Chapter 73
Bucky Barnes was brought to site where they'd gathered after the explosion at the Accords signing with the world watching closely, waiting to see what would happen to the soldier turned prisoner of war.
He and Steve walked into the building, well aware of the eyes that were watching, as Toni glanced around and saw their faces, a mixture of suspicion and sympathy for her friend.
"Why is he not restrained?" Ross said as he barged up to them. "He's a dangerous man, regardless of whether or not you think he's guilty of his crimes."
"I'd like to remind you that no official charges have been filed," Toni said to him, annoyed that the man could somehow deem fit to take over an investigation which he had no business leading. Not when the UN had put together their own task force to look into the incident. And Thaddeus Ross most certainly was not on that force. "And as such, James is merely a person of interest in your case. He's come here in a show of good faith to allow the UN Council investigating the matter of the explosion to clear him of his guilty."
Ross turned to her with a furious look on his face, "Be that as it may, Stark, you cannot deny that he is a dangerous man. He's capable of great damage, and I don't feel particularly up to seeing that strength firsthand in the chance that you are wrong, and he is indeed responsible for the attack."
"Unfortunately, your comfort, does not justify subduing an American citizen without proper cause," she told him in a mock sweet voice. "It's a kind of discrimination if you will, one which I've submitted a proposal for to be added into the next draft of the Accords. And it's Stark-Rogers."
His face turned red, as he made a move to grab Bucky, most likely to shove him towards the direction of the interrogation room that had been set up, but she stepped in front of him.
"Move," Ross told her, as Steve stepped up beside her.
"You are not on the panel selected to question Mr Barnes," she told him, not backing down, and offering a smile. "I believe the panel has selected Mr Ross, Everett, if you will, as the American representative. So if you do not mind stepping out of the way, we'd like to get on with the investigation."
"You think you're so powerful, don't you?" Ross sneered at her. "Just because you have a shiny suit that you refuse to hand over to those who could use it for better purposes. Barnes is guilty of his crime, and one way or another he's going to be brought to justice."
"You keep using that word, but I do not think you actually know what it means," she said, "Was it justice you were trying to bring Bruce to when you hunted him down? Because it seemed like you were trying to incarcerate him as well without any evidence. You may dislike the enhanced, but that is not a reason to pin a crime on Bucky for something he did not commit. You know as well as I do that the footage was faked. The expert results have already started revealing that. Bucky is going to be cleared of his crimes. And to try and steer the investigation in your direction of bias with intimidation is nothing more than obstruction of justice. You are trying to charge an innocent man of crimes he did not commit, and you fail to see the bigger picture."
"Which is?" Ross sneered at her, as the Accords council started to approach them.
"If James Buchanan Barnes didn't set off the bomb, then who did?" she asked, just as Everett Ross approached them.
"Ah Mrs Stark-Rogers," Everett Ross greeted her, "Thank you for bringing in Mr Barnes. We do appreciate your cooperation in this matter."
"Not a problem," she smiled at the man, as she watched Thaddeus Ross seethe from behind her. "Thank you for allowing us to bring in James so we can get to the bottom of what is truly going on here."
"Of course," Everett said, as he looked over at Bucky. "Mr Barnes, if you don't mind coming this way with us? We have a room all set up for you."
Bucky looked at her pensively, silently asking if he should trust the man in question and she gave him a nod. She may not have known a lot about Everett Ross, but she'd had JARVIS run a background check on him the minute he'd been selected to be on the panel. And while there wasn't a lot on him, CIA and all, the files JARVIS had hacked in the short amount of time they'd had showed that he was a good man. She may not trust him enough to turn the investigation over to him fully, but she definitely trusted him to act ethically and without the same biases that Secretary Ross had.
Bucky gave her a small smile, as he followed the men with Ross down the hall.
"I'm afraid I cannot let you in on the questioning," Everett apologised to them, "Conflict of interest and all. However we will be showing the questioning on the monitors as we understand the nature of the investigation has attracted a lot of interested parties."
"Of course," she said with a smile, "I'll leave the investigation in your hands, Mr Ross."
"Everett," the man said kindly, "If you will."
"Then I must insist you also call me Toni," she said, and the man gave her a smile, before walking away with the men to question Bucky.
"You haven't won this yet," Thaddeus Ross warned her, "We're flying in an expert to question Barnes. One which will show if he still has malicious HYDRA programming in his brain. And if so, it's going to get a lot harder for your boy."
