The Tour
Barnes is a delight to lead around the compound and then the workshop. On the spectrum of the few people Tony has actually shown his sanctuary, Barnes sits somewhere between Peter and Harley. He has the same wide eyed awe for everything Tony shows him that Peter has, but the quiet reserved demeanour of Harley around anything new. Tony doesn’t begrudge him the muted reaction, if anyone is allowed ot have trust issues it’s the Winter Soldier.
He of course shouldn’t forget that this man is more dangerous than anyone Tony has ever shown around as well. Before that person had been Pepper, but even her fury, determination and stilettos combined couldn’t hold a candle to the way Barnes moves through the workshop. Tony hadn’t known someone could even move that quietly. Barnes is completely still when he’s standing, when Tony is naming off the different Iron Man versions lining the wall, when he’s introducing the bots, showing off the tiny kitchen. And even when he walks, everything about the man seems to want to slide out of Tony’s field of vision. It’s a little terrifying.
It’s a strange contrast to the image from just an hour or so earlier, of Barnes sitting curled up against a wall, hand digging into the flesh of his left shoulder, as if the pain of the irritated flesh there could ground him. Tony knows panic attacks like he knows his suits, inside and out. He’s never seen one so strong on someone else though. Someone else within a reach of a knife.
Tony dared a glance at Barnes who has let down his guard enough to sit between the bots, letting them inspect him while watching them move. He seems fine now, his body still and hints of curiosity on his face. But he remembers the panicked stare of those blue eyes, hanging on his face, on his lips as he tries to get the Winter Soldier to breathe. He tried calling his name, any one of them, but only ‘James’ had gotten him anything close to a reaction. Tony tries not to think about that, and fails very quickly, his brain running away with theories.
“Well, that was the tour. I can show you the compound some other time, but people are gonna get up and bustling soon, and I figure you don’t want to run into the entire staffing of this place just yet.”
Barnes glances up at him, hesitant, before he nods. Turns his attention to the bots. Tony shrugs. Non-verbal, fine by him. He stretches to hook his foot into one of the rolling chairs from under a table and sits down, getting ready to work. He flicks his hand and opens the holographic version of his inbox, groaning when he sees the number on top. With a sigh he gets to work.
Tony notices soon enough that Barnes has turned his attention from the bots to him. Dumm-E and U are back to their tasks, Butterfinger is in their charging station, and James Barnes is sitting on the floor where they’ve left him, watching Tony work. Tony has been muttering to himself almost the entire time he’s been sorting through the onslaught of new tasks, and now that he’s being watched, he can’t help but talk more, give context and explain what he’s frustrated by.
It’s a little unnerving, not getting a response, only feeling the heavy gaze on his back. So Tony turns to look every now and then. And at some point he realises that Barnes is calm. He realises immediately after that this isn’t a state of him he’s seen before. Barnes is sitting on the floor, still as snow, and watching Tony work. Not the Winter Soldier, not trying to sneak a peak at any company secrets, Iron Man specs, nothing to be used against Tony. Barnes is watching his hands, his mouth, with something like calm on his face, all throughout his body.
So Tony lets him be until he’s finished his emails. The man deserves all the breaks he can catch, and it takes Tony over an hour to sort through the new messages. But reality is starting to press into the shop with the light of the rising sun, the bustle of people outside the windows, Tony’s racing brain that has at this point thoroughly mapped out each cursed, complicated corner of this situation. So he eventually closes his emails and turns around to Barnes, who is still sitting on the floor.
“So,” he starts, and Barnes immediately looses all sense of calm, tensing up and watching Tony wearily. “Steve.”
Barens is perfectly still, which just goes to show just how out of it he must have been a few hours before. He’d fidgeted then, his body reacting and shifting with his emotions. Not Tony knows he’s talking to a soldier, a man who’s been tortured and interrogated more times than he can remember. Sometimes my body remembers more than me.
“What about him?” Barens’ voice is soft, almost merging with the hum of the workshop. Tony thinks he could listen to that voice for hours. Which is a very stupid though to have, given that Barnes hasn’t said more than a few lines so far. It would be some very quiet hours. And somehow, Tony thinks that he wouldn’t mind that either.
