Chapter 47
The plane ride was silent as Clint piloted their way back. She sat near Barnes, looking over her tablet of the newest Stark Industries prototype for a suit that piloted itself with the help of JARVIS. If she could just get the suits to be self-autonomous then she'd have a real defense mechanism on her hands. Each suit JARVIS piloted took up a considerable amount of processing power, and she knew the best way to optimize it and have an amount of suits capable of making a decent difference would be way too much for JARVIS to handle on his own and still help her pilot the suit. JARVIS may be advanced, but it was too much to ask for just him.
But if she had more AIs, then perhaps it would help take some of the load off of JARVIS.
Besides, it had been a while since she created a new child, and really, she missed just being able to build. It seemed these days that she was so busy with everything else in her life and she didn't have enough time to just build. She didn't regret becoming Iron Woman; not when she knew how much of a difference it made.
But nothing came close to the feeling of engineering. Of creating something with her own two hands. And she didn't think that anything would ever replace the joy she felt from that.
She glanced over at Barnes as they prepared for landing, and she could see him sitting stiffly. She'd offered him a spare tablet to entertain himself, but he'd turned the offer down, opting to stare at his hands instead for the entire ride. She wondered if he was nervous, as she knew she would be in the situation. Nervous of what was to come. Of seeing Steve again on better terms. Of the world learning the truth of his situation.
She stood up as Clint landed the plane and gave them the all clear.
"It's going to be okay," she told Barnes softly, "Steve misses you. He's going to be happy to see you again."
"I'm not the same man he remembers," Barnes shook his head, "He wants his friend back. The one he knew in the forties. But that man is long gone. I'm not the one he wants."
"You've changed," she told him simply, "You may not be the same person you once were but you're still you. Steve wants you back. All of you. You may not be who you were back then.], but neither is Steve. A lot has happened in his life since the day you fell. And he's carried that guilt with him for all these years. He's going to be happy just to get you back."
He didn't look like he believed her, and she reached out and squeezed his arm. The doors opened then, and she walked out of the plane first, wanting to brace anyone who was out there to meet them.
Which of course just happened to be Steve.
"You're back early," he said, as he wrapped his arms around her. She sighed deeply as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him gently on the lips.
"I missed you," she murmured, and he moved to kiss her again, but she pulled back from him.
"Is everything okay?" He asked her, frowning slightly.
"I need to tell you something," she let out a breath, and he looked at her expectantly. "I lied to you. I didn't go to Linz for SI work. I went there for another reason. I just didn't want to tell you about it."
He looked confused at that, before his eyes widened as he looked at something behind her. Or more accurately, someone behind her.
"Bucky?" he asked, shocked. "What are you doing here?"
He glanced between the two of them as understanding dawned upon him.
"Why didn't you tell me you found him?" he asked her, a bit upset, "I could have gone with you. It was dangerous for you to go alone."
"I knew I wasn't in danger," she said with a shake of her head, "Besides I had Clint with me."
"You still lied to me," he said, crossing his arms. "I thought you trusted me, Toni."
"I do," she said, reaching out to take his hand. "I didn't want to get your hopes up, Steve. What if he wasn't there?"
"Then I would have looked for other leads," he argued.
"And if he didn't want to come back with me?" she raised a brow at him. "Because I gave Barnes his options. I told him he didn't have to come back with me if he didn't want to. Would you have given him that option?"
"He deserves to come home!" he said quickly, "Austria isn't his home! Brooklyn is!"
"Steve," she said gently, "He's still a person. And I know this is going to be hard to hear, but he's had so little choices of his own in his life. He deserved to make this choice himself. And he chose to come home. He chose to be here."
Steve looked torn, and she wondered if he was angry with her. They hadn't had any fights as a couple. Nothing beyond what to watch on tv or when he thought she needed to eat proper meals. She wondered if this would be their fight.
"You still shouldn't have lied to me," he said after a moment. "But I get why you did. I wouldn't have listened to you, and you were right. Thank you, Sweetheart. For bringing him home."
He kissed her gently on the cheek, before turning to look at Barnes tentatively.
"It's good to see you, Bucky," Steve said, as Barnes came closer to them. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you chose to come back."
Barnes looked uncomfortable but nodded, "I'm tired of living in the shadows," he admitted. "And Stark offered me a chance to have more than that. Besides, if she puts up with a punk like you, she could probably handle anything."
Steve grinned at that. "Not sure how she does it," he said, looking at her fondly, "Every time I think I catch up with her brilliant plans, she comes out with a billion other things that surprise me."
