#threetoo

When Steve had been lying stilland quiet for a little while, he found his ears attuned to Bucky’s breathing.He winced when he recognized the sound of it: carefully even and shallow,without the slightest accompanying sound of movement. That was Bucky in pain,or lying awake in the night trying not to give himself away.

Steve had always figured, when helay in camp listening to Bucky breathing like that, that he was remembering thefactory at Kreischberg–his imprisonment, and that table Steve had found himon. Now that Steve knew what Bucky had survived, he couldn’t help wondering ifit was more than that keeping Bucky awake at night–had he felt himselfchanging in slow motion the way Steve had changed inside Howard’s Vita-Raychamber? Had he known what Zola did to him, or had he been left to wonder?

Would he ever remember enough ofthose nights to tell Steve what his nightmares had been, or had othernightmares long since blotted them out?

After an agonizing three-quartersof an hour, the sound of Bucky’s breathing changed to something even morefamiliar. The softness of sleep, real sleep, which Steve had heard in his earand felt against the back of his neck more times than he could count. He fellinto something like a doze himself, lulled by the sweetness of it and thesudden release of tension. 

When a distant sound woke him,there was a second when he didn’t know where he was, only that Bucky was near.Was it their day off, precious hours wasted drowsing in the park? Were theynapping in camp ahead of a night raid?

He opened his eyes and saw thepotted plant and the skylight, and recognized the soft pad of approachingfootsteps. Stark–Stark the younger. Tony. 

Steve got silently to his feetand strode out of the bedslaves’ quarters, shutting the door noiselessly behindhim. He reached the doorway of Stark’s bedroom when Stark was only a couple ofsteps away.

Stark stopped short. He wascarrying a tray of food in assorted bite-sized pieces, including a little bowlof some kind of rainbow-colored bon bons, and for the barest instant he lookedsurprised to see Steve there. Steve held up a hand and stepped out into thehall, pulling the door shut after him. 

“He just fell asleep, maybeten minutes ago,” Steve said softly. “The worst of the headachemust’ve passed, but I don’t think he’ll be ready to eat until he wakes up onhis own." 

Stark looked past Steve, as ifThreetoo might materialize behind him, and said, "The worst ofwhat headache.”

“Oh,” Steve said.Right, he’d only recognized it himself from seeing how dark Bucky had made hissleeping area, and the plant, and what he’d heard. “Yeah, he… he made itpitch black where his bed is, and I could hear him being real careful drinkingthat juice, like he felt sick, so I figured… sick headache. I had a bunch of‘em when I was a kid, for weeks after I got my bell rung real hard in a fight.He hit his head yesterday, didn’t he?”

Steve felt a little sick himselfas his memory answered his own question with the sick sound of Bucky’s headhitting the floor of Stark’s lab. 

“Sick headache,” Starkrepeated, shoving the tray in Steve’s direction as he rubbed his eyes with hisfree hand. “Migraine. But it didn’t start yesterday, did it? JARVIS, howdid we miss this? The other day, he asked for dark–”

“He felt sick first,sir,” JARVIS pointed out. “The headache appeared to follow after. Hehas made his sleeping area artificially dark twice before, but there was noreason to conclude that he was experiencing migraine symptoms." 

"But now there is, so is he?Was he?” Stark demanded. “Did we–” Stark focused sharply onSteve again. “You’re sure he’s sleeping? He’s not lying there in pain?”

“I mean, I can’t guaranteehe hasn’t woken up in the last two minutes,” Steve said, gesturing to theclosed door. “But I know he fell asleep maybe ten minutes ago. Hisbreathing changed. Relaxed." 

Stark stared at him for a coupleof seconds, utterly still, and then shook his head and turned away, muttering,"Right. You know the sound of his breathing. Of course. Okay. JARVIS, checkwith Cho about migraine options and what we can do without her physicallyexamining him. And tell me the second he pushes the curtain back.”

“Of course, sir,”JARVIS assured him. 