He shakes the thoughts out of his mind. Focus dammit. He was still responsible for this entire disaster, and no matter what he thought of Steve, he should not be letting that colour his actions.
“He’s been sick with worry for you,” Tony starts, understatement of the week. He’s been at my throat with worry for you, would’ve been more accurate. But Tony pushes down his own hurt and spite and smiles. “I kind of kidnapped you to test a theory, and then you vanished. He’s been looking for you.”
Barnes’ weary gaze is fixed on him, and Tony doesn’t know why that makes him nervous, but it does. He doesn’t want to fuck this up. Sure, partially because he knows that no amount of Friday’s and Rhodey’s will be able to protect him from Steve Rogers’ wrath if he hurts or looses his bestie again. But mostly because Barnes is sitting alone and weary on his workshop floor, missing an arm that Tony shot off, looking like hell. It’s strange how often people, how often Tony forgets that at his core, he really just wants to help others. He just wants to fix things. And if that means letting Steve into the compound and take a gaunt, haunted looking James Barnes right back to where Tony kidnapped rescued him from, then Tony will be okay with that too.
“So what?”
Tony blinks, confused. “I just thoughts it’d be helpful to have him around. What with you being friend and all.” Lovers throughout time, a bond so strong no war, no Hydra and not even time could break it. But instead of the relief Tony is waiting for, Barnes’ face twists into a grimace that is almost immediately smoothed over into a neutral mask again. Barnes takes a deep breath.
“I understand if you need to inform him that I am here. From what little I remember of him, he must’ve been a pain in the ass for you. Just–” Barnes falters, and Tony watches the first human tick weasel it’s way through his control, his hand tensing around his jeans clad leg before letting go immediately back into neutrality. “I’m not going to stick around.”
Tony’s heart sinks, and he follows it down, chiding it all the way. There is no reason to be this attached to Barnes, not Barnes, and not already. This is Bucky Barnes, Captain America fanboy extraordinaire, Steve’s bestest friend, and Tony should not be this attached.
Tony looks at Barnes and swallows down a sigh. But it isn’t, is it? Not Bucky Barnes, and maybe not even Steve’s friend, going by his statements about memory just now. Still. I’m not going to stick around. Tony has head that before. He’s thought it before.
“Care to elaborate?”
Barnes gives a sharp nod and then stares the floor into submission for a minute before he answers. “I remember flying in a red metal cage. Breaking out and running.”
“That would have been me.”
Barnes nods, but keeps staring, and Tony bites his tongue. Not the time for quips and interjections. The man has been spoken over enough.
“It was a blank slate then. It’s– I’m used to it.” Tony winces at the dismissing tone, his heart breaking a little more for Barnes. Which it really should not. “Every time they sent me out it was like that. ‘Cept with the conditioning it takes longer for stuff to come filtering through, and I was never out long enough to get much.”
Tony holds on to the edge of the table he’s sitting on, trying to channel the urge to fix this, to wrap the man in a blanket or at least ask him to sit on the couch in the corner of the workshop, into the table.
“Then in Romania, that wasn’t there. Just me trying to make it all fit, all the thoughts and dreams and nightmares. This was like that again. I dropped, clean slate.”
Barnes takes a shaky breath, his hand holding on to his leg again, and Tony wonders if that hold is strong enough to bruise.
“Whatever this is, I’m at the start again. I’m getting faster, walking the same paths twice I guess.”
Something flashes over his face, maybe a memory he’s remembered before already but doesn’t know now, and Barnes’ face grimaces into something angry.
“And it fucking sucks,” he hisses out, the hold on his leg definitely strong enough to bruise now. Tony holds on to the table and has enough self preservation instincts to not stop the man, or come anywhere near him “Because it’s so bloody familiar. I remember things I already know, again. I have the nightmares again, go through the realisations again. And whatever happened, whatever this is, Steve didn’t stop it. Either he didn’t or he couldn’t, doesn’t fucking matter.”
