Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing was, if you knew from the start that a relationship was doomed to failure, why bother with more than a one night stand or friends with benefits? Not everyone had a mark seared into their skin on their twenty first birthday, and those that did often said later that it had ruined their lives, crumbled relationships that had seemed as solid as basalt as if they were nothing more than charcoal. Finding a matching mark was even rarer than having one, and Tony had spent long nights with a bottle of whatever liqueur he had grabbed first from the cupboard contemplating the unfairness of it all.

When Thor had shown up and admitted that it was all Asgard's fault, some scheme between his mother and his brother, well. Tony hadn't really needed a reason to dislike the madman rampaging at the head of an alien army, but he had been given one nethertheless.

Tony had spent his teenage years working his way through advanced science programs, immersing himself in a world of coded numbers and hot steel. He loved engineering, he loved seeing designs on paper made real, and his proudest moment of all was when JARVIS had had his first instance of independent creation, the point when he had become more than a program. From Pinocchio to real boy.

After that night - or was it a morning? Whatever - he had honestly expected his soulmark, if he had one, to be a series of 0s and 1s. 01001010 01000001 01010010 01010110 01001001 01010011 perhaps.

Instead he'd woken up - alone, just in case - to a sharp burning in his hip as his soulmark seared its way across his skin. It had taken a few seconds for him to blink his eyes into focus, or was it that the mark was still defining itself? It was colder than he had expected, ice rather than fire, and it certainly wasn't lines of binary.

"I'm gonna fall in love with a Robot," Tony mused to the empty bedroom as he studied the silvery gear etched onto his hipbone. "Wow. Happy Birthday to me."

It was an idea that, by later that afternoon, he had discarded as complete fallacy and the workings of a hungover mind. Still, he already had a robotic workshop helper, albeit one without any helical gears at all. Perhaps it was time DUM-E had a friend.

*1993*

"Tones, you know I love you dearly, but this is a bit much, even for you." James Rhodes surveyed the Malibu workshop with a small frown line rapidly deepening between his carefully shaped eyebrows.

"Shush, I'm creating my future soulmate." Tony flapped his free hand at him as he carefully soldered the last few wires into the circuit board. DUM-E was holding the solder, and doing a fine job of it. "Great work, DUM-E," he added just in case. He knew that this robot wasn't going to be his soulmate of course. In fact, the helical gear marking his skin seemed to be a custom job, Tony and JARVIS had searched every hardware catalogue they could get their hands on. Most of them were paper rather than digital, so U opened the deliveries and turned the pages for JARVIS to scan. Fabricating the gear himself seemed like cheating somehow.

"You have four robots. Why are you building another?" his friend demanded.

"Six," Tony corrected him. "This is the seventh. HOTSHOT wanted a friend."

"Why would you create a- seriously Tony, if you want to go out and meet actual people rather than just picking up models at the ridiculous parties you get invited to all the damn time we can do that. Life can be more than a one night stand. I will be your wing man."

"No point," the engineer dismissed with a shrug. "Not arguing about this," he added firmly when Rhodey opened his mouth to protest. "I assume you're here for a reason? You're in uniform."

"Yeah, ah... Here." Rhodey held out a USB and an envelope. "It's some sort of black project, and they need a consult. Double your usual fee, ultimate discretion required. I'm to give you the encryption key once you sign it."

"Oooh, that's a serious face," Tony sighed. "All right, I can be professional. JARVIS, full security lockdown, no data in or out. Store everything on the local Malibu server, triple encryption. DUM-E, put the solder away. U, put the camera away, family movie time is over." U drooped her arm, but the red recording light blinked out. "Sorry hon, you were doing a real good job there. Go tidy up the charge stations or something, HOPPIT has been collecting again."

The robots whirred into action following his instructions. HOPPIT had indeed been collecting again, his charge station was decorated with torn paper. He really needed to buy the kid a teddy. "JARVIS, put a reminder in for later, 30 minutes, we're going online shopping to get the kids some stickers or something to decorate their charge stations with. Tastefully this time, no garbage," he said with a pointed glance at HOPPIT, who stopped polishing the Mustang to spin around three times, chirping with excitement.

Tony stuck the USB into one of his experimental tabletop USB ports before he ripped open the envelope and scanned through the additional restrictions that the military had seen fit to apply on top of his standard NDA. Then he frowned at the name at the bottom. "Who the hell is Alexander Pierce?"

"Some government bigwig," Rhodey shrugged. "I didn't seem him, he sent a minion, but he signed off on this - whatever this is. Just sign it, we both know you're going to. You never could resist a mystery."

Tony grabbed the pen that DUM-E was tentatively offering and scrawled his name on the dotted line. "Good job anticipating my need for a pen, DUM-E. Top of the class. You get to pick what you want to decorate your charge station with first."

DUM-E waved his claw arm in glee and zoomed at his top speed - about five miles an hour - across to the terminal that he allowed the bots to use in their downtime to browse the internet. It had childlock on it, there were some things that his baby AIs did not need to know about just yet. Tony watched him go with a smile. "He's really doing amazingly well after his last update," he told Rhodey.

"I don't understand why they have individual charge stations," his friend grumbled as he dropped a second USB containing the encryption key on the desk. "Surely it would be more efficient to have them on some sort of charge rota and just have one or two?"

"They don't like using each other's stations," Tony explained, waving the second USB away. "Don't need that, JARVIS has already decoded it, right buddy?"

"With embarrassing ease, Sir," the AI responded promptly. "It appears to be a schematic, quite a poor one."

The AI opened first image on the nearest monitor and both men leaned in to take a closer look. It turned out to be extreme close ups of a schematic, smudged with dirty fingerprints, golden oil stains and a deep brown coffee mug ring.

"Well, that is an eyesore. JARVIS, please clean this up for me, use the program we worked out last year when the Playboy bunny split red wine on the contracts, ok?"

"Initialising HAHAsuckitpaintshop.exe Sir."

Tony opened the next image while JARVIS worked. "At least their photography is better than their scanning skills," he grumbled as an extreme close up of some sort of geared hydraulic system loaded. "Is that a bullet? Is there a file in here that tells me what they want from me? What even is this machine? They've got the camera so close I can't even see how big it is."

"That last one is a .txt file," Rhody pointed out. Maybe that's it."

"They realise that if they want me to fix something I have to actually see the thing I-" Tony fell silent as he scanned through the text file. "They want me to write a how to guide? What? Why not just bring the machine here, or ship me to it? That makes no sense!"

"Program complete, Sir," JARVIS reported, overlaying the original schematic with his cleaned up version.

"That's a lot better, well done JARVIS," Rhodey said to the ceiling. Tony had long since given up on pointing out that JARVIS had pickups all over the room. "Tony, the answer is probably national secrecy, I don't know, but they said it was time sensitive. How long will it take you to write this guide?"

"I should pencil them in for some time next week," Tony grumbled, mostly to see the look on Rhodey's face. "But I won't," he finished after an unnecessarily long pause. "J, start the dictation program and a fresh document. Make it a word document, and use size eleven point five comic sans."

"Because you're feeling petty, Sir?"

"Because I'm feeling petty," Tony confirmed.

*1995*

"Obie, I get it, I just don't like it," Tony grumbled into his phone as he tied his tie with practised movements. "Why do I need some hulking bodyguard? Happy is-"

"Hogan is fine in America, but he doesn't know the language Tony," Obie cut him off. "Hiring a local makes sense and the guy comes highly recommended, let me tell you. I'm sure he'll look the other way like a professional when you pick up some Russian skirt, so what's the problem?"

Tony sighed but recognised that he had lost the argument. "Fine, I'll accept his presence," he grumbled. "It's strange enough being in Russia in the first place."

"The President accepted their invitation to make a fuss over the War Anniversary, and it would be stupid not to be there," Obie reminded him. "Stark technology had a hand in the Allied victory after all."

"I just don't want to sit around hearing about how great Howard was." Tony sat on the bed to tie his shoes with the phone pressed to his ear. "I know it's been four years, but people are still coming up and saying how sorry they are. It's plastic."

"Smile, make nice, and it'll boost sales for the next two quarters and we can probably get the plans for that project we were talking about last week past the board," Obie dangled a carrot like a master, but knowing that didn't make the prize any less tempting.

"Fine, I'll behave," he conceded. "Where is this new bodyguard?"

"Waiting for you in the hotel lobby."

"Fine. Ta ta for now!" Tony sang before he hung up, knowing that it would annoy his business partner no end.

It was easy to find the temporary bodyguard in the lobby, standing at ease opposite the elevator bank. Tony took him in at a glance, dark brown hair nearly brushed back into a ponytail, ice blue eyes, jaw attractively outlined in a short groomed beard. He could appreciate a well groomed beard on a man, and on this man it highlighted distractingly full lips. He was wearing a reasonably tailored black suit that made him look like a hit man, especially given the leather gloves, but he filled it out well.

"Mr Stark," the man said, with only a faint hint of a Slavic accent.

"The one and only," Tony agreed. "What do I call you?"

"Lenya."

"All right Lenya, Happy is bringing the car around so let's blow this popsicle stand."

Lenya fell into step slightly behind him and let Tony lead the way outside, earning him his first brownie point in Tony's book. He hated bodyguards that hovered, or forced him to follow them around like a child. The lobby boy sprang to open the door for them and they stepped out into the cool May air. At least it wasn't raining.

