homebound

“Where are we?”

Tony’s used to not getting his questions answered. He's a naturally curious guy, so he already knows he asks more questions than most, and most of the time, people don't have to patient to put up with all of it. Things didn't get any better when he became Iron Man either, or when he became an Avenger. If anything, they just got worse. After all, he's working with spies now, and anything he'd ask that might seem even slightly too confidential met him with the same spiel over and over again: some things need to be kept strictly classified, it came with the business, yada, yada, yada. Sure, it certainly doesn't help that he has a teensy tiny, itty bitty little habit of drilling holes through international security servers to access restricted information, but hey— how else was he supposed to spend his Tuesday nights?

So people like to hide things from him, and he likes to find answers anyway, and they all fall into a weird, fucked up homeostasis where no one is happy but they're all too busy to do all that much about it. It works for pretty much everyone in Tony's life, from ex-SHIELD agents, to politicians, to even Pepper sometimes.

Except for one person.

"You're killing me here with the silent treatment, Cap."

Cap. Captain America. Good ol’ Capsicle, leading them through the middle of nowhere without even a damn peep of where they’re going.

If there’s one thing Tony's never quite been comfortable with, it's not getting answers from Steve. The man's an open book, hates secrets and plots more than anything else in the whole entire world, so when he's hides something it feels like the goddamn apocalypse. When the same man who was willing to turn his back on all of SHIELD when he had just an inkling of suspicion that they were hiding something decides to hides something on his own, it's hard to have an internal meltdown or two. 

Tony knows he should trust Steve,he really does.

Hell, he hardly has much of a choice, with the team beaten down and blundered as they were. Ultron’s in every file known to man, has access to nearly every surveillance system in the world, and has essentially backed them into the narrowest corner known to man. After the Salvage Yard and Johannesburg, Nat’s barely standing on her own, Thor looks seconds away from snapping, and without JARVIS to monitor his vitals, Tony’s not too sure how far he is from a panic attack. As a team and as just people, they really have no other choice but to trust each other, and that means trusting Steve Rogers.

But that doesn’t mean Tony likes it so much, not right now.

Because instead of giving them even a semblance of an explanation, a reason, anything, Steve’s just trudging through dense forests and leading them to fuck knows where. He’s been shielding—ha, get it—any questions they asked, and Tony’s not stupid enough to not notice the intense line of tension drawing down his back the further they walked on.

They were all tense, sure. Hard not to be with a genocidal AI on their tail, hellbent on making their whole kind go extinct, but this is different. For as long as he’s known Captain Do-Good, Tony’s always seen him ready to charge into battle without a single shred of doubt, seen him push forward as though there’s not a single thing he feels except pure determination.

But now, as they waddle through thick shrubbery with no end in sight, Tony allows himself to acknowledge the inklings of fear dotted on Steve Rogers’s posture.

He can’t think about it for long, though, because the second he finds himself opening his mouth for another snarky, but pointed jab—something akin to a ‘are we there yet?’ might do well—he sees it.

There’s not much to see at first, in the nighttime darkness and unyielding foliage blocking nearly every bit of light from sight. As they get closer, though, Tony blinks and wonders if what he’s seeing is little but a hallucination.

Wood, he notes first. Not saying much, seeing as they’re in a forest, but it doesn’t take him long to examine the cleanly polished, but still somewhat rustic logging of the cabin before them. There’s a minute sheen to the lumber only noticeable because of the dull glow of light coming from inside the home.

Because that’s what this clearly is. A home.

“What on earth…” Bruce mutters.

Tony can’t help but mirror the sentiment, especially when he sees that earlier twinge of fear instantly melt from Steve’s figure as the cabin came into view. He speeds up, whether he realizes it or not, and Tony has half a mind to tell him to shout at him for it. They got injured people here, after all, so it's not like they can all keep up with his inhuman pace.

Steve seems to catch himself before he can break into a complete, super-solider-esque sprint, though only barely. He’s still antsier than Tony’s ever seen him as he slows his pace to follow a steady march up to the cabin.

They make it up to the patio without a single word, and as Steve fumbles through his belongings for something, Tony considers the cabin with curious eyes.

It’s simplistic to the utmost and all but enshrouded by the trees everywhere, but there’s a certain charm to it Tony can’t deny. He sees the rocking chair out to the side, wooden and worn like the rest of the place, and he can almost imagine Steve perched on it, reading a book and relaxing like a man laid to rest.

Vaguely, he wonders if Pepper would like something like this.

The jingling sound of keys rattling in a lock break Tony out of his reverie, and he looks back just in time to see Steve pushing the door open. The second it cracked open, the soft smell of cinnamon and oak flooded their senses, and Tony swallowed a small lump in his throat as Steve welcomed them in with a small ‘come in.’

Yeah, Pepper would definitely like this.

The inside’s as homely as Tony would’ve expected, almost to the point where it’s just creepy. Really, whole thing screams department store domesticity, from the crackling fireplace to the sweater draped carelessly over the couch. Tony was almost tempted to ask if there was a mountain nearby and skis tucked away in the shoe closet to tie together the whole Flagstaff, Arizona vibe the place has got going on.  He could just imagine toddling little kids rushing out of a bedroom with pink noses and blonde hair and beige cardigans, stumbling to greet their guests and offer hot cocoa.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound too bad.

But alas, seconds pass, and no suburban mini-Steves come out to play. In fact, no one seems to be around, a thought instantly unsettles Tony as much as it confuses him. Clearly someone was there—the cottage is well-lived-in, that’s for sure—but there doesn’t seem to be a trace of anyone around. No shadow, no sound, nothing. It puts Tony on edge, but he doesn’t miss the calm, almost relaxed state Cap’s put himself in.

And that’s when he hears it.

“I’m home.”

Tony’s not too sure if Steve really spoke, or if he just mouthed the words with the tiniest bit of air behind them. The only reason he heard them is because he’s standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with Steve, and even then he’s wondering if he just imagined it.

But he didn’t, because suddenly he’s hearing rustling coming from another room, and he’s struck by the realization that he has no idea who’s coming, who Steve is waiting for, is coming home to. He braces himself for what’s to come, but even he can’t stop himself from startling still at who steps out of the adjacent kitchen.

The expression’s different, hair longer and eyes bright blue instead of that murky brown that plagued all the photos, but Tony recognizes the figure nonetheless. There’s no doubting who it is, after seeing him time and time again from history textbooks, from his old man’s photo albums, from Natasha’s data dump on SHIELD. There’s no one else it can be, besides—

“Buck.”

Buck. Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. Steve Roger’s best friend from childhood. Captain America’s right-hand man throughout World War II. A long-dead man brought back to the world of the living after decades of a hell that couldn’t be called life. The fucking Winter Soldier.

Now he stands before them decked up in denim and disbelief, and god damn it, Tony’s not in the right mental state to handle this right now.

“Steve,” Barnes breathes out.

The shock plastered on his face fade away into relief and something else Tony can’t point out. He stares at Steve for what feels like a millennium, before his eyes flicker around to take in the rest of the Avengers. His gaze is pointed but not unkind, and Tony watches in a sort of awed stupor as a small smile tugs up onto his face as he turns back to Steve.

“First he doesn’t tell me he’s coming home—” There’s that pesky home thing again. “—and then he brings a whole damn parade. What sorta show do you think I’m running here, Stevie?”

“Buck,” Steve repeats, and there’s a certain desperation clawing at his voice as he stumbles forward.

Tony—and the rest of the team, as it turns out—remains frozen in place and watches in awe as Steve all but throws himself at Barnes. It’s not so much a hug as it is Steve crumpling atop him in an exhausted heap, falling over him and curling up as though trying to make his hulking form go small.

Barnes takes it with as much grace as he can, though, and doesn’t voice any complaints aside from the small ‘oof’ he lets out as he takes the full brunt of Steve’s weight. Wrapping his arms around Steve’s tapered waist, he holds him in a careful embrace. The light of the nearby lamp glints off of his metal left hand, and Tony tries not to clench his jaw.

“Hey punk,” Barnes says, voice muffled by his face practically shoved into Steve’s shoulder.

The hug lasts way longer than Tony felt comfortable with as he stood there loitering around in front of them, and a quick glance at the rest of the team proves the sentiment’s shared.

Bruce has already turned around in this sort of half-turn, wanting to afford them whatever privacy he could. Thor and Clint are both gaping at the pair, in confusion and in pure shock respectively, while Nat’s narrowed her eyes to regard the whole scene speculatively. There’s a twitch in her eyebrows abruptly, and Tony looks back to see why.

At first he doesn’t notice anything strange, but he squints to look closer at the way Steve’s head is turned, as though to press his lips against the side of Barnes’s head—

Oh.

Barnes pulls away first, but not far: just enough to cup Steve’s cheek and look at him dead-on.

“So tired, you look so tired, sweetheart.”

Oh.

“You’re too young for these sort of lines,” Barnes continues, thumb swiping over Steve’s cheek lightly. “Gonna look like an old man if you don’t quit frowning so much.”

“I am an old man, Buck. We both are,” Steve retorts, but his hand comes up to rest over Barnes’s, his grip gentle and loving—

Oh.

“C’mon,” Barnes says, pulling away from Steve properly this time.

Steve looks like nothing short of a kicked puppy in response, but Barnes ignores him in favor of finally turning to the rest of the team, as though he’s just acknowledged their presence. He flashes them a weak but welcoming smile, one Tony knows he’d find normal on anyone else besides the man in front of him.

“Why don’t you all take a seat? I’ll get drinks.”

-

Drinks, as it turns out, just ends up being some hot ginger tea.

Really, Tony deserves at least some Gentleman Jack or Sauvignon Blanc or anything to help ease the throbbing in his head and the tightening in his chest right now. He has half a mind to complain for it, and he almost does, but then the first sips of tea hit his tongue all words seem to die in his throat just like that.

It’s comforting, and that realization leaves Tony feeling antsy in more ways than one.

He distracts himself from his looming unease by drinking more and letting his eyes wander. He narrows in on all the most obscure things, from the quiet sound of wind outside to the impressive bookcase tucked aside in the corner. It’s piled high with titles well-known and unknown alike, and Tony sees some foreign titles in there as well: some French, Russian, is that a touch of Gaelic or is he just seeing things?

A soft cough pulls his attention away, and he turns his head to look at Natasha. She’s in a bit of a stare-off with Barnes as he hands her a mug, her expression intensely blank and unreadable. It doesn’t seem to put off Barnes much at all though—not like Steve, who’s pursing his lips and wringing his hands together as he watches the interaction.

“Barnes,” Natasha finally says, taking the mug graciously even as her expression doesn’t change.

“Widow,” Barnes says, nodding his head in greeting. Surprisingly enough, that’s enough to break Natasha’s composure, as she raises a single eyebrow and the corner of her lip twitches precariously.

“Just Widow? I’m hurt—here I thought Steve would have more to say about me.”

Tony clenches his jaw unthinkingly, fingers tensing around his mug’s handle and shoulders scrunching forward.

Barnes, though, just shrugs and steps back.

“On the contrary, he’s talked all too plenty about you, ma’am.” A quick glance at the rest of the team, and Barnes amends himself. “About all of you. You’d forgive a man for keep his wits about him in front of ‘the world’s mightiest heroes,’ wouldn’t ya? ‘M tryna be a good host and not to embarrass myself here.”

