#xtaticpearl

“I don’t think you’ll find another choice, Captain,” Fury shot back, never one to back down from an intimidation even if he was in terrible shape, “If he stops you, he’s not going to think it’s a choice. Are you ready to risk a million lives on a bet that won’t take?”

Bucky opened his mouth to tell Fury where to shove his bet when another voice spoke up.

“There’s no need to be so dramatic, Nick,” Tony called out as he handed over the decoder chips to Hill, eyeing the Director of SHIELD with fake amusement, “Honestly, we all know that I’m the gambler in this team. Cap here is pretty much a surety, and that’s probably one of the reasons you decided to finally grace us with this information.”

“We can’t carry any more complications to this mission,” Fury shot Tony a quelling look, “We’re already on the weaker ground right now.”

“Wouldn’t exactly say that,” Tony shrugged and shot Natasha a quick grin, danger lacing it. Bucky didn’t know how much actual friendship Natasha and Tony shared but they had a level of strange understanding that had led Natasha calling on Tony for the mission, despite Bucky having said otherwise.

“Sir,” Hill interrupted before Fury could blow a fuse and Bucky focused on their conversation, putting any thoughts of Tony Stark defending him away.

The mission was a disaster of high proportions, and Bucky knew that well enough without Sam trying to subtly call attention to it on the comm. Natasha and Fury had taken care of Pierce and Sam had been taken down by Steve after the first chip had been replaced. Iron Man was still keeping the SHIELD weapons at bay and holding fort in the air, giving Bucky time to replace the last chip. It sounded easy, but as Bucky stared at a blank-faced Steve ready to kill him, he knew that it was anything but that.

“Don’t make me do this, Steve,” he pleaded without moving an inch from the mainframe, blocking it even as his heart choked his throat, “I don’t want to hurt you, punk, but I can’t let you hurt others too.”

Steve had never listened even before the war but now that he was this, this machine that Hydra had created, it didn’t even register. They fought in circles, Bucky using every last dirty trick he knew to push Steve off without actually hurting him and Steve using every trick to actually hurt Bucky. When Steve’s hand clenched around his throat, Bucky let the shield fall and tried to get a word in, anything to get his best friend back. He fell with a crash for the second time in his life, calling out for a forgotten memory as he blacked out.

When he came to consciousness, Sam was by his side and a shield rested against the wall.

“Stark dropped it off in the morning,” Sam said without asking, peeling an orange lazily, “Said they didn’t need another frozen fossil for seventy years.”

“Funny guy,” Bucky rasped, swallowing the dryness from disuse and winced when his jaw hurt, “What happened?”

“We saved DC,” Sam shrugged a shoulder and shot Bucky a smirk, “No thanks to your dumb ass, really.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Bucky huffed before he sobered and eyed Sam carefully, “You know where he is?”

“Who, Stark?”

“Sam -”

“Rogers, yeah, I know,” Sam nodded, meeting Bucky’s eyes with a pause, “He’s safe.”

“Safe,” Bucky repeats, mind whirring over implications, “Safe, what does that mean? Where is he?”

It hurt viscerally, a twisting burn of hot metal in his gut, when Bucky learnt of Steve leaving without meeting him. It made him want to tear down the world in anger and pain, a toxic mix of guilt and shame. It made him want to shred everyone around him but he couldn’t do that, wouldn’t do that.

It was easier to shred into Tony alone.

“You had no right!” Bucky yelled and they had been yelling for hours or minutes, some terrifying amount of anger period in the workshop that Bucky had stormed into right after getting discharged from the hospital. “You had no right to send him away, you bastard!”

“What did you want me to do? Put him in the Hulk room? Cage him?” Tony demanded, not giving an inch even in the face of a furious supersoldier, “He needed space, and you almost died trying to drag him back through some weird stubborn belief of memory triggers -”

“He recognized me! I could see it!” Bucky spat, “He is my friend!”

“He didn’t want to stay, James!” Tony yelled, finally pitching his voice over Bucky’s and Bucky stopped, a horrible crash to his thoughts. They were both red-faced, clutching at control with nails and Bucky felt his breath leave in a rush.

“Fuck, this is why I shouldn’t be allowed to play interference,” Tony ran a hand through his hair, taking a shaky breath and loosened his shoulders as he looked back at Bucky with a slightly calmer expression.

“When I reached the shore, you were completely out. You had a pulse but nothing else,” Tony breathed out and caught Bucky’s eyes, “He was there, either guarding you or making sure you didn’t wake up, I don’t -”

“Steve wouldn’t -”

“I don’t know,” Tony stressed, quiet and considerably softer but firm, “I really don’t know, but yes, maybe he wouldn’t. But I saw him and I tried to bring you both back. He refused, Barnes. I don’t know why even though I can make a pretty good guess, but he refused to come back with you. The only way I could have brought him was by knocking him out.”

“Why didn’t you do it?” Bucky grunted and Tony shook his head with a small smirk.