"Come in the back with me," Tony instructed Lenya as Happy opened the doors to the idling GAZ-3101 he had procured for the trip. "Martini?"

"I'm working," came the calm response as the bodyguard settled into his seat. "Put your seatbelt on."

Tony huffed but ceased his search through the mini bar he'd had installed in the vehicle the night before to attach the belt. Something like relief spread across Lenya's face for half a second, although the man was still doing a very good impression of a human robot. Tony gave himself a secondary objective for the trip: to get Lenya to smile.

"That suit needs something," he declared, abandoning the martini plan in favour of diving into his briefcase. It was easy enough to find the box of handkerchiefs he was looking for, in a rainbow of colours. He picked out the sky blue one and folded it into a pocket square, leaning into the man's personal space to tuck it into his pocket. "Perfect," he grinned up into his face.

"...Thank you."

Lenya smelled really nice, like fresh oranges and motor oil and Tony kinda wanted to smell him some more but that would be creepy and what exactly was wrong with him? He sat back quickly and pasted on a smile.

"You're welcome. It matches your eyes."

Lenya looked down at the small square of cotton with a confused frown. "Does it?"

"Trust my fashion sense young padawan," Tony intoned in his best Alec Guinness impression.

"Sir?" Happy said from the front.

"How many times do I have to tell you to call me Tony?"

"Sorry, ah, Tony, we're here."

"Great! Let's see where Clinton got to. Or shall we avoid Clinton? I'm honestly not sure. I know, we'll try to find him, but ahead of time we'll decide that if we get sidetracked on the way then it's fine."

"Very good, Sir - ah, Tony."

Lenya frowned at him. "Do you plan all your missions like that?"

"Not all of them," Tony defended himself. "I just didn't have a lot of time to plan this one, I was dealing with an AI personality crisis on the flight."

"Seems inefficient," Lenya said with a hint of humour in his eyes. He glanced down at his gloved hands for a long moment, seeming conflicted.

"Spit it out," Tony advised as Happy inched forward in the queue for the drop off zone.

"You have AIs? Real ones?" Lenya asked, still looking at his gloves.

"I sure do. You like science? What am I saying of course you do, Science is great. Want me to tell you about them? You can even speak to JARVIS. Well, we could video call the others but they can't talk back."

"I'd like that," Lenya said with a soft smile.

Tony beamed back. He hadn't expected to complete his secondary objective so easily.

Later that evening, once the schmoozing had been successfully completed and Happy was found to be snoring in the security break room, Tony and Lenya hunched over Tony's latest laptop design and video called Malibu.

Lenya was suitably impressed by JARVIS and asked him at least six questions in the time it took DUM-E to gather the rest of his brethren, but it was the bots that really made his grey eyes light up.

"All right kids, have you been good?" Tony asked, watching Lenya's reaction as the bots all played out their individual versions of affirmative, all widely different. "Any breakages?"

U drooped sadly and produced a ripped foam ball from somewhere behind the camera. It had a clear tire track across the edge of the rip, and sagged like a hungry pacman. "Oh dear," Tony signed. "Ok, did anything else get broken?" Tony glanced over to see Lenya's reaction as DUM-E used his three fingered claw to sign 'no'. "Ok, that's good. Put the ball in the trash and you can have a new one when I get home."

"They're amazing," Lenya said quietly, leaning forward to take in all the details, his eyes tracking U as she carried the ball to the nearest trash bin and neatly dropped it in. DUM-E would have tried to throw it and probably missed or knocked the bin over with the newly unwieldy projectile, but U had always been a little steadier and less impulsive than her brother - which was why she was the only one permitted to film alpha testing in the workshop.

Lenya hadn't been quiet enough for the bots not to pick up on the compliment, and the whole gaggle of them started showing off, picking things up and spinning in circles. HOPPIT waved a stained polishing rag like a flag. Tony was about to suggest that they calm down and let Lenya ask them questions when Happy snorted in his sleep and both men froze. "Time to go, kids," Tony said instead, waggling his fingers at the screen. Lenya hesitantly copied him just before JARVIS ended the call. "I take it you enjoyed that?" Tony asked as he packed the laptop away.

"Thank you for letting me meet them. They are... Truly amazing creations. I had heard that you were a clever warmonger, but I think that title does not fit you. You are a creator of more than just weapons."

Tony tapped the side of his nose with a grin. "Keep that between us, I prefer to be underestimated."

Lenya frowned. "Well then... Why did you share this with me?" he asked, confusion creasing his brow.

Tony shrugged. "I honestly have no idea, there's just something a little special about you, Lenya. Next time I'm in Russia I'll look you up."

Lenya's wristwatch hummed and Tony watched in confusion as all expression smoothed from his face. "This has taken longer than expected, I have another engagement," the Russian said woodenly.

"Uh, no problem, Happy can get me back," Tony assured him, a little unnerved by the sudden switch. With a brisk nod, Lenya spun on his heel and left the break room. "That was weird," Tony said to the empty doorframe, before turning back to shake Happy awake. "Come on driver! Time to get back to the hotel before the car turns into a pumpkin."

*1998*

Tony stepped onto the tarmac of Berlin international airport and took in a deep lungful of European air. His newest assistant was already talking to the driver of the sleek BMW that was waiting for him by the end of the runway, her red hair twisted into an elegant chignon at the back of her head. He half hoped that this one worked out, she was terribly efficient and wasn't at all star struck by him, which had become something of a problem of late.

He was looking forward to this trip. For the last three years his dreams had occasionally been haunted by a pair of slate blue eyes lit by a laptop screen, a surprisingly shy smile above a folded blue pocket handkerchief. He wasn't sure what about the Russian bodyguard had been so appealing, but Obie had finally been able to arrange for him to be added to the entourage for this latest trip - reviewing a World War Two bunker that had been uncovered in Germany, in the hope that it might contain some Stark Industries prototypes that had been shot down over Germany during the War and never recovered.

"Tony this is Hans, our local security expert for the trip." Tony wasn't really paying much attention, some German security expert didn't really interest him, but Ms Potts had been nagging at him on the plane to play nice with the locals, so he turned around to shake hands.

Only to fall, startled, into a pair of ice blue eyes.

"Lenya!"

The brunette was slightly taller than he remembered, his previously long brown hair cropped to fall in loose locks around his ears. The beard was longer, but the lips just as full and his strong brows... Furrowed in confusion?

"I am sorry, Mr Stark, I do not understand you," he apologised, sounding considerably more German than last time as he held out a gloved hand to shake. "My name is Hans Weber and I am to be a security asset for your trip."

"I... What?" Tony gaped at him.

"Into the car, Tony," his assistant said in exasperation as she ushered him into the BMW, still confused.

Hans settled into the other seat after Ms Potts had informed him that she was riding in the front, and Tony had regained something of his equilibrium. "Sorry about that," he said cheerfully. "Code name thing really threw me off. How have you been? It's been a long time since Moscow."

Hans looked at him doubtfully. "I have never been to Moscow," he said, sounding absolutely certain, with a wary glint in his eyes that made Tony uncomfortable. "And I do not think that I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, Mr Stark."

Tony suppressed the urge to ask more questions and just nodded, sitting back in his seat and staring out at the countryside whizzing past. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. The man sitting next to him was undeniably Lenya, he somehow knew it in his bones, but he also knew that Hans was telling the truth as he knew it. He pulled his mobile tablet from his briefcase and used an available Stark Satellite link to open a text channel to JARVIS. Something strange was happening, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

He managed to take a surreptitious picture of Hans the following morning to send to JARVIS. The last thing he expected to come back from his AI was a ping on the new facial recognition software they had been working on for targeting missiles, and suddenly Tony had a whole new problem, because the man he had been dreaming about wasn't Lenya and he wasn't Hans either. He was James Freaking Barnes.

Finding out what was going on was suddenly top priority.

With a sinking stomach, Tony instructed JARVIS to discreetly check into Obie's financial and communication records using company machines. Obie had hired Lenya, Obie had arranged for Hans to be on this trip. Somewhere in his records was the first breadcrumb, and Tony was determined to follow this particular trail to the end.

The man deserved to know his true past, and who was responsible for him loosing it.

Initial strangeness notwithstanding, Hans turned out to be just as good a companion for the trip as Lenya had been. He allowed Tony to lead, his inevitable hovering was unobtrusive and it took Tony three hours to make him crack a smile this time. Once the ice was broken he seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the purpose of the trip, and even volunteered to help wade through the mounds of disintegrating junk that had been stuffed into the bunker.

"It is a lot more fun than standing in the doorway looking to be scary," he'd grinned when Tony had asked.

"Fancy coming back to California with me?" Tony offered, knowing that no matter what Hans said it wouldn't be possible just yet, but unable to resist poking the bear, so to speak.

As he had half expected, Han's face shut down and his eyes went blank. "I cannot leave," he said flatly.

"Why not?" Tony pressed. "It's just a new job after all, Stark Industries will be able to sort you out a green card if that is what you are worried about." He regretted opening his big mouth a moment later as a spasm of pain flashed across Hans' face.

"I cannot leave," he repeated though gritted teeth.

"Hey, it's ok, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have... I just enjoy your company that's all," Tony confessed, stepping closer and resting a hand on Hans' shoulder. "Forgive me?"

The other man relaxed under his palm and nodded. "Of course."

