Untrue

Tony is giving him some poisonous looks and okay, Sam’s earned that he will admit but shit the dude off and slept with Steve’s best friend and also maybe an alien. Honestly he’s got no clue what the alien business is about but Tony’s not happy about it. He’s starting to think maybe getting involved with Avengers business was a bad idea because he didn’t anticipate aliens, he was just trying to tell Steve to deal with his damn problems.

“Okay, so uh. What’s going on, exactly?” he asks.

Natasha, who seems to have the same ability as Tony to make herself look at home anywhere given that she’s currently perched cross legged on Tony’s desk, turns the computer towards him. “Watch this and tell us what you think,” she tells him and he frowns.

“What am I supposed to be getting out of this? Alien invasions? Because I have to disclose that you two are much more equipped to deal with Invasion of the Body Snatchers than I am,” he points out.

It’s a weird thing to draw a smile out of Tony but it does seem to soften Tony to him some. “Just watch, we can talk body snatching later,” Tony tells him.

Natasha presses play on a video that’s, Sam checks, almost an hour long and okay, what the hell? He sits there and watches though, no fucking clue what he’s looking for, and for twenty minutes he’s lost as to why he’s watching White Boy Rick run around doing things until he gets a clue. So Bucky has memory loss, or at least he appears to given that he has no memory of events that Sam has already watched play out not that he knows exactly what that’s supposed to mean. Probably a symptom of PTSD not that Sam can make a diagnosis like that, but given his history it would make sense.

As the video progresses the behavior gets weirder, and the memory loss more pronounced but by the end of it Sam’s still lost. “Okay, dude’s weird. The point?” he asks. Natasha and Tony look immediately frustrated but they don’t say why exactly.

“So uh, you didn’t… notice things?” Tony asks, narrowing his eyes.

Sam sighs, “I notice plenty of things but I can’t give you anything meaningful from this, its an hour long video and I’ve never even met the guy. What opinion with any weight could I possibly get from this?” Inferences, he’s got plenty, but opinions based on the facts of Bucky’s life as Bucky has disclosed to him? Nothing. Best he can do is assume that Bucky’s acting weird in part because he probably has a whole lot of mental health problems and also the poor guy got thrown out of one shitty environment into totally unfamiliar territory. And even then the lack of familiarity could explain why he’s acting strange over mental illness minus maybe the memory loss, which could be a biological problem not a psychological one.

Natasha and Tony stare at him for a moment, which is unnerving, until Natasha talks. “Sam. They’re different people,” she says and Tony pushes her off the desk.

“Well don’t tell him what we think, he’s supposed to either agree or not based on his thoughts and ideas, not ours,” he tells her.

Scientific approach, however unscientific their experiment was. He sighs, “I can’t do anything useful with an hour long video. You could hand me a video of anyone and theoretically pull out a bunch of different people because people don’t act the same way in every situation. Tony, lets use you as an example. If I filmed you in front of an audience of fans, in your lab, fighting with Steve, and shooting the shit with Natasha that’s four people. Your behaviors, body language, manner of speaking, and pretty much every other habit you have will change to tailor itself to the situation. That’s normal, guys. Yeah, its weird that Bucky doesn’t seem to like the same foods sometimes, and yeah, the memory loss is concerning, but this doesn’t really tell me anything.”

Natasha picks herself up off the floor and smacks Tony’s arm. “We need a new professional, this one is broken,” she says.

Tony squints at her, “I think he’s got some points. He’s wrong but he’s got some points. So compromise, observe him in the wild, you’ll get it then,” Tony tells him.

“You two do know Bucky is a person, not a science experiment, right?” he asks.

Tony sighs, “yeah we know that but like… look, its easier to see than not. Also if its aliens we should figure out why they’re here.”

“Aliens? Dude has some memory problems and you two have jumped to aliens? Guys, that’s nuts,” Sam tells them. “You have problems with paranoia.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” Tony asks, always one to be a dick about things.

Sam rolls his eyes, “no, that’s my common sense opinion. Also if Bucky is aliens, I’m not qualified to deal with it. And Dissociative Identity Disorder is uh, nebulous at best.” He would know that better than them given that he probably has a much more well rounded history of the condition, if it exists at all, not that he’s much qualified to know the answer to that. But he knows enough about the history of over diagnosis of that particular mental health problem that he’d be hesitant to suggest it to say the least.

“Dis-what what?” Tony asks and Sam sighs.