"Maybe," she said with a shrug, "But we have truth and justice on our side. What do you have? Intimidation? Threats? I wouldn't get ahead of yourself Mr Secretary. And in the meantime, maybe you should start looking into the explosion to see who actually caused it."
The man glowered at her, before stalking off, presumably to watch the interrogation. Steve approached her as she led him into a room, so the two of them could do the same.
Bucky was interrogated by the Accords council for nearly two hours before Ross' man was brought in to further test his state of mind.
She'd run a background check on him as well, and saw that Theo Broussard was a psychiatrist with a well-known reputation and no red flags that she could find easily. She did have her suspicions on the man, given how Thaddeus Ross was holding the man over them like some sort of trump card. But there was nothing she could find that would either indicate a past relationship with the man or anything she could sense as a reason to be wary of him.
She'd watched Bucky's interrogation with Steve, as they asked him his whereabouts and cross referenced it with the footage they had of him out and about the day of the explosion and any testimony they had from other New Yorkers. And well, it was looking good for them so far.
There as a case that could be made that Bucky could have been in Vienna, given he had access to her resources, which included private jets, so he very well could have been in Vienna without people knowing any better, so it was why she'd handed over all records of her jet's private travel for the last week. It certainly didn't help either that Bucky, while no longer under the control of HYDRA, was still a trained assassin, and those skills certainly did not go away overnight.
But they had a solid case, and she wasn't overly worried about it, given that they had abundant evidence on their side to prove his innocence.
Broussard entered the room then, as he gestured for the other men to give them some privacy. And given that the session was still recording and being broadcasted to the members in the building, Everett Ross and his fellow council members left the room.
"Good afternoon Mr Barnes," the man said with a hint of an accent. "How are you today?"
"I've been better," Bucky said, drily. "You know, when I'm not being accused of terrorism."
"Yes, a terrible accusation indeed," Broussard said, looking at him curiously. "And yet you do not seem worried about it."
"I didn't do it," Bucky said firmly, "I trust in the system. And I trust in Toni Stark-Rogers. She hasn't steered me wrong yet, and if this is what needs to be done to clear my name then I trust her. So I'll go through this process."
"Must be nice, having someone as powerful as Mrs Stark-Rogers behind you," Broussard commented. "Gives you a certain sense of untouchability, no?"
"I don't understand what you mean," Bucky said with a frown, as he played dumb. "She's my friend, and I didn't commit the crime. I trust her to help me."
"You seem defensive," the man said leaning in, "Not as calm as you were a few minute ago, are you? But then again, when a mouse realizes it has been caught by a trap, it too is left desperately hoping for a way out. Much like you do now."
"Wouldn't you feel a bit defensive if someone was trying to pin a terrorist attack on you?" Bucky said, slightly annoyed at him. "It has nothing to do with my perceived guilt."
"Or maybe, you feel guilt for something else," the man said. "Guilt for all your past victims, perhaps? Guilt for anyone who stood in your way when you were the Winter Soldier, and guilt for anyone who will stand in your way."
"Those days are over," Bucky said.
"Are they?" the man said, as he pulled out a red notebook. "Желание."
"Is that Russian?" Steve asked, looking confused.
"Ржавый, Семнадцать, Рассвет," the man continued, and Bucky's eyes grew wide.
"No!" Bucky said, as the screen went black.
"What happened?" Steve demanded, "Where did it go?"
"I don't know," she stood, as she moved towards the interrogation room, "JARVIS can you bring it back online?"
"Trying," JARVIS said to her.
She moved down the halls quickly, as Steve followed swiftly behind her, both of them trying to make their way to the interrogation room to find out just what had happened and if Bucky was okay. And Margaret Hamilton help her if he wasn't.
There was a loud crashing sound then, as the wall behind which Bucky was behind collapsed, the man clearly having punched through it.
She looked in his eyes, and saw something there she hadn't seen in a while.
She saw the Winter Soldier.
"Oh shit," she swore. "JARVIS how quickly can you send me my suit?"
"No!" Steve said to her, "If he is triggered you can't fight against him. Not without your suit, and definitely not in your condition. What if something happens to you?"
She wanted to yell back at him, but she knew he was right.
"It would take five minutes to get here from the hotel room," JARVIS told her, and she swore. She was never leaving it anywhere else again.
Five minutes was a lot of time for the Winter Solider to damage anyone and anything that stood in his way.
And if he'd been triggered by Broussard, then who knew what his orders had been.
"Okay," she said, as Steve held her gaze. "I'll work on clearing the building."
"I'll contain him," Steve said, as he saw the Winter Soldier stalk towards him.
