December 16


Steve had been dreading this day since January, when Bucky finally came to live at the Tower with him. Somehow it had snuck up on him, even though up until a week ago he had been counting down the days to it. After the attempt on Fury's life, Steve and Nat had tried focusing on the HYDRA agent that had died, tracking his movements, his connections...anything that may help them to get to HYDRA. They had lost their most recent lead when the base in Austria had been cleared, so Steve had been hoping that by tracing the agent, that he could somehow get a new lead on Rumlow.

Sequestering himself away for the past few days, Steve had not paid attention as the anniversary of Howard and Maria being killed crept slowly closer. It had finally taken for Bucky to flat out refusing last night to go to the common floor for movie night for Steve to realize that it had practically arrived. Over the past few days, he had noticed Bucky making excuses for not going to gym, somewhere Tony would often go too. So Bucky would go to the firing range instead, or head outside to run a couple of laps around the park in the snow.

He had asked Victoria this if she had noticed his change in behavior but she just nodded, told him that Bucky would be fine, then changed the topic. So Victoria had noticed the change in him also, but she never asked him or Bucky what was wrong. Then he remembered that she had read the mission report, she knew every detail as well as Bucky did probably. When she noticed him acting differently, she had probably just put it together that today was approaching. But why did Victoria not seem concerned?

This morning Bucky had not been his usual happy morning self, even waking up with Victoria latched onto him. He had not said anything as he poked at his breakfast...a true sign of something bothering him. When Steve had asked if he wanted to go to the gym, Bucky had only grunted a negative reply as he sat down on the couch and picked up the remote.

Fifteen minutes ago, Victoria had come from the bedroom dressed and ready to leave the apartment, like she had every morning for the past few weeks, giving each of them goodbye kisses. He had been on the verge of requesting Victoria to stay in today with them, to see if she could help get Bucky out of the funk he was now in, but she had seemed so happy about something when she left. He could only guess that she really knew of today's significance.

Now, he was sitting at the kitchen counter with a sketch pad, while Bucky was still flipping channels. Steve looked down at the drawing he had done, a sketch of the Stark Expo exhibit with the flying car that Howard had put on, before they had even met him. Bucky had been so happy that night. The last time the two of them were together before Azzano, where Bucky had been captured the first time.

Steve had also noticed Tony being a bit more distant to everyone the past few days too, so it was not just Bucky that the anniversary affected. He had asked Pepper about it the first year he had lived here and had found out that Tony got this way every year around this time. Except for the Gala that he put on mostly for the board and employees, Tony did not normally celebrate Christmas. He still gave and expected presents, but he would only allow Pepper a small plastic tree to be put up on their floor.

"Sergeant and Captain, Miss Victoria would like for the two of you to go downstairs. Level Yellow, room 29," FRIDAY chimed to inform them, getting Bucky to finally turn and acknowledge that Steve was also in the room.

"Let her know that we are on the way," Steve replied, standing up while wondering if something was wrong. That was not a floor that he would guess that Victoria would ever go to. They had a couple of secured rooms on that floor, as well as storage for paperwork and less dangerous items found on HYDRA raids. Had she been going through one of the storage rooms and found something? He had figured that she had gone to the garage, and thanks to his foul mood, Bucky had not checked security camera like he would sometimes over-protectively do...all day, numerous times.

"Any idea?" Bucky asked as they reached the open elevator, stepping inside.

"Not a clue," he answered shaking his head as the door closed.

Reaching the floor, they first noticed that the hallway was a bit darker than he would normally expect it to be. It seemed that someone had only turned on every other ceiling light. There were no real offices on this floor, so as they walked it only confirmed that nobody else seemed to be on the floor with them. They followed the signs on the walls directing them to the room FRIDAY had indicated.

Opening the door to the room, he saw that the inside of it was a very comfortable looking den-like room. There were three oversized accent chairs sitting around a small round cocktail table. Off to the side was a small kitchen area with a round dining table, and again, three chairs. He and Bucky stepped inside, but quickly found that Victoria was not there.

"FRIDAY, where is Vic?" Bucky then asked. Nothing.

"FRIDAY, can you respond?" Steve then asked.