*1999*

"So let me get this straight," Rhodey frowned. "You met this guy as a bodyguard in Russia, and then three years later you met him in Germany, and he didn't remember you."

"No, no, no!" Tony interrupted, sending his latest creation, a window cleaning bot that was designed to crawl slowly up the outside of skyscrapers, on a slow test crawl up a vertical piece of glass. "He thought he was a completely different person. He thought he was German, not Russian, his name was different everything. So of course I investigated." The bot was leaving obvious sucker marks as it moved. Perhaps some sort of brush below the suckers would solve that?

Rhodey sighed and sat on a spare chair. "You never could resist a puzzle."

"It was basically bureaucratic nonsense," Tony said, waving a dismissive hand. "In Russia he was being programmed by this organisation called the Red Room, in Germany some other shadow Neo-Nazi organisation had him, and the techs that were charged with getting him ready didn't know that they were supposed to load a previous personality and memory set because he'd already met me."

"Honestly Tony, this is ridiculous even for you, and I know the file in front of me has been fact checked, but it's still hard to believe."

"Well believe it Honey bear, because we are getting him out. No-one should have their brains played around with like that, but in his case it's even more annoying."

Rhodey looked up from the file JARVIS had printed out for him with new confusion pasted across his face. "Why is this guy so special? Do you think he's cute or something?"

Tony shook his head in exasperation. "Fucking look at him, James."

It took longer than Tony expected, long enough for the bot to reach the top of the glass and start to climb down in a spray of deionised water, but then he'd met the man face to face twice and still not seen it. "Shit," Rhodey breathed after a long moment. "That's Bucky Fucking Barnes."

"Now you understand why we have to rescue him?" Tony demanded. He knew that he was being irrational, that there were channels for this sort of thing and this was his corporate paranoia talking, and that any second now Rhodey was going to point that out to him, but-

"When does the plane leave?"

Tony blinked at his best friend in astonishment. Of all the probable reactions to the bombshell, acceptance and support had not been close to the top of the list. "Once we've dealt with the Obie problem," he said blankly. "I need some moral support." He reached down to trail his fingers over HOPPIT's case as the little bot nudged up against his leg. "He hired a brainwashed Bucky Barnes who was being held by a shady black ops organisation. That didn't sit right with me, so I did some digging, and I'm pretty sure that figures are being fudged and Stark Industries weapons are slowly getting into places where they're not supposed to be."

"And Obie is behind it?" Rhodey asked in disbelief. "But he's been like a second father to you!"

"Yeah, that's what that shrink he insisted I go and see after mom and dad passed said," Tony snapped, trusting Rhodey to extrapolate from that. "The data doesn't lie, so clearly he's not the person I thought he was, the person dad thought he was. My perception of him is wrong, and maybe my perception of other things too. Weapons make a lot of money, but is war really the way forward? I want to expand some of the smaller divisions of Stark Industries instead, the technology and the 3D printed prosthetics."

"What about energy? There's that giant Arc thing in the LA office that your dad never got anywhere with, but it works, and technology is so much further along now. Maybe if you took a proper look at it you could improve it? Arc powered cellphones and computers?" Rhodey suggested.

"We are amazingly off topic, but those are good ideas. JARVIS, save those ideas. We have more to offer the world than new ways to blow people up, that's what the Stark Expo is all about, and I should come up with something new and amazing for the Millennium in any case. Now, how best to get rid of Obie? I can't just fire him, I need to discredit him."

"You'll need to get the media on your side."

Tony shook his head. "The media already like me more than him. I need.... Fresh ideas. JARVIS, would you say that you have a good handle on the problem?"

"Certainly Sir," the AI responded promptly. "Would you like me to summarise it for you?"

"No... I want you to summarise it for the kids," Tony decided, ignoring Rhodey's amused snort. "Send them all the data files, and Rhodey and I are going to get a coffee from upstairs. Once we come back I want you to present me with a list of ideas, of solutions to all or part of the problem, with duplicates removed. Add in your own take as well please, I value your opinion."

"At once Sir."

Asking a group of fledgling AI robots how to handle a delicate political situation was a genius move and Tony wasn't going to hear any negative comments from Rhodey on the subject. Even if more than half the suggestions were hilarious.

"U's idea has merit," Rhodey said, once he'd stopped chuckling. "I mean, the idea behind her idea, she's basically suggesting blackmail."

"I know, but something about that doesn't sit right with me. I like DUM-E's suggestion, but getting him thrown in jail is a little too obvious, plus he'll still have power."

"It'll be difficult to remove his power without damaging him or his reputation somehow, and although it'll be easy to damage his reputation with the public, it'll be harder with the shadowy sort of organisations he deals with."

"What if we set him up? JARVIS can find out when the next Weapon's drop is, he does seem to attend them occasionally. We arrange to alert the authorities, pretend that we just found out about it in time and have them arrest him on his way to the meet and arrest everyone else at the meet separately. If they get him ahead of time and put him under house arrest then it'll look like he ratted the rest of them out for a lighter sentence.

"That... Has merit. Making him look like a turncoat will take away a lot of his power, and we can make the house arrest pretty strict. Once he's arrested you can pull out whatever other dodgy dealings he's got his fingers in and hit him with those charges as well."

"I'm going to use his estate to fund soup kitchens and homeless shelters," Tony grinned victoriously. "It'll serve him right, the entitled bastard."

*2001*

Tony waited impatiently at the edge of the dock, watching the scuffed orange shipping container like a hawk as the bored crane operator swung it from the container ship onto the Stark Industries flatbed that was waiting for it. It had taken three long years to get to this point, two of them with Rhodey's help, but he had finally managed to free James Barnes from the Red Room.

Discrediting Obadiah had only been the first step after all.

His lowest point had probably been six months ago, when JARVIS had finally found a lightly guarded backdoor and together they had reviewed the files on the 'Winter Soldier' project. Triumphant and exulting he had been skimming through, only to be presented with his own damn schematic. The handy little 'how to' guide he had scribbled out eight years earlier, only this time it was in a folder with blueprints for the rest of the 'arm'.

Tony had thrown up into a trash can.

He had felt even worse when he had seen the full arm, the engineering part of his brain immediately analysing what must have been a triumph of engineering at the time, even though he was convinced that he could do better. It was brutally elegant and completely inhumane at the same time. The neural link alone would have been agony to get used to, and the implications hinted at in the notes made him shudder. Had they really linked it up when Barnes was awake?

Then he had seen it, hidden away in the bicep. A helical gear, the twin to the one etched into his hip. He had thought that he was imagining things, there was no evidence in the history books that Barnes had had a soulmark after all, so he'd had JARVIS compare them. The result had been a 99.3% probability match, and now Tony was standing in the freezing cold docks with salt spray seasoning his lips as he watched an orange shipping container with his soulmate inside being lowered onto a flatbed.

He really, really hoped that he wasn't wrong about this.

By some stroke of genius, the underground ramp to the workshop carpark was wide enough that the flatbed could back quite a way down the slope. He'd moved his cars to the private hangar that held his light aircraft, and the workshop was as clear as it ever got. The bots, sensing his excitement, had worked together to move their charging stations into an extremely space efficient layout, designed by TURBO. Recently they had proved to have a bit of flair for interior design, Tony was considering giving TURBO a budget and letting them loose on one of the guest bedrooms.

Tony sped ahead, beating the flatbed to his clifftop home by a good ten minutes, which was enough time to get the workshop ready to receive the container. The driver would back the truck in and return for it in the morning, never having set foot in the workshop itself. Tony had let the rumour spread that he was working on a new technology breakthrough for Stark Industries, the secrecy wouldn't be considered unusual in this age of industrial espionage.

He was confident that the plans that JARVIS had liberated of the portable cryofreeze unit were up to date and that they could safely defrost the man, but he was worried about his mental state. The files had references to a chair, to brainwashing techniques and personality overwrites. The one ray of hope was that it seemed that they had to repeat them fairly often. The human brain is a resilient marvel and it seems that James Barnes had been fighting back at every opportunity. So, if it came to it, Tony would just have to keep him contained for a few weeks until his memories returned.

The fact that he didn't really have anywhere to contain him was a secondary concern. Tony was hoping, probably naïvely, that the soulmate thing would be enough. If it wasn't, well, it was far too late to worry about that.

The drone of a large diesel engine coming up the drive prompted him to open the reinforced garage door. Tony watched anxiously as the driver expertly manoeuvred the rig halfway down the ramp, until the tightening angle meant that it was unwise to proceed further.

"There you go, Mr Stark!" the driver said cheerfully. "Be back at 10am tomorrow to collect her. Here's the keys, drive her out if you need to."

Tony passed him a fifty dollar tip in return for the keys and the man strolled off, whistling cheerfully. The setting sun painted the sky pink and orange overhead as the sun set in a blaze of fire over the pacific ocean. It was time.

Tony returned to the workshop to find the bots gathered around the end of the container, beeping and chirping quietly as they communicated between themselves. "Are you ready to meet our new houseguest?" he asked them, smiling despite his nerves at their enthusiastic response. He was grateful for their help in swinging the reinforced door open, revealing a mad scientist torture chamber of hydraulic hoses and sickly yellow light.

"All right, Bucky Barnes," he muttered as he pulled out the main control panel. "Welcome to the 21st Century."