Natasha’s expression softens, Clint snorts, and Steve exhales heavily in relief. Thor chortles merrily—that big, bright, booming laugh of his—and it’s almost palpable how much the mood lightens. Tony’s still itching to scream, to run away, to do anything, but all the can do is sit there tensely and resist the urge to peel his own face off while he watches Bruce move out of the way to let Steve and Barnes sit together. It’s so domestic and sweet that it’d practically be a crime to point out anything amiss now.

Like the fact that they’re shacking up with a goddamn international assassin, who just so happens to be canoodling with Steve Rogers right across from Tony at this very moment.

Now Tony’s not stupid. He immediately read all the SHIELD files Natasha leaked online the minute he caught word of the dump. And by that, he meant he had JARVIS run through all the files and pick out any and all salient bits for his review.

Sure, even before the leak, he’d had his fun poking at SHIELD’s defenses and prying through confidential information they thought he wouldn’t be able to reach. But this, this was different; this was 100% crystal-clear transparency, and there was no way he was gonna pass that up.

And so, he gave himself and JARVIS a proverbial hard hat, and started digging.

It’d taken months upon months to get through everything. Even with JARVIS’s filtering, there were a lot of files, to say the least. Cracking open every tiny piece of SHIELD’s dirty laundry was no small feat, especially when he also had to deal with terrorist junkies and nosy reporters banging on his door.

Really, they talked about the Mandarin’s real identity for maybe a week tops. Spent maybe a month about the Battle of New York. But hit pieces on the organization Howard Stark was fundamental in creating getting invaded by Nazis? Fucking endless. He, Pep, and their whole PR team deserve a year’s vacation just for fielding all those damn questions and news stories.

He doesn’t blame his pops, though he really wishes he could. But no, he knows plenty about HYDRA’s insidious, inconspicuous infiltration into SHIELD, from its incipient stages all the way up to the battle at Triskelion. There’s no way Howard would’ve been able to figure it out at the beginning, and by the time he did, well…

HYDRA had their own contingency plan, and Tony’s looking right at him.

“So,” Barnes starts coolly, ignorant to the gears churning a million miles per minute in Tony’s head, “what chewed up and spat out the mighty Avengers this bad, huh?”

Steve looks away, as does Bruce. Thor clenches his fist—the big guy’s never taken losing very well—and Tony quietly wonders if he should even try to respond. He doesn’t get a chance to answer that, though, because almost immediately Clint and Natasha start giving a shaky rundown of everything that’s happened.

They’re purposefully vague, which Tony finds a little odd, but he doesn’t try to give any more detail either. For the most part, he just lets the duo talk, pitching in occasionally as the others do the same. Well, except Steve. Even Thor speaks a few times, mainly to explain stuff about the scepter and Tesseract—because, right, all this alien stuff is still pretty new to Barnes, isn’t it?—but Steve stays notably silent the whole time.

Tony’s not too sure what to feel about that.

For what it’s worth, Barnes listens patiently throughout, not a smidgeon of judgement flashing in his eyes. He frowns at the right times, and Tony doesn’t miss the way his fingers tighten around Steve’s as time progresses.

“Lord Almighty,” he croaks out when they finally finish, “that’s some mess you’ve gotten yourselves into.”

Despite himself, Tony scoffs loudly, leaning back into the couch cushions and shaking his head.

“More than an understatement there, Manchurian Candidate,” he grumbles before he can stop himself. Barnes, strangely enough, doesn’t seem fazed by the jab at all. Maybe he doesn’t understand the reference. Tony changes tactics. “So where exactly are we, anyway?”

“As close to the obscurity as you’re gonna get,” Barnes responds vaguely. Tony looks to Steve for explanation, and he just shrugs.

“I guess you could call it a safe house of sorts,” Steve says. “Off of any files, with no coordinates Ultron can trace. We’ll be okay to lay low here for a bit until, well…” He pauses, sparing a timid, apologetic glance at Bruce. “Until things calm down and we work out a plan.”

Natasha hums in interest, and Steve stares at her, as though probing her to speak her mind.

“Fury has good taste,” she says, regarding the cabin with unveiled amusement. “Surprised he actually went through with it.”

“You knew?” Clint asks, but Natasha just shakes her head.

“Heard bits and pieces, but I didn’t actually think…”

“He offered me a favor, any favor, after Insight,” Steve explains to the rest of them. “Said he owed me as much, so I asked for this. Kept it under wraps, so it’d stay off the system and only a handful of people would know.”

“A handful, as in?” Bruce probes, and Steve sighs.

“Well, him, Hill, Sam…” The corners of his lips tug upwards. “And now you guys, I guess.”

God damn it, he’s outright beaming now, and fuck if Tony can ignore an delighted national icon. It’s Captain America for God’s sake! It’s practically unpatriotic to be upset when you see a happy Steve Rogers. No way around it: that golden boy smile is purely contagious.  

“Wait, Wilson knew before me?” Natasha says suddenly, cutting through the sappy mood overtaking the room in one merciful swoop. Thank god, because Tony was starting to feel things, and that’s never okay. “Okay, now I’m actually hurt, Rogers.”

It’s Barnes that scoffs and replies this time.

“You and me both, Romanov.”

“Oh hush, you like Sam,” Steve cuts in, that big ol’ grin still plastered on his face.

“About as much as I can like any guy that talks that much and owns that many sunglasses.”

Tony doesn’t know all too much about Sam Wilson—nice guy, lots of snark and good music recs. He’s joined for a couple of Avengers missions, but by and large he’s stayed out of sight and out of mind since the SHIELD debacle.

Still, Tony knows enough about the guy to get whiplash at the very sight of Barnes mentioning him. He supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised, what with Sam and Steve being so buddy-buddy all the time, but he won’t lie and say it makes all too much sense to him either.

There’s a story there that Tony’s not too sure he wants to unravel, but feels the urge to nonetheless.

“Now doesn’t that sound like someone else we know?” Clint drawls, and Tony forces himself to roll his eyes as the others look at him.

“Going for a personal attack now, are we Barton?” Tony quips weakly.

He tries not to gulp when Barnes looks at him head-on for the first time that night. There’s only mirth in his eyes now, but Tony can’t help but wonder what cruel blankness would’ve taken over his expression that night in 1991.

“Don’t worry, Stark,” Barnes says, “you’re good so long as you don’t send forty texts a minute any time some national disaster happens.” He pauses and tilts his head, almost thoughtful. “I should probably tell him it’s robots this time, see if he freaks out.”

Steve perks up at that, eyes bulging wide in shock and realization.

“Shit,” he swears under his breath. “I never told him what happened.”

Tony barely bites back a jibe of ‘language!’, though this time he’s fairly sure Steve wouldn’t hear it even if he said it.

“Sam, I didn’t— is he—”

“He’s fine,” Barnes interrupts easily, leaning into Steve a little bit more as a comfort. “Just being annoying as always, wondering if you’ve gotten yourself killed and the like. Normal Sunday texts, really.”

“I haven’t talked to him since the party,” Steve says sadly. “Ultron, he’d gotten into the internet and service lines, and I didn’t want to risk it, but God, I should call him, or—”

“Already done. Told him you’re here and all.”

“Wouldn’t Ultron be able to track that?” Bruce asks. The silent ‘and track us’ doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Part of being under the grid is codes, Doctor,” Barnes shoots back with an almost daring grin. “Not too many wack-job robots care if Stella from Indiana’s back in town to sell her herbal supplements and crystal charms.”

Tony snorts despite himself. He can just picture the conversation that would lead to coding Steve Rogers as a hippie herbalist, and he’s dying to see just what Sam Wilson’s text messages look like because of it. Steve’s still frowning though, in his classic, Captain America is disappointed look, and it’s almost enough to make Tony stop laughing.

Almost.

“Still, I should check in with him, or—”

“No,” Barnes cuts in, grin falling into a small frown. His voice is firmer now, less jovial and more sober, as though the very suggestion offended his most delicate sensibilities. “What you should be doing is resting. You look like you’ve seen the ghost of God, honey.”

Honey. Yeesh, that’s going to take some getting used to.

“Not now, Buck.”

“Don’t you ‘Buck’ me. Off to bed with you. Now.”

“We need to strategize first, figure out how to—”

“You can save the world tomorrow, when you’re not dead on your feet. Go on, I’ll get your guests settled.”

“Our guests,” Steve grumbles, almost too quiet to hear.

“Steve.”

“Bucky.”

Tony hadn’t noticed it until Barnes had pointed it out, but looking at him now, Steve really does seem exhausted to his core. Physically, he doesn’t look to be in too bad of shape—not any more than the rest of them, at least. But beyond that, there’s a sort of gravity to his face that has Tony’s breath hitching.

From the sunken feeling of his eyes to the intense droop of surrender in his shoulder, Steve looks more hollow than living. There’s so much conflict in his eyes now, his expression painting a hundred stories as he stares off with Barnes, and it has Tony’s insides squirming.

And he’s not the only one, it seems.

Barnes clicks his tongue and breaks eye contact first, turning his head to stare down at his own mug vacantly as he speaks.

“Fine,” he snaps, though there’s not much heat behind it, “if you’re so damn bent on staying up, go cook dinner. Lord knows I’m starving, and your friends probably are too.”

Barnes’s gaze flickers up to them, almost pleading, and the team’s quick to catch on.

“I could do with some grub,” Bruce says.

“Indeed, I’m quite famished from battle!” Thor roars.

“Fuck yeah, some food,” Clint practically moans, and Tony barely manages to find his voice to get in a quick jab.

“Cap, he said a bad language word again! Put a quarter in the swear jar, Barton!”

“Oh fuck off!”

Steve groans at the proceedings, but his expressions looks notably lighter and more relaxed as he shakes his head to himself and stands up. Barnes, on the other hand, looks bemused to all hell. He opens and closes his mouth a few times in confusion and intrigue, before shrugging off whatever questions he has in his mind in favor of standing up himself.

“Well, I guess I’ll figure out where you’re all sleeping then.”

-

Loitering around the Rogers-Barnes cabin feels no less than awkward, to say the least.

With Steve hard at work in the kitchen, Barnes doesn’t seem as privy as before to start any conversation with them. He’s nothing but courteous, sure, but he doesn’t try to buddy up with them in any way either. Instead, he stays polite and subdued as he shows them guest rooms they can shack up in.

He even apologizes briefly when he says some of them will have to bunk up together. That is, Natasha and Clint in one room, with Bruce and Tony in the other. Thor’s supposed to be staying with them too, except he immediately insists he can’t stay the night, how it’s ‘imperative that he depart after dinner’ or whatever. He’s blathering on and on with some nonsense, something about stones and water and prophecies and how it’s all too important for him to delay on.

Tony can’t pick out much sense from his blabbering, but his ears do perk up when he hears Thor mention he had at the Salvage Yard.

Those twins—no, that girl. Wanda Maximoff.

They had all briefed Hill about what had happened on the quinjet ride over. Well, mostly Clint, who had managed to zap the Maximoff girl before she could play with his mind. He was the only one not completely out of it, able to actually form cohesive reports for a good chunk of their ride here. 

Bruce had been the next one to break the silence, admitting quietly that he had no idea what the girl did to send the Hulk into a spiraling rage. He didn’t say it, but it was clear just how haunted he was from his own actions, from the lack of control, from the chaos.

The rest of them eventually pitched in, albeit barely. They spoke in hushed tones and fragmented sentences about visions and hallucinations, as though speaking any louder would make the apparitions come to life. None of them were keen on sharing exactly what they saw that threw them into such an intense daze, and the subject was dropped all too quickly as they shifted their priorities on laying low and surviving.