She grinned at him as he wrapped an arm around her.
"You must be tired," Steve said suddenly, looking at all of them. "When was the last time any of you ate? Come inside, let me make you guys something to eat and then get some rest. You must have had a long several hours what with flying all the way there and back."
"Food would be great," Clint said tiredly. "Let's go inside too. It's getting a bit cold."
She nodded, as she followed behind Steve. She could see Barnes trailing behind all of them, so she slowed her pace to keep up with him.
"How are you doing with all of this?" she asked him carefully. "I know all of this can seem a bit intimidating."
"I'm fine," he said shortly. She didn't push him, and he glanced over at her. "I still don't understand why you're doing this. I get that it makes Steve happy and that you're doing this for me. But why are you doing this? What are you getting out of this?"
She was silent for a few moments, not really sure how she wanted to respond, "I blamed my father for that car accident for decades. I thought he was driving drunk and killed her. But all this time HYDRA had been responsible. They'd used you to kill both of them. They turned you into a weapon and killed my parents. And if I give you your free will back, if I destroy the weapon that they used, then I can give them the justice they deserve. I may have hated my father but I loved my mother."
She paused for a second, "I also don't talk a lot about it, but when I was in Afghanistan I was tortured. And quite honestly, I didn't always know if I'd crack or not. Part of me fears if I didn't get out when I did and I was kept a hostage longer, then I may have given in. As much as I would have hated myself, I was in so much pain. And what if I'd made the weapons for them? They held you as a prisoner for seventy years. I was held for three months. And what we went through doesn't even come close to being comparable. So I want to help you. The two of us saved ourselves in the end. We got ourselves unkidnapped. But that doesn't mean we need to be the only ones fighting for us. I don't know where I would have been without the people in my life. And you still have people who care about you. Steve still talked about you all the time."
He glanced at her, and she continued, "I want to help you, not just because it was the right thing to do, but because you deserve it. But that doesn't mean any of this is going to be smooth sailing. So if you ever feel overwhelmed or like you need to take a step back, just let me know. And if you don't want to talk to me, just ask JARVIS to enable black out protocol. Then no one will bother you until you turn it off."
"Jarvis?" he asked, sounding a bit confused.
"My AI," she explained to him, "He won't invade your privacy or anything, but generally, J watches over the entire tower. He helps me manage my life, runs all high-powered operations for me, helps me pilot the suit, and basically is the reason my life isn't in complete disarray. J, say hi to our new occupant."
"Hello Mr Barnes," JARVIS said through one of the speakers in the hall. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Please do not hesitate to reach out if there is anything that I can do to make your time here more comfortable or if you have any inquiries."
"You made him?" Barnes breathed, and she remembered a story Steve had told her months ago about how Steve and Barnes had attended her father's Stark Expo years ago before they'd gone off to the war. That Barnes was something of a sci fi buff himself.
"If you ever want to see any tech feel free to come down to the lab," she offered him as they approached the kitchen. "I have a lot of prototypes I'm working on, both for the Avengers Initiative and for Stark Industries. But also, I was hoping you'd come down sooner rather than later anyways. I want to outfit you with a new arm."
"Why?" he asked her, sounding a bit surprised, "This one works well."
"It's HYDRA tech," she deadpanned. "It's got nothing on Stark tech. I may not know too much about biological limbs, but I've been meaning to reach out to some scientists in the field to see if we could combine something or the other to create artificial bodies for AIs. I'm sure we could apply a similar logic to create an arm for you. Plus, if I look at yours, I could reverse engineer it easily enough. It might be functional but tell me honestly. Does it work like a regular arm? Or are there lags that you've just accounted for? You lean heavily towards your left side, which implies to me that the arm is heavy, and you're just used to accounting for the weight. Are you in pain from the arm? Or does it feel like a regular limb?"
"It's functional," he repeated.
"Functional isn't good enough," she said, as Steve gestured for the two of them to sit down. He'd started preparing some dinner for them, and her mouth watered as she smelled the food cooking. He must have started when they'd radioed in saying, they were close. Honestly, if he didn't already know she loved him, she probably would tell him now just for cooking for them.
"Functional isn't good enough," Ava said as she came into the room, "Plus functional has never satisfied Toni. Try telling her one of her products are good enough and she'll go away and come back with an itemized list of things she can improve on it."
"Good enough is the downfall of tech companies," her nose wrinkled. "Hammer Industries tech is technically 'good enough'. That doesn't mean it's any good. Good enough just means that there are still things to improve on. So let me give you a better arm. I'm sure whatever I come up with would be a billion times better than what HYDRA gave you."