The defrost cycle took three hours, so he set the bots to creating a makeshift medical station for the new arrival. It would take a lot longer than if he did it himself, but they had time to spare and it was a good learning experience for them. It also meant that Tony didn't stand and stare at the progress bar for three hours, although he found himself doing that for long stretches anyway. The logs indicated that even after the defrost Barnes' core temperature would still be dangerously low, so heated blankets and electrolyte drinks were the order of the day. There wasn't a whole lot on what they had fed him, which was worrying, as he was sure that being frozen alive would have a strange effect on the digestive tract, but maybe the serum helped with that.

"Five minutes remain, Sir," JARVIS prompted, effectively stopping the fight between TURBO and U over whether to provide a blue blanket or a green one.

As the countdown ticked down to zero Tony was ready and waiting. The door hissed open and he was able to wrench it back, revealing Barnes dressed in black cargo pants and a black tank top, the silver arm on full display. His hair fell in wild tangles around his shoulders and for the first time Tony saw him close to clean shaven in person, just a light dusting of stubble across both cheeks.

"Я готов отвечать," Barnes stuttered out.

"Hey, uh, english?" Tony tried. "You spoke English before. Can you stand? Got a nice warm bed ready for you just down here, you can warm up in peace. You're safe here. I'm Tony Stark, do you remember me?"

"Stark... December 16th, 1991," Barnes said slowly as he climbed out of the pod and Tony froze.

"That's the date... That was you? Oh holy shit I need a minute. Several." Barnes stood uncertainly, shivering, and Tony waved him towards the cot. "Still, not your fault, you were brainwashed. I... I can't blame the gun, only the shooter. JARVIS, can you please?"

"At once, Sir."

Mind spinning aimlessly in shock, Tony tried his best to be a strong and stable support as he guided Barnes out of the shipping container and got him sitting on the cot bed U had found with a heated blanket across his lap and another around his shoulders. The man was shuddering so hard the wheels squeaked in place, but hopefully the blankets would help with that.

"Stay there, Barnes," he ordered. "DUM-E, get him that drink you made. I need a whiskey. No, coffee. No, tea. Let's be like the British for once, they have tea when they've had a shock, right?"

He was pouring hot water onto a tea bag when JARVIS chimed to let him know that he'd finished with a request.

"Hit me, J," he instructed as he reached into the under counter fridge for the milk.

"It would seem that the mission Sargent Barnes referred to was arranged at the request of Obadiah Stane," the AI revealed. "His codename is attached to the report I have been able to access. Mr Howard Stark was involved in an attempt to recreate Doctor Erskine's serum, he was transporting samples when the accident happened. The samples were retrieved by the Red Room."

"They made more of me, more Assets for the cause," Barnes said suddenly. "You're different."

"I'm not Hydra, or the Red Room, Barnes. I'm... well, I think I'm your soulmate. I rescued you from them, you don't have to go back."

He let Barnes think about that for a moment, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he studied Tony, and then the workshop around him. "This is different," he said slowly, plucking at the blanket that covered his lap. "This is... Nice? I don't think it was like this, before."

"Probably not," Tony agreed. He was more than a little relieved that Barnes was calm and communicating, he hadn't quite known what to expect but this was certainly turning out to be one of the better scenarios, shocking news aside. He hadn't wanted to have to impersonate a Red Room technician even if he had been mentally prepared for the eventuality. Strangely enough, now that the news was settling into his brain, he wasn't mad at Barnes. What had Howard been thinking, transporting serum samples in a car with mother? He must have known that he'd be a target. His arrogance had grown-

"Soulmates," Barnes said suddenly as Tony turned around with the mug of hot tea. The engineer jumped a little, slopping scalding liquid over his hand.

"Yes, I think we are," he said through gritted teeth as he sucked on his burnt hand. "Bugger, ow, that smarts. How do the British do it. Stiff lipped bastards!" Chilly fingers slid around his own as Barnes was suddenly right there, cradling his smarting appendage. "Ooh, that's nice," he said before his brain to mouth filter could kick in. Still, physical contact with his probable soulmate should be encouraged, he decided after a moment of panicking about boundaries and appropriate things to say to brainwashed sniper assassins.

"I think you'll live," the soldier said dryly, a hint of a Brooklyn accent peeking through.

"No amputation required this time," Tony quipped. "Uh, yeah, soulmates. I mean, I thought for the longest time that you'd be a robot, and I guess I wasn't too far off, given the arm but... Well, do you have any marks?"

Barnes frowned. "I... Don't remember. But you're familiar, you're.... Warm."

Tony glared at the ceiling for a moment until the prickling in his eyes and tightness in his throat subsided. "I'll take it," he said, coughing a little to clear his throat. "And I think your memories will return, given some time." He knew from his reading that the protocol was to wipe Barnes before freezing him, wipe him back to baseline as they could never be sure what kind of mission - and consequently what kind of skills - he would need the next time he was awoken. He was hoping that the lack of implanted orders and memories meant that the real memories would surface sooner.

"Will you sit with me?" the soldier asked, and Tony wasted no time wriggling his way under the heated blanket, careful not to spill his tea. DUM-E rolled up with the electrolyte drink gripped carefully in his claw arm and Barnes accepted it with a quiet thank you.

"What do you think of the bots?" Tony asked, sipping at his tea and burning his tongue. Really, it was a terrible drink. Coffee was much better.

Barnes grinned and Tony recognised Bucky in the expression as he reached out tentatively to brush his flesh fingers lightly over DUM-E's casing. "I think they're swell."

"Good, that's... Good." Tony wasn't used to being lost for words, but he excused himself, just this once. He'd had a shock. It wasn't every day a person rescued their soulmate from evil Nazis. Speaking of Nazis - "Would you like me to tell you who you are? Or are you remembering?"

Barnes gave him a sideways glance, but there was no suspicion in it. Tony did his best to be open and neutral as he sipped at his tea, suppressing a smile as Barnes echoed the gesture by taking a swig of the electrolyte drink. "I'm not sure if I'm remembering, but I'm starting to know things."

"Like what?"

Barnes frowned down at the bottle in his hands. "Like I really don't like the flavour of this drink. But... I think that I've had to hide my opinions for a while, because it was hard to admit that."

Tony nodded. "You were held by the bad guys. I don't imagine that they encouraged you to display free will. Me though? I'm all for freedom. JARVIS, do we have any other flavours in the house? Or an alternative that will have a similarly beneficial effect?"

JARVIS had just started to list off the options available in the kitchen when a smooth movement next to him caught his eye and he turned to see Bucky chugging the last of the drink.

"What? You said you didn't like it!" Tony protested.

Bucky grinned at him, pure sunshine. "I don't like wasting food," he said proudly. "The thought of wasting it was worse than the thought of drinking it, so I made a choice."

Tony gaped at him for a moment. "Well, I'm all for choices as well," he managed. "I guess a few explanations might help. You were a prisoner, and I rescued you. The people who were holding you had put you into storage and I was able to intercept, so I don't think they'll miss you for a while, I hope not anyway. Still, we should work on getting you a new identity as soon as we can."

"They froze me, in there." Bucky shuddered, gesturing towards the cryofreeze unit.

"Well, if I have anything to say about it, you'll never be frozen again," Tony promised him. "I will do my best to make sure that it doesn't happen."

"What happens now?"

"The truck gets picked up tomorrow, so the bots are going to work together to unload everything overnight, break it down and put it into the fabricators as raw material. All members of his robot army currently in the workshop rolled forward and started working, as if they had been waiting for his cue. It was more likely that JARVIS had triggered them to start the agreed activity as none of them had the hugest amount of practise following conversations yet - the only regular visitor to the lab was Rhodey, but it was all a good learning experience for them.

Bucky was enchanted by the miss matched crowd, and seemed happy to sit and watch them all night, but Tony wanted to get him upstairs and into some more comfortable clothes.

"Feeling up to going upstairs? We can take the service elevator if you're not recovered from the freeze."

"I'm ok," Bucky assured him, proving it by getting up without wobbling and starting to fold the electric blankets. Tony reached past him to flick them off, not wanting to start a workshop fire. "Where are we?"

"This is my home, in Malibu, California."

"Who else is here?" the soldier asked as he stacked the blankets neatly at the head of the cot.

"Myself, Anthony Edward Stark, usually called Tony. You, James Buchanan Barnes, once nicknamed Bucky. JARVIS, DUM-E, U, HOPPIT, HOTSHOT, FLYBOY, BASH-IT and SWIFT-E are the robot army, they help out around the house. I don't have a cleaning staff anymore, because HOPPIT and SWIFT-E do such a good job. I have an assistant for Stark Industries, Pepper Potts, but she only comes over occasionally and I'm technically on holiday for a week so she won't be visiting any time soon."

Bucky had visibly relaxed as Tony had rattled off the information and Tony was reminded of the servicemen and women he had interacted with during his time as a Munitions salesman. How much PTSD would sixty years of brainwashing and torture leave a person with? Still, all problems were solvable, and Tony just needed to make sure Bucky was comfortable in the house. They could worry about the rest in the morning.

"HOTSHOT and FLYBOY are security bots, they're helping with the dismantling of the cryo pod right now but usually the run regular patrols around the house, they let JARVIS know when they find anything and he lets me know if it's something worth knowing. I have some soup and crackers upstairs, and the windows are tinted so you can see out but no one can see in," he promised. "I know it's not quite as secure as this nice underground lab, but like I said, the bad guys don't even know you've gone. They think you're in a storage bunker somewhere in Siberia." He waited while Bucky processed the flood of information, hovering by the door to the workshop. Barnes stood and watched the robots using power tools to dismantle the machine that had been his prison for nearly a minute and Tony did his best to be patient, limiting his reaction to a smile when Bucky stepped away from the cot and towards the door.

