Title: Blast From The Past

Words: 2609

Main Character(s): Tony Stark, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes

Notes: If Tony's going to be giving sanctuary to a former Hydra assassin, he wants to know why. He wants to know why Steve Rogers would risk everything for Bucky Barnes, and archive footage from WW2 propaganda films might be what his curiosity is looking for.

"Sir, I have accessed the SSR archives," Jarvis reported, jerking Tony out of his zone and back into reality. He blinked a couple of times at what he was working on, the purely technical circuits and servos and motors resolving themselves into a heavy steel arm with a red star painted on its deltoid and specks of dry blood on its fingers.

"Okay," he said, looking up from the arm before he can think too much about it or its owner. "Remind me why that was a thing?"

"You were unsatisfied with the SSR propaganda movies featuring Sergeant Barnes," Jarvis reminded him. "You requested the raw footage from which they were cut."

"Oh, yeah," Tony remembered. "You found 'em?"

"There is roughly an hour of material, sir."

"Really? There was like six minutes of him in that Howling Commandoes newsreel thing," Tony said. "Play it, and start machining the parts for the hand out of that carbon alloy. Should be done around the same time, right?"

"Yes, sir, if we exclude assembly."

"I'll do that, I'll wanna tweak it as I'm doing it," Tony said, rolling over to the coffee machine to pour himself a cup. He wanted alcohol, really wanted alcohol, but after the bender he went on the night Steve turned up with Wilson and Barnes, Rhodey not only found a way to remove all of the alcohol from Stark Tower but had spoken to Pepper and Bruce, both of whom were now conspiring against him to prevent him buying more alcohol. I hate everyone I love, he thought grumpily as Jarvis started playing the grainy old black-and-white footage.

Steve was immediately recognizable, standing in front of the camera with what Tony thought of as his PR smile. "Is this okay?" he said, looking behind the camera.

"Couple steps to your left, Captain," somebody behind the camera said. Steve shuffled over, putting him off-centre. "Today we'd like to interview you and one of your Howling Commandoes—can you tell us who your second-in-command is?"

"Oh, that's Bucky—Sergeant Barnes," Steve corrected himself, but he grin flickered a little when he said "Bucky", growing wider and more genuine for a second.

"Alright, Sergeant Barnes? Is that you, sir?" the cameraman said distantly, moving away from the camera. "Can you stand right up there, on the Captain's right?"

Steve's grin got abruptly wider as he watched someone approach from off-camera, becoming something toothy and goofy and bright. Tony vaguely wondered if Steve had smiled like that at all since awakening in the future. Even the way he'd grinned when telling Tony that they'd won the Battle of New York hadn't been more than a dim lightbulb compared to the Stark-Tower brilliance of the way he grinned at Bucky Barnes as the man walked over to join him.

It was startling, looking at Barnes. He had all the same features as the man that Steve had carried into Stark Tower a couple of days ago, but he looked completely different. He carried himself differently, easily swinging his two flesh and blood arms as he swaggered over to stand next to his best friend, smiling back. Tony hadn't see the Winter Soldier since he'd woken up, only through video feeds, but those had been enough to see how flat and expressionless he was, how, aside from that initial moment of rage upon waking, there was nothing in his eyes at all. In the grainy, faded, black-and-white footage circa 1944, there was light visible in Barnes' eyes that was long gone in 2014.

"What are we gonna do, sing a duet?" Barnes said with a laugh.

"God no, this isn't a silent film," Steve replied. "We don't wanna deafen the folks back home with your caterwauling."

"Focus, gentlemen," the cameraman called. "Alright, Sergeant, what's it like working with Captain America?"

"Oh, awful," Barnes said, rolling his eyes. "He's a totally pompous asshole, always spouting off about truth and beauty and justice, striding into battle with bullets pinging off of his holy glow—"

"Speaking of assholes, guess where the shield's going if you don't take this seriously," Steve said, raising the aforementioned weapon. Barnes raised his hands, laughing.

"You sure this is Cap, Jarvis?" Tony commented. "This guy looks like he has a sense of humour."

"Facial recognition is a match for Captain Rogers, sir, as are voice patterns. I am afraid that, as of yet, I have no capacity to scan for a sense of humour."

"Okay… really? I don't know. He's still Steve to me," Barnes said with a fond grin. "Still gotta watch his ass when he starts fights he can't finish, so same old, same old. I just don't hafta listen to him coughing all the time now, is all."