Seconds later, they heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the hallway from where they had just been. Turning around, Steve was quickly put on edge as they saw the Iron Man suit fill the entire doorway, trapping them inside the room. Taking matching steps backwards away from it, Steve put his arm out to cover Bucky's chest, suddenly wishing he had brought his shield. Pushing Bucky fully behind him as the suit entered the room, Steve tried to cover him using his own body for protection. So far, Tony had made no threatening moves, but Steve was not taking a chance as they continued backing up across the room.

After the metal suit took a few more steps inside of the room, the two of them, now with the chairs between them, watched as the suit then opened up entirely on the front. Tony was already in the middle of yelling at FRIDAY, wanting to know what was going on.

"Tony?" Steve asked, getting his friend's attention. The second Tony eyes darted past Steve to Bucky, his entire demeanor changed. Tony became livid.

"FRIDAY, what the hell going on?" Tony yelled.

Instead of receiving an answer, his suit then lurched forward, knocking Tony from being inside of it. He stumbled forward, grabbing onto the back of the closest chair to stay upright. The suit then closed up, turned around, walked into the hallway, and closed the door behind it.

"Tony? What is going on?" Steve tried asking again, but having a sinking feeling that he didn't know any more than they did.

"I have no damn idea. I was in my lab, when FRIDAY said that Pepper wanted me downstairs somewhere. I refused, since I already told her to leave me alone today, and then suddenly, my own damn suit kidnaps me and bring me here!"

The entire time Tony was speaking, Steve saw that his eyes never left Bucky, who seemed to be trying to be as small as possible behind him.

"When we saw the suit, we assumed that you were going to attack us," Steve told him, easing his stance up a bit.

Tony then finally broke eye contact with Bucky as he turned and went for the door. Being on Level Yellow, it was a sturdier metal door than the normal office ones found on the lower levels. But it was locked from the outside and would not open. He then banged on the door a couple of times, trying the handle over and over.

Suddenly, Tony yelped and drew his hand back.

"It shocked me!" Tony loudly informed them, shaking his hand as if it were numb. "What the hell is going on, Rogers?"

"We have no idea. FRIDAY told us that Victoria wanted us to come here to this room," he informed him.

"FRIDAY?" Tony asked, but he received no reply. "FRIDAY, respond!"

Both he and Bucky then tried to get the AI's attention, but none of them received a response of any kind. Steve walked over to the door, trying it also, and receiving a small shock for his effort, just as Tony had. Turning around, he looked over at Bucky.

"You think I'll have better luck?" Bucky sarcastically asked, lifting up his metal hand and wiggling his fingers in the air.

"Alright, let's think this through a bit. Obviously we were set up, either by Victoria, Pepper, FRIDAY, or some combination of all three," Steve pointed out, walking around the small room, seeing if there was anything else in here. Besides a bathroom, bottles of water and soda in the mini-fridge was the biggest discovery.

"Why would they do that?" Bucky asked trying to put Steve between him and Tony, who was once again glaring daggers in his general direction.

"Because of what day it is," Steve heavily answered, bringing up the elephant in the room. Both of the other captives stared at him like he had grown a second head, but they knew he was right. "They want us to deal with…what happened."

"Nope! No way! Not happening! N to the O! Nada! Nyet!" Tony yelled. "Pepper! Vic! Get me the hell out of here! Now!"

Silence.


An hour later, Bucky was sitting at the small dining table picking at a cut in the laminate while Steve and Tony had taken up two of the comfortable looking chairs. This was about as far away from Tony as he was able to get in the room, besides going into the small bathroom, which only had a toilet and sink. He had heard of the phrase 'loud silence' and he would guess that it would perfectly fit right now.

After they realized that no matter what Tony yelled or threatened, that the door was staying locked, they all had actually agreed that Steve should just grab onto the handle and pull it off of its hinges. But as he got close to it, the sound of the Iron Man suit powering up its hand's energy blaster, came from the other side. They had a guard dog, it seemed.

So now, they had been sitting in silence, not sure if any of them really wanted to talk. Bucky kept replaying that mission in his head, over and over, remembering Howard as he had spoken to him, saying his own unfamiliar name. He had never met Maria, but yet he was responsible for the last day of her life. He could still recall the feel her neck in his palm. How could Vic put the three of them in here? How could she do this to him? Vic had gone through this file, as well as watching the video, and she knew exactly what had happened.