Stark didn’t seem at allreassured. He took a couple of abortive steps, one direction and then theother, obviously worried about Threetoo and not knowing what to do with himselfwhen he couldn’t help.

Steve was familiar with thefeeling. He raised the tray of food into Stark’s eye line and said, “I’mguessing this was your lunch as well as his?" 

Tony stopped, narrowing his eyes,and said, "I know for a fact that he did not have a chance to tell youit’s your job to make sure I eat. And it’s not your job. Or his.”

“Okay,” Steve saidagreeably. “But there’s this food that’s gonna go to waste, since–" 

Steve stopped short, experiencinga weird retrospective recognition as the words I know you’re notgoing to feed this to him if it’s not fresh occurred to him. Theblueberries DUM-E had brought to him, a carton discarded half-full. All theones left had been crushed or oddly shaped or otherwise imperfect. And Steveknew that Bucky liked blueberries. He was willing to bet that Tony knew it,too, and only gave him the best.

Stark ran a hand through his hairand then nodded, gesturing toward the stairs to the lower level. "Yeah,okay. I want the actual story on you and him–and, hey, medical history. Youknow his?" 

"Uh,” Steve said.“Well, up to 1945, I guess. Roughly.”

Stark raised his eyebrows, butdidn’t ask any more questions until they were down in the kitchen, the tray onthe island between them. Tony waved Steve toward a stool, so he perched therewhile Tony paced around, fetching drinks and napkins and setting the dish ofbrightly-colored bon bons pointedly to one side before he picked up a crackerfrom the tray and popped it into his mouth, waving at Steve to follow suit. 

“So,” Tony said.“From the beginning.”

“Well,” Steve said,building a tiny cracker-and-chicken-and-cheese sandwich from the tray. “Myfolks were enslaved in exchange for passage from Ireland in 1916…" 

He expected Tony to get impatientand tell him to talk about Bucky, or the war, but Tony just nodded, watchinghim intently and continuing to eat, so Steve kept talking between bites,explaining that his mother had been pregnant with him when his father waskilled in the Great War and was emancipated as his death benefit. He told himhow Bucky’s family had been better off, how he and Bucky had lived only a fewblocks apart but in subtly different worlds, since the Barneses’ flat had beenquite a different place from the tenement apartment Steve shared with his ma.

"I always knew where I washeaded,” Steve said. “Ma didn’t like it, didn’t want that for me,but… times were hard, and me being sick a lot didn’t make it any easier. Butwhen Bucky was sixteen, he suddenly just started talking about doing the same,and that–he didn’t have to do that. But I… I was already crazy about him,and he made it sound like an adventure, like we’d…" 

Steve shook his head. "So Ididn’t argue. And I didn’t realize until after we’d done it that he… he wascoming with me because he felt the same way I did. Then it was too late for usto–" 

Steve glanced at Stark, who wasfrowning into midair and rubbing a piece of cheese into fragments between histhumb and finger, and did not explain about the cock-lock.

"Well. We saw each other asmuch as we could, but service didn’t leave us much free time. And then thewar… Buck got put down for the slave draft right away, although they didn’ttake him for training until the middle of '42. Me, I kept trying to get myselfon the list, but no dice. I was 4F, unfit.”

That got Stark to look at him,his gaze raking meaningfully up and down as he chewed another cracker. Stevedid not blush. 

“Before Dr. Erskine andHoward got involved, I was five foot four, maybe a hundred pounds dripping wet.Asthma, family history of diabetes, TB exposure, touch of heart arrhythmia eversince I had scarlet fever as a kid. But they had this experimental program, andDr. Erskine decided that I was the perfect test subject, so…” Steve madea little ta-da! gesture at himself.

“So that’s how you got intothe war,” Stark said. “But Barnes was already in the 107th by then,straight infantry.  Already deployed?”