Barnes looked at Steve for help, but her boyfriend just shrugged. "I've learned that the best way to make her happy is to not limit her in the lab," Steve said, "Unless she's in there an unhealthy amount. But otherwise, it makes her happy to let her do things like this. I'm sure she'll find other uses for the tech beyond just you, if you're worried about her wasting her time. She made me an art tablet that felt like using a real sketchbook and pencil. Then sold it to the markets once she was happy with it."
"Think about the benefits," Harry said. He'd been in the room already, doing prep work for Steve as he chopped up some herbs and such. "She could release a line of prosthetics out to the masses. It would completely change the game, give what's currently out there."
She nodded in agreement, "I could also do some military contracts to fit vets with prosthetics who were injured in the line of duty. And have several ranges, based on what people can afford. And maybe set up a charity to try and outfit as many people with the prosthetics as well. It would be great for SI, but also could make a difference in people's lives."
Steve gave her a fond look and she grinned back at him.
"You're being disgusting again," Clint said, throwing a tomato at her and she stuck her tongue out at him.
"Let me show you where you're staying," Ava interjected, "Before this turns into some sort of food fight. I'd like to actually be able to eat dinner tonight, instead of finding it all over the walls."
"One time!" Clint argued, "It happened one time and now everyone blames me for it."
"One time too many," Steve said with a sigh, "I worked hard on that lasagne."
"I definitely cannot be blamed for this," Toni said solemnly, "I was in the lab when all of this went down. This is just Clint's fault."
"Nice guys," he pouted at them all, "I barely even did anything."
"Make sure you give him the grand tour," Toni called out as Ava and Barnes walked away from them.
"I'm going to go get Nat," Harry said, nodding at them both. She grinned after her cousin, not saying a thing, as she, Steve, and Clint were left together in the room.
"I'm just going to leave," Clint told them, "I'm not even going to come up with an excuse. Just don't want to be here when the two of you start flirting with each other."
"We're not that bad," she protested, and Clint snorted.
"Please I walked in on the two of you making out here last week. I had to wear a suit to sanitize the area to make sure it was completely clean."
"We didn't even do anything!" she protested as Steve blushed. "Just made out."
"In a common area," Clint winced. "Just have J summon me whenever dinner is ready. Before that, I'll just assume that it's not safe for me to come down here."
Which left her alone with Steve.
"Are you mad?" she asked, a little unsure. She didn't regret what she did, but she knew that it was probably better to make sure.
He came around from where the sauce was cooking and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"I'm not happy that you lied to me about where you were going," Steve said gently, "But you explained why you did it. And you had a good reason for it. You're right, I would have tried to convince Bucky to come home with me and wouldn't have listened to him, not really. Because this is his home and I want him here with me."
"He's not the same man you once knew," Toni warned him. "A lot's happened to him since the time you were friends. And you might never get the 'Bucky' you once knew as a friend back. Can you accept that?"
He looked pained at that, "Part of me hates that fact, because it means I've let him down. If only I'd been quicker or stronger, I could have held onto him. He wouldn't have gone through any of the things he went through. And the fact that he's not the same person, it feels a bit like my fault. Like I'm the reason all of this happened to him. But if I could just get him to remember who he once was then maybe it would make this a little bit better."
He exhaled, as she let him continue to speak, "But you're right. It's not fair to him to expect him to be the same person. Not after everything he's gone through. That's a disservice to him because it downplays the torture and pain he's gone through. And He deserves better than that. So as much as it kills me, I can accept it."
"Good," she said, and he pulled her tighter.
"I also don't want you to feel like you have to lie to me because you think I'll react poorly," he said, as she cupped his face. "Tell me the truth and then call me out on it if you disagree with my reaction. But I want us to be open with each other."
She nodded, "Okay," she said with a small smile. "I can do that."
He pulled her in for a kiss and she beamed as she moved against his lips, forgetting about everything around her.
"My eyes!" Harry said loudly, as he walked back into the room. "Spare my innocent eyes."
She heard a snorting sound as she pulled away from Steve.
"You're anything but innocent, Carter-Sousa," Natasha said giving him a sly grin and she stared between the two of them questioningly.
Was there something she'd missed?
Harry gave her an oblivious look when she glanced at him and he simply gave her a nonchalant shrug.
She definitely would be questioning him more about that at a later time, for now she was very curious about what it was that was going on between her cousin and the superspy.
