Well-made Man
Anthony Edward Stark
DOB: May 29, 1991 at 2:58 pm
Sex: Male
Weight: 7.0 lbs
Allergies: N/A
Illnesses/Ailments/Conditions:
Jaundice; patient exhibited signs two days following birth. Treament: Light Therapy — succcesful.
Heart murmur; patient exhibited signs of a slight murmur in-utero. Treament plan: observe.
Notes:
Patient did not cry or make sounds until three days after birth when being removed from his light box.
Patient had excessive difficulty latching and was switched to a bottle after seven weeks. Patient was switched to formula after four months.
Short and to the point, Anthony's smuggled birth record would probably prove to be useful someday.
Today, obviously, was not that day.
Bucky peaked over the side of the baby cot, wondering for the fifth time how exactly he would justify his actions to another set of worried EMTs why he called them because his kid was doing nothing. Nothing, which was the same thing Anthony had been doing every day for a month now, was going to drive Bucky insane. Not like he wanted him to cry and scream at all hours of the night (memories of the Ward baby two doors down still gave him the chills) but he was expecting something more than coo-ing and annoyed grunts whenever Anthony wanted something.
He didn't have a fever, Bucky was pretty sure a baby wouldn't be having a seizure for a month straight without showing any outward signs, and a stroke would have shown up on one of the many tests that he'd had SHIELD foot the bill for. Besides all that, the baby was always perfectly present, handing out looks and expressions that had Bucky wondering if his therapists had messed something up in his deprogramming and planted false memories there instead.
(He wondered if you could really call it paranoia when all you had memories of was people being out to get you.)
He sighs and reaches into the cot, finally giving up the battle of trying to make Anthony sleep. "C'mon, baby," he says, shifting him a little so his head rests on Bucky's shoulder.
He still isn't comfortable having Anthony on his hip. When some of his memories from before HYDRA had returned, he was much more comfortable with the intricacies of caring for his charge. SHIELD hadn't been so convinced, assigning him an agent to live in the apartment they had given him. Nick was nice enough, but it was odd taking advice on how to hold a baby without snapping its neck from a man who looked like he snapped necks for a living.
(Though, in that area, who was Bucky to judge?)
He didn't remember a lot of his time on any HYDRA base or with any of his handlers, but there were two things he couldn't seem to scrub: the kills and Maria Stark.
"I know television was rare in your day, but I'm pretty sure you know it's supposed to be on while you stare at it."
Nick was nice enough. A little sarcastic shit, sure, but ultimately helpful in his pursuit of Not Accidentally Killing Anthony Stark Because I'm A Goddamned Disaster which was all he was looking for in a housemate.
"They were before my time," he says, trying to remember how he'd gotten from his room to the living room couch. "Baby wake you?"
He knows he should stop asking questions that he knows the answer to, but it's easier to pretend this is all normal that way. He knows that Nick is always awake whenever he's awake. He's got a good hunch that SHIELD has cameras and recorders all over the apartment, he just doesn't know where. Still . . .
Nick just shrugs, pushing off of the doorway and moving slowly to collapse on the armchair just across from him. "Was working on some letters for back home. Thought I heard something and came down to check."
Anthony had never made a noise loud enough to carry and SHIELD didn't have a way to head-shrink the fact that Bucky could walk across wood floors without making a sound.
"People still write letters?" he asks, mindlessly rubbing circles on Anthony's back.
Nick makes a vague gesture with his hand and settles more into the chair. "He alright?"
Bucky sighs. "That's what they tell me."
"You think something's up?"
Anthony squirms a little, pushing at Bucky's chest until he gets the hint that he wants down. He tries but gets as far as moving Anthony to his lap before the baby clings to his waist. Bucky leaves him there and lets him cuddle into his stomach.
"No," he answers when Anthony settles. "I don't think they're hidin' anything from me. He just so . . . different," Bucky swallows. "I know that they'd tell me if something was wrong or they'd do something themselves, but he's too different, sometimes. Folder says he's never cried before."
The dim light in the kitchen helps him see the way Nick's eyebrows furrow. "Ever?"
Bucky is sure Nick's seen the record but is also, equally sure he's probably referring to the fact that at only six months old, Anthony Stark survived whatever HYDRA put him through and his rescue came in a hail of gunfire.
He nods. "He gets fussy sometimes, especially when he sleeps. I know the doctors said he'd probably forget that night, but he doesn't cry ever. Can't get a sound out of him."
