Tony woke to the sound of ringing in his ears. Every fiber of his being hurt. Focusing on breathing, he thought, I'm getting too old for this. His first system check was on himself, gently wiggling toes and fingers, trying to figure out where he was and when was it?
The recall hit him: the missile. The mission. Barnes.
"Friday!" he tried to be forcefull but it came out more as a groan.
"Here Boss."
"Systems check."
"All running normally, but I'd say you've had a knock on the head."
"Getting blown up will do that to you." Tony moved his arms and legs that were stuck under some smaller debris, the gears and servos of his suit working against gravity. Pushing up from the "floor" of rubble, he sat upright in the pitch-black void within the destroyed bunker. Stark activated a light on his helmet and scanned the space.
The bunker walls had held from the blast, they must be fairly far down in the shaft he concluded. Huge boulders of debris from above lay scattered about them like rocky marshmallows. The space wasn't huge by any means; no getting up and walking around today but he wasn't crushed either.
Sweeping the space in a 360-degree arc, he found Barnes.
Bucky was laying on his back, head pillowed by a chunk of concrete, two pipes of rebar sticking up out of his chest on the right, arms stretched out in a graceful arc as if waiting for angels.
Tony's breath stopped. Was Barnes dead?
Getting up, Stark moved over to Bucky's left side in a half crouch, his helmet brushing the ceiling. A large dark stain appeared below Barnes and trailed off into the blackness over the boulders of debris. The schematics of Bucky appeared in his visor as Friday scanned him, but she remained silent. Tony reached out a gloved hand to feel for a pulse.
The cool metal fingers touched Bucky's neck. Blue eyes snapped open as blood frothed from his lips. Tony backpedaled in fear, stumbling over rocks, and falling on his backside. The flashlight bounced wildly over the void and then settled on the ceiling making the rest of the space fall into darkness.
Tony gasped several times as his heart hammered in his chest.
Once his breathing quieted, he heard a faint whisper, "Finish it."
Sitting up, gathering himself, he shined the light back on Barnes, who had his eyes open but squinted against the light. "Finish it. It's what you want, right?" A trail of crimson leaked down the corner of his mouth.
Tony sat paralyzed with conflict. Here was his mother's murderer. His father's assassin. Steve knew and never told him. Here was his chance to get revenge. T'Challa was a great man for not falling into that trap, but he wasn't T'Challa. He was Tony Stark! He was Iron Man!
Another voice answered, your mother raised you better than this. He needs help. You need help. You are not God, you are Iron Man.
Friday interrupted his personal demons, "Boss, he's going to bleed to death if you don't do something."
Stark sat vacillating between murder and mercy. Voices began to yell at him from every angle to act, or not to act, calling him names, faces of the dead, Sokovia, Pepper, New Yorkers, blurring together into an incoherent mess.
"STOP!" he yelled into his helmet grabbing the sides of his head. Bucky didn't flinch. He knew who Tony was talking to because he had heard those voices too.
Taking off the helmet, he propped it on block so that the light shined on Bucky. Scooting over to Barnes, he told Friday, "Activate Red Cross protocol."
"Sure thing Boss." Friday replied as tiny compartments popped open and what looked like ants crawled out of them. They formed an orderly line and marched down Tony's arm, which he then extended towards Bucky as if he was in Michelangelo's painting, "The Creation of Adam".
"What…?" Barnes rasped as the tiny bots began to walk down his arm, but he was too weak to move.
"Red Cross protocol. It's a bit of first aide nano-tech. I got the idea from… Ant Man." Tony admitted reluctantly, "These tiny bots will close off any internal bleeding until we can get you out of here." Stark sulked slightly, "You might feel some discomfort. I've never used them on a job this big."
Barnes tried to pull away, but he was too drained. Shuri had fixed his mind to remove the murder in his head but it didn't erase the fear of being helpless, experimented on and tortured. As the bots crawled over his metallic arm to flesh, his skin prickled. They moved on to the rebar sticking through his lungs and crawled down and inside his chest. He was on fire from the inside out. Gasping for air, blood misting above him with each panicked breath, he thrashed weakly on his impaling spikes.
Stark was not above himself to say in the process of saving Bucky's life, he wasn't enjoying seeing him in agony. "Relax. Let them do their job."
Barnes blacked out.
Tony smiled.