James Buchanan Barnes has felt chilled to the born for well over seventy years.
From growing up in the Depression to being an unwilling participant in a super secret bad boy's club to finding himself half aware of fighting his supposed long time best friend off of a man that had zero enhancements.
That just learned his parents didn't die in a car accident like he'd been told. That literally watched his mother and father take their last breath. That just found out his supposed friend and teammate had lied to him for who knows how long and used him to find his parent's murderer on his dime.
Bucky slash Winter may have been turned into a monster but James on the other hand refused to allow his singular, continuously, failed mission be fulfilled.
Disarming the other super solider was pathetically easy. How Iron Man wound up on his back was chalked up wholly to not being able to focus. The standing "Kill On Sight" order was set in place after the child, at six no less, broke himself out of his very first kidnapping all on his own. There wasn't a person in that hidden compound that didn't have at least a broken bone or third degree burns from the make shift bomb the boy made and that terrified Hydra.
It just made both Winter and James proud.
He'd avoided the man at all costs through out his life. No matter how many times he was wiped the thought lingered. 'Antonio Stark must live'. Both Winter and James saw that the brain he had needed to be protected at all cost. They shadowed him through his life and watched him stumble and fall, create and destroy, nearly die and then come out stronger afterwards.
Winter didn't flinch when he'd heard that the man was kidnapped in the middle of Afghanistan. James was confident in the man's abilities and only grew worried after they'd found the video on Obadiah Stane's servers. It was taking Antonio much longer than it ever had to escape capture.
At first they'd thought it was because he was out of practice after so many years of semi safety. Then they thought it was because the man was dragged out in the middle of the desert and would need more than his longest record of four day's capture to make it out of the dry heat that surrounded him.
They'd got into the servers easier than it should have been and found a secret back door under the name of J.A.R.V.I.S. that granted him entrance. The name had sounded familiar at the time. A name lost to the cryo-sleep and wiped from his mind through way of electricity, but a familiar name nonetheless.
J.A.R.V.I.S. acted somewhat like a virus that was, what seemed like very recently, embedded in every nook and cranny of every single server available. It was how they found the video of Antonio beaten and bleeding with what looked like a car battery sitting in his lap.
He was forced to retreat before he was able to do anything about the situation and called back to the Hydra base that demanded his presence. He was loath to leave the man on his own but knew if he had refused, he'd have been hunted down and wiped once again.
No matter how much James fought against Winter they both knew that they didn't want to be wiped till they knew Antonio was out of his temporary prison. They had no doubt in either of their minds that those sharp brown eyes and viciously sarcastic mouth would make it back to his home in Malibu.
They'd seen the birth of Iron Man just before having ice set their bones in place once again.
It was the first time they'd gone down with little fight and the ghost of a smile on their face. They went down with updated orders for his "Kill On Sight" list. An update they would continue to ignore as they had for all these years.
Winter had it set in his mind that if Antonio decided that he had to die for his part in the elder Stark's murder then he'd accept it without complaint.
James agreed with him.
Agreed they would accept responsibility.
They had caught Antonio's eyes though.
Those sharp brown eyes that help a deep sadness but a tone of acceptance. Antonio had already known, or at least suspected, The Winter Soldier's involvement in his parent's murder. Had already known and accepted it.
Antonio Stark did not blame him for his roll in Hydra's plans and doings. Winter would have cried in relief if tears hadn't been beaten out of him some sixty odd years ago.
James was the one that had caught the change in hardness in the brunet's eyes. The anger that started to course through him.
Quiet words nearly whispered between the two in front of him. The betrayal that came across Antonio's face was soon replaced with unadulterated rage.
James was resigned to and accepted his place to stand back and let the brunet wipe the floor with Steven's face.
But Winter had been activated not even a full 24 hours before hand and was subject to take any and all orders thrown at him without question.
When Captain America barked his order at him to "Run Bucky!" Winter could do nothing but accept his new order's and find his way to the nearest exit. Which just happened to be a hop, skip and jump up about sixty feet into the air on rickety and rusting metal stands jutting out from the walls leading up to the opening in the roof.
Orders were thrown at him left and right from the blonde and both Winter and James felt more enraged at every single one. They had just been released from Hydra's rules, regulations and orders along with Zemo's and here he was being thrust right back into more of them by a so called "friend" of his.
He came crashing down when a stray repulser beam struck in front of him and had the lid of the roof slamming shut. Then there was a shield destroying the metal grate he'd landed on. Hitting several metal flooring crates and dropping twenty feet was anything but nice, even for a super solider.
Landing on his metal arm wrong and snapping it off on accident was even less nice.
He was subject to watching Iron Man and Captain America fighting to what seemed to be the death. Except it was to the death.
Not for Iron Man at least.
Winter and James took their few seconds to compose themselves from the open wiring being mangled and sending viciously excruciating signals to the nerves in this chest to count all the pulled punches Iron Man was throwing. Watched as Iron Man most just kept to trying to subdue the man in front of him.
Captain America, Steve Rogers on the other hand held nothing back and went for every single kill shot he could find. Landing hit after hit to Antonio's clearly weakened chest.
Steve Grant Rogers was set on killing Antonio Edward Stark.
With all the strength Winter and James had in their body, they heaved them self up and launched them self at Steve.
Steve who had gotten Iron Man, Antonio on his back and straddled the metal suit. Steve who had ripped off the metal face plate to reveal a bloody face, broken nose and terrified eyes. Steve who had raised that damn shield above his head and had every intent to bring it down on Antonio. Every intent to either slice through the already compromised chest plating or just straight up decapitate the man.
No chance even in hell was Winter or James about to let that happen.
Fuck whatever 'friendship' they and Steve had.