"Spooky," Nick admits. "But he's healthy. I've never had much experience with kids myself, but I think you'd be able to tell. He's a happy little thing."
And Bucky has to agree with that.
Mostly, Anthony is happy. He tends to giggle Bucky awake every morning from the bassinet and sighs himself to sleep, like he's still thinking of whatever woke him and is just reconciling with it. He loves to play with Bucky's hands and he loves to be read to. More often than not, he loves both of those things at the same time, which has caused Bucky to become very good at one-handed page turning. He likes his little walker better than he likes the weird, automated swing thing that Anthony's doctor had assured him would be therapeutic. He likes playing with (read: torturing) Bucky's hair, and though it's something of a hindrance whenever Bucky tries to be productive, it has the benefit of making him the person Anthony likes to be held by best.
The sacrifices are not many.
Anthony's not a fan of anything yellow. Bucky noticed it when they'd been brought to a SHIELD med-bay that first night and most of the things that had meant to comfort babies (rubber ducks, soft yellow blankets, and a yellow-orange rattle) only made him more anxious and squirmy. Anthony prefers bananas to peaches, but he'd eat every peach in the world to avoid touching any of the vegetables Bucky's tried on him. (Mashed potatoes at least got swallowed, and Bucky still thinks he has God himself to thank for that one.) He loves bath time and the one time that Bucky took him swimming in one of the SHIELD exercise pools he seemed to enjoy himself.
The only other miracle Bucky has asked for was that Anthony might hold still for five seconds to help Bucky orchestrate a diaper changer that wasn't a godforsaken disaster.
"How's the shrink?" Nick asks, keeping his eyes on Anthony.
In all honesty, he was getting better. The Winter Soldier wasn't gone, but he was stuck firmly in the backseat of Bucky's consciousness. He got pissy sometimes, like when Bucky let anyone walk behind him for an extended period of time or when he had to go to back to the SHIELD HQ for his weekly check-up. He'd only ever hurt two people since Bucky'd been back in control: some random woman who had taken Anthony away in the med-bay, and Nick, once, when he had woken up to the man standing over Anthony's bassinette. Bucky may have been mostly in control of the two of them, but the baby was still his mission, and with no handler to take it out of him, he would just have to go with it.
Bucky's sure this is part of what Nick has to include in his weekly report — making sure Bucky wasn't faking any of that progress with the head doctors — so tries not to take offense, smiles, and says, "It's going alright." And then, "They ever make you see one?"
Nick makes another one of those so-so gestures with his hands. "They didn't make me, but my handler did."
He tries not to feel cold. "SHIELD gives out handlers?" But everyone said—
Bucky feels a hand on his shoulder, followed by a tight pressure and then release. "Not like what you're thinking." Nick's voice is softer than it's ever been. "Our version is a little different. One agent in the upper divisions gets assigned a dozen grunts, handles their missions, and their paperwork."
To be fair, that's exactly what Bucky's thinking, but logically he knows that they probably had less Chinese water torture. "Who's your handler?"
"I don't have a handler anymore," Nick tells him. "I handle."
"You handle," Bucky repeats, something like shock in his voice. He knows what "handler" means, but he'd been stupid enough to think—
Nick nods.
"Are you handling me?"
If he didn't know better, he'd say that Nick is offended, with the way his mouth pulls tight into a grimace. He doesn't appear ruminate, and his expression melts back to something more neutral. "I'm handling him." He points to Anthony, and something flickers across his face quick. "Officially, he was assigned to me, but he's something of a family friend."
"I'm handling him." Nick points to Anthony, and something flickers across his face quick. "Officially, he was assigned to me, but he's something of a family friend."
A family friend? "Didn't know you two were so close."
Nick does glare at him, then. "You could say I knew his parents. Howard Stark paid my goddaughter's way through college, and Peggy Carter was—"
"Peggy Carter?"
Nick freezes. His eyes snap to Bucky's, wide, and searching for something. Bucky's confused, but the importance of whatever Nick is concerned about washes over him too. The only disruption in the moment is Anthony fussing a little in his lap, which dies down the moment he starts patting his back.
"Something you remember?"
He thinks so. Sometimes Bucky feels a little ancient. His bones ache in places that he knows they shouldn't and he knows things about a world that looks nothing like this one. When the memories from before HYDRA come to him, they're completely alien to what he knows now. He hasn't actually seen his file, so he doesn't know how long HYDRA'd had him for, but with the rudimentary, crash-course history lessons he'd been receiving with every question about appliances, it must have been a while. The world that came to him in pieces didn't have electric can openers, or mobiles, or compact discs. The world he remembered was hungry and small and dirty and a lot harder to live in.