Steve nodded. “I, uh…Erskine was killed by a Nazi agent–HYDRA, their deep science division–and noone could replicate what he’d done. They sent me to a lab for a while to studyme, what the serum actually changed and all, see if they could find  a way to reverse engineer it. No luck, and Iwas stuck there until Howard pulled me out and started bringing me around tolook good in uniform for whoever he was doing deals with. He brought me alongto Europe, into Italy when he went to meet up with the SSR brass there, andthat’s how I found out most of the 107th had been captured by HYDRA’s own shocktroops. The ones taken were mostly slaves. No one was planning on rescuingthem, and Bucky was… unaccounted for. So I, uh… I convinced Howard to dropme into Austria to go find them." 

Stark stared at him. "Dropyou…”

“From a plane,” Stevesupplied, although he had a feeling that that wasn’t really what Stark washaving difficulties with. “I mean, with a parachute, and some prototypegear. That was part of why he brought me along, to model and test some stuff hewas developing for the Army." 

Including the ridiculouscombination thermal underwear and partial body armor which Howard had insistedon getting up in a gaudy American flag design, but Steve wasn’t going todescribe that to Stark if he could possibly avoid it. 

Well. There was the silver liningto Bucky’s amnesia, because God knew otherwise he would probably remember everyinch of that outfit in loving detail and would feel no compunction indescribing it. He’d had a funny fascination with it, even after Howardredesigned it into something Steve didn’t have to cover with fatigue pants anda leather jacket to be halfway decent in public. He’d bitched from time to timeabout the hazards of Steve’s anti-camouflage, but he never actually lobbied forSteve to change to something more practical.

Stark had his head in his hands,and Steve dragged himself back to the point. "That’s where–I think thathas to be when he–he got… changed. So he survived what happenedafterward.”

Stark’s head jerked up at that.“He wasn’t…" 

Steve shook his head. "Asfar as I know, the US never tried again after me. Howard sure hadn’t draggedalong his Vita-Ray machine to Europe. But Bucky had been taken away from theother prisoners–they said the ones who got taken away never came back, but Ifound him. Strapped down on a table. I think… Zola. Arnim Zola, one of thetop HYDRA scientists, he’d–I think he’d done something to him.”

Steve had known the least part ofit: that Bucky was cock-locked, after that. He hadn’t pressed to know what Zolahad done beyond that, and it was obvious now that that had been by far theleast of it. 

“Even at the time, I had anidea there was something, but I never… we didn’t talk about it, and he saidhe wanted to stay in, wanted to come with me and keep fighting HYDRA. The SSRput us on that directly, a strike force that just went after HYDRA bases anddestroyed them however we could. Behind enemy lines like that, it was better tosend slaves–at least if we got captured by regular army, we had someprotections under the Geneva Convention, more than free soldiers. ObviouslyHYDRA didn’t care about that, but still better us than anybody else. We weretrying to capture Zola himself when Buck–when he fell. But he survived, whichmeans…”

Stark looked away. “Yousaid… as a sniper, you said…" 

"Yeah,” Steve said,swallowing hard. “Yeah, I think… I never fought beside him before Zolagot him, and I didn’t really know what a normal sharpshooter was like. But Ithink he… he was really something special. So maybe that was… a sign, and Ijust didn’t get it.”

There was a little silence. Steveforced himself to eat another few tidbits off the tray, thinking of rations andBucky’s lean and hungry look during the war, smoking all of Steve’s cigaretterations as well as his own. Had he been starving then, the way Steve would onnormal rations? Had Steve been letting Bucky go hungry while he wolfed downtriple rations in front of him? 

“Bone density,” Starksaid. “What about–bone density? Dr. Cho noticed something about his bonedensity that made her realize he needed the same stuff as you to beanesthetized. What was that about?”

Steve frowned, thinking about theway Bucky had held his rifle. Recoil couldn’t have done what the shield did,could it? But then… she’d been working on what was left of his left arm.Whatever impacts that had been taking must have been after.

“My hands,” Steve said,showing Stark his palms, as if it would be visible. “I, uh… I hadthis… shield. And I used to throw it, catch it on a ricochet–” Stevestruck the palm of his left hand with the side of his right, demonstrating.“It hurt like hell at first. I got better at the angles, but… apparentlymy bone density is a lot higher right there, too. My body adapted." 

