Chapter 3
Tony wasn’t sure why he was losing sleep, Howard or Bucky, but he was getting kind of annoyed with it. Steve wasn’t a moron, he knew something was going on and Tony wasn’t exactly sure what to tell him. It didn’t help that Bucky refused to talk to anyone but him and S.H.I.E.L.D was up his ass to get useful information out of the guy. Tony felt bad for Bucky, he had no idea what was going on and S.H.I.E.L.D was making zero efforts to try and work with him, instead making him purposefully uncomfortable in an attempt to get information faster. Tony didn’t get that, if it was him in there he’d keep his information to himself out of spite; he did plenty of that in the caves. Bucky didn’t seem to mind his uncomfortable accommodations though, clearly having been in worse and finding his new upgrade more comfortable.
The only time things got more comfortable for Bucky was when Tony was around because Tony refused to sit in a freezing cold room for hours trying to get Bucky to talk. He had standards and he fully expected S.H.I.E.L.D to accommodate for him if they wanted his cooperation. This has the unintentional effect of conditioning Bucky to associate Tony with better living conditions and food, which only served to make Bucky more reserved and guarded when S.H.I.E.L.D agents tried to get any sort of information out of him. He was secretly happy about this because he was at least someone’s favourite person even if the circumstances didn’t really leave him any other options. The only person he seemed to display any other preference for was Coulson, and that was probably because he was the one who brought Tony to see Bucky most times.
Then there was that whole Howard thing, that was just weird. The guy had looked exactly like his father, like his de-aged twin or something and it had freaked him out. Now whenever he slept he kept having nightmares about Howard, about his childhood. Nothing had ever been good enough for him and something about his doppelgänger claiming he was pissed him off, which didn’t really make a lot of sense. He shouldn’t have been hung up on the guy, it wasn’t like he hadn’t run into people who looked like Howard before, but something about this guy was different and he didn’t know what it was. Questions always irritated him, he liked black and white, grey areas meant uncertainty and he didn’t do uncertain, he did definitive.
“Hey,” Steve says the day after he ran into Not-Howard, “what’s wrong?” he asks.
Tony sighs, “To be honest I’m not really sure,” he says, “I’ve just had a rough week and a half I guess. I’ll be okay,” he assures Steve. He had to get some prototypes to Pepper too, he was a week behind and she was chewing his ass four days ago. Thankfully with his lack of sleep for the past two days he had been able to mostly get his work done. S.H.I.E.L.D had called in the morning though, something about Bucky’s arm malfunctioning, so he had to go in and deal with that before he dealt with anything else.
“You sure?” Steve asks, brushing his fingers over the now yellowing bruises Bucky had left around his neck, “S.H.I.E.L.D seems to be running you pretty hard trying to get information out of your cyborg,” he says, smiling slightly.
Tony laughs softy, “yeah, truth be told I don’t think their guy has a whole lot to offer, he was more a victim than a perpetrator, not that S.H.I.E.L.D thanks that,” he says somewhat harshly. What made then think Bucky was complicit in his torture he had no idea, frankly he didn’t care, it was pretty fucking obvious he was doing what he needed to in order to stay alive. He knew a thing or two about that and the way S.H.I.E.L.D treated Bucky struck a nerve with him.
“You sure you’re okay? You seem pretty upset,” Steve points out.
“Yeah… I… yeah, it just bugs me, the way they treat him. It’s more than obvious that he’s been tortured extensively, he’s been brainwashed, he doesn’t even know who he is for Christ sakes, how the hell could anyone think he wasn’t the victim here?” he asks, frustrated.
Steve tilts his head to the side, “it makes you wonder how they would have treated you if you weren’t, well, you,” he says.
Tony nods, “yeah, I mean I didn’t want to build a bomb for terrorists, I just did what I need to so I didn’t die, so Yinsen didn’t die. So why was I treated like a person when I came back, offered a job even, but this guy is treated like a criminal when he went through way worse?” he shakes his head, “that just doesn’t sit right with me,” he says.
Steve smiles at him, brushing his fingers over his cheek, “you have such a big heart,” he says and Tony laughs, yeah okay.
“You haven’t known be long enough to know how laughable that is,” he tells him.