And how could Pepper do this to Tony? How could she make him a prisoner with the murderer of his parents on the anniversary of their deaths? What did they want from all of them? Then he wondered if it was possible Pepper didn't know. If Tony would hold up all day alone usually, would she notice him missing?

Hearing something, he turned his head to see that Steve had a smile on his face, a low laugh coming from him.

"Something funny about this, Rogers?" Tony questioned, getting angry pretty quick, standing up to pace behind the chair, Steve between the two of them.

"I was just thinking about how Howard would find our current predicament funny," Steve told him. Bucky thought about it for a bit, starting to remember all of the other times he had been with Howard, not just the final one. "If anything, this reminds me of some of the practical jokes that he used to pull on us."

Tony was now staring at Steve like he was crazy, but thinking back, Bucky realized that Steve was right.

"My father did not do practical jokes," Tony snidely remarked. Steve glanced over his shoulder at Bucky and then the two of them lost it. Bucky couldn't help it. "What are you two laughing at?"

"Howard pulled more jokes on all of the Howling Commandos than we were ever able to pull on him, combined," Steve informed him, finally calming down from the laugh.

"What are you talking about? My father could barely crack a smile, let alone pull a practical joke," Tony told them.

"Not when he was with us during the war," Steve said. "His favorite pastime was figuring out how to annoy the Commandos during our downtime, giving everyone a good laugh usually to help keep up morale."

"Remember when he set all the clocks in Crocker's Folly ahead three hours?" Bucky chuckled remembering one of his favorite incidents.

Steve began to laugh hard, recalling the incident.

Looking at Tony, Bucky explained, "The Commandos were scheduled for a eight a.m. meeting with Howard to get new equipment checked out. We were all out drinking and having a good time while he worked through the night, trying to get everything ready. To make sure we showed up in the morning, Howard somehow changed all the clocks in the tavern to be ahead three hours, to make sure that we went to bed and didn't miss his meeting."

They could tell by the look on Tony's face that he had never heard that story before. How much could Howard have changed after the war? He was always such fun to hang out with.

Steve continued the story with a chuckle, "Dugan was so mad when he figured out what Howard had done, specifically cutting in on his drinking time, that he nailed every wooden cabinet door shut in Howard's laboratory, while running lengths of chain around the glass cabinets and padlocking them."

"Which got Howard so mad, that he took Dum Dum's bowler hat, tied it to an experimental weather balloon he had, and released it. You should have seen Dum Dum running across the compound, chasing Howard while his hat flew away," Bucky sat back in the chair, remembering all the Commandos laughing while watching the spectacle.

"My father? Are you sure you got the right Howard Stark?" Tony asked while calmly walking around the chair and sitting back down in it.

"Yeah, we do," Bucky replied. "Howard would love it when we came back from a HYDRA base raid. Whoever brought him the most unique item to study would get a night's room rental in a local hotel for a bit of…'private time' with whatever dame they could find willing to say yes."

"My father paid for a room, so one of the Commandos could have sex with a woman?" Tony asked, still not sounding convinced.

"Yep. Steve there was the only one who never participated," Bucky smiled, pointing over at him, seeing Steve a redder shade of embarrassed.

"Howard was a good friend. If it wasn't for him, I never would have been able to rescue Bucky from that Austrian HYDRA factory after he was captured in Azzano."

"Azzano? Where the Howling Commandos were all captured together?" Tony asked. He and Steve looked at each other. Had Howard never really talked with his son, telling him about all the crazy things he used to do? "I didn't know my father had anything to do with that."

For the next two hours, the three of the sat in the chairs, chatting and reminiscing about Howard's inventions he experimented with, the weapons that he made for the Commandos, the backfire of the Tesseract power source that Steve had brought him. Tony had never even heard the story of how Peggy had shot at Steve while he had been holding his shield for the first time.

"Aunt Peggy?" Tony said, catching both of their attention.

"Aunt?"

"That's what I called her when I was very young. Whenever she was in town, Aunt Peggy would always come by for dinner and she always made sure to bring me a Captain America toy of some kind," Tony told them.

"I never thought about the fact that you would have known Peggy as a kid," Steve then said, probably now thinking about her.