Still, Tony knows he can’t forget it that quickly, knows the images he saw have been burned into the back of his mind with the cruelest iron. He can’t close his eyes now without feeling bitingly chill drafts running down the back of his neck, without hearing the screeches and squawks of those damn Chitauri monsters. The sight of everyone he knew and loved dying is plastered onto the back of his eyelids, and one haunting line scorches in his ears.

Why didn’t you do more?

He can’t imagine what is Thor saw, and quite frankly, he’s not sure he wants to.

The wait for dinner is all too long and all too short at the same time, and Tony busies himself by fumbling with whatever outdated tech Steve has lying around the cabin. Really, the man works in some of the most cutting-edge facilities in the world, and he still has garbage laying around for his leisure use like a laptop that looks straight out the Ye Olde Dark Ages—aka, 2008.

Tony takes to poking around at the barely functional coffee machine in the corner of the kitchen, despite Steve’s half-hearted protests of ‘it’s fine, Tony, you don’t have to fix anything.’ Tony, of course, ignores him, and Steve’s too busy working around the oven to really say much else.

They work in companionable silence for a while, with nothing but themselves and the delicious scents wafting around the room to entertain them. There’s about a million questions looming over their heads right now, a Pandora’s box neither of them were willing to crack open, and Tony wonders if it’s possible to be suffocated by his own silence.

Sure feels like it.

Eventually, Bruce and Barnes come stumbling into the kitchen just as Steve wraps up with dinner. Tony doesn’t hide his surprise when he sees the two of them together, but he quickly averts his gaze when he realizes that Barnes is watching him with curious eyes as he’s tinkering away.

It catches him off-guard enough that he doesn’t think to ask Bruce what they were doing together at all. Instead, he focuses all his attention on playing around with the coffee machine’s pressure settings. God knows he’d need the strongest brew possible to survive the next few hours.

Vaguely, Tony can hear the sounds of clinking plates and shuffling pans around as Barnes helps Steve finish up dinner and Bruce sets the table. Still, he doesn’t look up from his busy work at all until Steve is loudly calling for him to come join, and even then, he lingers. He spares a glance at the dining table, at the ragtag bunch seated there together, and all he can think is how fucking weird his life is.

‘Tis the woe of being an Avenger, he guesses.

Dinner’s a calm affair, thankfully. Tony’s not all too sure there’s enough food to go around—there’s plenty, sure, but they do have two serum-enhanced men and a literal god at the table. No one complains, though, more than willing to just sit back and enjoy the comfort of a home-cooked meal. Conversation is sparse and sporadic for the most part, as they focus more on the roast in front of them than anything else.

Steve attempts to bring up Ultron a few times, to strategize or even just to cut through the thick veil of dread sitting upon their backs, but Barnes stops him repeatedly. Whether it’s with a quick, sharp glare, or with loud interjections on a completely random topic, he manages to shut Steve down before he can a single peep out about Ultron.

It’s a sort of fervent caution that reminds Tony so much of Pepper he feels his chest constricting a few times. She has little tolerance for his missions and his work on the rare occasion they’re at the table together, and as strange as it is, Barnes is giving off the same stubborn concern right that she does every time Tony sees her.

But Steve, bless his heart, keeps trying.

“Has anyone gotten in contact with Hill since we landed—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Stevie.”

The discordant clang of Barnes’s cutlery hitting the plate makes Tony jump a little in his seat.

“Buck—”

“Another peep outta you and I swear to Jesus himself I’m gonna—"

“Ultron’s not gonna stop—”

“You deserve a moment’s rest Stevie, for God’s sake. All’a you do.”

“I know but—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Barnes slams his hand onto the table as he growls. “You’re useless as you are right now.”

Steve looks stricken, flinching back at the heat in the words, but Barnes doesn’t stop there. It’s as though floodgates have been shattered open, and even Tony finds his stomach lurching as Barnes speaks.

“If you go now, if you go chasing off after ‘im all beaten down and broken like this, what good do you think you’ll do? Absolutely nothing, you goddamn idiot. You can make your plans and create your strategies and rush out guns a’blazing ready to take down the world, but all you’re gonna do is end up dead. So shut the fuck up and eat your goddamn dinner, Rogers.”

Silence strikes across the room like an echoing gong. Steve still seems taken aback with shock and shame and something else painted on his expression, while Barnes is nearly panting from the ferocity of his own outburst. Seconds pass like hours, and it feels like forever has gone by before Barnes’s face is morphing from pure lividity to guilt, maybe even regret.

He doesn’t say anything though, doesn’t take back his words or even try to pretend that everything’s fine.

Instead, he just averts his gaze and falls back into his chair, a noticeable slump forming in his shoulders as he glares holes into the plate in front of him. He doesn’t acknowledge the puppy dog stare Steve’s shooting him now as much as much as he doesn’t acknowledge the growing airs of unease spreading across the table.

They’re all on edge right now, even here, tucked away in Steve’s cozy, presumably safer-than-safe-can-be cabin. Barnes’s rambling, furious outburst, one that hits far too close to home for all of them, is more than enough to send nerves spiraling sky high.

Natasha flips the butter knife in her hand a hundred times a minute. Thor clenches his fist and grits his teeth like he’s about ready to punch a hole into the sky itself. Bruce rubs his hands vigorously across his face in resigned exasperation. Tony himself brings his hand to his chest, absently stroking the arc reactor from where it’s hidden beneath his shirt, longing for the chilling familiarity of his suits.

And Clint, being Clint, decides to break the silence.

“What, no one’s gonna call out his language now?”

The jab’s weak, but it has Barnes raising a brow in curiosity. It’s such a sharp turn in the conversation that even Steve breaks out of his desperate staring contest with Barnes’s ear in surprise.

“Favoritism at its best,” Natasha says, though even her attempts at keeping her voice light and unbothered seem shaky, nearly crumbling under the thick fog of tension in the room.

“What on earth are you two on about?” Barnes asks. He’s still fairly high-strung, but there’s a dip in his shoulders as intrigue takes over his anger.

“The good Captain doesn’t like swearing, you see,” Thor says conspiratorially, with a little smirk that Tony’s fairly sure is genuine.

Hell, he’s probably the most relaxed in the room, which isn’t saying much. Tony’s nothing but a bundle of nerves, no surprise there. Clint and Natasha are still playing up the airs and illusions of ease even as their eyes remain analytical and cautious. Bruce is watching the interaction with open nervousness, while Steve looks halfway between amused and horrified.

And Barnes—well, he just looks affronted.

“Doesn’t like swearing?” he echoes, eyes saucer-wide as he looks around the table at all of them, as though waiting for a punchline never to come. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all!” Thor booms, cockier now. “He’s quite the tight-lipped fellow, you see.”

“Ste—what—”

“It’s nothing—” Steve pitches in, but he’s quickly ignored.

“Steve, as in Steven Grant Rogers, you’re saying he doesn’t curse?”

No one says anything, does anything, save for the tiny nod Thor gives in response. They watch with bated breath as Barnes processes his own shock, watch as bewilderment morphs into confusion, then disbelief.

“That is…”

Tony’s breath hitches, and Barnes grins.

“…the biggest horseshit to grace God’s green Earth.”

What.

 “Buck—” Steve starts, but he’s immediately cut off by Barnes throwing his head back in roaring laughter.

“Seriously, Steve? Not swearing? Man’s got a mouth even sailors would cringe at!”

Okay, what the fuck.

“It’s not that bad—”

“Yeah, tell it to Sweeny, bud. Your Ma woulda gagged ya with soap if wasn’t so damn expensive, and you know it. ‘Doesn’t curse,’ my ass. My god, what sorta shit has he been feeding you—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tony blurts out, bewilderment overtaking his discomfort with talking to Barnes almost instantly. “What are you talking about? Rogers is Rogers, y’know. Good, straight ol’ Cap, good holy boy who does no wrong, kisses babies, and—”

“—Goes to church on Sundays?” Barnes finishes for him, still grinning. “Yeah, heard the jig million times before, but God, I didn’t think people in the future’d be dumb enough to fall for that shit.”

Okay, Tony feels slightly offended.

“Steve swears two ways to Tuesday when he misses a damn train,” Barnes continues when the whole table looks at him in disbelief. “Oh come on— we were in the army, for crying out loud!”

“That… makes a lot of sense, actually,” Natasha muses, but Clint’s shaking his head besides her.

“Well I, for one, am still affronted. Baffled. Outraged!” he exclaims. “We’ve been lied to!”

“A travesty indeed,” Bruce says somberly, though he’s grinning sky high at Clint’s dramatics.

“Truly the end of Captain America as we know him!”

“Hear that Buck? You’re killing a national icon,” Steve says dryly, though Tony can see the way the tips of his ears have flushed red over the past few minutes.

“And I’m damn happy to hear it,” Barnes says triumphantly. “Wait ‘til I tell them the shit you screamed at Nazis, after you, you…”

Barnes trails off at that, smile falling from his face as he furrows his eyebrows in sudden uncertainty. He goes silent for a minute, staring directly at Steve as though he holds the answers for all the world’s mysteries in his perfect blue eyes. Steve, for his part, picks up on the shift immediately, dropping his embarrassment to return the eye contact encouragingly.

Tony looks to Natasha for explanation, for help, for anything, but she’s transfixed on the scene before them.

“You, you hounded him, between missions. Asked him to teach you the dumbest, most vile shit you could in German, so they’d know what you called ‘em when you kicked ‘em in the gut. God, who was he? Got a real simple name, something like, uhh…”

“Yeah?” Steve presses, bringing a hand up to squeeze Bucky’s gently.

“…Jones.”

Barnes speaks with startling clarity, smile tugging at his lips once more.

“Went to school, switched from German to French so he could pick up more dames in class.”

He glances back to Steve, almost timidly.

“That, that right?”

Oh man, that bright Captain America beam is back again in full throttle, charged with pride and excitement that nothing could compare to.

“Yeah, Buck, that’s right.”

Tony has so, so many questions, but if there’s one thing he’s learned from his Rhodey-approved therapists, it’s that maybe he should learn to control his impulses just a little bit. At least, in nice dinner settings like this.

Natasha, though, has no such qualms.

“So you do remember things,” she says, though Tony can hear the question behind the statement. “From your past, I mean.”

It feels like way too sensitive a question for polite conversation, but Barnes just shrugs, unconcerned.

“Mostly, but plenty bits are still foggy,” he admits. “Not always easy to tell what’s real and what I just dreamed up, what I just lost because of how long ago it’s been and what I lost to the wipes.”

“The wipes?” Thor asks. Bruce looks curious too, while Clint and Natasha share a look.

Huh, Tony had forgotten that all the bloody details of the Winter Soldier files weren’t part of the easy-access SHIELD files online.

It’s true—even after the dump, it took far more digging than Tony expected to really get into the nitty gritty details of the Winter Soldier, from his kills to his handlers to his torture. It was all painfully well-documented by HYDRA goons over the past decades, but also painfully well-hidden, coded in such a way that even whole governments couldn’t crack the case.

Those governments didn’t have JARVIS.

At the time, Tony had justified the amount of time he spent entrenched in the Winter Soldier project file as a sort of testament to his friendship with Steve. He had the time, after his post-Killian retirement, so why wouldn’t he try his hands at the most securely shielded case files he’d ever seen just for his good buddy Rogers? He put in all that effort to learn more about Steve’s boy, to figure out how to help him and make things right. Truly, he was doing something incredible just out of the pure kindness of his shrapnel-impaled heart.