Stark nodded, snagged a couple ofcubes of cheese and slapped them into his mouth. "Okay. And the anestheticthing? Tell me whatever you know about that, in case we need to tinker aroundgetting him a headache remedy.”

“Well, my metabolism isapparently four times faster than normal?” Steve offered. “I, uh… Ihad to have minor surgery once, at Alamogordo. Howard figured out how to keep meunder–of course, that was ether gas, I don’t think they use thatanymore?" 

Stark thankfully didn’t ask himwhat the surgery had been, just started questioning him about the ether.

Threetoo woke up feeling groggyand halfway between sick and starving. Everything was dark and warm and…soft, and for a moment he thought that he could just snuggle in and go back tosleep, and then the memory slammed into him like– 

Like a fire extinguisher,knocking him flat.

Steve. Hismaster had brought Steve to the penthouse, to be his second bedslave, forThreetoo to train. Instead of doing anything useful, Threetoo had been seizedwith the punishment pain, worse than it had ever been, so bad he could hardlystay upright. He had begged off immediately, and left his master to show Stevearound, to get him settled.

Threetoo’s mind’s eye suppliedvisions of Steve kneeling by his master’s feet, his master gently explainingthat he was safe here while feeding Steve his lunch, running his fingersthrough the dark gold of Steve’s hair and running his hands over Steve’sperfectly smooth skin. For a weak, cowardly moment Threetoo considered hidinguntil he provoked his master into coming to find him, but he rejected thatthought as soon as it formed. 

This was Threetoo’s project, as much as his master’s. And if his master was pleased to have Steve,pleased to touch and talk to him and teach him, then that was all to the good,because his master would be happy, and Steve would be safe and good.

Threetoo tugged his curtain back,letting in what turned out to be less light than he expected. That wasn’t bad,and even if it was, he was going to go and find them and help teach Stevewhatever he needed to learn, no matter how badly it hurt. 

Before he could even climb out ofthe pillow box, JARVIS said, "Please stay where you are, 32557038. Mr.Stark is on his way to speak to you.”

Threetoo winced, curling down,and the throb in his head that had only just died away started up again. 

“Hey,” his master said,only seconds later. “Hey, sweetheart. On a scale of zero to ten, with zerobeing "doesn’t hurt at all” and ten being “I cannot move or signbecause I am in so much pain and I need urgent medical care or I mightdie,” how’s your head right now?“

Threetoo raised his head to lookat his master, mentally assigning ten to the otherwiseindescribable experience of the day before. He raised two fingers. 

"Mm, two means you onlynotice it when you focus on it. Is that right?”

Threetoo raised a third finger. 

“Okay,” his mastersaid, smiling a little stiffly and settling a warm hand on the back of hisneck. “Thank you for telling me that, Threetoo. Good data. I’ll get you acopy of the scale so you can assign numbers consistently going forward. Before,when you came in here to lie down, what number was that?”

Threetoo winced. His mastersqueezed gently on his neck, rubbing firmly with his thumb and finger.“Let’s say nine is 'can barely move or think because of pain’ and eight is'pain is so severe it’s hard to think, talk, or listen, and very hard to moveor do anything else.’ Do I need to describe seven?" 

Threetoo shook his head the tinybit that his master’s grip allowed and signed, eight.

"Eight is a lot,” hismaster said quietly. “Eight is way more than I ever want you to feelwithout telling me about it, because eight means we should be doing everythingwe can to make it better as soon as possible. I mean, I’d like to be doingsomething about three right now, but Dr. Cho says all she can do reliably atthis point is make you unconscious, so it’s probably overkill for athree." 

Threetoo stared at him. Hismaster hadn’t actually asked him a question, so he technically didn’t have toreply. That was a good thing, because he had no idea what to say.