Barnes takes a deep breath, relaxing his hand into neutrality again and looking up at Tony. Tony feels the gaze, but his eyes are fixed on that hand, on the bruise he knows is forming beneath it. Will Barnes even notice it?
“So yeah, do what you have to, Stark, I get it. I won’t begrudge you. But I’ll be gone before Steve shows.”
Barnes falls into silence then, and Tony falls into a racing whirlpool of thoughts. He can’t look away from Barnes’ leg, he can’t get the anger and pain and despair in Barnes’ voice out of his head, thinking over and over again that Barnes is a master assassin. He’s been other people for most of his existence, he’s been lying and acting and not feeling anything for a century. Tony can’t stop realising that if this is the anger he can pick up on, how much else must be beneath it. How much pain and confusion must be there. He wants to fix this, dammit, wants to help.
“Stay.” The word slips out of him without much of his control, but once it’s out there and Barnes looks up in surprise, suspicion immediately tainting his gaze, Tony realises he means it. He meets Barnes’ gaze.
“What?”
“Do you think Steve knows?”
Barnes lets out a frustrated sigh, running his hand through his hair, making it a glorious mess. Focus, dammit. “I don’t even know what he might have known. It’s just… It’s blank. All that’s there is this instinct not to go back, to never let it happen again. It’s overwhelming. And I don’t even know where it’s coming from.”
Because at least with Hydra you knew. Even if he didn’t remember what his handlers might have done the last time, the Winter Soldier is smart, and one look at that chair, at that lab, is enough to know.
“I–” Tony hesitates, but that is short lived. He wants to help. Sure, there are a million ways this could blow up in his face, but he’s never been known for his impulse control. “I could show you what Friday and I noticed, what we’ve been working on.”
“Yes. Please.” The answer is immediate, those blue eyes boring themselves into Tony. The man is all tension and determination, cowering on the floor trying to look calm, like a person just sitting there, talking. Not like someone who has been drowning and just been thrown a life line. A barbed life line, Tony reminds himself.
“Alright, just–”
“I’m not fragile, Stark,” Barnes interrupts him, and Tony can’t help but look at the spot where the bruise is forming. Even ignoring the missing metal arm and super soldier-ness, Barnes is a beast of a man. No, fragile was never a term Tony would’ve thought of. “Whatever this is, this isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me. And I’m still here.” The none of them are remains unspoken. It rings so loud through the workshop that Tony expects to be able to see it.
“Fair. I’m not trying to coddle you, just…”
“Just what?”
Tony takes in the man before him. The coiled tension and strength, the five different types of mistrust interlocking into one man. “You seem tired,” he says softly. “Like you could use a break from awful shit happening to you.”
Barnes breathes out a shaky laugh. “That’d be nice. Not sure I deserve it, but yeah. This break was nice.”
“Last night?” Tony asks incredulously. “Barnes, you had a panic attack, that wasn’t a break.” Sure, super solider serum made you sturdy as all hell, but Tony knew just how exhausting a panic attack was, especially something of the calibre he’d seen earlier. For a delirious moment he wonders if Barnes can even tell. If he knows what well rested feels like.
“James.”
The soft word startles Tony out of his thoughts. “What?”
“James. You called me that earlier.”
Yeah, Tony had been panicking. He’d tried everything, but Barnes hadn’t responded, hadn’t even blinked. But then he’d looked up, wide lost eyes finding Tony. Tony tries not to let any of it show. He shrugs, as if this wasn’t important, smiles.
“Alright. Then you call me Tony.”
James looks at him and returns his smile, just a tiny thing, but it’s like a beaming ray of sunshine for the man’s face. Tony realises he’s staring and realises he can’t stop. James’ entire face softens, Tony’s heart stumbles over itself in an effort to stop and soak in the beauty of what he’s looking at.
“Please show me what you’ve been working on with Miss Friday.” Tony has heard plenty of flirting and dirty talk in his life, has dished out better than he’d gotten. But nothing has speared straight to his heart and then down like those quietly uttered words.