Then, he found out about his parents.

“You remember enough,” Steve affirms, dragging Tony out of his thoughts. Barnes just snorts in response.

“’Course it’s enough. I remember all your most embarrassing moments—that’s all I really need.”

“Bucky!”

“Blackmail on Captain America: the treasure we all wanted but never thought we’d have,” Clint drawls.

“Speak for yourself, Barton,” Tony pitches in, hoping no one notices the shake in his voice. “Pretty sure Widow has enough dirt on all of us to bury us in the ground with a plastic spoon.”

“What, like it’s hard?”

“Oh fuck off, Nat.”

Laughs go around the table, and for a moment, the strangling feeling in Tony’s chest is dissipating. It’s still there somewhat, churning away and making him feel seconds away from pulling his own internal organs out, but it’s easier to ignore now. Now, surrounded by the team—his team—he feels more comfortable than he has for a long while, since New York.

Hell, maybe he hasn’t even been this relaxed since Afghanistan.

He’s not sure how to feel about that.

“Your memory,” Bruce says, turning to Barnes with that curious glint still in his eyes. “Was that, was that from the ice, or did HYDRA…”

Bruce winces a little at his own train of thought, and Tony looks at him a little baffled. Bruce is the last person, besides maybe Thor, that Tony thought would know about the Winter Soldier. He clearly doesn’t know all the gory details, but the fact that he knows at all is a bit shocking, to say the least.

Vaguely, Tony wonders if that’s what they had been talking about earlier. He tries to imagine Bruce whisking Barnes away and asking him everything about how he was here and how he got here, while Barnes answers in vague fragments to help sate his curiosity.

Bruce had admitted, ages ago on one very drunk, very relaxing night, to have been a fan of Cap and the Howling Commandos when he was younger.

“I…” Barnes starts hesitantly, looking down at the tablecloth like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “When I was… kept, it wasn’t good to remember things about yourself. Weapons don’t have a history, don’t have memories or a mind. It’s better to be a blank slate, so remembering things was, er, discouraged.”

“What do you—” Thor starts, but Barnes cuts him off.

“Now, even if I’m not there anymore, remembering too much can be… a struggle. Feels like if I do, shit’s gonna hit the fan”

“Conditioning you to hate your own memories,” Natasha quips, fake amusement heavy on her tongue. “To fear them.”

Barnes gives a half-hearted sort of shrug.

“Whole can of worms to open there, but how about we save that for another day, hm?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s therapy for that sorta thing,” Bruce persists. “Ways to access repressed memories without triggering anything. ’Course, not many of them are probably used to hundred-year-old supersoldiers, but still, might be worth looking into.”

“Yeah, no.” Barnes shakes his head, but he smiles good-heartedly, almost a little sadly. “That sorta stuff isn’t… well, let’s just say it requires a lot more identification than I can provide.”

“Too over the table for you, Sergeant?” Natasha muses, and Barnes actually snorts.

“I let a single big-wig get a glance at me, and it’s over. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a therapist or a grainy photo from a security camera at a corner store bakery. If people are looking, I’ll get found one way or another. Best to stay out of sight, out of mind, and don’t involve myself with the public so long as I can help it.”

“But you let us in,” Clint points out. "To your place."

Barnes shrugs.

“Steve trusts you. That’s enough for me.”

Something in Tony’s chest curls and clenches painfully. Is his arc reactor acting up? He almost hopes so, because risking major cardiac arrest seems like so much more fun than dealing with all these conflicting feelings welling up in him right now.

“And you think people are? Looking, I mean,” Natasha asks. “It’s not exactly like the Winter Soldier files were an open book. Most don’t know much besides the name.”

“A ghost story,” Clint echoes.

“Besides, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other shitstorms the world’s dealing with right now. Who’s to say anyone will come for you at all?”

Barnes look at her for a moment, considering, before grinning.

“There are kill-on-sight warrants for me in at least ten countries. Sure you know how it feels, Наталья.”

Natasha cracks a smile, one of those tight smiles she only shows when she has a million things on her mind at once and doesn’t know what to say first. Tony doesn’t like that smile, especially when it’s directed at Barnes as they communicate silently with telling looks that Tony couldn’t dream of comprehend.

“Not so easy getting by without government amnesty covering your ass, is it?”

Barnes replies easily in Russian, and though Tony doesn’t know a word of what he just said, he does have eyes. He can see the way Barnes’s slight grin has fallen, how his words seem a little tenser, and how his eyes have gone a little blank. Hit to close to home, it seems, but Tony’s thankfully able to shut himself up before he actually said that out loud.

Steve, too, seems to have noticed the slight change in Barnes’s demeanor, because he presses a firm hand to his knee and peers at him worriedly. Barnes shoots him a reassuring grin in response, but even Tony can tell it’s forced and empty.

“Still,” Bruce persists, only a little uncomfortable. “There are professionals who are used to more secretive cases, and patient confidentiality—”

“Not worth it,” Barnes waves him off. “Even if they didn’t rat me out, there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t get found out anyway.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Steve blurts out, voice heated and vehement.

The look on his face is one Tony’s only seen a few times before, one of intense and unbridled rage that only comes when he’s ready to tear everything around him apart into pieces. Truly, he has the look of a man ready to burn the world down, and Tony has a feeling he really would if it meant keeping Barnes safe.

It’s endearing as much as it is horrifying, and it’s certainly not doing much to help the dizziness in Tony’s head right now.

“It’s not,” Barnes affirms, softly squeezing Steve’s hand on his knee. “No way I can die yet, not with you still running around wreaking havoc. Someone’s gotta be here to check on your stupid ass.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

God, Tony needs a nap or a quadruple-shot espresso. Maybe both.

-

Thank their lucky stars, they finish eating in relative peace.

Small conversations break out between them, keeping an element of community without the painfully sharp need to focus on someone at all times. Tony stays quiet for the most part, mentally noting how Bruce keeps prodding Barnes with suggestions of professional help, albeit as gently as he can.

It’s not so surprisingly how insistent Bruce is on this, just because Tony knows exactly where his motivations are coming from. Bruce had been tiptoeing around stuff like this for a while now, offhandedly mentioning how he was looking into solving the memory lapses he always had when he was the Hulk.

Tony entirely supported him, mainly because he knew how much it affected Bruce to be in such little control of his own body, his own mind when he was the Hulk. He also knew first-hand how annoyingly helpful therapists and the like could be, a fact that he peppered into his conversations with Bruce as disarmingly as he could.

Tony’s not sure if Bruce ever found anyone, but just the fact that he’s mentioning professional help now makes him think that things are going to turn out alright.

Well, assuming they survive Ultron.

Still, it both warms and wrenches his heart to see that advice going to Barnes of all people. Vaguely, he wonders: is he going to survive a whole night in this cabin? With the sheer amount of chest palpitations he's had in the past few hours, it certainly seems like this night might kill him long before Ultron gets a chance, and now that just wouldn’t be fair to his rebellious robot son, now would it?

No, no it wouldn’t.

Bruce eases up eventually, sensing Barnes’s discomfort and letting the subject slide as they emptied their plates. Barnes is quick to escape given the first chance he’s given, so he makes himself busy by collecting their dishware and utensils the second they all seem done. Steve offers to help, but Barnes shuts him up with a quick kiss to the forehead and asks what he wants to drink.

“HYDRA’s big bad Winter Soldier,” Clint says, wolf whistling, “fixing up Captain America’s nightcap like a darling housewife. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“An agent’s gotta have many faces, Barton,” Natasha says. “You know that.”

“Assassin, not an agent!” Barnes pitches in as he walks out of the room.

Like that makes it any better.

“You seem happy,” Bruce says, and it takes Tony a minute to realize he’s talking to Steve. “When you’re with him, I mean.”

Steve blinks, gaping as he takes in Bruce’s words. Thor nods soberly next to him.

“Indeed,” he agrees, “I’ve rarely seen you so calm, Captain.”

“Not a bad look on ya,” Clint adds, and Tony’s tempted to join them if only to see that flush on Steve’s cheeks grow darker.

“Yeah, well,” Steve starts, abashed as he scratches the back of his neck and averts his eyes, “it’s been a while since we, uh, since we’ve been able to…”

“Go home?”

Natasha’s words ring through the room, and Steve startles, recoiling back like he’s been stung.

“You’ve been fighting for a long time, Steve,” she continues, even as Steve continues to gape like a fish. “Don’tcha think it’s time you retired?”

There’s something knowing in her eyes, sweet and understanding but sad at the same time, that Tony can’t exactly explain. He thinks of the time she and Steve spent together in SHIELD, from the co-op missions to the organization’s very downfall. Tony wonders what she saw back then when she looked at Steve, wonders what she heard, what she felt.

He has a few good guesses.

Steve’s spared from having to respond by Bucky coming back in, a glass of bourbon dark as amber in hand. He looks curious at the silence that’s fallen over the room, but doesn’t question it as he hands Steve his drink and ushers them out back to the living room to unwind.

Tony barely manages to bite back a request for a drink of his own.

The evening goes quietly from there on out. Thor’s quick to leave, the merriment of dinner fading away as silence persists and leaves them alone with their thoughts. Gone was fanciful ignorance they’d developed over the past few hours to the truly deep shit they were in, and in its place, painful reminder slammed into the back of their minds.

Dinner had been fine, even—dare Tony say it—enjoyable, but that didn’t mean shit when an all-powerful genocidal AI of his own making was still out on the loose.

The thought sobers him up quicker than any ice bath can, and it only gets worse once Thor excuses himself. He leaves with little fanfare, simply promising to return once he’s found what he’s looking for.

Tony considers telling him to stay, since splitting them apart certainly sounds like something Ultron wants right about now, but he’s not able to get the words out in time. By the time he can even piece together what he wants to say, Thor’s long gone, and they’re left to silence again.

Steve retires to bed fairly quickly after that.

Exhaustion seems to wear on his bones even more than before, the droop in his shoulders growing more and more pronounced as he struggles to even keep his eyes open. Bucky nags at him quietly to go to bed, and Steve’s surprisingly compliant. He must be more fatigued than they expected, Tony thinks, if he’s agreeing to rest that easy. Even on their normal missions, Steve’s always annoying adamant about staying up to keep watch, to make reports, to do anything.

But now, with nothing but a few quiet words to the team and a kiss to Barnes’s forehead, he’s giving in.

He makes his way to one of the back rooms of the cabin, going down a darkened hallway until he reaches what Tony assumes is his bedroom. Barnes watches him go silently, waiting until the soft sound of a door shutting rung through the air before snapping his head back to the rest of the team.

“Alright, now tell me what actually happened.”

Tony startles without meaning to, as he takes in the sudden frost that’s covered Barnes’s expression. Except, no, it’s not so stoic upon second glance. Sure, there’s a sort of hardened seriousness to his face, especially when compared to the previous warmth to his smile and the crinkle of his eyelids.

But beyond that, Tony can see more.

He sees fury, worry, sorrow, and he just knows that a flat, cold and calculating Barnes would be so much easier to deal with that any of this shit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Natasha says, tone light and almost coy, even.

Barnes doesn’t seem to appreciate the attitude.

“You were hiding something, earlier, because of Steve,” he says flatly, unamused. “What is it?”

“Are these walls thick enough to block out a supersoldier’s hearing?” Natasha asks instead.