Steve frowns, seemingly upset with Tony’s conclusion, “maybe not, but I know that you’ve spent the last week and a half advocating for someone you don’t even know, often sacrificing your own health to do it. I know that Rhodey called you a month ago saying it was an emergency and you were out of bed before he was even done his sentence, I know that you regularly pay off people’s hospital bills and student loans, and I know that out of the small amount of people that know who I am you’re the only one who makes me feel like a person instead of a science experiment. You’re not a bad person because you’ve done bad things Tony, you are so much more than you know,” he says, cupping Tony’s face. He lets himself take some comfort in Steve before he leaves to go deal with Bucky’s arm. He doubted Steve’s opinion of him will be the same after he found out that he had purposefully kept Bucky from him, at least his would be, if he was in Steve’s place.
*
He had a semi-regular schedule with Bucky, who had picked up on this long ago, and apparently did better when Tony made his regular trip in. He was more agitated and jumpy when Tony didn’t show up according to Coulson. He shows up with breakfast, which irritates the S.H.I.E.L.D agents because they wanted to restrict Bucky’s diet as much as possible. No wonder Bucky refused to speak to anyone but Tony.
He walks into the room Bucky was currently housed in and Bucky looks up, glaring daggers at the door before he realized it was Tony and his features soften some. “Please tell me that isn’t from S.H.I.E.L.D,” he says, gesturing to the bag Tony was holding.
“Fuck no, I have standards,” he says and hands Bucky his bag, “I’d eat a rubber boot before I tried S.H.I.E.L.D cafeteria food again,” he wrinkles his nose. Bucky practically inhales the food but Tony takes his time, Bucky wasn’t exactly relaxed and that would make working on that arm difficult. He was still confused about how the hell Bucky’s captors had access to Stark Tech of that long, at least half the parts in the arm were traceable but when Tony tried to track them down he got fake names. The other half of the parts were things his father almost certainly made himself and they weren’t things that would be sold on a regular basis if at all.
“I’m guessing you’re here because of the arm?” Bucky says quietly.
Tony nods, “what seems to be the problem?” he asks.
Bucky frowns, “I’m not sure, it kind of hurts but it shouldn’t because it’s not a real arm,” he says.
That confuses Tony but he admittedly hasn’t gotten around to looking through the whole arm so it was entirely possible he had missed something in his initial examinations of the arm. “Does it hurt in any specific area?” he asks, maybe it was ghost pains? That was possible. He was hoping something wasn’t wrong with the actual arm itself, he didn’t have a full understanding of how it worked and how, exactly, it was connected to Bucky and he didn’t particularly want to find out by screwing something up and hurting Bucky. He’d never trust him after that and Tony wouldn’t blame him.
Bucky shakes his head at Tony’s question and winces, like he expects Tony to do something to him for not having a real answer. “Okay, does it hurt more when you move it?” he asks, Bucky nods, “alright, it’s probably something caught on something else,” he says. He wipes his hands his hands off and goes to get some supplies that will hopefully deal with the problem.
“Is it alright if I look at your arm?” he asks Bucky when he comes back.
Bucky looks irritated, “do I have a choice?” he asks, sounding a bit sarcastic. Tony raises an eyebrow, that was new, Bucky generally talked in monotone unless he was freaked out so this was new.
“Yeah, you do, it’s your arm and I’m not going to go poking around in it without your permission,” he tells him.
Bucky looks confused for a second, like he wasn’t expecting the ability to make his own decision, “and if I say no?” he asks, not quite able to hid his fear.
“Then I’m not going to go poking around in your arm, this is your choice,” Tony tells him. He wondered when Bucky had had to make a choice last, a real choice, not opting to follow his handler’s orders and follow through on whatever it is he did. Probably a very long time, or at least that’s what he assumed.
“Okay,” Bucky says, nodding to himself.
“You sure?” he asks and Bucky nods again so he sets himself up. He finds the problem relatively fast, some crossed wires, and frowns. If the particular wires did what he thought they did Bucky was probably in a lot of pain and he seemed to feel almost nothing. Or maybe he was just very good at hiding it, he was kind of hoping for option two because that had the possibility of less torture.
“That feel any better?” Tony asks, pulling the wires apart, they needed to be replaced and he had a sneaking suspicion that S.H.I.E.L.D wouldn’t let him take Bucky home like he did Steve. That would be beneficial though, he had better equipment there and he could scan everything, examining it without crawling into Bucky’s personal space. Besides, Bucky could use a scenery chance. He’d have to tell Steve first though, god knows what the poor guy would do if he came home and found his dead best friend hanging out in his boyfriend’s lab.