"You knew the Captain before he received the serum?" the cameraman asked, sounding surprised. It sounded a lot like the man had been dragged out from under a rock and handed a camera.

"You sound like he just popped into existence when he got buffed up," Barnes said. "Nah, I knew the idiot back when he was this tall—" Barnes held his hand out at about waist-height.

"I was taller than that, you jerk," Steve said, grabbing Barnes by the wrist and dragging his hand up.

"Still weighed less than a sack a' potatoes, though," Barnes said. "We met his first day a' school. I was playin' football with some other boys at break, and then everyone was runnin' to watch a couple of guys beating up this scrawny little toddler—"

"I wasn't a toddler, Buck, I was five, I was only a year younger than you," Steve pointed out.

"I thought you were a toddler, you were so tiny," Barnes said, rolling his eyes. "Actually, you were so tiny and scrawny, I thought at first that the guys had taken some little girl's doll and were kickin' it around—" He jumped aside with a yelped laugh as Steve kicked at his leg.

"I can't even remember why they were beating me up, now," Steve said with a shrug. "Okay, I was always pretty little compared to other kids, and maybe I shot my mouth off sometimes—"

"Sometimes? Your mouth was bigger than the rest of you," Barnes said. "I don't even know how many times I had to come bail your stupid ass out of fights. Shoulda left you in a ditch and saved myself a lot of trouble."

"Guess that just proves that you're even stupider than me," Steve laughed.

"Hey, I'm not the dumb shit that went charging behind enemy lines and jumped into a Nazi base alone," Barnes shot back.

"Well, I'm not the dumb shit who got myself captured by Nazis," Steve replied. He and Barnes were still grinning at each other, bantering in a painfully brotherly way, but at mention of Barnes' capture some stiffness had crept into their expressions, a slight shadow in their eyes that made them look much more like their 2014 counterparts. "Do you know how ass-backwards it was, me having to come to your rescue? I wouldn't have been surprised to run past Hitler waltzing with Jesse Owens."

Barnes burst out laughing at that, bent over and clutching his gut, the moment of pain and darkness gone. "You wanna talk about ass-backwards, pal?" he choked. "I thought you were a goddamn hallucination. I though, this guy looks like Steve, but he's built like one a' those guys offa the covers of those cheap romance novels girls buy, y'know, all glowing golden hair and rippling muscles bursting outta your shirt—"

"Carryin' my helpless dame out of danger," Steve said, sweeping Barnes up into his arms in a bridal carry. Barnes swore viciously even as he was laughing.

"You gotta swoon, Barnes," somebody yelled from off the camera, probably another Howling Commando. "The girls in those books always swoon."

"And how on earth do you know that?"

"I got sisters, man, they buy that shit all the time."

"You wanna swoon? I'll show you a swoon," Barnes said, swinging an arm around Steve's neck and leaning back, the back of his other hand pressed against his forehead. There were some wolf-whistles from behind the camera and somebody yelling for them to kiss.

"Strike a pose, Cap'n!" one of the invisible Commandoes called. "C'mon, show us that heroic jawline!" Grinning, Steve immediately struck the kind of ridiculous pose that had probably been on a hundred propaganda posters at the time, Barnes swooning in his arms.

"Although, I dunno," Barnes said, looking up. "I think I gotta open my shirt up a little more, show 'em some of my boobs, whaddya think?" He reached up as if to unbutton his shirt and Steve promptly dropped him.

"Okay, okay," the cameraman said, sounding like he was trying not to laugh. "I'm sorry, we gotta do this again, I can't use any of this footage. You boys gotta watch your language, okay? Less of the monkeying around. You guys are national heroes, we gotta show a good image to the kids…"

"Hard to believe it's the same guy, huh?"

"Pause, Jarvis," Tony said, turning around to look at the doorway. Sam Wilson was standing there, holding a pizza box.

"We ordered pizza and Doctor Banner asked me to bring you some," he said, proffering the box. "Said you were probably in the zone and hadn't eaten."

"Well, if it's doctor's orders…" Tony said, gesturing to another swivel chair. "You eating too or are you the delivery boy?"

"I can always eat more pizza," Sam said with a grin, grabbing the chair and wheeling over to open up the pizza box. "Besides, I figured I'd hang down here for a while 'cause I feel kinda useless upstairs. I keep getting jumpy and wantin' to draw a gun on Barnes, but Steve and Doctor Banner both keep tellin' me that'll freak him out."

"Can't blame him, having guns pointed at me freaks me out," Tony said, rolling up a slice of pizza.