"All right," he agreed. "Lead the way."

"Are you hungry?" Tony asked as he climbed the stairs. "I have some stellar vegetable soup and crackers waiting in the kitchen just say the word. Although we should get you out of those clothes first, and into a hot shower." He turned to judge Bucky's reaction to find the taller man raising a suggestive eyebrow. "Not like that!" he yelped, nearly missing the next step. Bucky reached out and steadied him with the metal arm, using it seemed to come as naturally to him as the flesh arm and Tony really, really wanted to ask about it but... One thing at a time.

"A shower sounds good," Bucky confirmed with a grin at Tony's near miss. "As does some hot food."

"R-right, I'll heat it up while you rinse off," Tony decided, leading the way to the nearest bathroom. They were all stocked the same after all.

Once inside he set the shower going, nice and warm, and turned to find that Bucky was already stripping, displaying a nicely defined six pack and an alarming number of scars, most of them centred around the place where metal met flesh. Without thinking, Tony reached out and Bucky stilled, watching him warily but obviously allowing the contact.

"Does it hurt?" the engineer asked as he traced lightly over the marks.

Sometimes," the soldier admitted, a wary look on his face.

Tony swallowed and pressed his palm firmly over the seam. "I'm going to do something about that," he promised, before spinning on his heel and leaving to give the other man some privacy.

The soup was bubbling gently and he was liberally spreading butter onto crackers when Bucky reappeared with a fluffy grey towel wrapped around his waist and another around his shoulders, soaking up the drops that fell from his hair. Tony took a second to appreciate the sight before gesturing to the main staircase with the butter knife.

"Up the stairs, first door to the left is your room. Door to the right is mine. There are clothes in the dresser for you, they should fit. We can order some more once you've decided what kind you like. Food is nearly ready."

Bucky nodded and headed to the stairs. "I'll be right back!" he called over his shoulder.

His back had more scars than his front, old marks criss-crossed his pale skin, some faded silver and some still pink and new. Tony felt a spike of rage, a burning desire to find the ingrates that had dare to mar the smooth skin and make them pay... But it passed quickly once Bucky was out of sight.

The kitchen island had reasonable sightlines, which is why Rhodey favoured it over the dining room, so they would eat there. By the time Bucky returned, clad in black sweatpants and a grey Stark Industries T-shirt, Tony had placed bowls of soup and spoons on the table and was filling two glasses with chilled water from the fridge.

"Thank you," Bucky said quietly as he sat on a stool and waited for Tony to return to the table with water.

"You're welcome," Tony replied, taking the other seat.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. The sun had set long before and the moon shone over the waves, a sharp pointed crescent that reflected far less light than it would in a week's time.

"I like the windows." Bucky said absently, his dark blue eyes fixed on the view as he dipped his spoon for another mouthful.

"I grew up in New York, behind walls." Tony said, half surprised at himself for bringing it up. "When I had the chance to build my own home, I wanted it to be by the ocean, but I also wanted to see the water."

"Did you sell the home you grew up in?" Bucky asked, taking the last cracker and breaking it to offer Tony half.

"Ah, thank you... No, it's still in the Family, Stark Mansion. I considered donating it to charity, but to do that I'd need to go through it. Howard left all sorts in there, it's not... It wouldn't be safe." Tony started a little in surprise as Bucky slid his bowl from under his elbow and carried both to the sink to wash up.

"I like my room," Bucky said as he filled the sink with hot water and bubbles. "It's a good shade of blue. Thank you."

"You're welcome. There's a few more rooms on this level, I can show you after, ah, after you're done there. I wasn't sure, I mean it's late but I napped earlier and you only just woke up so if you're not sleepy?"

Bucky nodded, wielding a yellow sponge with practised movements. "I'm not tired. I'd like to talk some more, is there a room for that?"

Tony shrugged. "There are sofas over there, in this big open plan bit. The other rooms are a formal dining room, a music room with the piano in it and a lot of books and a home cinema. Oh, and the gym, which has sliding doors through to the pool."

"It's a big place," Bucky said neutrally as he wiped his hands on a dishcloth.

"I'm a rich man," Tony said baldly, wanting to get that part over with. "Dad was rich, and I'm richer. War does that to a weapons company - oh but I'm not anymore."

"What?"

Tony led the way to the sofas, still explaining his choices to move away from making weapons and move into other industries that would better help humanity. "It was due to you, in a way," he concluded, smiling as Bucky's blue eyes widened. "I realised that Stark Industries had some... Unsavoury ties and had been involved in some dodgy things, and that was due to meeting you twice. It was the kick in the pants I needed to start effecting change and build a legacy I could be proud of."

"So, how did we meet?" Bucky asked.

Tony was happy to tell him.

Chapter Text

The following morning Bucky lurked in his bedroom as Tony talked to the truck driver, pressing another fifty into the man's accepting hand before he pulled away, towing the now empty shipping container. It was the final link in a multi-threaded trail with so many false leads and double backs that Tony was hopeful Hydra would never manage to unpick. It should be long cold by the time they started after all, and at least half of the paperwork had been carefully misfiled, corrupted by a hacker, destroyed in an unfortunate flood, or lost. The intricacies of the shipping networks were child's play to JARVIS after all.

"Clear," he called up the stairs, and was pleased to see Barnes' legs appear shortly afterwards. "Were you hovering on the landing? Do you want waffles for breakfast? Brunch? DUM-E has made waffle mix."

Bucky was smiling when his face came into view, revealing a dimple in one cheek, scraped free from stubble for the first time in years. "DUM-E cooks?" he asked in delight. The Engineer's breath caught in his throat - his soulmate had been handsome before, but now he looked stunning.

Tony coughed and nodded. "Sure he does. Things that go in blenders are his speciality, but he also makes hot drinks and toast, and he's working on sandwiches."

"How does he crack the eggs?" Bucky demanded as he inspected the half full blender.

"Carefully. I was going to start teaching him how the waffle maker works next, do you want to help me?"

Tony had never expected to be standing in the kitchen on a sunny morning with his soulmate, teaching his first AI the basic steps to make waffles, but he felt lighter than he had in years. Bucky got on well with the bots, although remembering Lenya's reaction to them years before perhaps it wasn't so unexpected. He remembered reading somewhere that Barnes had had a younger sister - or had it been sisters? He was patient with DUM-E's clumsiness, and smiled brightly with every success.

Once the waffle maker had been sufficiently pre-heated and the mix was sizzling away, he lent on his elbows on the counter and chewed at his lip as he looked at Tony sideways from under long lashes.

"Spit it out," the engineer advised. "Better than sitting on it."

Bucky huffed a laugh. "This is surreal," he complained. "I don't remember anything about me, I'm making waffles with a robot, and if I do tell you what I'm thinking I feel like I'll be crossing a line."

"What if I promise not to be mad?" Tony suggested.

Bucky nodded. "I... I think DUM-E needs an upgrade, and U might too. I don't think he gets a whole lot of depth perception through his main camera, and that's why he keeps on missing things."

Tony blinked at him in astonishment as his mind struggled to comprehend that mere hours after being rescued from the hell that Hydra's custody must have been, Bucky was... Well, he wasn't sure what he was. But he liked it.

"I never thought of that," he admitted. "I thought it was just dodgy code, and it was part of his personality so I didn't want... But if this is a sight problem then it should be fixed. Hm. JARVIS, what kind of Camera does DUM-E have right now?"

"His latest model is an eight megapixel camera with 12 times optical zoom," JARVIS recited. "It has been in use for six months, and he has expressed pleasure at the image clarity."

"Well, I can't do much better than that, and there's no room on his chassis for a second lens, unless I figure out how to make them smaller... Maybe laser reflection? Or echolocation, like a bat? Although that will be noisy. What are they using for deep sea submarines at the moment? Compile the latest submarine specifications and put it into a file please J."

"Certainly Sir."

DUM-E whirred in excitement as he lifted the top of the waffle iron to reveal a golden brown waffle.

"Good job buddy!" Bucky said. "How about I get this one out with a spatula, you can watch what I do and give it a go next time?" he waited for DUM-E's signed 'yes' before moving, and Tony was awed all over again by the respect he was showing to his learning AI.

They shared the waffle, topped with blueberry jelly, as DUM-E made two more. He broke one in half as he tried to get it out, but it hadn't ended up on the floor so Tony and Bucky were quick to assure the bot that the cooking had been a success.

"So," Tony started awkwardly once they were both full of waffles, in possession of steaming mugs of coffee, and safely down in the workshop. Bucky was calmer down there, away from the large windows. "How did you sleep? Dreams?"

Bucky nodded, his eyes fixed on HOPPIT as the bot polished the Ferrari. "Yes. Memories, I think." He swallowed and Tony repressed the urge to reach for him. Then he thought better of that plan - the man had to be touch starved after all - and reached out to rest his fingers lightly on Bucky's forearm. Metal fingers reached up almost absently and covered his own, the titanium warmer than he would have expected. "They weren't pleasant," he said slowly, still staring fixedly at the Ferrari.