“Doesn’t matter if he’s asleep.”

“Like he’ll manage to catch even five minutes of Zs,” Clint says, voice connivingly joking even as Tony could see the way he tensed up as though preparing for the worst.

Spies. Figures.

“Oh he’ll sleep alright. At least four hours, with that dosage.”

Okay, what the fuck.

Tony’s standing before he can help it, fists clenched and stance low as though readying for a fight. His fingers subconsciously swipe over his ring—he can call his suits up within a ten-second window, but he needs to stay alive long enough for that.

Natasha and Clint don’t stand up, but Tony’s not dumb. He can see the knife that’s materialized in Clint’s hand, can see the way Natasha’s eyes are scanning every bit of Barnes and the room to look for weaknesses. Bruce is only one holding back, more shocked than anything else, but he’s fidgeting with his fingers in that way he normally does when he’s worried about the Other Guy coming out.

And Barnes—well, Barnes just looks annoyed.

“Oh come off it,” he snaps.

“You wanna try that again, bud?” Tony snaps, wondering if he should bring his suit up anyway. God knows he can’t see this going well any way they spin this.

“Bucky,” Bruce starts, and okay, when the fuck did Barnes become Bucky? “Why don’t you explain why you, uh, drugged Steve, okay? Just explai—oh god, just, just relax for a second, Bucky please.”

It’s only then that Tony realizes Barnes’s fist is clenched by his side as well—the metal one, shiny and smooth and dangerous. It only slightly relaxes at Bruce’s words, but there’s still a very sharp line of tension running up Barnes’s spine. Even in his cashmere sweater by the flickering fireplace, the way his eyes narrow and his shoulders scrunch forward makes him look almost imposing, intimidating.

Almost.

“You wouldn’t do anything to harm Steve,” Bruce continues, slow and low as though speaking to a child. “Now would you?”

That seems to startle Barnes enough to unclench entirely, startling back with wide, incredulous eyes.

“Harm Ste—Bruce, what the fuck?”

“Forgive us for being worried when you casually just knock out Captain America,” Clint snaps, though there’s something in his posture that’s grown hesitant, questioning.

“Especially considering how that man metabolizes medicine like it’s no one’s business,” Tony quips, sounding far more lighthearted than he felt. “How’d you manage that exactly, huh?”

“Tony…” Bruce says warningly, but he just scoffs.

“C’mon, Bruce. What make you think he’s not gonna get us all too?”

“Maybe the fact that we’re still awake? He gave us dinner, for Christ’s sake. Tony—”

“Steve gave us dinner,” Natasha butts in. “Barnes didn’t cook. Plus, there was that tea—”

“That was hours ago!”

“Still. Could try something later.”

“Ah yes, and giving you advanced notice before I sedate you makes so much sense,” Barnes says dryly, his bafflement from earlier completely melting away and leaving nothing but unamused frustration.

“Whatever, fine, you’re not bothering with us. Still doesn’t explain why you did it to Cap,” Clint shoots back.

“He wouldn’t sleep otherwise!”

The shout’s startlingly loud, enough that Tony’s sure that, asleep or not, Steve must have heard it in the other room, but it’s not the volume that takes him so aback—it’s the words.

“You all saw how he looked,” Barnes hisses, fury rising in his voice where indignance had been before. “You think he’d be able to sleep for even a wink, all haunted like he was?”

The explanation’s so simple, and it has something sinking in Tony’s gut.

“Doesn’t explain where you managed to bag enough sedatives to knock him out,” he retorts weakly, and Barnes actually snorts.

“’s the same as my dosage, tough guy. Lotsa night terrors go on in this house, and it usually ain’t cos of Steve.”

The pit in Tony’s stomach solidifies, and he falls back to the couch cushions before he can help it.

“So I’ll ask again—what happened.”

They tell him.

Or, rather, the others tell him, because Tony can’t seem to get a single damn word out. He stays silent, choking on his own breath as Natasha, Clint, and Bruce alternate with all the missing details they never mentioned before. They detail just how Ultron came to be, they narrate the sheer violence of the past few days, they explain who the twins are—human experimentation and all.

Barnes keeps that same flat expression tinged with nothing but mild annoyance and interest as they speak, though. He’s far from reactive, doesn’t even bother to pretend to sympathize like he did earlier. Hell, he doesn’t even twitch. Tony had seen glimpses of the Winter Soldier in him before, but it doesn’t even compare to the stone-faced sobriety painting Barnes’s face now as he doesn’t grace them with a scowl or a sound or literally anything that’d give him even a little humanity.

And then, they mention the visions.

“Oh god.”

Tony’s pretty sure Barnes doesn’t think they can hear him. Either that, or he doesn’t care, and Tony can’t be bothered to figure out which it is when he’s too busy gaping at the sudden, severe exhaustion that overtakes Barnes’s face.

It’s a stark change, going from that cold, rapt attention to this. Barnes is quickly burying his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes roughly as Natasha explains the Maximoff girl’s powers, the way she played with their minds and turned them into putty. Even as she speaks, Tony can feel the personalized hell Wanda created for him creeping back into his consciousness from the back of his mind, pushed away earlier by the comfort of a home-cooked meal and the anxiety of having his parents’ murderer in front of him.

He’d take HYDRA ex-assassins over mind-melting witches any day, thank you very much.

“Stevie,” Barnes murmurs, pulling his face from his hands for a brief moment to cast a nervous, worried look to the side.

Tony doesn’t have to follow his gaze to know he’s looking down the hallway Steve had gone earlier, to the bedrooms. He doesn’t get a chance to, even, because Barnes is quickly clearing his throat with a cough and replacing his stricken expression with that calm stoicism again.

“No wonder you lot looked like such shit,” he jokes, though his voice is croaky, rough.

“Well not all of us can be baking some damn apple pies and sipping hot cocoa in fuck-knows-where,” Clint quips. "Some of us got jobs to do."

“Fuck you, my pies are great,” Barnes snaps back.

“Yeah? Prove it.”

“Survive this shit, and maybe I’ll make you one.”

Desperate to will his heart calm, Tony tries to imagine Barnes, the god damn Winter Solider, decked out in a fluffy apron baking a pie like he’s just come straight out of the 1950s.

It only slightly works.

“You should rest,” Barnes says abruptly, standing up so quickly it makes Tony’s head spin. “All’a you.”

The argument’s on the tip of Tony’s tongue, jibes ready and set to shoot out at Barnes just for the sake of being difficult, but he holds back. There’s an air of finality to his words that no one else seems particularly keen on challenging, and quite frankly, Tony can’t blame them. They’re all fucking exhausted, and Barnes’s words only serves as a frank, if not snappy reminder of that fact.

And so, he holds his tongue and follows Barnes’s lead.

It’s a bit of rustling and bustling, getting all their ducks in a row and navigating out of the cozy sitting area. Hours passed in the cabin meant that their things had gotten a bit scattered over time, from coats to utility belts to bandages. They take their time collecting everything, while Barnes busies himself popping in and out, handing over everything from glasses of water to keep by their bedsides to extra blankets in case the night’s chill seeped in.

They’re almost entirely out of the living room, when Natasha speaks up.

“What’s that?” she asks, nodding her head to a small cardboard box in the corner of the room. It’s closed, but the tape covering it’s been ripped up, showing that it’s clearly been open once before.

“Nothing really,” Barnes answers, only half paying attention as he looks away staunchly and inches closer to the bedrooms. “Just some of Steve’s paints.”

“Not just some paints,” Natasha says, a little snappy as she raises an eyebrow. “I gave him those—god, has he even touched them at all? That asshole.”

Tony’s torn between touting another jibe of ‘language’ just to be annoying, and reeling back in bewilderment because what business does Natasha have buying Steve paints, of all things? But in the end, he doesn’t get a chance to do either, because Barnes is snorting and shooting her a passing glance.

“He likes them plenty, trust me. He’s just terrible with ‘em.”

Natasha looks visibly shocked by that, while Tony’s just trying to figure out when Steve Rogers took an interest in the fine arts. Barnes seems hardly bothered, giving a weak shrug and finally turning to actually face Natasha.

“What?”

“He told me he’s an artist.”

“Sure is,” Barnes replies easily, a little wary now that he sees Natasha’s surprise. “Damn good at it too. Ask him to show you his stuff sometime—his charcoals are my favorite.”

“But he can’t paint?”

“Well I mean, he’s not terrible. But he was colorblind ‘til the serum, y’know?” he quips, and okay, Tony did not know that. “Color theory doesn’t exactly come easy after that. And with the war, and nose-diving into Atlantic, and waking up in the future… doesn’t exactly give a guy much time to practice.”

He’s greeted with silence, as even Natasha is left lost for words, but Barnes doesn’t pay it a single mind as he turns on a dime and lazily waves his hand.

“Get ‘im sketch pencils next time—he’ll run through ‘em quick as a cricket.”

Without saying another word, Barnes gestures for them to follow him, which they do without argument. A certain lull’s fallen over the team, a fog of silence and, well, not quite awkwardness but just a tad bit of discomfort. Tony busies himself with flipping through his phone robotically, and if he sneaks a glance or two to the closed door behind which Steve Rogers is sleeping then well—that’s his secret, now isn’t it?

There are no more conversations after that, save for a quick check-in from Barnes to make sure they have everything they need and a few shared goodbyes as they take to their separate rooms. Bruce stays quiet even after they shut the door to their shared room for the night, quickly and efficiently changing into the oversized sleep shirt Steve lent them and the sweats they stored in their emergency compartment in the quinjet.

“Good night, Tony,” Bruce says softly as they settle into bed and turn the lights off. “Try to get some rest.”

“’Night, Banner.”

Despite the way his brain’s running circles like it’s a marathon, Tony closes his eyes and internally resolves to follow Bruce’s quiet command.

God knows it’ll be the last chance they have at sleep for a while.

-

Tony doesn’t sleep.

That much was to be expected, he supposes. He can barely sleep peacefully in the safety of his own home, with Pepper by his side and nothing to worry about besides the next city Stark Industries is gonna bring clean energy to. It’s hardly surprising that he’s struggling now.

After all, he’s always had an overactive mind to a fault, and it’s only gotten worse in the years past. New York’s stuck with him in more ways than one, after all, and if it’s inspiration keeping him up at 2a.m. anymore, it’s certainly some crippling anxiety about otherworldly threats to their planet and to the universe as they know it.

Oh, and genocidal robots now too. Being Iron Man is just so much fun.

He slips out of the room without so much as a peep, all too well-versed in sneaking out of bed without Pepper noticing. Bruce doesn’t even rustle in his sleep, and Tony’s more than grateful for that. Bruce has already gone half-therapist for one fucked up dude today—he shouldn’t have to be Tony’s either.

Besides, Tony already has therapists, much to his own chagrin and Rhodey and Pepper’s relief.

He doesn’t quite know where to go or what to do when he steps out of the room, so he lets his body run on autopilot as he makes his way to the front door. He’s not sure what it is, but something about the air in the cabin just feels so stifling now, so oppressive on his chest that it’s like it’s threatening to break open his ribcage and arc reactor all in one.

So he steps out, and he’s not sure why he’s so unfazed when he realizes he’s not the only one out.

“You’re up past your bedtime, mister.”

Steve noticeably startles at Tony’s voice, jerking in his little rocking chair that creaks from the movement. Poor chair—it’s old and rickety, probably not meant for all 240-something pounds of pure muscle that is Captain America.

