government by hacking stuff."

Steve grins. "Hell yeah, I need you to hack stuff."

"Can I hack the NSA?" Tony begs. "I heard about this like, level one SHIELD chick doing it and the CIA was sooooo mad. I reallyyyy wanna try."

"Don't get arrested," Steve warns. "I need you on the outside."

"This is like a gangster movie," Tony says, delighted. "Man, I can't wait to hack the NSA. When do we start?"

"Right now too soon?" Steve asks.

Tony whips out his phone. "Oh, hell no. JARVIS, start running diagnostics, code four, use facial recognition on Barnes- hey, you want a cheeseburger? Will they let me bring in food? I've been in hospitals, their 'food' is garbage."

"Can we get fries?" Steve asks, and Tony replies, "Done."