She gave him a nod as she ran backwards, trying to usher everyone out of the building before the Soldier came for them all.
She could hear the fighting behind her, as she ran away from the fighting.
She hated it, hated feeling so invalid and incapable of fighting, but she knew she didn't have a choice. She was pregnant, and she wasn't about to put her baby at risk, not when she knew Steve could handle himself.
"We're on our way," Natasha said, over their comms, "ETA one minute. Heading to your level now, Steve."
She felt a sense of relief, knowing Harry and Natasha were close by. Wanda and Pietro had gone back to the hotel to get some rest, and Rhodey had been meeting with other members of the Accords council, trying to work on some of the sections which needed to be heavily rewritten.
She saw a woman fall over as the crowd ran towards the door, desperate to get out and she ran towards the woman, and helped her up.
"I think I hurt my ankle," the woman said, looking distressed as she looked behind her.
"Lean on me, okay?" she told the woman, as she wrapped the younger woman's arm around her neck and helped her walk out of the building. "We're almost there. Just a little bit further."
"What happened?" the woman said, confused. "He was doing so well when we were questioning him. What happened?"
And wasn't that the trillion-dollar question?
Was Broussard HYDRA? What had he been saying to Bucky before he'd triggered the Winter Solider? And was he tied to the bombing that had occurred?
She had so many questions, and not enough answers.
Bucky had come to Vienna because he'd trusted her. And in turn she'd gotten him triggered into the thing he'd tried so hard to overcome.
"I don't know," Toni said finally, and the woman looked at her scrutinizing. They'd existed the building then, and she turned back to face it.
"How many are still inside?" she asked JARVIS.
"I can sense three life forms," JARVIS told her.
"Three?" she said sharply.
"The Winter Solider has left the building," Steve said over the comms. "He's headed onto the street. Going to pursue a course of action."
"Be careful," she told him, as she wrapped her arms around herself.
"I'll do my best," he promised her, as he must have taken off pursuit.
Her phone began to ring then, and JARVIS patched the call in to her comms.
"Toni?" Ava said, a bit frantic, "I'm watching the news and they just reported that Bucky broke out of interrogation? They say that he's the Winter Solider and that a UN Task force is in pursuit! What's happening? I thought everything was under control and that it was just a simple questioning? Please I need to know what's going on."
"I don't know," she said, hating herself for not having better answers than that. Because she was Toni Stark. Wasn't she supposed to have all the answers? She was always supposed to always be one step ahead of the game, always supposed to have the answers to everything.
And she was completely on the dark.
"Toni?" Ava prompted her. "Look, this isn't on you. I know where your mind is going. I promise, I'm not mad at you nor do I find you at all responsible for this. But I just need to know what happened, okay? Please?"
"I'm sorry," she said softly, as she held herself tightly. "Ross, Thaddeus Ross, flew in a specialist to question Barnes. I should have questioned it a bit more, should have looked deeper into it. But I couldn't find anything that showed that he was anything other than who he said he was. He started saying these words to Bucky in Russian, and well, just like that he was gone. Steve, Nat, and Harry are in pursuit. They're trying to bring him in."
"Good," Ava said with a nod. "I don't want you going after him. Not in your condition."
"You know?" Toni said, a bit surprised. Because well, they really hadn't told anyone yet other than Peter. But she supposed if everyone seemingly was able to guess that she was pregnant then maybe they ought to stop hiding the truth.
"Biologist, remember?" Ava said dryly. "Stay safe, okay, Toni? You're my older sister, even if not biologically, and I don't want anything happening to you or the baby."
"I will," Toni said swallowing. "He's not responsible Ava. Something is going on here. Something bigger than I know, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. Someone is trying very hard to frame him for crimes he didn't commit and once I figure out who and why, I will bring them in to justice. I will make sure they face the consequences for it. Bucky will not go down for this if I have anything to say about it."
"Thank you," Ava said softly. "Can you just promise me one thing? I know it's not easy, but please, I need to ask you for this."
"What is it?" Toni asked her cousin.
"Bring him home," Ava said, a slightly tremble in her voice. "He's not responsible for this. He didn't ask to be triggered and to do anything that he's going to do because of Winter. Please, make sure he sees that. Make sure he knows he's not responsible and that he comes home."
Unlike Bruce.
The words were left unsaid between them, and she felt her heart ache for her cousin. It was clear to her that Bruce leaving still hurt her, even if she was trying to move on with her life since he'd left.