"Dinner's ready," Steve told them, and she tried to sneak over and steal a bite before Steve brought it over to the table and he shook his head at her. "You know the rules, wait until it's on the table and everyone's down for dinner."
"You won't even let me break the rules this once?" she pouted at him as she helped carry the food over. "I thought you loved me."
"I do but I also know that if I let everyone get into the food before it's on the table we'll never have a proper sit down meal," Steve gave her an amused look.
"The Steve I knew was never this domestic," she heard a teasing voice as Ava and Barnes returned to the room, "He'd always just grab whatever dinner that day was and run out. Always on the move, that one."
"Someone had to keep your scrawny ass out of trouble," Steve shot back, and Barnes let out a deep laugh.
"I'm sorry, I think you're misremembering our entire relationship," Barnes said. "I was the one often getting you out of fights."
"It's true," Ava said solemnly, "Mom used to tell us about it.
Steve scowled at them, "Now you're all just taking sides against me. this isn't fair. And after I spent all day making dinner."
"You spent like an hour," Harry deadpanned, "And half of that was asking JARVIS every ten minutes how far out Toni was still. Face it, you might have cooked this for us, but it was very much because Toni was coming home, and you were excited about that fact."
She squeezed his hand over the table as Bruce came down to join them, sitting beside Ava before giving her a quick peck on the lips. Harry looked away after making a big show of it, but Barnes had a surprised look on his face as he glanced over at Ava.
Interesting.
All of this was proving to be very interesting indeed.
"Now you can eat," Steve said, and she grinned at him as he plated some spaghetti for her, then getting her some garlic bread and vegetables.
"I love you," she said, and Harry groaned at her.
"I'm trying to eat," her cousin said. "Can the two of you please stop flirting for more than a few minutes so that I can manage to get some food down?"
"But it's my civic duty as your older cousin to make your life as miserable as possible," she teased him, and she could see Ava roll her eyes as Bruce offered her a slice of garlic bread.
"So where's Peggy and Daniel today?" Steve asked Ava, "I haven't seen them in a little bit."
"They wanted to go away for a few days," Ava told them, "I think they wanted to make up for some of the time that the two of them lost, what with everything that happened. I got them to promise to call if they needed anything, but I think they'll be fine. Mom's been doing a lot better recently, and Dad's always been fine, health wise."
"Good," she said, "I'm glad they're making time for the things that are important. Uncle Daniel asked if I could give him the keys for the Colorado house, but I doubt the two of them will do any skiing or anything. Aunt Peggy always said there were far more enjoyable ways of getting her thrills than tying two boards to her feet and launching herself down a hill."
"Instead she'd rather take on several enemies at once," Harry grinned.
"Sounds like she was quite the dame," Bucky noted, for the first time since sitting down. "She always was so energetic when we were younger. I think half the men in the unit were terrified of her and the other half were in love with her."
"Which half were you?" Ava asked him and he grinned.
"Oh definitely terrified of her," Barnes said without hesitation. "I saw what she did to the men in training. I'm not embarrassed to admit that she terrified me. And with good reason. Your mother was one of the best soldiers in the entire unit."
"She was amazing," Steve said fondly, as she squeezed his hand, "Still is. Everything with HYDRA put her through, she still managed to turn her life around and come back from it all. She's always been a fighter."
She was about to say something, as a loud crack of thunder sounded in the sky, followed by a shot of lighting.
She stood up in her chair quickly, knowing it meant that they had a guest. Someone whom they hadn't seen since the last time the Avengers assembled.
Steve caught her gaze, as they walked out onto the landing pad on that level. And sure enough, there was Thor, standing with Loki beside him.
"I hope I am not interrupting anything," Thor said as he looked at all of them.
"No," Steve said with a shake of his head, "You're just in time for dinner actually. Unless there is something urgent that the two of you need to discuss?"
Loki looked uncomfortable at being around them all, probably because the last time he was with the Avengers, they were busy fighting him. Even if he was under the influence of the mind stone.
"No, nothing that cannot wait," Thor shook his head, "I was visiting with Jane and brought Loki along. He's been working too hard as of late, and he needs a break. At least for a few weeks."
"I'm fine," Loki said, sounding like a petulant child, and she wondered how many times they'd had this argument so far.
"Sounds great," she said, cutting the two of them off from fighting, "Why don't you both come inside and join us for dinner?"
"Very well, Lady of Iron," Thor said with a beam, "Let us feast as we catch up with our brothers and sisters in arms."
Loki gave an exasperated sigh as he followed them back into the tower.
Well, now the Avengers had all gathered under her roof, and she could only assume that things were about to get interesting.