Going with his gut, Tony set his coffee aside and reached out with his free arm to turn Bucky's face towards his own. Ice blue eyes laced with regret met his and then flicked away. "They took away your ability to choose," Tony reminded him. "It is our choices, our intentions, that make us who we are in the end."

"Ma always said the road to hell was paved with 'em," Bucky muttered, eyes widening in shock a moment later. "I remembered that!"

Tony grinned at him. "Not all bad then," he said encouragingly. "I'd like JARVIS to take a scan of your brain, with your permission of course. Then we can take another in a few days and compare them, see if there's any changes to be marked."

"Sure, JARVIS. Go ahead. Do you need me to move anywhere?"

"You are in range of my sensors, Sargent Barnes," the AI assured him. "Please remain still for fifteen seconds."

Bucky froze obediently, and JARVIS helpfully projected a countdown clock on a bare piece of wall. Tony had plans for that, one day JARVIS would be able to project more than just a 2D image. There would be 3D blueprints and images, like Starwars, and he had a plan for thin gloves laced with electronics that would allow him to manipulate the holograms in real time. First though, he needed to do something about Bucky's arm. Although that would take months of planning and testing, so perhaps the first priority should be Bucky himself.

"Thank you Sargent Barnes," JARVIS said. "The scan will be analysed in nine minutes and thirty seven seconds."

"So, Bucky. I, ah, we should talk about your identity. I made you one, back when I figured out who you where, so there's a far amount of background data on you already - you've owned cars, and sold them, you have a small flat in Bed Stuy that you lease out to an Italian grandmother who emigrated here in the sixties and you're a very conscientious landlord who fixes things that break quickly. Your name is James Buckworth, so Bucky isn't a strange nickname - plus my bestie is called James Rhodes and I call him Rhodey so it won't seem all that unusual."

Bucky was blinking at him with a blank expression and Tony stopped the flood of information, worried that he'd gone too far, or that Bucky's still healing brain was unable to-

"Breathe, Tony," the soldier reminded him. "I'm just a little... surprised at how well you've planned this. So, who am I playing in this new life?"

"My new bodyguard. Happy was making noises about needing a team anyway but I don't like most people. Um... Three years."

"What?"

Tony shrugged. "I've had three years to plan this, it took me that long to find you and figure out a way to get you out without ending up with all of Hydra gunning for our heads. I'm sorry it took so long, I'm sorry I wasn't-"

Bucky shushed him with a finger to his lips. "Don't ever apologise for saving someone, Doll," he said quietly, his blue eyes meeting Tony's own and holding this time. "If it wasn't for you I'd still be there, not in this wonderful place, with you. Now, you have projects to work on and I should probably do some homework if we're going to be all caught up by the time your holiday is over."

"I can made any information you request available on the terminal of your choice, Sargent Barnes," JARVIS offered.

"Thanks JARVIS. Say, can we agree on a nickname? Sargent Barnes is a little formal."

JARVIS was silent for a moment longer than usual before he replied. "What did you have in mind?"

Bucky looked at Tony, who gave him his best encouraging expression. "Perhaps... Sarge?" he suggested hesitantly. "I think I liked being a Sargent, the title has some good feelings attached to it."

"Dad always said that the Sargent ran a company," Tony told him. "Captains know where they're going, the Sargent knows how to get there, where the food is and how many men in the company require new socks."

Bucky laughed at that and for Tony it was a strange feeling, to find amusement in a story originally told by Howard Stark. Perhaps this was what healing felt like? He left Bucky in JARVIS' capable care and pulled up the specifications for his window cleaning robot. The engines that he had designed for FLYBOY were now on their third generation and were stable enough to put into the second generation of the window cleaner. The Bots were always proud when a product that they had field tested went out into the wide world for other robots to use, although he had to carefully explain that those robots were not learning AIs.

The window cleaning robot wasn't perfect, but for the larger buildings where it was too dangerous thanks to sweeping architecture or weather conditions for a human to dangle from the top they were good enough. The major market was in the Middle East and Asia, but some American companies had bought the original model. It had made enough money that the board had greenlighted a MK2 model when he had proposed it last month. They didn't know that he had already developed the engines needed to lift the bots meters into the air, and had given him a nice long timeframe. Long enough that he could rescue his soulmate and still finish the prototype in plenty of time to hand it over to the R&D department for Beta testing.

"Sir?" JARVIS asked hesitantly. "I believe there is something wrong with Sargent Barnes."

Tony looked up from the workbench to find Bucky standing at attention, every muscle on his frame tense as he stared into the middle distance. "Oh shit, I knew things were going too well," he cursed. "What did you last show him, J?"

"We were reviewing the annual reoccuring events," JARVIS told him.

"On screen."

JARVIS projected the guest list for the Stark Industries New Year's party onto the wall and Tony scanned through the names, each with a small thumbnail size photo next to him - something JARVIS had added to help him recognise people when they came up to him. About halfway down the page he found the probable cause - Alexander Pierce was invited.

"Crap. I don't suppose we can get Alexander Pierce off of the list for these things? Do we have a reasonable excuse for it?" Or I suppose I don't have to go myself. Or we could expose him as a scumbag. Nevermind!" Tony clapped his hands, interrupting his own flow. "More important things to deal with." He stepped closer to Bucky, moving slowly into his line of sight. "Sarge?" he asked, remembering that Bucky had mentioned liking the title. "James? Bucky? Are you in there?"

Bucky breathed in quick pants that were close to hyperventilation and Tony chewed at his lip, wondering what on earth he was going to do if he couldn't talk his soulmate down from this flashback, or whatever it was.

"Can you slow your breathing for me, babe?" he tried. "You're safe, you're in Malibu, it's April 2001. Pierce can't get to you, Pierce doesn't know where you are. I'll have JARVIS red flag any events that he is invited to and we won't attend, ok? And we'll work to expose him for the scumbag he is, although I'm not sure how successful I'll be at that. C'mon Buckaroo, come back to me."

Bucky blinked twice at the nickname and shuddered, his breathing slowing slightly. "That's good, well done, nice deep breaths Buckster. I've got you. You want a nice warm shower, or a bath?" He could see the cold sweat beading on Bucky's ashen skin and wondered if an afternoon lounging in the sunshine by the pool might not be in order. Surely after being frozen Bucky didn't like the cold, and the workshop wasn't exactly toasty.

Tony looked around for something else to help and realised that HOPPIT was edging closer. "HOPPIT, come here buddy. Bucky has had a bit of a shock and needs some friends to help him recover, do you want to help?"

HOPPIT chirped an affirmative and sped up, bouncing a little on the overpowered rear legs that had given him his name. Tony was a little worried over Bucky's - or was this the Winter Soldier? - reaction to his approach but as HOPPIT skidded to a halt a few inches away and then, after an enquiring chirp, rested his silicone casing gently against Bucky's leg he realised that the robot at least didn't need to fear a bad reaction. HOPPIT reached one claw hand up to touch Bucky's metal fingers and Tony huffed out a sigh of relief when they twitched and Bucky shifted to look down at the little bot.

"I don't think you guys have properly met yet," Tony babbled around the lump in his throat. "HOPPIT here is a state of the art polishing bot who likes to clean things with interesting shapes, like my cars or the equipment in the gym. He moves a little bit like a rabbit or a kangaroo, hence the name. HOPPIT also likes hanging out with me while I'm in the shop, but he doesn't like helping me with whatever I'm working on. He prefers to explore or clean nearby rather than be directly involved." Bucky shifted a little and Tony clammed up to give the man an opportunity to say something without interrupting.

"Like a cat," Bucky said slowly.

Not the first thing Tony had expected to come out of his mouth, but at least it was a verbal response, and even a relevant one. "Just like a cat," Tony agreed. "How are you feeling?"

"...Removed."

"Disassociation, ok, that's not great. J, can you bring up those brain scans you took earlier? I'm no brain surgeon myself, maybe we should get an expert in."

"Sir, I have compiled enough data on the topic of the human brain to be able to analyse the scans and make recommendations," the AI assured him.

"That's... That's good, JARVIS. Well done, nice initiative there. Did you do this recently or have you been compiling for a while?"

"You sustained a concussive injury in 1998," JARVIS said. "I was concerned when the hospital in question released you and wished to be prepared."

"He worries about you," Bucky said, slowly stepping towards the couch and sinking down onto the battered cushions. HOPPIT cheeped his approval and followed, rising up on his hind legs to rest both of his manipulator claws on the cushion. Bucky reached out hesitantly and stroked the pressure sensitive plate behind his camera.

"And now we're worrying about you," Tony told him as he studied the brain scan. JARVIS had already compiled a layman's description of the results for him to review and he hit a few buttons to print the whole thing out for Barnes to read.

"Here, it's your brain after all," he pointed out as he handed the sheaf of papers over, still warm from the printer. It was difficult for JARVIS to predict an outcome from a single data point, so the AI seemed to have focussed on analysing the image. There were a number of shadows on the scan, but without something to compare the scan to there was no way to know if Bucky's brain was degrading, healing or stable.

"I think that daily scans might be a good idea, if that's all right with you?" he asked. "I'm sorry I didn't think to take one yesterday, we'd be better off."

"Don't beat yourself up, Tony."

Tony chewed at his lip, ready to protested but then something nudged his foot and he looked down to see that Hoppit was now pressing against his worn trainers. "Ok," he agreed. "I think maybe that's enough work for you for today, and I have a really long deadline on this project, do you want to be couch potatoes and watch a movie?" Tony smiled down at U when the bot approached with a blanket clenched in her claw. "Is that for Bucky? That's a nice idea, thanks."