"Howard found out early on that Peggy was the only one he should never pull a joke on," Bucky had to force himself to not start laughing, getting Tony's attention. "He only did it the one time. Howard made some kind of chemically altered fake lipstick and swapped it for hers. After a few minutes of her wearing it, her body heat turned the red shade bright blue, a perfect match to the color of Steve's uniform. Peggy had been all over the base, working files and attending meetings, before someone finally told her what she looked like. To say she did not appreciate it would be an understatement."

"What did Aunt Peggy do, Barnes?" Tony asked.

"She made sure that for the next three months, that Howard slept alone every single night," Bucky told him. "We never could find out how she did it, but every single dame, wherever we were stationed at the time, would turn Howard down. He was devastated."

"With a few dames even throwing drinks in his face. As far as I know, Peggy never did tell anyone the secret of how she accomplished that task," Steve finished. Tony had a smile on his face, probably trying to picture the playful Howard they knew, and not the stern father that he had known. "Between Howard and Bucky, there were always a couple of dames around."

They were all startled by a knocking on the door. Steve decided to be the brave one, standing and walking over to it. Carefully testing the knob, he found that it was not set to shock at the moment, so he opened the door. They saw Tony's suit standing there with a tray for him to take, which he did.

Taking a step back, the suit then closed the door behind Steve. Bringing the tray over to the coffee table, he put it down, while Bucky tried to figure out how the items, obviously to be a snack, were meant to be used, looking at the warming pot with melted cheese, skewers, chopped vegetable and cubed bread selection before them.

"What is it?" Steve finally asked for the both of them.

"A fondue pot. How do you not know this, Rogers?" Tony asked.

Hearing that, Bucky couldn't help it as he finally lost it, laughing at Steve now sitting in his chair, his red face covering his hands while Tony just sat there, not getting the joke. Looking over at him, Tony asked, "What the hell am I missing, Barnes?"

"Very funny, Victoria!" Steve yelled into the air as he continued to laugh.


Tony sat at the table with Steve and Barnes eating the lunch that had been delivered a couple of minutes ago. He couldn't believe that he was trapped inside of his own Tower, with the man who had killed his parents, and that he was actually enjoying himself. This was not how he had been expecting to spend today. Everyone, especially Pepper, knew that he always wanted to be alone, to hole up in his lab or somewhere else, and not talk or do anything today.

But instead, he had been kidnapped by at least two different soulmates, who it seemed were determined to force the three of them to deal with the significance of today, whether they wanted to or not. But the man he had been hearing about all day was not the one that he had grown up with. His dad had seemed to have been a more carefree, fun, and outgoing than he had thought possible.

Steve and Barnes were the only ones that the Commandos had lost. Had losing the friendship of the two men sitting in front of him now really changed his father that much? They had to have meant a lot to him to turn Howard into the humorless man he had been later in life. Never joking, always so serious. He would have liked to have met his dad from back then. From the many great stories he was hearing, Tony knew that he took after his father a lot more than he ever suspected.

"So, do you think they'll let us out for good behavior?" Tony asked taking another bite of the chicken and pasta dish that he would guess Victoria had cooked. None of the chefs he had ever used made a dish similar to it in any way. It was great. He would have to start requesting it after missions, along with that delicious, blasphemous deep-dish pizza.

"I have a feeling they will let us out when they feel like it," Steve told him.

"What are we going to do to get payback for this confinement?" Barnes then asked with a devious smile towards Steve.

"Oh, I'm sure I can think of a few things for Pepper to do," he told them with his own smile. "I wonder who came up with this idea."

"Vic." "Victoria." They both answered at the same time.

"So sure of yourselves?" he asked looking between them.

"Yes." "Definitely." They then answered.

"Bucky, could you pass the pepper?" Tony asked seeing the item closet to him.

As he handed the item over, it was then that Tony realized what name he had used. Not Barnes. He had been listening to Steve call him Bucky for hours, and now, it seemed to fit the man sitting in front of him a lot more.


Another two hours later, they were finally running out of stories to tell Tony. Steve could not believe how this day had turned out. A few minutes ago a new snack had been delivered, the same brownies with chocolate icing that Victoria had made for them and the hockey team. A large pitcher of very cold milk was also on the tray.

"We have got to be the most well fed prisoners ever," Steve said taking a large bite of his brownie, licking the icing off his fingers.