"Have you been havingheadaches that get really intense, that make it painful to see light? Make youfeel sick? Maybe cause other weird effects? Make you feel too cold or hot, orsee lights in your peripheral vision, or…" 

Threetoo nodded slowly.

"Okay,” his mastersaid. “I wish you would have told me about that, but to be fair I didn’tthink to ask. Those headaches are called migraines, sweetheart. They happensometimes if you’ve had a head injury, which I think you probably had evenbefore yesterday. They also happen sometimes just for no reason. Lots of peopleget them, and I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to make sure that they don’thappen at all, but we can at least get you some pain relief when they do happen,even if it’s only making sure that we help you go to sleep right away when itgets bad. Being in pain isn’t good for you, it’s just like beingpunished–" 

Threetoo’s lips parted, his handtwitched, and then he looked sharply away.

His master’s hand tightened, thenwent back to the slow, rhythmic rubbing. 

"Threetoo,” his mastersaid quietly. “Look at me, please.”

Threetoo dragged his gaze up tohis master’s, trying not to tremble, trying not to even breathe. His masterlooked tired again, the way he had yesterday, and nearly as unhappy. 

“Threetoo, sweetheart,project number one,” he said softly. “Did you think you were beingpunished?”

Threetoo closed his eyes andnodded. 

What else could it mean? Itwasn’t an injury–he hadn’t known about migraines untilhis master told him–so it had to be a punishment, didn’t it? Masters could dothings from far away, through chips and… and other things.

“Threetoo,” his mastersaid, his voice very quiet and small now. “Did you think I was punishingyou by making your head hurt like that? And not telling you why, or what youdid wrong, and talking all the time about not wanting to ever punish you, andpunishing you anyway?" 

Threetoo squeezed his eyes shuttighter, feeling them sting with tears, and shook his head hard. He raised hishand to sign no, and then–because he knew his masterneeded good data–I thought maybe. At first. But you said. So I knewit wasn’t you. Because you wouldn’t.

"Okay,” his master saidquietly, and there was a press of lips against his forehead that didn’t stopthe throbbing in his head from rising into what was probably a four.“Okay, I… I’m glad. But… who did you think was punishing you? Or wasit just… cosmic punishment, floating around randomly?" 

Threetoo swallowed. He hadn’t thoughtabout it, really, but… he hadthought–believed–known–that the pain was punishment,even while he knew his master wouldn’t inflict pain on him. And no one else wasauthorized by his master to do so; no former master held that power over himany longer.

And that only left one personresponsible. One person who had access to him and definitely had no right tointerfere with his master’s goals by inflicting pain on his master’snumber one project.

Me, Threetoosigned, before falling back to the safety of referring to himself bydesignation instead. 3-2. 3-2 punished. 3-2 knew 3-2deserved.

"Oh–” his mastermoved, and then his arms were around Threetoo, drawing him up out of thepillows and into his master’s lap, cuddling him close against his master’schest. “Okay, so. On the one hand–I really really don’t want you to dothat, Threetoo. Even if you know you’ve done something wrong, even if it seemsreally bad, I… I don’t want you to hurt yourself, not in any way, ever. Okay?Because I want you to heal and get better and be safe. Right?" 

Threetoo hid his face against hismaster’s chest, nodding. He did know that. He did, and his stomach was a stone,his whole spine and skull ablaze with tension and pain because he knew he haddone what his master didn’t want.

"And on the other hand, andthis is the really important hand right now–” His master’s actual handstroked down his spine and back up to the nape of his neck, then down again. 

“I need you to remember thatit was never punishment, Threetoo. It was never anyone’s fault, includingyours. Especially yours. Even if you thought you were punishing yourself–itwasn’t punishment, and it wasn’t your fault. It was just a fact about your bodythat we didn’t understand yet. But it’s not your fault.”

Threetoo didn’t want tocontradict his master, but… 

He raised his hand, enough sothat JARVIS could see it if not his master, and signed, Occurrencenot random. Correlated to infractions.