They had been set on edge with the man ever since he started to try to track them down. They had left message after message that they didn't want to be found, both on notepads and in the fact that they'd set up more than necessary cold trails. The blonde's persistence was infuriating and suffocating and had them on the run every single second of their life since leaving Hydra. The only reason he'd let the blonde believe he was accepting to tag along with him and his 'crew' of degenerates was because he refused to allow a single of those soldier's out of their tubes.
"Bucky! No! He has to be stopped! He's going to kill you!" The scream grated on his nerves and hurt his ears.
"Antonio is no threat to me." Thick Russian accent coming out as Winter dug the blonde's face into the cold cement.
"Bucky! That's the Winter Soldier talking! Tony is going to kill you! You have to fight the progra-"
"Antonio isn't after me." Russian accent putting emphasis on the venom coming from his lips. With one arm on the side of the man's face he had to restrain the other enhanced human with his knees pinning the blonde's arms to his sides. James had at least thirty pounds on the man under him, which he used to his fullest advantage.
"You're not listening Buck! He's blaming you-"
"As he should." James and Winter had fought over the interrupted sentence which led to an interesting Brooklyn slash Russian accent.
"-he has to be stopped! It wasn't you Bucky! Hydra had control over you!" The blonde under him fought and struggled to gain ground over Winter.
"Oh shut the fuck up, Rogers." Antonio was out of his wrecked suit and hovering over the two super soldiers. That brilliant work of machinery that came in the form of a watch was once again pulled and stretched over Antonio's hand to form a gauntlet. Without another word the metal covered fist came down on Steve's face, knocking him unconscious. "Fuck, he's annoying." The brunet groans out his annoyance before walking back over to his near totaled suit. "You still with me, Baby Girl?"
"I am, Boss. I've signaled for Doctor Strange like you requested. He should be here momentarily. I do believe he's collecting on Ms. Romanoff currently and checking over Rhodey before making his way here. He said to relay a time frame of twenty minutes, Boss." Comes an Irish female voice from inside the Iron Man suit.
"Thanks Fri. You're doing an amazing job at keeping me alive, Sweetheart." The sentiment was a genuine one that was paired with a small smile that warmed James and set confusion off inside Winter over James' reaction.
'Fuck is wrong with you?' Winter asked James as he pushed himself off of the blonde super soldier.
'I'm sorry did you not see that smile? It was a real one. How many times have we seen him really smile?' James came back at him in an offended tone.
Winter just made a not so committed sound in the back of his throat and went to sit down against one of the pillars close to the Iron Man suit. Antonio didn't flinch or so much as give him a fraction of his attention.
"Jarvis told me you'd been protective over me. I never really, truly believed him till now." Antonio's voice came out as more of a whisper than anything else. A bittersweet smile tugged at the man's lips before he pushed on. "If he were here now he'd be rubbing it in my face with an 'I did tell you so long ago, Sir.'" A far away look allows the man's face to drop before he pulls himself back to fiddle with a screwdriver he pulled out of nowhere. "Smug bastard would never have let me live this one down." Scarred hands tighten around the screwdriver and reach into the chest of the suit to tinker at something or another. James and Winter may know a bit of mechanics and James may have been a bit of a science nerd back in the day but they didn't even try to pretend they knew anything about the happenings within the suit.
"Jarvis. That's a familiar name." The word plays across his tongue in odd fashion. "Who or what was Jarvis?" They're not really expecting an answer but James asks anyway. Brooklyn accent coming out and making Antonio pause in his work momentarily before picking back up.
"Well first he was basically my father when I was little. Taught me almost every combat move I know." That small genuine smile that James was geeking out over earlier comes back to the man's lips. Which has James internally squealing.
'You're a gay fucking disaster, Barnes.' Winter internally rolls his eyes at the other man.
"Second of all J.A.R.V.I.S. was my first speaking A.I. that allowed you and directed you to the shit stain Obadiah's files while I was in Afghanistan. Yes, pun intended." Antonio takes a moment to throw a wink at him and James nearly swoons.
'Fucking mess of a man, you are.' Winter shakes his head at the other half of himself.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System in honor of my surrogate father. He was protector over myself and security of my company and building for the last twelve years. Till Ultron killed him. Now I've got my baby girl, Friday here looking after me." Antonio pats his hand against his suit as if giving his A.I. a pat on the head. "She's doing a pretty damn fine job of following in her big brother's footsteps of keeping me alive." A larger smile graces the genius's face and okay maybe Winter understand's a bit of what James was basically drooling over earlier.
Winter and James had adapted to the cold that surrounded them for decades. Embraced it even after a while.
The chill on their bone's hadn't bothered them in a damn long time.
The smile that was currently warming them from the inside out though? Yeah it was making it hard to ignore the cold that tried to snuff out the warmth they were feeling.
'God damn that smile is going to get us killed, isn't it?' Winter bordered on a whine but settled on exasperation.
'You're probably right. It would be worth it though.' James almost preens when that same smile is flashed again but at them this time.
"Friday has kept tabs on you like Jarvis did. She likes you for the most part." The soft smile that pulls at the man's lips is a quick one but it does the trick. Sets both James and Winter on their next most pressing mission.
'Make Antonio Stark Smile As Often As Possible' was not set in the back of both of their minds.
'I mean I guess you make a point.' Winter throws their head back to thunk against the pillar that sat against.
Not even Winter could deny the bone deep warmth that settled over them from that smile. They could get used to that warmth.
Hopefully they get the chance to follow through on their new mission.
AN
Just a little something I wrote while deep in my depression. You may see a few random one shots popping up here and now that I've wrote to take my mind off of you know my mind.
Updates will start rolling in on my multi chaps soon though!
Lemme hear your thoughts and opinions!
Till next story and/or chapter my Gremlins! ^.^