“Tony,” Steve says breathily, snapping him out of his reverie. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Well, I was trying to run away and escape the nightmare of blissful domesticity and rustic farmhouse chic, but you just had to come around and thwart my plan, didn’t ya, Rogers?”

Tony doesn’t know what to feel about the coil loosening in his chest when Steve chuckles weakly in response. Swallowing slightly, he ignores the feeling as much as he can in favor of stepping over to the opposite edge of the patio and leaning on its wooden railings. He tilts his head as though regarding Steve before he speaks.

“Thought you’d be out like a light,” he says casually, wondering if he should mention the fact that Steve’s—best friend? Sweetheart? Pet assassin?—drugged him up so he’d get a few winks of sleep in. He decides against it. “What’cha doing up?”

“Same as you, probably,” Steve responds cryptically, and Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes. He does scoff, though, and Steve shoots him a cheeky grin in response. “Just thinking, that’s all. You should rest, Tony.”

“Too late for that, bud, I’m already up,” he quips.

Almost immediately, Tony can sense the Captain America is disappointed look about to come his way, so he works fast. He grips the nearby pillar and pivots playfully around it in semi-circular spins so he doesn’t have to meet Steve’s eyes. It doesn’t even half work, because Steve is nothing if not stubborn.

“Tony—”

“So!” Tony shouts suddenly, and it sounds all the more loud in the dead silence of the forest surrounding them. “You and Barnes, huh?”

It’s far from his smoothest transition, and he’s wincing internally at the painfully abrupt and blunt change of pace. It’s not even close to how he wanted to bring this topic up, especially when he hadn’t even been sure if he wanted to bring it up at all in the first place. But he doesn’t have much of a choice but to go with it now, since of all things, that manages to shut Steve up instantly.

“That’s, uh, that’s not in the history books,” Tony finishes weakly, cringing at his own stuttering. His inner social savant is screaming in agony at his uselessness, and he readies himself for the painful awkwardness to come.

What he doesn’t expect, then, is for Steve to snort.

“Yeah, well,” he starts, sounding far more amused than Tony is okay with him being right now, “we’re from a time where it wasn’t all too illegal to bludgeon a guy to death for being a fairy. Not exactly something we were touting around.”

That… wasn’t the answer Tony was expecting.

“That bad, huh?” he asks, already knowing the answer and not bothering to meet Steve’s eyes to hear the response. Instead, he spins around again until he’s gracefully skipping off the patio, thankful he had the sense to put his shoes on as they make contact with wet mud and shrubbery.

“People are never too kind when they see something against what they’re used to. I don’t take it personally.”

“Good for you,” Tony replies, because what else do you fucking say to that? “We should schedule you to go to a pride sometime. ‘m sure the internet’ll freak out, havin’ Captain America as the new spokesperson for LGBT rights.”

“I’ve considered it,” Steve remarks casually, almost fondly in a weird, twisted way.

Tony tries to imagine the PR disaster that would be, as a pathetic, useless attempt to distract himself from the turmoil within him.

It doesn’t work.

“Guess the whole ‘battlefield romance’ story was for the wrong person, huh?” he quips weakly, wincing internally when Steve just looks back at him confused. “Here everyone was, bawling about the wrong brunette. What, have a thing against Brits, Cap?”

Tony hopes to god he doesn’t bitter, but he knows he probably does, at least a little bit. Can you blame him? All things aside, everyone’s seen the clips, heard the tale, felt the heartbreak. The whole country—no, the whole world knows the tragedy of Captain America and his wartime sweetheart, yet now that’s all turned on its head.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for someone whose love now seems to be pointless, forlorn, especially when that person is Aunt Peggy.

Or, well, maybe Tony’s pushing this a bit too far. Really, even to him his newfound protective snark feels unwarranted. After all, Peggy Carter’s no more an aunt to him than DUM-E is his favorite child. Even her official title to him as his ‘godmother’ feels dry and fake on his tongue, no more than a symbol of her companionship to Howard Stark than any relation between her and Tony.

That’s not to say she’s been a completely absent figure in his life. Tony well remembers visits from Aunt Peggy, usually to have tea with his mother or chat business with his father. She’d always have some of the best gifts to give Tony, and when she was in a particularly good mood, she’d even stay for dinner with her husband Daniel Sousa.

Tony remembers, back when he was particularly young and naïve,  asking Peggy about Captain America. Back then, he was still relatively unaffected by his father’s hellbent admiration and obsession with the American icon, and his childish curiosity outweighed any of the darkening thoughts creeping around in the back of his mind. He’d simply wanted to know more about the legend that everyone adored, the symbol villains feared, the man his father loved more than his own son.

Peggy rarely entertained his questions, though.

Looking back, Tony realizes how cruel it was, to unearth what must have been such painful memories for her. The world would never let her forget Steve Rogers, that was for sure, but she couldn’t even have peace in her leisure time, because brats like Tony wanted to learn more about the man in their coloring books and history lessons.

Eventually, Tony stopped asking, but even then, there were moments he’d see the chill in her façade crack. The wistful sighs when the 4^th of July hit, the way her husband gripped her shoulder comfortingly when Howard brough up searching for the Valkyrie again, the light shake in her voice when she said Steve’s name for an interview.

As she grew older, too, she loosened her iron-grip on her own memories. Maybe it was the dementia, or maybe it was just regret—Tony sure didn’t know. But with time passed, Peggy shared more and more: stories from the war, nicknames they had for each other, regrets she’s held onto ‘til now.

With each word she said, and even each word she didn’t say, Tony could see the pronounced flickers of pain in her eyes, could see the genuine hurt from a lost love that had so much potential, but was lost to the brutality of war. Captain America and Peggy Carter: America’s greatest love story and tragedy, for ages to come.

And yet, here Steve is. 

“That’s not it.”

Steve’s quiet, muted voice feels like jolts of electricity down Tony’s spine, making him startle as he’s yanked out of heartbreaking reminiscence.

“Peggy, she, she was…”

He pauses, and Tony doesn’t talk, doesn’t breath, ‘til he speaks up again.

“I, I loved her, I did. It’s just—”

“Cap,” Tony starts weakly.

He brings his hand up in compromise and comfort despite the storm of anger that had swirled in him just seconds prior. He can’t help it, seeing that guilt-laden expression twisting Steve’s face into all sorts of awful. Just like that, Tony feels awful, infuriated at himself for assuming the worst of his teammate, his friend.

“I get it,” he continues, stepping forward with his hands still up in what he hopes is a placating manner. “I do, you don’t have to—”

“We made a lot of excuses.”

That shuts Tony up.

“We both knew pretty early on, y’know, Bucky and I. How we felt ‘bout each other. Been attached by the hip since we were brats, and it’s pretty hard to hide it for that long. Took us years to do anything about it, though. I was 16, when we…”

Steve swallows heavily, and Tony watches the motion of his Adam’s apple with pinprick precision and dulling discomfort.

“But I was too sick all the time. Both of us thought I’d die of something or another before I turned 20, so Bucky needed to go out and find a better life for himself, find someone who’d live to give him a future. That’s what I always told him, even if he never wanted to listen. But surprise, surprise, the years kept passing and I kept living.”

“Cap—”

“Pneumonia didn’t bury me in the ground, but it did to my Ma a few years later. Suddenly all I had was Bucky, and well, it wasn’t too bad. Sure, we were slumming it with barely a few dimes to our names, but we came home to each other every day, and the people around us didn’t ask questions—too busy dealing with their own problems, I guess.”

“There were even a couple queenies two doors down from us, and they got by just fine, so why couldn’t we?”

Vaguely, in the deep recesses of his subconscious, Tony wonders how many people Steve’s told this to.

“Then, the war hit.”

Probably not many.

“No one could forget the Great War, and none of us ever thought there could be another, that something so brutal could be just the first. But the memory was still there, and there… there wasn’t a lot of hope of coming back home, with a precedent like that.”

“Steve,” Tony says, and Steve doesn’t interrupt him this time.

He looks to Tony instead, away from the faraway tree he’d been previously staring at. Looking at him like this, Tony can see the quiver of his eyebrows, the tension in his jaw, and god he wishes he knew anyway to comfort him.

But he doesn’t.

“Never thought about it back then, how much my trying to enlist would hurt Bucky so much.”

Steve’s nearly inaudible when he speaks now, but Tony can hear him loud and clearly beyond his own bated breath. Steve chuckles, a shaky, piteous thing, and turns his gaze down to the trees once more.

“He always said I had war etched into my bones. Asked me if I liked getting punched so damn much. And then, he was gone. Drafted, like the universe was mocking me for never even considering that he might get taken from me before I could run off myself.”

Tony can’t help but think of Pepper. He thinks of how long she’s been by him, from just a PA to now the center of his life. He thinks of all the terrible things he’s done around her, the awful sides of him she’s seen. He thinks of how she stuck by him despite all of that, and how he never ceased to take her for granted until the very last second.

Tony thinks, and he tries not to scream in frustration as the line between Barnes and Bucky blurs.

“So,” he croaks when Steve goes silent for a painfully long moment. “What now?”

“H-huh?”

Steve’s slow to raise his head, confusion dawning on his face once more like it never even left, and Tony’s throat feels dry and scratchy as he forces his words out.

“What now?” he repeats, as though that explains anything. When Steve says nothing, he continues. “All those excuses, look where that got ya. So what’s there to do now? Keep making more? Or are you gonna take Natasha up on her offer, put down the shield, and finally retire?”

Steve gapes, actually gapes, in lieu of an answer, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. He hadn't had this reaction when the others had said pretty much the same thing, and it's almost as though he'd never expected Tony of all people to bring it up. He can practically see the gears turning in Steve's head, but it takes a while before any light’s turning on in there. When it does, it’s weak and flickering, as Steve turns away his head in shame and hesitance and something else Tony can’t pinpoint.

“I, I don’t know. Don’t think I can.”

“No one’ll blame ya, I’m sure. Hell, I feel like I could do with stopping too, one of these days. God knows Pep’s been asking.”

“That’s not—I mean, I don’t see how I can just—”

“Steve.” Tony’s voice is softer now, or at least he hopes it is, but he’s never been quite good at being nice and coaxing and friendly. “What’s really stopping you?”

“I…”

“Stevie?”

Tony visibly jerks away at the soft call cutting into the darkness. He snaps his head over in the direction of the voice, but he doesn’t see anyone. Instead, he sees the flicker of a light turning on inside the cabin, and a growing shadow peering through the still-open front door as the figure comes closer.

Tony doesn’t need to see a face to know who it is approaching them. Even if he’s only been here for a few hours, he’s heard that voice enough times, had it burned into the back of his brain enough, for him to instantly recognize that gentle but gruff timbre without a shred of doubt.

Tony ducks out of Bucky’s line of sight just seconds before he appears in the doorway.

If Steve notices his evasive behavior, he doesn’t point it out. Instead, he lets Tony fall back into the shadows of some surrounding trees without so much as a single word, their previous conversation forgotten as he himself turns to make long, purposeful strides towards Barnes.

Barnes, for his part, looks like he’s just climbed out of bed. Long hair messy, eyes tired, he looks half asleep on his feet already. He even has a thick blanket wrapped over his shoulders, as though he dragged it out of his bed to retain at least some of its cozy warmth.

That quick glance’s all Tony gets though, because soon enough, Steve’s hulking form comes to stand directly in front of Barnes. He’s only barely taller and wider than Barnes, but from this angle, it’s just enough to completely shield him from Tony’s sight.