“Mm,” his master said,still petting up and down his spine. “Well, hey, guess what, correlationdoes not equal causation. That’s science, baby. I’m not gonna ask you to layout for me what infractions you think you’ve been committing, but whatever theywere, I bet your migraines also correlate with you being stressed because youthought you did something wrong. Stress, worry, that cando a lot of things to your body. Raises your blood pressure. Brings onmigraines, sometimes, if that’s what your body’s predisposed to." 

Threetoo leaned against hismaster, and breathed, and felt the pain and tension subsiding under hismaster’s touch. That had happened before–his master had touched him gently,reassured him, and if the pain–the migraine–was only justbeginning when he did it, then it might stop. Because he stopped being worriedwhen his master touched him. Because it was early enough in whateverphysiological process made up a migraine to short-circuit it. Sometimes hismaster’s touch didn’t help: when the pain was already very bad. When theprocess was too far along.

Not a punishment. Just a fact.Just his body. 

Threetoo signed, Oh.

His master laughed a little."Yeah. Oh. Hey, what’s your plant doing over there? You want it back onthe shelf before you have your lunch?" 

Threetoo nodded against hismaster’s shoulder, and his master stayed still for a moment before gentlypushing Threetoo to sit up on his own. His master got the plant and brought itto Threetoo, and Threetoo waded through the pillows and set it back up on theshelf. When he came back to the edge, his master was holding a lunch tray withsomething new on it–little irregular balls, something dark studded withrainbow-colored bits like candy.

"Yeah, I see you eyeing thesweets,” his master said, sounding amused. “One of the cooks madethose up for you special to help you get blueberries and maximum calories atthe same time. And in honor of you having such a rough day yesterday. You wantto try one? It’s got blueberries in it, but it’s not an actual blueberry." 

Threetoo nodded, curious andfascinated. A treat–from his master, but also from someone other than hismaster. Someone he’d never met, who was supporting his master’s project, andcared that he’d had a rough day.

It was sweet, and the rainbowsprinkles were a little crunchy, but it was chewy and tart, too, a burst ofintense flavor. Threetoo showed his master his upraised thumb.

"Good, well, the rest ofthem are for after you eat some protein,” his master said firmly, andThreetoo nodded obediently and settled to the work of being fed. 

Rogers wasn’t just outside thebedslave’s room, where Tony had barely managed to scrape him off after hefollowed Tony upstairs. He’d told himself, in the fraction of a second he hadto think about it before he was wholly focused on Threetoo, that it was good toknow he would have a chaperone for this.

Clearly that hadn’t lasted long;he reran the conversation in his head, trying to work out what Rogers wouldhave heard, as he walked out of his bedroom and looked around. He was nowhereobvious. 

“J?”

“You may want to check theguest room." 

Tony rubbed his eyes, feelingstupidly exhausted for a moment. Whatever was going on with Rogers, he didn’twant to deal with it–but Tony had taken responsibility for him, and Rogers wasa mistreated slave too. He deserved to be looked after, and Tony had separatedhim from everyone else who could do the job. It was necessary, in order tomaintain the illusion that Tony was inflicting some suitable correction uponhis would-be murderer, but it meant that Tony was the only person left to dothis.

So. He would do this, obviously. 

He tapped at the door of theguest room, and opened it a few inches when there was no answer.

It was nearly as dark inside asThreetoo’s bed, but he heard a soft rustling of clothing: Rogers getting to hisfeet. "Mr. Stark? Did you need me for something?" 

"Uh, not really,” Tonysaid, but he pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the dimroom. Rogers was standing in one of the near corners, where he might not beimmediately seen from the doorway. “Were you… hiding?”

Rogers shrugged stiffly, lookingaway. “Seems like I shouldn’t let him see me, don’t you think?" 

"No, it’s good–”Rogers flinched, turning half away with his head down and shoulders up, andTony stopped short.

Clearly Rogers had heard at leastpart of his conversation with Threetoo, and if he heard any of it at all, he’dhave heard the part where Threetoo was at an eight on the pain scale earlier.When Tony thought he was having some kind of programming-tension-freakout whichwas, in reality, an excruciating migraine. Probably still caused by the stressof pushing at his programming, and therefore by the sight of Rogers. 