“Multiple personality disorder,” he says, using the more commonly known and outdated term for it. The light bulb goes off and Tony wrinkles his nose.

“Well that wasn’t quite our theory but yeah okay, option three, Bucky’s two hundred people. Great,” he says, waving a hand around.

Another problem with the diagnoses, therapists supposedly drawing out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different personalities. “That’s… that’s not quite how that works,” Sam tells him.

“Tell him the actual theory,” Natasha says, nudging Tony with her arm. He gives her an irritated look but complies.

“We thought, well, wondered if when we removed the trigger words for the Winter Soldier we left something behind, some part of that state. Makes only slightly more sense than aliens, but mostly because we can’t figure out why an alien would have the hots for me,” he says, shrugging.

“You’re attractive, that’s reason enough,” Sam points out.

Tony wrinkles his nose, “pretty sure aliens would have different beauty standards than us and what’s the chance of another planet having the exact same set of things we find attractive? We don’t even have consistent standards, attraction varies from person to person,” he says and that’s not what Sam expected but okay. Kind of a good point.

“Fine, maybe they do, or maybe they’re like humans and they’re attracted to weird shit the way humans sometimes are you you’re the weird shit. Point is the only overly concerning thing I saw was the memory loss and I wonder about brain damage Bucky may have got being tortured by HYDRA and also Steve beat the hell out of him pretty good before he realized it was Bucky under the mask. Can’t be the first time that’s happened,” Sam says.

Tony turns to give Natasha an offended look. “Why did Steve’s mistress think of that before we did?” he asks.

That throws Sam for a loop but in hindsight Tony would have had to have known about Steve’s… over attachment to have spent a bunch of time glaring at him earlier. He’d say something in his defense but he doesn’t really have one aside from telling Steve to get a divorce, which he figures is a little insensitive all things considered.

“That’s not it,” Natasha tells him and Tony sighs.

“That’s more likely than aliens,” he points out.

“We once watched Steve bounce head first off concrete after he jumped from a plane with no parachute and he doesn’t have brain damage and you know that’s not the first time he’s done that,” Natasha says. “So what makes Bucky so special?”

Sam shrugs, “I don’t know, could be the violent torture endured over almost a century, the fact that no one gave a shit about his wellbeing, and the fact that the serum he got isn’t the same as what Steve got but sure, aliens and extremely rare mental illnesses, that’s more logical,” he says sarcastically.

“I can see why Steve likes you,” Tony tells him. “And that’s not a compliment,” he adds like his scathing tone wasn’t enough of an indication of that.

“He’ll get over it, he just doesn’t like being introduced under false pretenses,” Natasha tells him. “But once he stops violently hating your guts he’s plenty cuddly. I speak from experience.”

“Uh huh. Can we get back to Bucky here because I’m pretty sure its not brain- you know what. JARVIS. Run brain scans on Bucky and tell me if they’re normal,” he says and Sam’s eyebrows fly up.

“You can just do that?” he asks. Seems pretty invasive of people’s privacy but neither Tony nor Natasha have reacted much so Sam assumes that this is normal for them. He, on the other hand, finds Tony’s AI running brain scans on people running around his house fucking weird.

Tony rolls his eyes, “yeah, I can do that. J?” he asks.

“Brain scans appear consistent with a healthy brain,” the AI says and that is wild.

“There you have it, brain damage is out. So we’re back to aliens and Winter Soldier state,” Tony says. “And Bucky being two hundred people I guess.”

He says that like its crazier than aliens and Sam doesn’t understand that but okay. “Explain this Winter Soldier state thing to me,” he says, waving a hand around. “You said something about trigger words earlier? The hell does that mean?”

“What’s on the tin, Wilson. Use a set of trigger words, access a state where the person complies to what you want them to do. You know, MK Ultra, Manchurian Candidate, that type of shit. Except Nazis figured it out,” Tony says like that’s a small feat.

“Only kind of. Didn’t work on the other Winter Soldiers, just Bucky,” Natasha reminds Tony and okay what?

“Steve has been holding the fuck out here- the hell do you mean other Winter Soldiers?” As far as he knows there’s just Bucky and now there’s at least two more? He should have made friends with Natasha first, he would have gotten all the good stuff right away and then he could have listened to Steve refuse to do anything about his marriage problems. This is a hell of a lot more interesting than Tony not being what Steve expected.