James’ smile turns sharp with self deprecation. “Can’t promise how I’ll react, but I need to know what else other than Hydra is out there that can wipe me.”
He says it calm and calculated. He say it like take me out. Tony stares and wonders when in the last hundred years James gave up on his life.
He knows the feeling, fuck he knows it all too well, but Tony decides right then and there that he’s not going to give up on James. Too many people have already left him behind for dead and wrong and broken, and Tony refuses to be another name on a long list. He’s always been on short lists, usually on the top. He’s not going to change now.
“I will, but first let me assure you that I’m not calling Steve unless you want me to.” Basics first. That it’s a relief not to have to talk to Rogers again is secondary to the weary look he gets from James. “It’s your wellbeing I’m interested in, not Steve’s. So if you’d rather not have him know that you’re here, that’s fine. We’ve been keeping him at arms length so far, we can keep doing it.”
A series of complicated looks flash over James’ face too fast for Tony to parse out before he settles on something carefully neutral again. “But why?”
Tony blinks in confusion. “You said you don’t want to see him.”
James shakes his head. “Why are you interested in me?”
The question is sharp, and Tony hears the rest of it just fine. What do you want with me? What parts? The weapon? The soldier? The war hero? Tony tries to keep his breathing steady and his anger in check. Nobody deserves this.
“I’m interested because you’re not, James. I’m not going to let you die.” James looks at him like Tony might still shoot him, and Tony’s heart aches. He’s also historically not been stellar at accepting help, but at least that’d always been his pride and his fear of rejection talking. Never the actual knowledge that helping hands hurt more than they ever helped. Well, Tony refused to be part of long lists.
“I can help you with your shoulder, I can help with a lot of things. And if I can’t, I know the people that can. You’re free to leave of course, you can go and think about it, or just turn and never come back, but if you want it, there can be a place for you here.”
“I thought that was the Colonel’s choice”
Tony huffs a laugh. “Platypus runs the avengers, but this is my building. He can’t really stop me if I want to start housing cute homeless guys.” He winks at James making it clear that he’s joking and leaves the man to thumb at the seam of his jeans. It takes a while for James to pick up the conversation, and while it’s hell for Tony to just sit there and not do anything, he keeps his mouth shut and his arms crossed over his chest.
“You have quite a talent for picking projects, Stark.” Tony knows a cut inwards when he sees one.
“Tony,” he reminds James gently.
A flash of a smile quirks at James’ lips. “Tony.”
“And you’re not a project, James.”
The smile returns, sharp, a cut turned inwards. “No? Then what else is this?” Tony doesn’t know what hurts more, the self-deprecation or the mistrust. He doesn’t stop to think about it, shrugs.
“An olive branch. You’ve had a shitty time, a shitty life, and I’m in a position to help you catch a break and get back on your feet.”
James swallows, hand back on his leg and pointedly looking at the floor before Tony’s feet.
“Despite– everything?”
Tony sighs. He knew this talk was coming. He’s had it with himself more times than he can count. He’s had it with Rhodey and Pepper when the pardons were signed and Bucky Barnes was once more a war hero, pride of america. Somehow he’s still not prepared for it. He’s just tired, wearily looking at the mess of emotions and pain he’s going ot have to wade through again.
But James looks like he is waiting for Tony to execute him, his head hanging low, hand holding on to his leg as if he hopes to break it, break himself into something that deserves mercy.
“I saw the files that Hydra kept on you, James,” Tony starts softly, and James flinches. “It wasn’t your fault.”
James swallows hard, his throat working hard around the forgiveness Tony is offering. Tony knows what a man looks like when he’s tearing himself apart from the inside, hoping desperately that the pieces will hurt less than the whole, will be more palatable than the whole. He’s seen it in the mirror often enough.
“It was my hands though.” Tony realises he’s been running his fingers of the seam of his shirt. He slides off the chair and onto the floor, a few feet away from James.
“And it was my hands that built missiles responsible for thousands of deaths, made the Maximoffs orphans and refugees. My hands that built Ultron, that destroyed an entire country. My hands that helped build the body that paralyzed Rhodey. My hands that tore you apart, left you in a year of pain.”