Peggy Carter
The name sounds familiar. He doesn't see a face, but he sees brown, shoulder-length waves against a stunning red dress and equally stunning red lipstick.
He doesn't think this counts as remembering, though, so he shakes his head. "Almost," he tells Nick. "Did I know her?"
"A little," Nick sighs. "You had a mutual friend." And then, "She's the kid's godmother."
He was not briefed on that. "Does she want to see him?" Bucky doesn't know if he likes the sound of that. SHIELD's been letting him pick and choose who gets near him and the kid, and mostly he's been alright. Having Nick around helps, but he can't help but watch every move of the agents they send sometimes.
"If she knew he was alive, she'd want to see him," he answers simply, looking a little tired. It's a statement and nothing more. An offer, maybe, but Bucky knows that he needs to be cleared before he's let out to make friends.
Something doesn't sit right with him. "She thinks he's dead?"
"Everyone does," Nick yawns. "The Starks went missing four months ago, and their official status is 'presumed dead'. If he ever wants to take over Stark Industries, or if you decide to send him to school, SHIELD is more than willing to deal with the publicity. For now, he's dead to the world."
Bucky swallows. "Does he have any other family?"
"He's got some scattered around Europe. His mother's side, from what I can remember. Howard had never been very forthcoming with his family history, but they did have a butler that I heard the kid was pretty attached to." When Bucky cocks an eyebrow at that, Nick continues. "I didn't know them for long, but from what I remember, Maria was not the maternal type."
Bucky feels a little flare of anger at that, followed by an irrational urge to defend Maria Stark. "She seemed alright to me."
Nick's face still keeps the tired look, but there's a twinge to it. Whatever it is that's bothering him, it doesn't disagree with Bucky. "She wasn't a bad mother, from what I saw. It was clear that she had never expected this sort of thing with Howard, but it happened, and I'm sure they did the best they could."
"I know that she's dead." Bucky says. "I saw it."
"We recovered the bodies. Maria and Howard Stark are officially dead."
He considers this. He looks down at Anthony, trying to feel some sort of sympathy for the boy. He's an orphan, now, being raised by an ex-assassin and an underground government agency. He would never be normal, whether kept in the back pocket of SHIELD or released into the world. He would never think of the world with an open sort of curiosity Bucky assumed most children had.
One that he could not remember having.
And he tried to feel sad about that. He tried to feel some sort of pre-regret about his shortcomings in raising Anthony, but couldn't seem to conjure it. Maybe he would never remember himself beyond a name and a particular set of skills, but dammit if he couldn't do right by this kid.
Anthony hiccups in his sleep, and that seems to settle things.
"You can argue with me all day, but I will not be getting your apple juice this time."
Baby lets out an indignant whine and slams an open hand on his tray.
Bucky cocks an eyebrow. "Do you really think that's going to help you get your way?"
He gets an equally defiant look back. "Juice," Anthony states simply, pointing at Bucky. He knocks his hands together with his fingers coming to a sloppy point when they touch. "More."
Unfortunately, Bucky can't help but smile at that, which lets Anthony know that if he tries just a little bit harder, Bucky'll give in and get the sippy cup off the ground.
Anthony has taken to signing like he was born for it. Prefers it to speaking, almost, which had been worrisome for a time, until Bucky had started introducing other advantages to the spoken word. (Speaking's the only way Anthony would be allowed to have cheerios before bed, which was one of the only rules kept faithfully.) Bucky didn't speak much himself at first, but he made sure to push it onto Anthony, keeping him around Phil as often as he could and trying to make sure the other agents talked to him and asked him questions when they had the time.
Nick leaving them was hard. He'd been informed that it hadn't been up to Nick, that it was probably inevitable from the beginning, and that they'd more than likely have some sort of rotation going until Bucky was cleared and fully deprogrammed. It had something to do with Anthony's development, they said. Something about him making attachments to agents whose job it was not to follow a kid around for the next eighteen years and play some sort of pseudo-parent to.
After reading his personal file, Bucky understood perfectly well who the agents were here for.
He'd like to believe that it doesn't matter.