“Also, no conditioning attempts that were preformed on me worked,” Natasha adds. “There’s something genuinely unique about Bucky all things considered.”

Tony nods. “Not a huge sample size, but you said there were other Widows, right? Conditioning like Bucky’s didn’t work on them?”

Nat shakes her head. “No. Most of us died, and those that didn’t were cut off from everything we knew and loved. We weren’t allowed to develop connections to anyone or anything. That was the result of their attempts to condition us went wrong. We were all given identities, people we were supposed to be in the real world and mine happened to be a ballerina. Had the conditioning they attempted worked I would have genuinely thought I was her until, like Bucky, they used trigger words. Aside from people getting too comfortable in their skins and getting killed for it that technique didn’t work.”

Steve once told him Natasha doesn’t talk about her past, which seems contradictory to this but Sam gets the feeling a whole lot of history is missing in that and they have bigger concerns anyway. “Uh, okay. So what happened? When you used the trigger words?” he asks and Natasha gives him a dirty look for it inexplicably. “What? I assume that you know what happened and that this uh… state of being was separate from Bucky’s normal personality somehow.”

“Uh. Mostly we got our asses kicked a lot on someone else’s orders, Bucky was briefly recaptured, it doesn’t matter. Point is those mind control experiments worked to a point. Bucky, pre recapture, didn’t want anything to do with us but he was on the defensive. He kept running. When he was recaptured and the words were used it was like he was a blank slate killing machine, nothing behind the eyes,” Tony says.

“So how’d you snap him out of it?” he asks. They had, obviously, given that Bucky isn’t running around killing people.

Tony shakes his head though. “We didn’t. Nat tried to knock him out-”

“Cognitive recalibration. Worked on Clint,” Natasha says.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. The human version of ‘have you tried turning it on and off again.’ Anyway, didn’t work. In DC Steve’s presence broke through that conditioning but it didn’t here and we don’t know why. Steve thinks maybe Bucky had been in the Winter Soldier state a little too long in DC, long enough to come back to himself but we have no real proof of that either. So I uh, well, made a contraption that attached him to my suit by his metal arm. Two in one- catch him and also neutralize his most powerful weapon. Was a real pain in the dick because he tried to kill me like fifteen times but Steve eventually held him back, which is how we got him the rest of the way home.”

Sam squints, “he had to try and kill you that many times before Steve decided maybe holding him back was a good idea? Man, you should have thrown the whole thing out, I would have.”

He doesn’t expect Tony to laugh but he does, a little too hard too, and Sam figures maybe he won’t say anything about it. “Yeah, Steve didn’t want to hurt Bucky and we kind of all got that but he did throw Clint into a wall hard enough to permanently damage his left shoulder, and he did try to kill me at least five times, and then he tried to kill Tony a bunch of times, and then when Tony detached him from the suit he tried to kill Thor, which obviously didn’t go well. We all get why Steve didn’t want Bucky hurt, but aside from Thor he’s the only one strong enough to actually handle the damage Bucky can cause,” Natasha says.

Steve’s got issues but that’s a discussion better left to have with Steve. “Okay. And what happened after? How’d you know about the trigger words at all?”

“Oh, yeah, I hacked HYDRA’s camera feed and watched the whole thing play out. Bucky seemed to fight it pretty hard, knew what was coming so he has an obvious awareness of what would happen next but no control. Like as soon as the last word was said it was like he was a doll and he literally said ‘ready to comply’ but in Russian. Nat translated. Anyway, when we brought him back we obviously had to restrain him while we figured out how the fuck to undo that and also the trigger word conditioning,” Tony says.

Yeah, okay, that seems… like science fiction but Sam supposes he’s seen some crazy shit the last few years. This isn’t much crazier than aliens trying to colonize New York of all places. “How’d you do that? Get rid of the trigger words?”

“Binary Augmented Retro-Framing device, otherwise known as BARF. Hijacks the hippocampus, allows you to relive traumatic memories with the purpose of… undoing the damage, I guess. Or in this case undoing conditioning.”

Sam frowns, “how the hell did you even find that kind of technology?”

“I made it,” Tony says, misunderstanding Sam’s question though in his defense Sam didn’t ask a very useful question.

“No, I mean how’d you even get that idea? That would be massively useful as a therapy technique.” Could also be a total disaster, but like any therapy suggestion that’s entirely up to the patient and their needs.