"I'll do my best," Toni promised her cousin. "I can't say that it'll be easy, but I'll try my best to bring him back, okay? It's not going to be easy, but I'll talk to him and bring him home."
"Thank you," Ava said softly. "For everything, Toni. You've done so much for all of us, and I just want you to know that we do appreciate everything that you do. Even if you can't bring him home, it means a lot that you're going to at least try."
"Of course," she reassured Ava. "I'll do everything in my power. Whatever's going on here, I'm going to get to the bottom of it. One way or another. I don't care how long it takes. Someone is trying very hard to discredit us in the eyes of the world, and I'm going to figure out who and why and bring the true guilty parties in. Bucky won't be held responsible for this, not if I have anything to say about it."
"Stark!" she heard a voice boom her name and she sighed.
"I gotta go, Ava. But I promise I'll give you a call as soon as I learn anything," she said, as she hung up the phone only to turn around to come face to face with Thaddeus Ross.
"Ross," she greeted, tiredly.
"You said he was stable!" Ross spat in her face. "You said you healed him of everything HYDRA had done to him. You stood in court and said he was no longer a threat to society."
"I said we were working on removing all the damage that had been done to his brain as a result of HYDRA," she corrected him carefully, knowing if she worded anything incorrectly, that he'd pounce. "That he was a prisoner of war and we were treating his PTSD, and in turn trying to solve the damage in his brain. And we were doing that. The Winter Soldier was no longer the default configuration that James Barnes had to push down on a regular basis."
"Then who just broke out of my interrogation room?" he asked her aggressively. "Because that sure as hell looked like the Winter Soldier."
Not your interrogation room, she wanted to correct, but she held her tongue.
"Look," she said, standing her ground. "Barnes was fine. Then your man went in there and started reciting some Russian words at him and all of a sudden, he was no longer Barnes. How about you explain that to me, Mr Secretary? What did your man do to him? Because from where I was standing it looked a lot like HYDRA got their hands on the Winter Soldier and triggered an escape. Mind explaining that to me? How did HYDRA get to the Winter Solider, Secretary Ross? Just who did you call in to question James Buchanan Barnes?"
He spluttered at that, "I assure you we are looking into what happened. But that doesn't change the fact that you claimed that Barnes was nothing more than an enhanced individual who was free of HYDRA. And yet he went on a rampage and is now God knows where. Do you know how many lives are at risk now because you wouldn't let us restrain him? Maybe if we had the streets of Vienna would have been a while lot safer."
"He was not a criminal," she reminded him firmly, "He still isn't. He may have escaped but he hasn't actually broken any laws, especially given that he wasn't under arrest. As for your other point, I'd like to remind you that the mind is a complex thing. We've been doing our best to rid him of his conditioning. I'd ask Dr Strange to testify to that, but he hasn't been seen in months since his accident. So you're just going to have to take my word for it. James Buchanan Barnes is not a criminal, and to treat him as such is a great injustice."
"You can spew that nonsense til the sun sets," Ross said, unimpressed with her. "But at the end of the day, he's still the Winter Solider and he has more blood on his hands than any of us truly even know. He should have been locked up for his crimes and instead you paraded him around the country claiming him to be an innocent man. What happens when he causes more civilian deaths? When he takes more lives? The world will demand your head when that happens, and all the money in the world won't be able to help you buy your way out of the mess that you will find yourself in."
"You're talking about locking up a prisoner of war," she told him. "You're former military. Would you lock up any of your soldiers if they'd been captured while fighting the enemy?"
"I would if they'd done a fraction of the things Barnes did," Ross said firmly. "Your man is a criminal. It's as simple as that. You may have fooled the rest of the world with your dog and pony show, but they're starting to see the truth of it all. The truth about all of you."
"And that is?" she asked him, as she stood a little straighter.
"That all of you Avengers, are dangerous and need to be locked up. You may have saved us from the Chitauri, but since then you've been nothing but a public menace and a danger to society and the sooner that you lot are locked up, the better. Then the world will be safe from the real threats," he said as he gave her a mocking smile. "I hope for your sake that when you find Barnes he hasn't caused too much damage. It's going to be real hard for you to talk your way out of this one now. Because from where I'm standing, his guilt is starting to look more and more clear."
He stalked off then, and she was left staring after him.
And she hated to admit it, but he was right. They may still have the evidence on their side, but unless she acted fast, public opinion was going to turn on them. And when fear turned to rage, that was when things would start to get a whole lost messier for them all.
She just hoped that she was able to get to the bottom of all of this, one way or another, and find out the truth.