“Okay, maybe we should becareful how much he sees you until he gets used to you, but that doesn’t meanyou have to hide in a dark room. He’s napping again, for one thing, and JARVIScan help you avoid him if you really need to. God knows there’s enough space inthe penthouse for the two of you not to see each other.”

Rogers shrugged stiffly. “Isthere somewhere else I should be, Mr. Stark?" 

Tony pressed the heel of his handto his brow, trying to push back his own incipient headache. "Jesus, youlive in my bedroom and I have to use your first name at least to Threetoo. Callme Tony, all right?”

“Tony,” Rogers echoed,mechanically, dutifully. “Thank you." 

Tony shook his head, turningaway. "Okay, right, stand around in the dark if you–” He’d made itjust to the threshold when Rogers spoke behind him, his voice expressive nownearly to the point of desperation.

“Tony, I’m sorry.”

Tony froze. 

“I–I don’t think I saidthat, before,” Rogers went on. “But I tried to killyou and I’m so sorry. I would have–it was wrong. I know I was wrongabout you. I knew that already, but listening to you talking to him–you’re sogood with him. Not just kind; you know how to help him. I couldn’t do this forhim like you do, I…”

The rush of hideous sinceritytrailed off, and a second later Tony managed to snap out of his horrifiedparalysis. 

“Well, hey, not everyone canbe a billionaire playboy genius with a heart of gold,” Tony said in hismost careless style. “Don’t beat yourself up just because you’re not asgood as me, no one is. JARVIS, lights.”

The lights came up, and Tonywalked out without looking back to see the results of his words, or the refugehe’d deprived Rogers of. He was too desperate to get back to his lab and findsomething, anything, to scour away the sound of Rogers being every bit aswrongly grateful to him as Threetoo was–and without the excuse of whatevercombination of brainwashing and brain damage had madeThreetoo who he was. 

It had been barely more than aday, and he’d already managed to break Rogers from a berserker bent on freedomor death to… this. Apologizing to the man who made the StarkChip.

This was why he didn’t meet theslaves he was involved in rescuing. This was why he definitely didn’t move them into the penthouse. And this was why he neededto get Threetoo more attached to Steve than to his master as fast as humanlypossible–so he could get both of them the hell away from him. So he could stopcorroding them just by being who and what he was anywhere near them.

“J, see if you can get athousand liquid calories into Threetoo in the next four hours? Things to do.Places to be." 

Anywhere but here.

1. The pain scale Tony is teaching Threetoo is this one. I figured Threetoo would have an easier time processing something that focused on how pain affected his functioning than a subjective measurement of his own suffering.

Before he could even climb out ofthe pillow box, JARVIS said, "Please stay where you are, 32557038. Mr.Stark is on his way to speak to you."

Threetoo winced, curling down,and the throb in his head that had only just died away started up again.

"Hey," his master said,only seconds later. "Hey, sweetheart. On a scale of zero to ten, with zerobeing "doesn't hurt at all" and ten being "I cannot move or signbecause I am in so much pain and I need urgent medical care or I mightdie," how's your head right now?"

Threetoo raised his head to lookat his master, mentally assigning ten to the otherwiseindescribable experience of the day before. He raised two fingers.

"Mm, two means you onlynotice it when you focus on it. Is that right?"

Threetoo raised a third finger.

"Okay," his mastersaid, smiling a little stiffly and settling a warm hand on the back of hisneck. "Thank you for telling me that, Threetoo. Good data. I'll get you acopy of the scale so you can assign numbers consistently going forward. Before,when you came in here to lie down, what number was that?"

Threetoo winced. His mastersqueezed gently on his neck, rubbing firmly with his thumb and finger."Let's say nine is 'can barely move or think because of pain' and eight is'pain is so severe it's hard to think, talk, or listen, and very hard to moveor do anything else.' Do I need to describe seven?"