"Definitely an improvement over what I was fed," Bucky's voice was suddenly not as chipper as it had been previously. Steve had not even thought about the idea behind his comment when he said it.

After a few moments, Tony spoke up, albeit hesitantly, "Bucky...did they put the arm on you right away?"

Steve held his breath, wondering what Bucky was going to do. He never seemed to want to talk about his time with HYDRA, and practically refused to speak with Steve about the second time he was captured. He wondered how the two of them would handle this topic.

"No. It was a long time before Zola arrived at the base to even see what had happened to me. He had already been working for a while inside the S.S.R. or SHIELD...I'm not sure which name they went by at that time. He was able to hide my project with some help. It then took a couple of more months for him and his team to develop it," Bucky explained, rotating the arm and moving his fingers, showing the amazing range of motion, just like a real arm. "At the same time, Zola knew that he couldn't always be there to work on it, so they brought in the cryostasis chamber to keep me in. It was easier than trying to contain me since I could then use the arm to free myself."

"Then it was even later when they came up with the Chair?" Tony cautiously asked.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure how long I was under before they finally had it up and running. They would bring me out to keep trying other brainwashing techniques, trying to break me while the Chair was being built but…they didn't work. And even once it was finished it took the Chair a while before…they finally got it to work."

Steve was surprised at how open Bucky was talking with Tony about this, when he had always been so hesitant. Maybe spending the day reminiscing about such good times was helping make it easier for him.

"Victoria found a note in one of the HYDRA files that stated that maybe one of the reasons the Chair started to work was because they showed Bucky the newspaper article about me going down in the Arctic."

Tony seemed to consider this new piece of information for a moment, before saying, "They used it to mentally break you just enough to get you to the onset of clinical depression. The mind would be much more willing to bend at that point. I went through most of those files and never saw that one. How did Vic find it?" Tony asked.

"Nat didn't tell you?" Steve asked to which Tony just shook his head. "Victoria spent an entire day and went through them, every single one of them, reading the files and watching the videos."

They could both see Tony slightly pale at hearing that. He had watched a lot of the videos, explaining to Steve that he was trying to convince himself that it had been HYDRA who had killed his parents, while just using Bucky as the weapon.

"Vic probably knows more about what they did to me than I do," Bucky said with a huffy smile.

"You let her do that?" he then asked, looking right at Bucky.

"I wasn't going to hide anything about my past from her. We just didn't think that she would be able to do that. Even Steve here gave up trying," Bucky told him. They could see that Tony was working on something in his head, so they just continued to snack on the brownies.

"There is definitely something about her," Tony said finishing off his own brownie, washing it down with a large swig of milk. "I'm glad the two of you finally found Vic…with my help, of course."

"Of course," Bucky smiled at him.


Less than an hour later, they had moved back over to the chairs, discussing anything that came to mind. The three of them had never just sat down and talked for fun before. Bucky had to admit that considering how today started, there was no way any of them would have guessed they would have ended up here.

As they were talking, the door opened, and Tony's suit then walked in with another tray, this one carrying three glasses with a liquor already poured in them. It put the tray on the coffee table and then walked to the corner of the room, shutting down. They all stared at the open door, guessing that their confinement was over.

Tony picked up a glass first, he and Steve then following suit. Taking a sniff, Tony said, "Single malt Scotch," as Steve then held his glass out for a toast. They both followed suit.

"To Howard and Maria. May they never be forgotten, and to the final downfall of HYDRA for being the wretched assholes that they are, and bringing such misery to people," Steve firmly stated.

"Language," he and Tony said at the same time as the three of them saluted, clinked glasses then downed their drinks with a smile.


Author's Note: This was a strange and easy chapter to write. I knew from the beginning that I wanted Tony and Bucky to work through their problem. Remember that Steve informed Tony about his parents right after the events of CA:WS in my story. This has given Tony just under three years to process the information (including 1 year of living and working with Bucky). So, yes...as the author, in my world, this is a gigantic leap forward in their friendship.

Also, for those sharp-eyed people who noticed the fondue pot in A:AofU, let's just pretend Steve never saw it, even though Tony weaponized it, and Bucky doesn't strike me as a 'fondue' person. But he would have heard the term and the story from Howard later on.

karina001 - think that Vic finally just bit off more than she can chew? hehehe