"I... Maybe?" Bucky said uncertainly as U spread the blanket across his knees.

"I can find something from your era so you don't have to deal with anything new if you like."

Bucky shrugged. "New could be good, but not, not too new?" he requested. "The last thing I remember before all the war reels was this animated flick, Stevie went nuts over the art. It was for kids of course, but it was beautiful."

"Ok, so... Maybe the Wizard of Oz? Or Alice in Wonderland? Alice might be better, thinking of it, Oz has a few themes that might be problematic. J, can you queue it up for us?"

"Certainly, Sirs," the AI confirmed as he dimmed the lights. "U has offered to make popcorn for you, shall I accept on your behalf?"

Tony glanced at Bucky for confirmation, who nodded. "Sounds good, thanks U." He stepped closer to the sofa and Bucky shifted to the left to make room for him. The blanket U had found was a soft fleecy affair and he had the fingers of his flesh hand buried into the fibres.

"Is this all right?" Tony asked, leaning slightly against his soulmate as the opening credits started, a solid line of warmth down his side.

"I think so," Bucky whispered back.

"You let me know if that changes."

*September 11th, 2001*

"Good morning boys and girls!" Tony carolled to the mostly empty office. The keen interns who had bothered to brave the New York traffic at this early hour all leapt to their feet and he just knew that, despite looming over his shoulder in a vaguely threatening manner, Bucky was suppressing a smile.

They were in New York to visit the Mansion on 5th Avenue, but Tony wanted to visit the office in the North WTC tower and see how the team there were doing before he took a drive down memory lane. It was a busy office, but given that there was no R&D or manufacturing going on there, he tended to skip visiting the teams housed in the skyscraper in favour of visiting more interesting spots, which wasn't fair to them.

"Enter your lord and master," Bucky quipped under his breath as the available staff had a quiet panicked discussion about who would walk forward to ask him what he wanted. It always amused Tony to spring his presence on people, and the team had had no idea that he was even in the area.

"I think I'll treat them all to breakfast. Can you call Happy and ask him to load a bakery into the benz?"

"Sure thing," his soulmate agreed, stepping aside to call down to their patient driver, currently sitting in the underground carpark and probably playing games on his new Starkphone. They had managed to crack the requirements for a full colour display before Nokia and Tony was confident that the Starkphone would be the phone of the new century, providing a stable income to replace the old weapons contracts and shutting up the board members at the same time.

It had been easy enough once he stopped thinking of the mobile devices as phones and had started thinking of them as very small portable computers.

"Good morning Mr Stark, we weren't expecting you," said a rather flustered woman with her curly hair smoothed back into a neat bun. She had clearly been nominated to approach him, the rest of her team hovered at a safe distance.

"I prefer it that way," Tony grinned at her. "Nothing to worry about, I was in the area and I've dropped by to buy you all breakfast. Any allergies? My driver will be en route shortly."

"Uh, I don't think so, Jaz is vegetarian. Sorry, I'm Mandy Adebayo."

"Nice to meet you Ms Adebayo. How are you finding things since the Starkphone launch?"

Mandy smiled at him and gestured for him to follow her to a break area closer to the windows where several sofas and a coffee machine had been set up. "It's been busy, which is great. It was strange breaking into a new market like that - we put forward a recommendation that we headhunt from Nokia and Sony, and we managed to get some experts on board which helped a lot, and-"

She broke off as Bucky was suddenly in between them, phone still pressed to his ear as he stared out the window. "Tony," he said urgently. "Look!"

"Is... Is that a plane?" Mandy asked as the shape drew nearer.

"Oh holy shitballs," said someone behind them and if he hadn't been so busy panicking at the sight of a plane heading straight for them Tony would have laughed.

"Everyone back away from the windows and get down!" Bucky hollered, dragging Tony back by his elbow. "Get under your desks!"

Bucky manhandled Tony under the nearest desk and barely had time to get under the one opposite before the building was shaking. The windows cracked and shattered as ceiling tiles split and fell, breaking into ever smaller pieces as they smashed against the monitors and chairs. A terrible grinding noise split the air and after a few seconds the overhead lights flickered out. After a few shaky seconds, a wailing alarm started, but it was oddly muffled.

"It hit above us, right?" Someone demanded as the noise decreased. "How far above us?"

"At least a couple of floors," Bucky shouted back. "We need to get out of here!"

It was chaos. The corridors of the 92nd floor were a mess, the door of first stairwell they came to hanging off of one hinge and pierced through by a steel girder. The only saving grace was that it had been so early that most people had yet to arrive, but the World Trade Centre never really slept. Someone had a flashlight which was a help, but all it revealed was that the staircase was hopelessly blocked in both directions.

"There's no chance that the lifts will be working," Tony shouted over the noise of the alarms that had started to sound, thinking aloud. "We'll have to figure out which staircase has the least debris and try to make our way down."

"And quickly, before the fire gets worse," Jaz called from the back of the group. "I can see the reflection in the South Tower, the building is on fire."

"Let's get round to the other staircase, it's further from the impact point," Mandy suggested.

No one disagreed so they followed the slight woman through the dark hallways, picking up other early starters from other offices as they went.

Tony pulled out his starkphone to call Happy, swallowing past a lump in his throat when the other man picked up. "Hap, we survived the initial impact but the staircase is blocked. Crazy sort of accident, huh?"

"I'm parked on Vesey Street," Happy told him, his voice steady and clear over the shrill sirens in the background. "Luckily I was already out of the carpark to get the breakfast."

"All right, I'll get you know when we manage to find our way down."

A haze of smoke had gathered overhead by the time they reached the stairwell they were aiming for, and the air was getting hotter.

"Anyone with asthma?" Tony asked Mandy, eyeing the ceiling suspiciously.

"Not yet, Mr Stark. I mean, they started at nine so they weren't in the building yet."

"Well, that's something at least."

The door to the second staircase was jammed but after a few moments of straining effort Bucky managed to pop it out of it's twisted frame. "Love this arm," the solder muttered as he tossed it aside and although Tony was proud, he had never felt more useless. His soulmate was up in front, fearlessly tossing obstacles aside as he cleared the staircase, and he was useless baggage. Oh, he was fit enough, he wasn't about to have an body image crisis over the size of his muscles, but his normal, human strength wasn't enough here. Bucky was saving them, but what about all the people above them? From the state of the staircases the emergency teams were going to have a hell of a time breaking through. If only there was something, like a pocket laser cutter or an exoskeleton strength enhancer like the bug killing infantry used in the novella that that terribly bad movie was based on.

By the time they'd worked their way down two floors, Bucky clearing the way and the rest of them shifting metal and breeze block as best as they could, all dusted with a thick coating of pulverised plaster, it was clear to all of them. Without Bucky they'd already have suffocated from smoke inhalation trying to clear the first flight.

Not that it wasn't still dangerous. The smoke hung overhead, and there were occasional falls from further up, probably from other survivors trying to make their way out. Tony couldn't blame them for trying, but when Matt, the youngest intern, was hit on the head with falling debris and had to be carried down slung between two of his coworkers, adding an extra layer of danger to an already perilous trip, well. Tony couldn't blame them, but he didn't have to like them.

Then the building shook again.

A smaller tremor than before, but enough to cause a rain of debris from the weakened levels further up. The staircase itself split away from the wall and the small space echoed with cries of alarm.

Bucky and Tony clung together, Bucky holding the arm that he had made steadily over Tony's head. "Gotta protect that big brain of yours," he said quietly when Tony gave him an incredulous look. "What do you think that was?"

Careful not to disturb the new layer of masonry debris that surrounded them, Tony pulled his phone out again. "Happy? What's going on out there?" he asked when the call connected. "Did the top of the building start collapsing or something?"

"It's another plane boss!" Happy shouted over a crackly connection. "A plane hit the South tower as well! This is an attack, not an accident. What floor are you on?"

"Eighty nine!" Bucky called into the microphone.

"You need to move faster," Happy said ominously before the line cut.

The stairwell was hot and stifling, the threat of suffocation hanging over their heads as threads of smoke slid into their lungs and threatened to choke them. They're reached the fortieth floor, and the creaking noises from above were becoming more and more alarming, before strange suited figures loomed out of the gloom. Bucky nearly punched the lead firefighter in the face but Tony grabbed his elbow just in time.

"What floor are you from?" the man shouted over the wailing alarms.

"Ninety two," Tony called back. "It's all blocked above, I we don't know if anyone managed to get through from the higher floors."

"Keep moving, you're nearly there," the man advised. "We're clearing out the lower floors one level at a time, just keep going down."

Three hours later, having found Happy, ensured that the SI employees were safe and had places to go and retreated behind the high walls of the Stark Mansion to glue themselves to the news channel, Tony was furious.

"So many lives," Happy muttered through the fists he had pressed to his mouth.

"I should have been able to do something," Tony grumbled. "Something to help, not just... Just run away."

"You did do something," Bucky said, waving his titanium alloy fingers at him. "You designed this amazing arm, which allowed us to escape. No one on that floor would have survived without you, they couldn't have got the door open."

"But what about the people above us?" Tony demanded. "What about that guy who threw himself from the roof? If terrorists are going to be attacking America like this, if they think they can get away with this then I am going to prove them wrong."