“Apart from the reason that you would kill me?” he snorted, waving it off with a hand, “No, forget that. It’s like you said, I didn’t have the right.”

“Never stopped you before,” Bucky raised an eyebrow and Tony nodded acquiesingly.

“True, but this wasn’t like before,” he shrugged, eyeing the suit he was working on, “Look, I’m not the leading expert on mind-control or brainwashing but I know a thing or two about kidnapping. You know how long he’s been gone but you don’t know who he has been when he was gone. In your head you see him as Steve Rogers, the first Captain America, your best friend. But to him? He hasn’t had the chance to be that guy in years, in decades. You make him come here without giving him a choice, and you’re taking away any chance of him finding out who he is.”

“I just want to help him,” Bucky exhaled hard and leaned back against the work-table, feeling an untold age in his bones, “God, Steve.”

Tony didn’t say anything, letting the silence stay as Bucky tried to focus on breathing without air hurting his lungs.

“You’re sure he’s safe?” he asked after a while, quieter than before, and looked at Tony who was doing a good job of pretending not to watch Bucky.

“I put a tracker in his arm,” Tony shrugged at the look Bucky shot him, “What? I can give a guy some space, not let a ‘maybe assassin’ run around the country without knowing where he is.”

“Bastard,” Bucky reiterated but Tony grinned unapologetically this time, the deviousness not affecting him in the least.

It didn’t get easier, even with knowing where Steve was and that he wasn’t involved in any incidents. Sam had volunteered to shadow him to his best and Bucky had hated it but Natasha had been right when she explained that it was safest for everyone. Feeling useless had never sat right with Bucky, even if it wasn’t to Steve’s old level of restless itch. It probably wasn’t surprising then that he had taken to taking his frustration out with either Natasha or Clint, since he wasn’t sure about Tony yet. Or maybe he was and that confused him. It worked fine, despite Clint’s insistence that he wasn’t fine with being moped at, till it wasn’t.

“Wonder twins off on mission?” Tony asked as he walked into the common kitchen, a low hanging sweatpant and black tanktop showing that he had been in a workshop binge.

“Potts off on a business trip?” Bucky asked in return without looking up from the tablet he was reading on.

“Touché,” Tony hummed and came around the counter to pull out a pan, rummaging around the cupboards for ingredients.

“You’re making food?” Bucky raised an eyebrow when he finally made sense of the ingredients and Tony shot him a dry look before nodding.

“Shocking, I know, but survival demands sustenance,” he quipped as he cracked eggs into a bowl, pausing a second before shooting Bucky a glance, “You want some?”

“Some?”

“Food. Scrambled egg sandwiches,” Tony pointed to the loaf of bread he had picked, “You want some?”

“Burnt sandwiches?” Bucky snorted and bit back a wince when Tony’s shoulders tensed as he turned away to gather tomatoes. He knew that he was not much of a charmer at times and Tony seemed to bear the brunt of his worst sarcasm often, even if he gave as good as he got. It wasn’t really fun and Bucky scrambled to salvage the conversation.

“Want a hand?” he offered and got up, moving around to pick up the bread, “I’ll do the toast and you can do the eggs.”

Tony didn’t reply but Bucky was fluent in his silences by now and he knew that the tension had lessened to mild suspicion.

Nothing was burnt, more or less, and Bucky didn’t really know how he went from making sandwiches to sitting with Tony for a Star Trek marathon but it was the first time in months that his head wasn’t buzzing with the need to do something. He didn’t know if he was being selfish by taking the reprieve but Tony was warm beside him and the screen was bright enough to dull some dark thoughts. Tony shuffled and his elbow nudged Bucky’s arm. Bucky leaned back a little into the couch and let it stay.

Between keeping an eye out for Steve, re-forming the Avengers, and handling the backlash from SHIELD’s fall, Bucky hadn’t been surprised when his tentative romance with Natasha had fizzled out. He was still in awe of her, and still felt his heart clench for a minute when she did something particularly simple but he had seen the looks she exchanged with Bruce. It didn’t hurt much after a while and he had gotten used to the idea of her as his friend. Sharon, whenever she came to the Tower, shot him pointed looks sometimes but even she let it go when she caught sight of Bruce making Natasha smile easily. Things were rocky but he was getting a hang of it, especially with Tony, when Sam called.

“He caught up with me a week ago. I think he wants to meet you. We’re at Bucharest.”

Clint had assigned himself to join Bucky on the trip and Bucky didn’t know if he was annoyed or relieved, but he let it go with the latter.

“Told you he’d just need space,” Tony smiled softly, the way he did nowadays when there was no broken glass to tread on, and Bucky rolled his eyes as he packed but felt his shoulders relax at Tony’s presence.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a real Cassandra,” he grinned and caught the phone that Tony threw at him easily, raising an eyebrow as he glanced at it, “I distinctly remember something else being my phone yesterday.”

