Operating Procedure
“Boss? Colonel Rhodes is requesting admittance to the workshop. He’s at the door.”
“Blackout more is still up?” Tony asks with a grunt, dragging a lifeless Bucky Barnes through the workshop, trying not to breathe all that much.
“Yes, boss.” Tony can practically taste her disapproval, and when did she learn that? He finally reaches the one clear table in the room.
“Then you can tell him that for everyone’s collective safety, he can not come in.”
A moment of silence settles over him as Friday presumably talks to a presumably fuming Rhodey. Tony takes the moment to step back, stretching his back in an attempt to recover from dragging 150 kilograms of super soldier onto the table.
“The colonel would like me to to inform you that you are the reason he’s going grey, and that he’s not leaving.” Friday pauses for a moment before she adds, in a gentler tone: “he’s worried.”
Tony sighs and pulls one strap taught over Barnes’ chest. “Put me through, Fri.”
“Of course, boss.”
“Tony, what is this?”
Tony winces, Rhodey does indeed sound pissed. He continues tightening the second strap around Barnes’ thighs. That man has thighs like treetrunks. Tony flinches away from the thought, trying to shake it out of his head as he leans back, inspecting his work. Tony, no. The man is unconscious. The man begged you to kill him.
“Well, good news is I solved a major problem of ours by accident.”
“And the bad news?”
Tony looks down at the unconscious form of Bucky Barnes. He knows he can’t lie to Rhodey, the man has been able to hear Tony’s lies since college.
“I’m currently strapping down the Winter Soldier so I can operate on him.”
There is a brief tense beat of silence and then the door shudders under an impact. “Tony, open up this fucking door, right now!”
That’s the colonel speaking, and normally when Rhodey talks with that kind of authority, Tony knows to listen. Today is an exception. Even unconscious, Barnes’ face is a mask of pain. Maybe now even more so than when he was awake, masking it.
“No can do, papa bear. Can’t have the entire cavalerie shouting at me while I need to focus.”
“Tony, I will blast down this door,” Rhodey threatens, and Tony sighs.
“Rhodey, he’s unconscious. Mapping Rogers’ data onto him, I have maybe an hour to get this done, after that you can shout at me all day.” He finds one of the rolling chairs scattered around the workshop and double checks his tool kit, making sure he has everything he needs.
“Friday, zoom in on the shoulder.”
“The shoulder? Tony, what are you doing?” Seems like Rhodey is still worried, but that just means he’s alive and functioning, especially when it comes to Tony. But although Tony is very talented at letting his mouth run wild, he can’t coherently explain the situation and do surgery on a mangled futuristic piece of tech from a hundred years ago at the same time.
“Friday? I need to focus for a second.”
“Sure boss. At the tower, Mr. Stark initiated a diagnostics routine and responding software update. By the time that concluded and I rebooted, Boss was in the workshop, and so was the Winter Soldier. Mr. Stark prohibited me from alerting anyone, conversing with the soldier and taking him out when Mr. Barnes moved to attack.”
“Friday!”
“He attacked you?” Rhodey is sounding outright panicked now, and Tony tries not to get frustrated with the two. He is running out of time here. He doesn’t want to hurt Barnes a second time. Well, third.
“I reported the events, boss.”
“What does she mean, he attacked? Tony, are you okay? Let me in!”
“Friday, you misrepresented the events. I get that you’re worried, but look at what you did to poor papa bear.”
“Tony, this is not funny! At least let me see that you’re okay!” Rhodey is fuming, and Tony knows he’s not going to stop.
“If you will let me work then.”
“Open the blinds.”
Tony sighs. “Friday, open the blinds. Do what the boss man says.”
Tony glances over to the entrance to the workshop where the opaque glass is becoming clear. A very distressed Rhodey is pacing on the other side and Tony waves, getting up to do a spin, showing that he’s fine before sitting down with Barnes again. Rhodey’s gaze follows him.
Tony turns back to the operation at hand, taking hold of the first wire. Barnes flinches at the contact, a low moan the soldier would never have let out while conscious coming from his lips.