Tony clenches and releases his hand into a fist, again and again. It doesn’t really help. “It’s not the same, I know. I’m just saying I get it. It doesn’t feel like you deserve it.” Tony looks up, meets James’ eyes who is looking at him like he’s looking at salvation. “I want to give you this, that part’s not up to you. The same way I’ve forgiven you for mom and dad. If you deserve it is not up to you.”
James watches him carefully and Tony tries to let himself be watched, tries to not wall up and let himself be read.
“Then what is up to me?”
Tony shrugs, tries to break the heaviness of the moment with a smile. “Your talk with the big boss. What you want to do from here. What you want to do with yourself.”
James nods, looking around the workshop, thinking. U moves on to putting a bunch of Tony’s tools back into the toolkit they belong to, and James turns to look.
And flinches. Tony’s gaze zeroes in on him immediately, his mind racing through the last few hours, through James not moving, sitting still on the ground and never moving.
“Ah, shit. I knew I missed something.” He hops up and turns to fetch the tool kit he used last night when he realises he should probably not be storming off without explanation. “Is it alright if I take another look at your shoulder?”
“I’m alright.”
Tony can hear from his voice, can see from the perfect stillness of his body that he is not. “You’re in pain.”
“It’s fine,” Barnes counters and Tony sighs. Is this what Rhodey has been dealing with for years? He needs to get that man an apology gift. Maybe some nice chocolates. Tony turns to James.
“Please let me help,” he offers again, facing James and trying not to fidget. “It’s up to you.”
For a moment James sits there, his body still, his hand forcibly relaxed on his thigh. Then he nods, visibly steeling himself before he gets up faster than Tony thought possible, one elegant movement.
“Okay.”
Tony tries not to grin, simply rushes to grab his tools. He points James to a chair that should be comfortable enough and rolls up on one of the rolling chairs.
“Alright, tell the man where it hurts,” he murmurs, staring at the mess of wires and fucked up metal he cleaned up yesterday.
“This movement here,” James says and then turns. His face is blank, none of the pain showing and Tony realises it must have caught him by surprise just now. “It shoots up into my spine.”
Tony really doesn’t like that he can’t tell the pain from James’ eyes or face. Nobody should be this good at hiding it. Nobody should be this good at distinguishing pain either.
“You’re good at this.”
A bitter smile crawls across James’ lips. “Plenty of practice.”
Tony tries not to think about that while he inspects his work from yesterday.
“You wanted to tell me your theories. Unless you need to focus.”
Tony grins, zeroing in on the wire nerve connection that’s at fault. “Winter Wonder, I can always talk, trust me. My own personal superpower.” He picks out a few tools. “Friday, show the man the footage we have.”
“Yes, Boss.”
In a way it’s easier to do this while working. Then he can’t see James’ face. Can’t see his reactions.
“We’ve been meeting with Rogers rather regularly, unfortunately. He wants to be back in the loop, wants him and his gang to be part of the New Avengers. We keep telling him that he needs to apply through the right channels, but you know the man. It’s like talking to a river for all he can hear us.
Anyway, another week, another meeting. This was five weeks ago now, last month. You left the meeting early, and Steve was being an ass, and I realised that I was going to get cruel if he kept riling me up, so I pretty much fled.
I guess that’d never happened before? That you weren’t around him, I mean. I met you in the hallway, literally ran into you.” Tony carefully cuts away the fraying part of the wire, and James jolts, his entire body tensing up with pain.
“Shit, I’m sorry. Do you want me to stop?”
James shakes his head. “No, keep going, this is fine. Just… can you keep talking? It helps.” First time Tony’s ever heard that in his life.
“Well, that’s the footage Friday is showing you.” A video of his encounter with James is playing in a hologram Friday is displaying before him, recorded from one of her camera’s in the tower. “It was fucking creepy, if I’m being honest. It was like talking to one of the suits when it’s powered down, I don’t know.”
Tony tries to be careful, slowly untangling the wire from the nerve it’s merged with. He winces when James’ breathing halts, pain rippling through his muscles.