Or maybe, he’s shielding Tony from Barnes’ sight. Tony’s not too sure how he feels about either of those possibilities.

“What are you doing here, Buck?” Steve asks softly, cupping Barnes’ cheek and letting him lean into the touch.

“You weren’t in bed,” Barnes replies, less accusatory and more curious.

“Had some things on my mind.”

Barnes just hums in response, seemingly content to just stand there in Steve’s presence. Tony fidgets to himself, wondering if it’d be better to just snake his way around the forest and explore for a bit until the two went inside. It’d certainly be better than just standing here and unintentionally being the world’s biggest third wheel.

Huh, now he knows what Happy feels like all the time.

“Go back to sleep, Buck. I’ll be in soon.”

Barnes ignores the suggestion immediately.

“When’d you wake up?” he asks instead.

“Not too long ago.”

“Shoulda upped your dosage.”

Steve laughs brightly at the petulant grumble, throwing his arms around Barnes to pull him into a loose hug.

“You threatening to your Commander Officer? That’s a ballsy move, Sergeant Barnes.”

Apparently that means something to Barnes, because he just snorts and returns the hug slowly.

“All due respect, Sir—I’m tryna keep my CO from getting ‘imself killed.”

Steve chuckles in response, but the sound is more strained than before. Tony’s not sure if it’s just a trick of the light when he sees Steve’s arms tighten around Barnes a fraction, because no one so much as reacts to it. They both stay perfectly still and quiet, paused in their embrace as though it might be their last.

Tony wonders how many hugs they’ve had like this.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

Barnes’s voice is muffled because of the way his face is pressed against the crook of Steve’s shoulder, so Tony’s only barely able to make out the words.

“I’m sorry too,” Steve says, burying his face in Barnes’s hair.

“You’re not useless. Could probably beat a million men down with your eyes closed in sleep.”

Steve laughs at that, a weak puff of air that’s both tired and relieved. Barnes doesn’t share the sentiment though. Instead, Tony thinks he hears just a soft sigh before Barnes’s pulling away from the embrace. He doesn’t go far, just enough for Tony to see the outline of his hair, but the move is telling enough.

“Buck?”

“It’s hard not to worry about you,” Barnes admits. “Always has been.”

Tony thinks of 2012. He thinks of the few seconds just before he’d grasped the nuke in its fingers, forced in its track as it hurtled towards Manhattan. He remembers Pepper’s contact popping up on his display by JARVIS’s suggestion as Chitauri poured in from all around him.

Even those few seconds that he thought might be his last, he had Pepper in the front of his thoughts. Her face filled his mind, and he thought he had to be around to come back to her after the whole shitshow was over. Had to, because she was there waiting for him.

It’s been a long time since Steve’s had someone waiting for him.

“Are you upset because I’m going,” Steve says slowly, almost as though he doesn’t want to ask, “or because you can’t be there to watch my six when I do?”

“I—”

Barnes cuts himself off, and Tony desperately wishes he knew what his facial expression looked like right now. Why, he’s not so sure.

“Don’t,” he says softly, almost pleading, “don’t do that.”

Steve hums softly, bringing his hand to comb through Barnes’s sleep-tussled hair.

“It’s never been easy, huh?”

Barnes huffs out a laugh—at least, Tony thinks it’s a laugh.

“Easy? Wasn’t easy back when you were a runt, just a little slip of a thing, so it sure as hell ain’t now. Lord knows, sometimes I wished you stayed small, all easy to get a hold of and take care of.”

“If I stayed small, you’d’ve ended up dead on Zola’s tables with all those injectables in ya, Buck.”

Steve’s words are pointed but not unkind. His hand stays steady in Barnes’s hair, and Tony doesn’t miss the telltale slur and slide of his voice. It’s more accented than usual, tinged with a sort of urban drawl not unlike Barnes’s own voice, and Tony vaguely wonders if this is how Steve used to sound before the serum, before the ice, before Captain America.

He doesn’t mind it.

“Yeah, guess you’re right,” Barnes concedes. “Stevie, my Stevie, all big and grown and sweeping me from the big bad guys. When’d you get so heroic, huh?”

“Gotta repay you somehow, don’t I? After savin’ my sorry ass so many times over.”

“I’d do it a hundred times over without hesitation. You know that.”

“Yeah… yeah, I know.”

Something in Tony’s heart clenches so utterly painfully, a throttlehold on his heart that has him wanting to puke and choke at the same time. His weight’s supposed by the tree next to him as he leans over and tries to steady himself, overcome by the conflict that’s been brewing inside him from the second he showed up here.

"Buck, when I…back then, what that girl showed me, those visions…God, I know they were fake, I know she was just screwin' with my head, but Buck, I, I saw—"

"Shut up, Stevie."

Every bit of Tony is screaming in chaotic confusion, regret and remorse ripping through his heart as anger and apology argue in his mind. It’s like his body can’t decide on a single thing to feel, so he’s feeling everything all at once without so much as a clue for how to deal with all of it.

So he does the first thing he can think to do: he leaves.

-

In hindsight, wandering an unknown forest in the middle of the night without a single clue of where he is and a palsy portion of his tech is a pretty terrible idea. Not inviting-a-terrorist-hellbent-on-revenge-to-his-Malibu-doorstep level of terrible, but still pretty damn terrible.

Fuck, he can’t even pull up any sort of navigation on his phone, because even the tiniest connection to the worldwide web brings the risk of Ultron finding them. Not that he’d have any signal here anyway, in fuck-knows-where, but not being able to even test it is beyond infuriating.

He settles for aimlessly going around what he thinks is familiar ground, though he’s really not sure if he’s been honest. The woods all seems the same around here, particularly so in the darkness of night, with nothing but the moonlight and his own phone flashlight to guide him.

If he gets really lost, he supposes, he can always fly over the forest to find glimpses of that now-familiar cabin, or at least a nearby town. After all, he might have left in a hurry, but not unprepared. He’s kept a deconstructed form of his Mk XLIII’s legs attached to him at all times since they’d disembarked from the Quinjet, and he could have them on with his blasters at the ready with just the press of a button.

He restrains, though, if only because the idea of flying without the rest of his suit is horrifying enough on its own, thank you very much. The rest of the suit’s pretty busted up from the fighting, and he can’t exactly call upon any of his other suits without communicators, without…

JARVIS.

Fuck, some wounds are a bitch to heal, huh?

Trying not to think of the sharp pain in his chest that he definitely can’t blame on the shrapnel in his heart this time, Tony eventually settles at a cliff edge. It’s not terribly high, but with the pitch-black coverage of night, looking down feels like looking into the very precipice of life itself, a void unfilled and hollow in an alluring bid of nonexistence.

Sheesh, way to theatricize. At this rate, he’s gonna be prattling off Shakespearean soliloquys like Thor any second now.

Sighing, Tony shakes his head and closes his eyes to think.

It’s oddly calming, being out here in the dead of night. He’s been a city kid his whole life, never far away from the hustle and bustle of urban sprawl, but there’s a certain appeal to this sort of peace and quiet.

Usually he’d avoid it with a ten foot pole, already knowing that even a bit of silence would have his overactive mind rushing headfirst into painful overthought and anxiety and fear. Yet now, he doesn’t feel any of that, not really. Even his overwhelming panic and conflict from earlier has mostly dissipated, leaving nothing but a calm consideration.

Maybe it’s the fresh air out here in the middle of nowhere, or the slight sounds of grasshoppers chirping to break up bouts of silence. Hell, could just be the exhaustion of nights upon nights of little to no sleep. It’s probably that, if he’s being honest, but he can’t find himself to care as he focuses on just feeling the drying grass beneath his hands and the chill breeze on his cheek.

It’s calming to the ever-growing disquiet within him, so Tony’s not surprised when it doesn’t last.

“It’s easy to get lost in these woods, you know?”

Tony doesn’t even try to hide the tension that zips down the line of his back, but even then, he doesn’t open his eyes or sit up. Instead, he stays there, lying down on the yellowing grass with his feet dangling over the cliff edge as Barnes walks towards him. The sound of the grass crunching beneath his shoes is apparent as he nears, and Tony forces himself to remember that this is an internationally renowned ex-assassin that could very well hide his steps if he wanted to.

The thought’s not as comforting as he hoped it’d be.

“I’ll have you know I have excellent navigation skills, thank you very much,” he snarks, eyes still closed as he feels and hears Barnes sit down.

He’s not directly next to Tony, but he’s close enough.

“Everyone says that, then the next thing you know, they’re missing for four days and end up eaten by a bear.”

“Okay, no one told me bears were on the menu. Now that’s just not fair.”

Despite his better judgment, Tony opens his eyes.

Barnes isn’t looking at him, and it’s a small relief in and of itself. He’s looking outwards, instead, down out at the horizon with that same distant look Tony saw on Steve earlier. The metal of his arm glints threateningly in the moonlight, and Tony’s quick to turn his gaze back up to the stars above.

Huh, so that’s what a night sky’s supposed to look like. He never sees the stars anymore, not in New York. This is pretty nice.

“If we’re going by fairness, I doubt freaky robot people are on the list either,” Barnes quips.

“What can I say—Junior’s going through a rebellious phase. Kids, am I right?”

Barnes snorts, a single, curt sound, and it’s so weirdly normal that Tony has to resist the urge to smack himself to see if he’s dreaming. Not that it’d really help—this whole night has felt like a dream, and if it is one, he’s pretty sure he’s not waking up anytime soon.

Fantastic.

“Still, you probably shouldn’t wander off like that. Steve damn near lost his mind when he couldn’t find ya.”

Tony doesn’t even bother resisting the urge to scoff, because what a load of bull.

“Sorry, thought he’d be too busy gazing longingly into your eyes to notice,” he shoots back, snappier than intended, and he immediately blames the nerves prickling beneath his skin.

Almost out of instinct more than anything else, he tenses up, awaiting a violent outburst or an equally snappy remark back or just something. But all he gets is a soft huff of a laugh, one barely audible even in the dead quiet of the night. Tony drags his gaze back over to Barnes, only to see him looking back down at him with the tiniest hint of a grin.

“You remind me of him, you know.”

No, Tony doesn’t know. He doesn’t know at all, and he feels like he’s being pinned in place by Barnes’s gaze. It’s not a particularly intense or fierce expression, and the emotion welling up in Tony’s chest isn’t fear of anxiety or anything else that would make even the tiniest bit of sense. He’s frozen where he lay because of one thing and one thing alone.

Curiosity.

“Who?” he asks finally, when Barnes doesn’t seem keen on continuing.

“Howard.”

Tony tries, he really does, to not physically reel at that, but he knows he’s not successful. Can feel it, in the way his lips twist into a grimace and his chin dips into a bit of a cringe. Barnes raises an eyebrow, intrigued at the reaction, and Tony doesn’t bother trying to backtrack or pass it off casually.

Instead, he forces himself to sit up, leaning heavily on his hands behind him in the dry grass. His palms will feel raw later, he knows, but he can’t find himself to care as he stares out at the cavernous scene below them.

It doesn’t seem quite so dark anymore. His eyes have probably gotten too used to the darkness by now, his retinas accommodating with as much lowlight vision as possible. The outlines of trees and shrubbery are more noticeable now, clear enough for Tony to really tell how far down the basin really goes.

