T MINUS ONE WEEK
If Bucky thought Natasha was invested, she was nothing compared to an angry Tony.
Their research revealed that the Winter Soldier hadn't had just one handler. He'd had several. The position kept changing hands over the course of his seventy-year slavery, and though it paid well, it apparently had a high mortality rate.
Considering the handler's proximity to HYDRA's greatest and most temperamental assassin, it wasn't hard to imagine why.
His most recent handler, Alexander Pierce, was already dead. (Upon reading the name, Bucky suddenly recalled an incident with a carton of milk, and his anger flared up irrationally.) But the one prior to that, active duty in the year Tony's parents passed—Vasily Karpov—was still up and kicking.
He'd changed his name and residence several times, trying to cover his tracks after the Triskellion went down. Honestly, it was a pretty good effort. But between the data-mining capacities of JARVIS and the dubiously legal investigation of a couple of spies, he stood no chance.
"Cleveland?!" Tony scoffed, and threw the file down on the table. "Who lives in Cleveland?"
Steve sat with his elbows on the table, fingers intertwined under his nose. "Someone who doesn't want to be found," he muttered darkly.
Tony and Bucky shared a look over the table.
Bucky had developed a new brand of Winter Soldier Glare recently. It was nearly as stony as the old one he'd worn that fateful day on the Helicarrier, but now it sported the slightest glint of righteous anger.
"Well," said Tony, and he shoved back his chair. "Too bad for him."
Buttoning his suit coat, and with a feral grin, he said, "Let's go pay a house visit."