Busted
Bucky's POV
Mr. Barnes, Mr. Stark has requested your presence in his lab
Well that probably wasn't good. Tony never called anyone to his lab except for the spider kid and Banner, and he had never called for Bucky ever. What could he have possibly done to upset Stark? I mean to be fair the Solider did a lot that could upset Stark, but Bucky has already been confronted about that and he himself had never done anything to warrant Stark's request... has he?
As Bucky recounts his movements over the past few days, Jarvis breaks his thoughts once again.
Mr. Stark requests your presence... immediately
Well there's no time left to try and prepare himself for what could happen. As Bucky made his way to the lab he realized what this could be about. Could this be about that girl? Okay yes he had been told by Steve that he wasn't supposed to go in that room, but he just needed an escape for a minute and she seemed harmless. Well maybe not harmless, but within the cell she couldn't hurt him... right? Well anyways, Stark wouldn't be calling him up if he had simply put his own safety at risk, so he must have done something else. Oh god, what does Stark want?
Before he's able to work himself up into a panic attack, he's knocking on the door and entering the lab to a disheveled looking Tony. He looks like he hasn't slept in days, and based off the number of half empty coffee mugs scattered across the room, he hasn't. Bucky's never seen Stark like this, normally the man does everything in his power to put up his cool, calm, and suave front. This must be important if he's not concerned about how he's being seen right now.
Bucky's suspicions as to why he's here are confirmed as footage of him in the room with the girl pops up on the screen in front of him. He sucks in his breath as he's able to watch the girl and how she watched him when he wasn't looking, the quality of Stark's security and the sheer number of cameras in that room allowing him to see her much better than he had been able to in the moment. The intensity in her dark eyes capturing his attention, almost as if they put him under a spell.
A spell that was quickly broken by Tony clearing his throat before speaking, "So it seems you've met the newest guest of the tower,"
Bucky goes to attempt and defend himself but Tony cuts him off, "I'm not mad, I'm not throwing you to the dogs of SHIELD or into a cell or something if that's what you're concerned about" Tony gestures for Bucky to take a seat and then sits across from him as he continues, "Now under normal circumstances I wouldn't be telling you this, but as you may be able to tell these aren't normal circumstances. I'm blown away by your interaction with the prisoner, honestly shocked. I've spent months trying to get her to speak and have only now achieved that seemingly by accident, but you. You were able to not only break her out of her voluntary ignoring trance but you got her to speak. It's phenomenal"
Tony turns to rewatch as she had spoke to Bucky while he was leaving that day, leaving Bucky to adjust to everything he'd just heard.
"Why is she a prisoner?", evidently this was not the question Stark had expected based on the split second surprise that flitted across his face before it settled once again.
Standing, Stark gathered some papers which he handed to Bucky as he began to explain, "After Loki's invasion SHIELD put new protocols into place should a being from Asgard and Asgard adjacent worlds appear on Earth again. A few months ago we received a message that one of these beings had been detected in New York and were to bring them in for questioning. We found her 3 days later in an ally. It had appeared that she'd been living there for atleast a week before we found her,"
Bucky looked up from the papers at learning of how she was found. Tony had pulled new photos up onto the screen. Rather than the security footage it seemed to now be surveillance photos and footage of the team confronting her. She looked nearly the same, although she seemed much more gaunt now and in this footage she was wearing some type of armor. It's a wonder that she was able to stay undetected from the general public before they found her.
"We were originally supposed to only question her on her intentions and reasons for being on Earth, but she was immediately hostile to us and attacked, leading us to have to bring her into SHIELD HQ once we were able to regain control over the situation. They then turned her over to us with the instructions that we were to interrogate her and force her to reveal her intentions as they now assumed they were malicious"
Wait that's the entire reason she's been in captivity for months? She was from a different planet and reacted negatively to a band of men in combat uniforms hostilely confronting her? That was such bullshit, and Bucky vocalized that to Stark who in turn sighed and turned away towards the footage that was still playing.
After a few beats of silence, Stark spoke again, "I need your help. I want you to help us with. She spoke to you, that means something, and I think we could use that to our advantage"
Bucky looked up in surprise. Stark wanted him to go in there and try to manipulate this girl into revealing her bad intentions.
Seeing the look on Bucky's face, Tony quickly began to try and explain what he meant, "I don't want you to interrogate her or try to trick her. No. I don't like having her here as a prisoner, I don't like her being a prisoner at all. I think SHIELD is vastly overreacting to Loki and this girl was caught up in that. But I'm fascinated. I want to learn more about her, wherever she's from, and whatever she is. No, what I am trying to ask you is I would like for you to simply spend time with her. You'll be allowed free access to her room and can go in there whenever. I want to see how she interacts with somebody who isn't trying to pull information out of her or yelling at her" Tony then began coughing in a way that seemed to cover up him saying "Steve".
Well that doesn't sound too bad. Just be able to go in there whenever he wants? And he doesn't have to try to get any information out of her. That doesn't seem like such a bad deal. But there's still one problem.
"Have you talked about this with Steve?", based on how Tony's face scrunched up, Bucky was willing to go out on a limb and guess that no, Tony hadn't told Steve all of this, "He's not going to like this"
This seems to flip some sort of switch inside Tony, "Steve isn't your father or your keeper. You are a grown ass geriatric man and you can make your own decisions,"
Bucky wasn't expecting Tony to care about any of this, it was kind of surprising. Tony sighed and sat down again, seemingly calmer now, "I know that you and I haven't had the best past. There were a lot of issues. But I'm going to tell you something and if you ever repeat it I will deny it, but I don't like how controlling Steve is over you. Why does he get to choose what you can and can't do?"
Bucky knew he was right. He'd been allowing Steve to take total control after he came back. It wasn't until he was in Wakanda that he started to make his own decisions again, and now that he's back in the tower once more he's finding it difficult to readjust to Steve making all of his decisions for him again. He's not the same broken man he was when Steve first found him.
Maybe this could be a step towards showing Steve that he didn't need him to make his choices for him anymore.
"Okay. I think your idea sounds alright. I'm in"