“Tony’s got daddy issues and wanted to solve them, it just so happened that it his daddy issue fixer also fixes super soldier deadly assassins,” Natasha says and Tony shoves her off the desk again. “I will kick you,” she tells him as she picks herself back up.

“And I probably won’t kick you back because you’re a much better fighter and also you scare me. I didn’t out your dirty laundry so don’t out mine. But yeah, that’s what happened. Took forever too, almost a month,” he says.

Sam sits back in his seat, “and let me guess, you were his primary care taker in that time frame?” he asks, more based off a hunch than any real evidence. Tony nods though.

“Not that Steve wasn’t around plenty but he didn’t get the science of what I was doing so mostly it was me,” he adds.

Well, that explains a lot. “Yeah, he wondered why Bucky was so attached to you and guess I just got my answer. I assume you did something in that time frame to endear him to you while Steve lagged behind.”

“Aside from removing trigger words that turned him into a mindless assassin?” Natasha says. “Because I’d fuck Tony for that alone.”

Tony wrinkles his nose, “you’re not my type, twinkle toes.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, “I’m everyone’s type, Tony. And there was a point where you didn’t mind,” she says, referencing events Sam isn’t familiar with and he’d like to be because what? There’s a whole lot he needs to talk to Steve about but his tendency to not tell him anything cool is his priority at the moment because come on, marriage problems over a whole fleet of Winter Soldiers? Dude needs a lesson in which details are more important.

“In my defense, I was dying,” Tony tells her and hold up what?

“Man, Steve fucking sucks at the fine print please explain all of that,” Sam tells them.

*

Tony is making coffee and debating on whether or not he wants to kick Sam out of his house when a noise to his left catches his attention. He looks over and finds Peter there glaring at him and he sighs. “Just say what you want,” he tells him. This was going to happen one way or another though he doesn’t much appreciate Steve taking the choice in how Peter ended up pissed off at him away.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Peter asks, upset. It’s not what he wanted to say, Tony can tell, but that’s what came out.

“Could give you a whole list kid, but I’ll be blunt here. Do you want a reason as to why I had an affair with Bucky or do you want a neat little narrative that explains what I did in a positive light despite my shitty actions, therefore absolving me of responsibility for my actions? Because you’re not going to get the latter.” Bluntness, Tony figures, is what Peter has earned here. It’d be easy to spin him some sob story that makes Steve look bad and Tony’s got plenty of evidence for it, but that’s not really fair to anyone and it conveniently leaves out his own shitty behavior or at least tries to excuse it and that’s not… useful. He’s been down that path to many damn times so consider trying that again.

Peter considers this for a moment, leaning against the fridge looking conflicted. “Why would you do that with Bucky of all people, dad, that’s cruel,” Peter tells him.

Tony clenches his jaw, looking away because Peter’s small, confused voice is a lot to handle. He takes a moment and breathes in before he responds. “I liked the attention he gave me,” he says honestly, not looking at Peter.

“You liked the- wait, he started it?” Peter asks and Tony hazards a glance over to him. He looks confused about that and Tony has no idea why everyone seems to have decided he must have started this whole thing.

Actually no, he knows why, but he’s still annoyed about it. “Yeah. And it was stupid, sure, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt any kind of attention like that and I’m sick of being in a relationship where I can try, and try, and try and it doesn’t seem to matter what I do. Then Bucky shows up and tells me that he sees me, that he notices my efforts and…” he shrugs. “It’s not my finest moment even if its probably not my worst either. It feels good though, to feel like my feelings are actually reciprocated and that I’m not just going through the motions. Its fucking exhausting to do that.”

It must be for Steve too, who isn’t even any good at it. Or at least not like Tony is. Steve hasn’t had to play a role his whole life though and Tony is used to rotating through a seemingly never ending pile of masks, tailoring himself to each moment appropriately. Steve obviously struggled with it, then gave up on their marriage completely and that’s his own fault. Tony, he can’t really say why he kept trying except that maybe he wanted the love he felt before back and kept trying to get it out of a non viable source.

He’s surprised when Peter rushes over and hugs him but he takes it, hugging the poor kid back. “You did a shitty thing,” Peter tells him and Tony nods.

“Yeah, I did.” No sense in denying it.

“I don’t want to be mad at you,” Peter murmurs.

Tony sighs, “complicated feelings are fine, Peter. I’m basically the king of complicated feelings about my father.”

Peter lets out a hysterical little laugh and hugs him tighter and Tony’s glad for it.