Their new keeper is a kid, just a few years younger than what Bucky looks. Phil's stern and quiet, giving off a much more authoritarian energy around others than Bucky would ever imagine possible for a guy that eats gummy bears for breakfast and lets Anthony drool on his tie during nap time. He's a staunch professional, still addressing Bucky as 'Sir' or 'Sergeant Barnes' even after two months of Bucky begging him not to.
It's Anthony who always seems to break him.
Sure, Phil starts every morning standing on the fringe of any room he's supposed to be in. He's still too fresh from his training to be really good at blending in with the walls, but he tries. He carries himself with this thinly-veiled nervous energy. Whenever Bucky catches him in the corner of his eye, he's always looking at Bucky like he's trying to convince himself of something. And yeah, from his file, he knew he was a minor celebrity back in his day, but this look is intimate. It's personal in a way that he can't really place.
But Anthony . . .
There are no pretenses with Anthony.
Anthony'd had the flu the week of the switch. Nick had left the day they'd noticed a fever approaching, a mysterious call from HQ demanding that he abandon his post and return immediately. Bucky hadn't thought much of it right away, too focused on preparing himself and the apartment for when Anthony's on-coming fever broke. (He had put a fiver he didn't have on it only take a half day, and when Nick had asked for his reasoning, he'd off-handedly claimed that he'd always been good at telling with these sort of things.) He'd just laid Anthony down for a nap when Phil showed up, claiming to be a temp. If he hadn't learned that only SHIELD personnel were allowed in the apartment complex (which was information that he may or may not have gathered from his stolen, personal file) then maybe he would have held a knife to Phil's throat or shoved a gun at his forehead or something. Instead, he tiredly asked for the man's badge and the official transfer papers.
He pretended that he didn't feel a sting when he saw Nick's signature at the bottom and simply offered Phil something to drink.
(He'd declined.)
Bucky lost some time after that. He remembers hearing some fuss on the monitor and muttering something about taking Anthony's temperature again, but then there's just some bit of nothing, and then Bucky coming back to himself in the kitchen with his hands under running water and Phil's voice crawling in the under-current.
He'd gotten Anthony out of his crib and held him for the three hours Bucky had just been . . . lost. He'd read him books and sang him songs, and when Bucky entered the living room, finally, he'd been telling some sort of story that Baby had already fallen asleep to.
"You should work on that," Phil had said, tucking Anthony's head under his chin.
"Not much you can do for crazy," Bucky answered, but he hadn't been exactly sure about that.
He knew about the nuthouses in his day, and about how no one ever returned from those quite the same way. He remembered getting shocked to keep him in line, and sometimes after missions if he would ramble during his reports. Other than that, he knew nothing of what they would do to him if he walked into one of his sessions and said, "Yeah, sometimes (like when I'm making breakfast for that infant you guys trusted me with) I completely freeze up, forget who and where I am, and then I can't remember it afterwards. Anything you can do for that?"
It probably wouldn't go very well.
They'd probably try to take Baby away from him.
Unacceptable.
Bucky is long past his days of assuming something is wrong with Anthony everytime he misses a developmental marker, or takes an alternative route to get to one.
It would turn him gray, no matter what his serum had to say about it.
He decides this, mostly, when he walks into the Playroom to see the familiar mess of brown curls bent over a giant silver box and hears some sort of inhumane screeching coming from it.
Bucky sighs. "Who gave him the microwave?"
An indiscriminate group of people surrounding the scene who quickly scatter as Bucky enters. Normally, it would amuse him. Now, however, after three weeks straight of nightmares and (yet another) unsuccessful attempt at removing his triggers . . .
He manages to catch one of the uniformed runaways by the collar. "You." He tugs them back around so they — she — is standing in front of him without blocking Anthony. "What is this?" he asks, gesturing to his boy who is, notably, happy to ignore the two of them for some smaller, rectangular box on the microwave.
She's staring at him with most of the whites of her eyes showing. "I, uh, I wasn't— I mean, I would, but it wasn't in my papers, you see, and I know how particular Sergeant Barnes is with— I know that he doesn't want—" She blinks, finally, and takes a deep breath. "I just wanted to see him work, sir."
'Sir'? Bucky looks down at himself while she catches her breath and finds himself without his badge. Reasonable that she wouldn't know who he was without it. Bucky hadn't meant to, but having his own apartment allowed him to become something of a recluse in SHIELD's care. He only had to see his therapists, Anthony's (his) caretaker, and Anthony, and two-thirds of those people were usually found in the apartment, anyway. (There's a nudge at the back of his head to really let her fry for this, but he ignores it, and, instead, let's her down gently and smooths the collar a bit.)