“Fuck, sorry. Well, if there’s one thing you need to know about me is that my brain is a mess, five different trains of thought running at full speeds in different directions. And it just wouldn’t leave me. So I talked about it with Friday, trying to figure out what had happened. It’s also when I looked back at your files again. First theory and all, seemed the easiest leap that someone used the triggers like in Germany. I know the Winter Soldier wasn’t just a blind killing machine. So I dug up the records of infiltrations and days long missions where you were some diplomat or something. Do you know how many languages you speak? It’s amazing.”
James breathes heavy with the pain, his chest heaving as he tries to stay still. But through it there is a smile. “No.”
“Well, it’s amazing,” Tony continues, chugging along because he knows he will kick himself to death if he stops and thinks about his words now. “Anyway, that was a dead end. Both because the– the conditioning wouldn’t stop like that, wouldn’t leave you blank like that. And like, why would it stop if you were away from Steve, that didn’t check out. And of course, Shuri made it abundantly clear all the effort she went through to make sure the trigger words didn’t work anymore. So dead end.”
Tony pauses, picks up a different tool. Gives James a moment to relax, to breathe before he continues.
“So I looked at Maximoff next. I know she’s loyal to Steve, always has been. And… well, we have some experience with her power set, and the stone it came from, so it seemed a likely candidate.”
Tony pulls back looking at his work. It’s not pretty, not even nice. But the wire is gone. Tony watches as the bleeding stops too, super soldier serum doing what he can’t.
“There, that should do it. Be careful with it for today.” James nods, not offering anything else, eyes fixed on the recording that has stopped looping by now, frozen on an image of Tony talking to a catatonic Bucky Barnes.
“I was wondering whose clothes they were,” he offers eventually, and Tony inspects the image, looks back at James. The button up and trousers in the image look like they were stolen straight from the Smithsonian. They look good, spitting image of one of Tony’s first crushes, war hero James Buchanan Barnes. They look nothing like the nondescript clothes James is wearing now. Even with his god-like built and intense eyes hidden by a curtain of hair, Tony isn’t sure he would recognise James if he passed him on the street. Hell, if he’d remember him.
“Friday and I did our research, she did the math on how far Maximoff’s powers could reach. She’s done enchantments before, one time things that just leave emotional scars. But this was an active thing, something she would have to turn on and off.” He gestures at the image as he says ‘off’.
“So next meeting I just… It’s not stupid if it works, okay, so I just sort of grabbed you, threw myself out of a window with you into a suit, and just flew you out of the radius.”
James actually chuckles at that, and encouraged by the reaction, Tony continues.
“That should really have been the first sign that I was onto something. Sure, Siberia was something of an even fight because you were fucking out of it, but me without suit against the Winter Soldier? This would never have worked if you were– well, you.”
James nods, still looking at the video.
“You’re wrong, though.”
Tony quirks an eyebrow. “You need to specify, Snowflake. This is not an accusation I take lightly.”
James glances over at him, relaxing when he spots Tony’s ridiculous expression. “It wasn’t an even fight. I was scared out of my mind, what little I had of it at that moment, but Steve and I got to the facility ready to fight. I went in there ready to die. I was always the weakest of the six. And you handled the two of us easy.”
Tony doesn’t know what to say to that. So he doesn’t and ignores the blatant admiration in James’ voice. “But there you have it, that’s the theory. Something something Maximoff magic. Not sure how, or why, or even what exactly she was doing.”
James nods, slowly looking around, moving his shoulder gingerly, but without any further signs of pain.
“I… I would like to stay. At least until I know what happened. Even like this,” he continues, gesturing towards his shoulder. “I can’t let her get a hold of me. So yeah… if you’re alright with it– I’d like to stay.”
“I see, I get some sleep for once in my life and you have all my meetings for me, Tony.” Tony lest out an embarrassing squeak as Rhodey strides into the workshop, wearing a fresh shirt and looking like the leader of the Avengers on tv. James however beside him freezes, staring at Rhodey like his executioner has arrived.