Threetoo shook his head the tiny bitthat his master's grip allowed and signed, eight.

"Eight is a lot," hismaster said quietly. "Eight is way more than I ever want you to feelwithout telling me about it, because eight means we should be doing everythingwe can to make it better as soon as possible. I mean, I'd like to be doingsomething about three right now, but Dr. Cho says all she can do reliably atthis point is make you unconscious, so it's probably overkill for athree."

Threetoo stared at him. Hismaster hadn't actually asked him a question, so he technically didn't have toreply. That was a good thing, because he had no idea what to say.

"Have you been havingheadaches that get really intense, that make it painful to see light? Make youfeel sick? Maybe cause other weird effects? Make you feel too cold or hot, orsee lights in your peripheral vision, or..."

Threetoo nodded slowly.

"Okay," his mastersaid. "I wish you would have told me about that, but to be fair I didn'task. Those are called migraines, sweetheart. They happen sometimes if you'vehad a head injury, which I think you probably had even before yesterday. Theyalso happen sometimes just for no reason. Lots of people get them, and I don'tknow if we'll ever be able to make sure that they don't happen at all, but wecan at least get you some pain relief when they do happen, even if it's onlymaking sure that we help you go to sleep right away when it gets bad. Being inpain isn't good for you, it's just like being punished--"

Threetoo's lips parted, his handtwitched, and then he looked sharply away.

His master's hand tightened, thenwent back to the slow, rhythmic rubbing.

"Threetoo," his mastersaid quietly. "Look at me, please."

Threetoo dragged his gaze up tohis master's, trying not to tremble, trying not to even breathe. His masterlooked tired again, the way he had yesterday, and nearly as unhappy.

"Threetoo, baby, projectnumber one," he said softly. "Did you think you were beingpunished?"

Threetoo closed his eyes andnodded.

What else could it mean? Itwasn't an injury--he hadn't known about migraines untilhis master told him--so it had to be a punishment, didn't it? Masters could dothings from far away, through chips and... and other things.

"Threetoo," his mastersaid, his voice very quiet and small now. "Did you think I was punishingyou by making your head hurt like that? And not telling you why, or what youdid wrong, and talking all the time about not wanting to ever punish you, andpunishing you anyway?"

Threetoo squeezed his eyes shuttighter, feeling them sting with tears, and shook his head hard. He raised hishand to sign no, and then--because he knew his masterneeded good data--I thought maybe. At first. But you said. So I knewit wasn't you. Because you wouldn't.

"Okay," his master saidquietly, and there was a press of lips against his forehead that didn't stopthe throbbing in his head from rising into what was probably a four."Okay, I... I'm glad. But... who did you think was punishing you? Or wasit just... cosmic punishment, floating around randomly?" 

Threetoo swallowed. He hadn'tthought about it, really, but... he hadthought--believed--known--that the pain was punishment,even while he knew his master wouldn't inflict pain on him. And no one else wasauthorized by his master to do so; no former master held that power over himany longer.

And that only left one personresponsible. One person who had access to him and definitely had no right tointerfere with his master's goals by inflicting pain on his master'snumber one project.

Me, Threetoosigned, before falling back to the safety of referring to himself bydesignation instead. 3-2. 3-2 punished. 3-2 knew 3-2deserved.

"Oh--" his mastermoved, and then his arms were around Threetoo, drawing him up out of thepillows and into his master's lap, cuddling him close against his master'schest. "Okay, so. On the one hand--I really really don't want you to dothat, Threetoo. Even if you know you've done something wrong, even if it seemsreally bad, I... I don't want you to hurt yourself, not in any way, ever. Okay?Because I want you to heal and get better and be safe. Right?"

Threetoo hid his face against hismaster's chest, nodding. He did know that. He did, and his stomach was a stone,his whole spine and skull ablaze with tension because he knew he had done whathis master didn't want.

"And on the other hand, andthis is the really important hand right now--" His master's actual handstroked down his spine and back up to the nape of his neck, then down again.