Somehow, the drop seems larger than it had before, back when he’d first arrived at this cliff. Time seems to have brought astounding clarity to his vision, and Tony’s suddenly very aware of just how easy it’d be to push him over.

How one rough, well-timed shove at his back could be more than enough to have him falling. How two precise hits to the boosters on his feet could prevent him from flying away. How both done together could make sure, without even a shred of doubt or uncertainty, that when he went down, he stayed down.

Barnes doesn’t move.

“I don’t remember as much about him as I probably should,” he says instead.

His voice suddenly sounds so far away, so distant, past the pounding and ringing in Tony’s ears. Vaguely, Tony makes a mental note to check himself for tinnitus later.

“Stevie said he was around a lot, making us gear and getting us in trouble. An unofficial Commando, just like Carter was.” He pauses, and Tony’s breath hitches. “I just remember him being a absolutel cockhead.”

A bark of laughter cuts through the still air, and it takes Tony a minute to realize it’s his own.

Eyes wide, he turns back to Barnes, only to see that tiny grin from earlier growing.

“Always going around like he owned the world, what a cocky fucker. But he was damn smart, so you could never really question him ‘cos for all he was a dick, he has the boots and brains to back it up.”

Tony laughs again, God knows why. He can’t wrap his head around it, why listening to Barnes feels so good. Not weird, not infuriating, not anything he would’ve imagined if he ever thought about anyone shit-talking his father, let alone the very man who murdered him.

Except Barnes and Bucky and the Winter Soldier and every other goddamn person the man in front of him’s supposed to be all feels so damn different, and well, he hasn’t heard anyone talk about Howard like this in ages.

Aunt Peggy used to, occasionally. In little jabs over dinner or hushed stage-whispers to Tony back when he was still wide-eyed and clutching teddy bears. Besides her, no one really looked at Howard as anything besides the genius the world knew him to be.

All Tony ever heard was how great Howard was, how much he’d achieved, how high the expectations for Tony would be once he grew up. Even Steve, for all his reminiscing, only ever spoke of Howard with a sort of fond, if not distant admiration, one that you might have for a particularly useful coworker—not for an enemy or even for a friend.

 Tony supposes Barnes got the chance to be both.

“He couldn’t have known, y’know.”

“Huh?” he manages to get out past his own chortles.

“About HYDRA, about SHIELD.”

Laughs die on Tony’s tongue as his throat closes up.

Closing his mouth and pursing his lips, he swallows heavily and looks away, out to the endless span of darkness in front of them once again.

“He was a dick, but he knew where his loyalties lied, and it wasn’t with the Nazis,” Barnes continues even when Tony says nothing. Maybe even because he says nothing. “Can’t imagine he’d’ve ever let it fly under his watch, allowed them to carry on if he had even a hint of suspicion. Carter too. They couldn’t have known when it was happening, or they woulda stopped it.”

A pause.

“And well, it was too late by the time he did find out.”

Tony’s silent.

He stays silent, because what can you say to the guy that murdered your parents in cold blood?

Nothing, really. You say nothing to him, because you’re too busy shooting him ‘til he’s dead, then shooting him some more. That’s how it usually worked, as far as Tony was concerned, because fuck morality and motive and tenuous paternal relationships—he deserves his revenge.

Except it’s getting all too easy to separate the sin from the sinner nowadays, and doesn’t that just make everything sticky?

“I never knew her,” Barnes says suddenly, and there’s something different in his voice now. His tone’s not so grave anymore, and there’s a certain lilt to his words that sheds itself of the sobriety from before. “Maria Stark.”

A star twinkles in the distance, a glimpse of brightness in the pitch black night.

“She came along well after I… fell,” Barnes continues, casual as though he wasn’t uprooting and unearthing most of Tony’s life. “Not sure how she even met him in the first place.”

The old man’s casino in Monaco, back in the 60s, Tony’s brain supplies when his voice fails him.

“There’s one thing I know for sure, though: she had to have been helluva dame, to be able put up with a piece of work like Howard Stark. You’d need the patience of a saint to deal with him and make him an honest man like she did.”

Honest is not the word anyone in the right mind might use for Howard Stark, so it makes perfect sense that Barnes is the one spouting that shit.

Yet somehow, Tony understands exactly what he means.

“She musta been quite the woman.”

“She was,” Tony croaks. 

It’s not an apology, not by a longshot. It’s an acknowledgement, sure, but it’s nothing more and nothing less. Quite frankly, that much by itself is like a blessing—Tony’s not quite sure he even wants an apology. There’s certainly no easy forgiving and forgetting from him here, and it’s nearly a relief that there’s no expectation for it.

Instead, they say nothing else, staying silent as they both stare out at the void of black before them. There’s no telling how much time passes like that, with them simply sitting in the cloak of night and basking in the pressure of their own admissions. Even just being here, they toe a delicate line of mutual co-existence, of passive amicability, because an alternative of enmity and hostility could only end in total ruin.

Tony can’t say he hates it.

“So,” Tony starts only when the edges of orange sunlight begin to just barely peak out from under the horizon, “when are you gonna let me look at that arm of yours?”

There’s a split second of silence, pure silence, where Tony can’t hear a thing—no crickets chirping around them, no leaves rustling from the trees, no puffs of Barnes’s breath. It’s absolute quiet, unsettling as it is fascinating.

Then, Barnes laughs.

It’s a warm, bellowing thing, almost too loud and sudden compared to the minutes, maybe even hours, of silence they just spent together. And yet, Tony can’t help the tiny grin curling up on his own lips in response.

“Tell ya what, Stark,” Barnes says, “you survive this whole Ultron nonsense, and you can tinker with the arm as much as you damn well like.”

The glint of Barnes’s metal fingers twinkles as he shifts, a manmade star never meant to shine as bright as it does.

“You got yourself a deal, Barnes.”

Tony looks over, and he doesn’t even flinch when he’s faced with not a smirk or grin, but just a soft, genuine smile—crinkled eyes, pearly teeth, and all.

“Bucky.”

-

Hours later, they’ll stumble back to the cabin only to discover they’ve stayed out well through the night.

One by one, members of the team will arise, groggily waking up and making their ways to the common spaces to snag coffee and sunlight. Wariness from the night before will have completely faded away, and a sort of quiet contentment will spread across the rooms.

The morning will find them lounging about and eating pancakes Barnes—Bucky— made from the ingredients he ran to the nearby town to buy. Steve will wake up last, only just in time for breakfast, as he stumbles over to Barnes for morning hugs and plods through the cabin like a drunk zombie. He’ll take a positively obscene amount of coffee to wake up, something Clint will tease him about for at least a good hour to come.

But the morning bliss won’t last.

It won’t take long for the gravity of their duty to impress upon their shoulders. Reminders of their failures and fears will dig into their minds, and they won’t be able to avoid the demons swirling in their hearts for more than a few peaceful moments after breakfast.

It’s only expected, then, that none other than Nick Fury will appear on the cabin’s doorstep just hours later, seeking them out for their assistance, as demanding as he is desperate. He’ll incite everything in them they need but don’t want—petrifying fear, earth-shattering guilt, inescapable responsibility.

The shame of loss always has been such a powerful motivator.

It’ll hardly take much longer after that for them to piece together the threads of a plan. Ultron is as chaotic as he is predictable, and it’s with Bruce’s single question that everything falls into place, so horrifyingly quickly. Helen Cho. The Cradle. The vibranium. Ultron’s ravenous thirst for power, and unbelievable ends he’ll go to achieve it.

Brutal yet simple—a combination Tony is all too familiar with, one that’s far too homebound than he’ll ever be comfortable with.

Minutes will race but seconds will drag as they suit up. There’ll no telling what they’ll be charging into, and without Thor on their side, Tony will entertain, for just a brief second, the idea of asking Bucky to join them.

A ghost in the wind, one as deadly and silent as hemlock, could be an asset like none other in a battle where all they’ll truly have is the advantage of stealth. It wouldn’t be any real replacement for Thor—couldn’t be, not in a fight like this—but their hands are tied and even the consolation of additional help will seem glorious in Tony’s eyes.

And then he’ll remember the Maximoff girl. He’ll remember the way she warps and toys with minds like mush in her fingers. He’ll remember HYDRA, and the eerie photos a machine capable of administering thousands of volts of electricity to the brain in seconds. He’ll remember the delicate line of stability that’s plagued these chipped oak walls since the second they stepped in.

He’ll remember, and he’ll promptly keep his mouth shut.

He won’t be the only person to think of it, though, as evidenced by the glint in Fury’s eyes as he looks around the cabin, as though searching for something.

Or rather, someone.

It’ll be good, then that Bucky won’t even be around to hear the suggestion. Far before he even reaches the abode, though, Bucky will make himself sparse like the ghost story he once was, and Tony won’t see him return until well after Fury and Hill presumably leave.

He won’t ask what they wanted, and no one will tell him.

Steve’ll come close, staring at Bucky with those long, conflicted gazes Tony’s learned to read, but in the end he’ll stay silent as they ready themselves for the fight to come. They’ll have preparations to attend to, after all, it’ll be a challenge to cling to their frail moments of peace before it’s time to set out on a mission.

Minutes will race on by, and soon, it’ll be time to depart.

-

Scenes blur as they race to the Quinjet, with nothing but the shirts on their backs and about three quarters of a plan in mind. Tony doesn’t see Bucky again before he trails back to the jet, but he’s far from surprised to see that Steve’s the last to make it over. They board in silence and with little fanfare, only ever breaking the quiet to discuss tactics in hushed tones or make little wisecracks to help lighten to mood. It doesn’t work, not really, but it’s well-appreciated nonetheless.

Clint and Nat are piloting this time around, so Tony lingers by the front aimlessly, pensive and anxious. It’s both reprieving and unnerving to feel the familiar swoop of his gut as they take off from the ground, the sudden pressure in his ear drums, and the instant dread of what’s to come. He taps mindlessly at his own arm, desperate for a distraction, when he sees it.

The cabin.

Without though, his eyes fixate on the familiar structure, perfectly in his field of vision as the Quinjet stays in one place and slowly gains elevation. They’re not terribly far from it, but here like this now, it feels so terribly distant. Like a vacation spot long past, or even a dream vividly recalled. Even before him now, it feels surreal, and that befuddlement only grows the higher they go.

Soon enough, the sight of the cabin becomes obscured, growing smaller from distance and muddled by trees.

He watches as the clouds roll in and puffy white replaces deep oak in his vision. He waits and waits, doesn’t even try to look away until the very last speck of chestnut brown has cleared from his vision, until all he can see is titanium white and all he can feel is sterile, still air.

The hairs on his skin stand on edge, his body cold in way so different from the warmth he’d seen just the night before. Absently tapping his own chest, Tony lets his eyes flicker across the Quinjet, taking in the sight of nothing but chilling metal around him.

I see a suit of armor around the world.

Sounds like a cold world, Tony.

God dammit, Bruce.

“Hey Cap,” Tony calls, interrupting whatever quiet back-and-forth Steve and Bruce are having behind him.

“…Yeah?”

Tony thinks of wool quilts, fresh roasted coffee, and flickering fireplaces. He thinks of thick shrubbery, dried grass, and polished poplar. He thinks of sheen paneling, holographic screens, and throbbing blue light. He thinks of cemented flooring, smooth steel, and budding nanotech.  He thinks of rusticism and modernity, of wood and metal, of past and future and the lines drawn between them.

“What’s your favorite art gallery?”

He thinks of that glinting metal arm, and wonders if a line needs to be drawn at all.