“Something you won’t let me upgrade but let’s save your travesty for another day,” Tony rolled his eyes and walked into the room, “This is similar to a burner phone but with more...me. It’ll keep your communication secure and also send signal to JARVIS in case you need help.”

“My comm works just fine, Tony,” Bucky reminded but Tony simply picked up a leather jacket Bucky had folded and dumped it into his duffel.

“Who’s the genius here, exactly?” he countered with a smug look and didn’t bat an eye when Bucky pulled the finger, “It’s for in case your comm doesn’t work. You’re not exactly taking a cavalry with you and you won’t take the Quinjet.”

“The jet works just fine, smugass,” Bucky laughed and Tony threw his hands in the air.

“Don’t blame me when you can’t call me,” he said with a mock-haughty sniff and Bucky dropped a towel on his head to hear him make indignant noises.

“Don’t do anything stupid when I’m gone, okay?” he warned lightly, zipping up the duffel and slinging it over his shoulder, eyeing the genius who had become his good friend over the madness of time.

“You do remember that you won’t be here, right? All the stupid is gonna happen with you, God, maybe I should warn the Bucharest government about you” Tony pointed out, pushing Bucky away when he moved to swat his head, “Get out, you jackass. I bet Rogers is a better guest than you. Bring him home. I need better people on my side.”

“Who told you he’d be on your side?” Bucky teased but threw his arm around Tony’s shoulder, dragging him out of the room when the genius started on a rant about Steve obviously having common sense.

He met Pepper on his way out and she smiled at him but Bucky felt something wrong with her smile, something tight and unhappy about her posture. He didn’t have time to think about it though and he got into the jet, waving away to his team, his last visual of Pepper and Tony standing stiffly next to each other but not touching.

It felt off but Bucky didn’t get to think much of it with Clint setting course to Bucharest.

Meeting Steve again was anticlimactic at best and uneventful at worst. Bucky had a list of ideas of what to expect, of how he would react or how Steve would react, but none of them involved Steve quietly showing him to a room in a shabby apartment and then shutting himself up in the adjacent room. Clint had simply shrugged at Bucky and had dragged a tired Sam out to go get some food. For three days, Steve would come out of the room for breakfast, go out to buy a newspaper and come back to go straight back into his room. The first day Bucky wasn’t sure if he was allowed to follow but when he tried it the second day, Steve didn’t say anything so he figured it was alright. The meals were awkward and Clint would try to make as much conversation as possible, Sam going along with it, but Steve didn’t say a word.

When he did speak, it wasn’t anything Bucky thought he would speak about.

“Stark,” he said on the fourth day, between Clint’s wild gesticulation of some story and Sam’s snort. Clint didn’t pause entirely but the noise did dial down and Bucky was caught between freezing up or prompting a continuation.

“I met him,” Steve said finally, eyes on the soup he was ladling into his bowl, “When I -”

The pause was deliberate this time and Bucky felt invisible guns trained on him.

“Yeah, he - he leaves an impression,” he settled on finally, kicking at Clint’s ankle when the archer stifled a laugh.

Steve ignored that but took two sips of his soup before looking up at Bucky, face devoid of any particular emotion.

“He anything like Howard?” he asked and this time Clint stopped muffling laughter. This was a landmine and Bucky had always tried to burrow away from them, preferring targets he could see.

“He makes things fly better,” he replied finally and imagined that Steve’s lips quirked at the sides but then he was nodding.

“He doesn’t need to track me anymore,” Steve said and Bucky wanted to yell, wanted to lean forward and grab the punk into a hug or whack him over his head. Sam nudged his feet under the table and Bucky swallowed twice before he exhaled.

“Alright,” he said, not asking if it meant Steve was coming home or if he wanted Bucky to stay. Maybe it was the familiar watered down soup or an actual conversation with his presumed dead friend, but Bucky was good with what he got in that moment.

“I’ll tell him,” he told Steve and felt a giddy feeling in his head as he had the urge to call Tony immediately. If he brushed a hand over the phone Tony had given him during the rest of the meal, then it wasn’t something he was willing to discuss out loud or in his mind yet.

That night he called Tony and was grateful for the silence around him when his words turned into choked sobs over the phone, chaotic words and curses mingling with names as he clung to the phone tight. Tony didn’t stop him or give him meaningless platitudes but let him speak, offering quiet answers whenever Bucky asked desperate questions.

“It’ll all work out, James,” Tony promised softly, a confidence that was born from defiance and defeat, “Everybody will come home in time, you’ll see. We’ll all get home eventually, I promise.”

“Tony?”

“Hmm?”

Bucky didn’t know what he wanted to say. Didn’t know if it was gratitude or longing or happiness or grief; there were too many emotions to convey but he huddled the phone closer to his ear and whispered.

“Don’t do anything stupid till I get back.”

“I’ll wait for you then,” Tony replied, warm and without missing a beat, and everything Bucky wanted to hear.