He goes with something she might be able to answer with the limited vocabulary she still has. "You wanted to see who work?"
"The Stark kid, sir," she says, sneaking a glance at Anthony over her shoulder. "Phil talks about him all the time and I've seen some of his training footage—"
His stomach rolls. "Training footage?"
She seems to forget herself a little. "I guess we don't call it that for normal kids, huh?" Bucky's body loosens, but not by much. "Uh, his time in the Playroom, sir? And with the trauma counselors. He's not a verbal one, but he loves to work."
Which is true. If he'd met a four-year-old before HYDRA, he certainly didn't remember it. However, he had some sort of an inkling that they weren't supposed to have power tools in their playtime kit, and it probably wasn't wise to read them theoretical physics books before bed if they continuously insisted on dropping heavy machinery off the top of your apartment building. However, Anthony's "experiments" had never been at the risk of causing harm to himself before.
This, Bucky felt, was different.
But the girl isn't done. "I mean, Phil talks about him all the time. I thought it was all myth, you know? Breakroom talk? But he's the real deal, and he's gorgeous." And then: "His brain, sir! His brain is gorgeous!"
(Racecars. Bucky distinctly remembers Tony taking about racecars about a month ago, or something. That was probably a good first sign.)
"Who are you?"
"Danvers, sir. Trainee Carol Danvers."
Bucky quirks an eyebrow. She very much looks the part of a trainee of something: small, blond, smiling. Nervous now, but he could see all the optimism and hope shuffling out of the top of her and waiting to come out.
But SHIELD? She looked too . . . soft.
"How old are you, Danvers?"
"Seventeen, sir." She seems to sense his observations, because she adds, "I took a placement test straight out of high school at the request of Ex-Director Carter, and she approved me."
Carter?
. . . Oh.
. . . Oh shit.
"Peggy Carter?"
Danvers nods slowly with a small smile forming. "The one and only. I used to live on the same block as her niece, apparently. Ex-Director Carter couldn't hire me or anything, but I know she's pretty hard to ignore." Danvers shrugs and looks pointedly at Bucky, like he should know what the hell she was talking about. "Strictly speaking, this is nothing more than an unpaid internship for me."
He let his eyes fall to her holster and throwing knives. "Do most unpaid internships involve so many deadly weapons?"
(His did, anyway.)
Bucky looked back at Anthony again, only to find the boy looking up at him with a very serious look on his face. It was a cross between his thinking face and his sad face, and it had Bucky moving towards him without a thought. "You got something to show me?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. Aside from being almost totally stripped, the microwave looked much the same as any other microwave would under the circumstance. There was no wild, new machine made, and somehow that was worse.
Anthony nodded, walking to Bucky and grabbing his hand. "This," he said, pointing at the skeleton.
It . . . twitched. The shiny silver box at the back (which looked mighty important) had some rusted cog attached to it and it was giving pathetic, jilted spins every few seconds. It didn't appear to be doing much, but the fact that it was doing anything at all was enough to cause a swell of pride to push against Bucky's rib cage.
"Robot," Tony grumbles, picking up the wrench and chucking it at his creation. It shifts away, groans, and the rusty cog starts turning the other way with even more pitiful jolts. "Almost."
Bucky ducks down and takes a good look at the thing. It's got promise, he thinks. Pithy though it is, it came from his kid, and his kid can't even tie his shoes yet. He's always known that Tony was brilliant. (Scarily so.) He's always known that it would be criminal to keep Tony locked up, experimenting with microwaves for the rest of his life for fear that HYDRA would find them, even with the protection of SHIELD. He's always known that someday, he'd have to put the reigns in Tony's hands and let him decide what he was going to do with his life, and that that decision was probably going to include fancy, private schools and a string of creations so complex, anybody with half a brain would be after his Anthony before he picked a major.
He squints. "An almost robot, huh?"
Anthony nods with a pout on his face. "Bad," he says dejectedly, glaring at the ground.
Bucky shrugs, trying to keep his posture and his face neutral. "I think it's pretty good, baby."
"Good?" Anthony perks up at that, turning from Bucky to see the machine. The look on his face is pure wonder with a flicker of hope. He looks at it as if it is in a new light, like he's never seen the thing before. He seems to fidn whatever he was searching for in it, and turns back to Bucky, expectant.
Bucky nods. "Perfect." he says, and it really is.