"You gotta wonder what turned that guy into the Winter Soldier, don't you?" Sam said, gesturing to the screen. Barnes and Steve were frozen in place, hands clasped as Steve pulled Barnes back to his feet. Both of them had their eyes locked on each other, grinning widely with a sheer joy that seemed to come just from being in each others' presence. The way they mercilessly and joyfully ripped into each other reminded Tony of the way he and Rhodey pissed each other off for fun, but the way they grinned at each other made him think more of the way he felt when he looked at Pepper.

He knew, of course, what had done it, gouged out the smiles and laughter and camaraderie and left Barnes hollow and empty and dependant on orders. He'd read the horrific, clinically detailed reports of Barnes' "treatment". He wondered if Sam had, but if he hadn't, Tony wasn't going to be the one to introduce him to the reports. Not until he could get his hands on some alcohol again.

"I don't really know why I started watching this stuff," Tony said with a shrug. He took a big bite out of his pizza, staring up at the screen. "I dunno. Maybe I just wanted to see what Cap sees when he looks at this guy, you know? Try and get why he's willing to risk so much for a guy that tried to kill him."

"I know what you mean, man," Sam said, shaking this head. "I saw this guy fight twice, both times he was tryin' to kill both me and Steve, an' I ain't never seen anythin' like it. He was like a damn machine, man. He just kept comin', nothin' but absolute focus, and it was terrifyin', I don't mind sayin' it. An' now he just looks… switched off, y'know? Like there's nothin' goin' on up there. But I keep feelin' like, any second, he's gonna switch back on and we're gonna have a goddamn assassin on our hands, tryin' to kill us all."

Tony nodded. "I just don't get what Cap thinks he can do for this guy," he admitted. "I mean, I look at that guy there—" He jerked a thumb at the screen, at Bucky Barnes' laughing face. "—and I look through the surveillance cameras at the guy upstairs, and I just… there's nothing left of him. Not a thing I can see, anyway. Sooner or later, Cap's gotta realize that that guy there is dead, and that what he's got now is a Hydra doll."

"I tried tellin' him that, but he's fixed on the fact that that Hydra doll dragged him outta the Potomac," Sam said with a sigh. "He keeps pointin' out that that guy saved his life. Doesn't change the fact that before he saved his life, that guy beat the shit outta him and shot him four times."

"Yeah, but what the hell can you do about it?" Tony said, finishing off his slice and reaching for another. "Cap's a stubborn son of a bitch. He's got it set in his head that this guy is his buddy and that he's going to protect him."

"Honestly? I still feel like mercy killin' this guy would be the best thing for everyone, especially Steve," Sam said with a shrug, "but I don't know if I could manage it without either of those supersoldiers snappin' my neck first, if Steve doesn't do it afterwards. I don't know, man, I just feel like that guy isn't safe for Steve in a lotta ways."

"I hear you," Tony said, tapping the arm lying on the table. "I promised Cap I'd make his buddy a new arm, a lighter one, and I'm gonna because lying to Captain America is probably a mortal sin, but I'm putting a few things in Cap doesn't need to know about. It's gonna have a remote control override so I can control it like my suits, a tracker and a shot with enough sedative to kill an elephant, so it should put him out for, like, an hour. It's not that I don't trust Barnes, it's just… no, actually, that's it. Gotta do all we can to make sure Cap's stubbornness doesn't get him killed."

Sam gestured at the frozen video. "Sounds like he's always needed somebody to do that," he said.

"How did I end up being the dumb schmuck on Cap-protecting duty?" Tony muttered, picking at sticky strings of cheese and draping them over the top of his slice.

"C'mon, man, it's Captain America," Sam laughed. "If Captain America turns up at your door lookin' for help, how can you say no?"

Tony looked up at Barnes' fond grin. "I don't know," he'd said. "He's still Steve to me." He thought about how he had two "friends" contact lists, one with over four hundred names on it, and one which, until recently, only had two. He thought about the way that Steve had smiled with a fixed grin that was identical to the way he smiled for PR business in the modern world, until he looked at his best friend and his smile turned into something that the world probably hadn't seen since 1944.

"Keep it rolling, Jarvis," Tony said, gesturing to the screen. "Dinner and a show, whaddya say?"

"Now I know what they mean when they say Tony Stark knows how to have a good time," Sam commented, taking a bit out of his pizza and looking up at the grainy projection.

"Okay, gentlemen," the cameraman said, "let's start from the beginning."