“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly and Tony decides he’s going to spring Bucky from S.H.I.E.L.D’s clutches and he’s probably going to use Steve to do so. Really, were they dumb enough to tell Captain America no? Coulson would wet himself at the thought, they guy was practically in love with Steve, well, Captain America, Steve Rogers was a mystery that was lost of Coulson.
“You’ve got a plan,” Bucky says, “you always make that face when you figure out how to get S.H.I.E.L.D to do what you want,” he tells him. Well, Bucky was observant he’d give him that.
“Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D is going to release you into my custody, provided that’s what you want, and they aren’t going to have much of a choice,” he says, grinning. They should know better than to not cooperate, Tony Stark always got what he wanted, but he knew they would resist and when they did they were going to have to have a tough time explaining why Bucky should be on lock down to Steve Rogers.
“I’d rather go back to my handlers than stay here,” Bucky says, looking traumatized.
Tony winces, okay then, “I’m going to make a few phone calls and with any luck I’ll have you out by tonight,” he says and walks with purpose to the door, prepared to make S.H.I.E.L.D bend to his will.
Coulson meets him at the door with his arms crossed, “you can’t seriously think we’re going to give you Barnes,” he says, doing his best impersonation of a disappointed dad.
Tough for him, Tony had a lifetime of experience in disappointing dads, “Oh I seriously think you will,” he chirps, patting Coulson’s cheek and walking away to make his phone calls.
*
“You seriously met Tony Stark?” Maria asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, I seriously met Tony Stark, I almost ran the poor guy down because I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was going,” he says, still embarrassed about the whole mess, “and apparently I look just like his dead father. Creepy,” he says.
Maria snorts, “Oh my god, this is like a bad movie. Tony Stark , wildly popular billionaire who is secretly sad and lonely runs into a guy who looks just like his abusive asshole of a dad and the two become unlikely friends,” she says dramatically.
“Oh shut it,” he says jokingly, “I highly doubt I’ll ever see him again. Besides, I remind the guy of his shitty father, why would he want to spend time with me?” he says logically, “and what kind of father could possibly think Tony wasn’t good enough?” he asks. That made no sense to him whatsoever, the guy had invented technology that was so advanced it wasn’t even supposed to exist on several occasions. How could that not be good enough? What kind of crappy father did that poor man have?
“Are you seriously clueless about Howard Stark? The guy was a genius, no doubt, but he was a bad parent. All he ever did was push Tony to do more faster, like I guess graduating from high school at eleven, graduating from MIT at fourteen and having a PhD at seventeen wasn’t enough,” Maria shakes her head, “guy sounds like a real duchebag if you ask me. Like seriously though, you have this weird obsession with Tony Stark and you’ve never looked his dad up?” she asks.
Howard shrugs, something about Howard Stark seemed familiar, like he did look him up at some point but it was a long time ago but the memory was fuzzy. “No? It did really seem relevant I guess,” he says.
“One second, I’ll look him up then,” she says and taps away on her phone, “whoa, that is weird,” she says, “you look exactly like his dad when Howard was younger, you even have the same first name, no wonder he was so freaked out,” Maria says, handing her phone to him over the table.
He looks at the picture and his eyebrows shoot up, Howard Stark could be his twin they looked that much alike. This was… this was just weird. He scrolls through the Wiki article on Howard, specifically focusing on family, and frowns. Howard Stark’s wife’s name was Maria and he allegedly worked with Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America, and his middle name was Grant. “That is a lot of very strange coincidences,” he murmurs.
Maria raises an eyebrow and he fills her in, “okay, that is really weird,” she says, “but you aren’t a genius billionaire inventor. I wish because then I wouldn’t have to worry about student loans,” she jokes.
Howard rolls his eyes, “yeah, yeah, if only I was a horrible father you wouldn’t have to pay for your schooling,” he says, playfully swatting her arm, “I do have a way with cars though,” he says.
Maria snorts, “your competition is Grey, you could throw road kill at an engine and it would do a better job fixing the problem then Grey would,” she points out. Howard laughs and nods, it wasn’t like it wasn’t true. Something was still off about the situation though, something in the back of his mind told him that he had a lot more in common with Howard Stark than a couple of weird name coincidences. Not that he particularly wanted that, it seemed Howard Stark cared more about his work than his family and that just wasn’t the kind of man he wanted to be.