“Fuck,” Tony hisses to himself. He needs to hurry.
“Are you okay?” Rhodey’s voice comes over the intercom.
“Peachy,” Tony mutters, picking up custom clippers he made for work on the Iron Man suits. “Unharmed. He smells though, oh my god.” Tony tries to breathe through his mouth, but since he’s either talking or holding tools with it that is not very successful.
“He came to kill you?”
Tony shakes his head. “Suicide by cop.”
“What?”
Tony drops the tweezers from his mouth into his hand and works on untangling a different clump of wires. “He came for me to kill him. I refused, so he attacked.”
“Huh.”
Tony smiles grimly. “Yeah.”
“So now what?”
“I put pressure on his shoulder, he was barely functioning with the pain already.”
“He seemed fine before though.”
“He did indeed,” Tony mutters, stripping a wire of molten and rotting insulation, wincing as Barnes groans.
“Maybe something happened in the last month,” Rhodey offers, but Tony shakes his head.
“Nope.” The ‘p’ pops through the workshop. “Friday checked. It’s… the arm is as we left it.”
“Tony…” Tony hates that tone. It’s the ‘be kinder to yourself, not everything is your fault’ tone.
“I’ll fix it while he’s out,” Tony presses on, because talking has gotten him into and out of most situations in his life. “I don’t care what happens next, I’m not letting him run around with ten tasers going off on him at all times.”
“Wow.”
Tony shrugs. “Understatement, probably. Friday was still doing the math.”
“You were accurate in your estimation,” Friday chimes in.
“And he went on the run with that?”
“Somehow.” He cuts another wire, wincing at each jolt going through Barnes. The cold part of his brain catalogs which wire does what, which ones are laced into his nerves, which nerves. Where does the pain come from?
“Will you let me in now? For when he wakes up?”
Tony shakes his head. “I don’t want to spook him.”
“You don’t want to spook the Winter Soldier?” Tony can hear the sarcastically raised eyebrow without having to look up.
“Look, I told you not to check up on me, I told you this was stupid.”
Rhodey sighs, and Tony can hear the fond smile in that too. “That you did.” There is a pause, and Tony hit’s the first bit of flesh. Bone and muscle and nerve, brutally cauterized. He’s read about how this arm was made, he knows all of this. Still. It’s something else seeing it.
“So, how did he seem? Still… you know, Maximoff?”
“No. He was… well, a mess. In a lot of pain. Man of few words.”
Rhodey scoffs. “Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like Bucky Barnes.”
“He indeed did not,” Tony mutters, a scalpel between his teeth. He cuts another wire, cleaning up the frayed ends and applying insulation tape. Some of the wires have melted together with the heat of the blast that shot off the arm, melted and deformed some of the metal. Tony tries not to think about it.
He doesn’t know if Rhodey has fallen silent to let him work, or has noticed that there’s no talking to him as he focuses more and more and has left, but it’s quiet. Gives Tony the space to try to undo his damage.
At some point he unfuses some wires from a nerve and everything about Barnes sags. Tony hadn’t even known that an unconscious body could hold so much tension unit it runs out in front of him like water. Like ice melting. Tony clenches his teeth against the memories, against shocks of cold, the sound of metal on metal, feeling the pressure of fingers digging into his chestplate. He takes deep breaths, counting them. He cannot panic right now. He has to finish this, clean up before Barnes wakes up.
With Friday’s help, Tony seals the last remaining nerves and wires, putting away his tools just as Barned begins to stir. Tony looks up to Rhodey, who is still standing at the door.
“I’m dropping the shutters, Friday will keep you updated with a feed. Do not come in unless I’m actually in danger. Friday, you keep the honey bear up to date, if he or anyone wants to stage a rescue, notify me via one of the suits quietly, wait for my okay.”
Rhodey’s nostrils flare and Tony can tell he’s not happy with this. He can also tell Rhodey knows he’s not going to win this fight.
“And if you’re not able to five the okay–”
“You may storm the fort. Friday, mute.”
And just in time. Tony looks down, and the Winter Soldier blinks open his eyes.