He left Happy and Bucky in the living room and stormed into the study in search of paper. Some sort of mechanical augmentation, an exo-suit if you will, powered by the miniature arc reactors he had designed last year. The palladium cores would need to be replaced on a regular basis dealing with that sort of high energy load, but it he was fairly sure that the math would work out. The new repulsor engine he had created for HOTSHOT was also an option, a flying exo-suit would be like nothing the world had ever seen before. He could have flown up the outside of the building to rescue civilians, or used the superior power offered by the suit to clear the staircases.

Tony found a fancy ink pen that still worked in the pot on his Father's desk and a sheaf of yellowing notepaper. Tools in hand, he sat at the desk and got to work.

*2003*

Ms Virginia Potts, who Tony had found out two years after originally employing her had been called Pepper in school - and it was a crime that it had taken that long to find that out, was no doubt the most efficient assistant Tony had ever had. Unfortunately, she was getting suspicious.

When he'd first created Bucky's new prosthetic arm, he had been able to wow the board with a simplified version, and Stark prosthetics was born, offering articulated fingers to all. Of course, no one else had quite the range of movement that his soulmate did, and no one else had sensation in their artificial limbs, but seeing as those upgrades were only possible because of Nazi inflicted brain torture, Tony didn't feel too bad about not sharing those particular upgrades with the general public.

Stark Prosthetics had now started their new exo-skeleton range after enthusiastic consent from the board, who had finally realised that not sitting on a pile of explosives and military contracts was a good thing for the planet. It helped that a full third had retired and passed the chair to younger, more enthusiastic representation. Board meetings were now almost tolerable, especially when Bucky decided to prowl around the perimeter of the room with his best murder glare. He saved the move for when people were being especially stupid or off topic and Tony had been amazed at how effective it had been the first time he'd tried it.

But Pepper Pots was getting suspicious, asking pointed questions about the origin of the new technology and even a few about Bucky, and Bucky was of the opinion that including her now would save them both grief later. Tony wasn't so sure, but was willing to take the plunge this time.

JARVIS sounded the alert that indicated that FLYBOY had identified unusual movement on the estate and he looked up from the engine bay of the classic Mustang he and Bucky were working on restoring in their spare time.

"Is that our visitor or a squirrel?"

"Ms Pott's Mercedes has pulled onto the driveway," JARVIS reported. "No squirrels present at this time."

"Alright, who is upstairs and able to put the coffee on?"

"Sargent Barnes has just left the pool," JARVIS suggested.

"No, he'll need to get dressed. Can't have Pepper seeing all that deliciousness, it'll give her ideas. Those abs are mine to lick."

"Of course Sir. SWIFT-E is upstairs but she has never worked the coffee machine before. May I make a suggestion?"

Tony sighed and wiped his hands on a clean rag that BASH-IT held out for him. "You're going to tell me to make the coffee myself right? It's ok, I'm on my way. DUM-E, U, please remove the new test parts from the fabricator once they're done and put them in Box 17. HOPPIT, no polishing the mustang until I say so, there are things balanced on it and I don't want you getting hurt. BASH-IT, it's your turn for a software update now that HOPPIT is done, plug yourself into the upgrade console and JARVIS will take care of you. Get JARVIS to ping me if you have any questions, confirm?"

He waited for the four bots currently in the workshop to each give him their version of 'yes' before stepping through the glass door and locking it behind him. He didn't usually bother, but Pepper might want to come down and if she did she would see him taking security seriously.

He managed to get to the coffee machine as she was getting out of her car, and was busy with mugs by the time JARVIS opened the front door.

"Good morning Mr Stark," she called, standing hesitantly just inside the door.

"Good morning Ms Potts, I'm in the kitchen," he called back, listening for the tap of her high heels against his sustainable bamboo flooring. "Large or a small coffee?"

"Large, please," she said, setting her briefcase on one of the kitchen chairs. "You wanted to see me?"

Tony turned around with a large coffee in his hands and slid it across the island to her, along with a bowl of sugar lumps. He wasn't sure why Bucky had a preference for lumps of sugar over powder and a spoon, but it was an easy enough change to make to keep his soulmate happy.

"I did. We did." He could see Bucky coming down the stairs, his hair still damp from the pool, and as always the sight derailed his train of thought for a second.

"We?" Pepper asked, sipping at her coffee. "I was under the impression that after discrediting Mr Stane you made your decisions alone."

"Not anymore," Bucky said as he came up behind her and accepted the mug of black coffee Tony held out to him. "Thanks doll."

Pepper narrowed her eyes as she glared between the two of them. "I knew something was going on," she said.

"He's my soulmate," Tony interrupted before she could imply anything she might later regret. "We met in 1995 but he was... It took a while for me to get him to the states."

"I am American, I just wasn't in America at the time," Bucky said in response to her puzzled frown.

"Who else knows? I assume that you're not telling me because you want to go public with this." Pepper took a deep gulp of her coffee and pulled a pad out of her briefcase to make notes.

"No, not the plan," Tony said quickly. "Rhodey, JARVIS and the bots are the only other people who know for sure."

"I think Happy suspects," Bucky added. "You get a bit handsy when you're champagne drunk."

Pepper tapped her pen against her bottom lip. "Is this the reason for Stark Prosthetics?" she asked.

"It's a happy coincidence that an invention I made to help my soulmate has the potential to help amputees everywhere," Tony grinned at her with his press-shark smile. "Substitute bodyguard for soulmate and you have a soundbite there."

"I'll put something on file for marketing in case the press put two and two together. We've been lucky so far, but someone might find a braincell." The redhead shifted on the bar stool, crossing her ankles. "Still, this doesn't explain the exo-skeleton range at all," she said pointedly, pinning him with a steely blue glare.

"Told you she was getting suspicious," Bucky murmured, walking around the island to press himself against Tony's side under the flimsy pretence of needing a refill.

"It was just a natural follow on," Tony hedged, knowing that it hadn't worked as soon as she renewed her frown. "It's helping people walk again! I really don't see the PR downside here-"

"I have suspected that you've been working on something ridiculous since 9/11-"

"Ridiculous is a bit strong-"

"And I would appreciate it if you could be honest with me so that as your assistant I can help control the fallout when this all blows up in our faces."

Tony looked up at Bucky who shrugged at him. "I told you, I don't see the harm in telling her, but it is your decision," he said quietly. "The suit is your baby, it's a fantastic marvel of engineering and if you want to share it you can, if you want to keep it in a lock box you can."

"All right. JARVIS, please project the design plans for the Mark 3 on the North wall."

*2004*

The trouble with having a suit of armour that was primarily used to help during times of crisis and disaster, was that people then knew that there was a helpful suit of armour flying around. Tony had used it to help get victims of flooding to safety, to rescue people from the top of burning buildings, and on one memorable occasion, to save a lift full of snow sports enthusiasts from an avalanche. It hadn't taken long for the seedy underbelly of the world to take note, and before he really knew what was happening the Police and the Army were using the national news to try to call him out of hiding to help them out.

The press had dubbed him Iron Man, although there was no Iron at all in his suit, and after a lot of nagging and a strange encounter with a mutant supervillian while his Soulmate was on the other side of the country, Bucky had agreed to let him build him his own. Rhodey had pouted a lot about that, so a version with shoulder mounted machine guns was rapidly approaching the fabrication stage of design.

Happy was driving them to the LA headquarters to check on the Howard's Arc Reactor and attend the monthly R&D meeting when JARVIS sent a ping to Tony and Bucky's phones.

SECURITY OVERRIDDEN. INTRUDER IN OFFICE. MS POTTS ALERTED.

"What the hell?" Tony muttered. "Happy, speed up a bit please, seems we have a rat problem at the office."

"Sure thing boss," Happy confirmed and the engine purred as he started to accelerate, weaving between the slower traffic. Tony had considered fitting some blue flashing lights for these occasions, but he didn't want to get arrested for impersonating a police officer.

"Pity that suitcase suit is still a design."

"We're still armed," Bucky grinned at him, waggling his metal fingers.

Tony stared at him with the blankest expression he could managed, before he cracked and huffed out a laugh. "That is possibly the worst pun of the decade, congratulations."

The intruder turned out to be an overly dramatic pirate in a leather trench coat. He had some sort of sophisticated jammer on his person that had allowed him entry past all the electronic logs and biometric scanners, but JARVIS had been able to remotely reboot all the cameras after he had passed. He was even able to send a slightly blurry photo to their phones, taken by one of the MK2 Window Cleaning bots from a safe distance away along the side of the building.

Bucky entered the office first, and had a gun pointed at the man's head before he had a chance to move.

"Mr N Fury, I presume?" Tony said, reading through the facial recognition results JARVIS had pulled from the Military database and sent to his tablet. "You are trespassing. You have thirty seconds to convince me to let you remain before I call for more security and have you forcibly removed from the premises."

"Mr Stark, Mr Buckworth. I represent the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, and we would like to discuss the addition of the Iron Man suits to our roster in whatever capacity best suits you. We would also appreciate the opportunity to consult with you on your ground-breaking work with robotic technology."

"You would have found a more attentive audience had you made an appointment rather than forcing your way in here," Tony said shortly. The man had done his homework, and Tony didn't see the point in refuting that was behind Iron Man. Pepper had figured out that something big had happened before he'd even told her about the suits, now that Iron Man was a hero beloved by the nation's media, it had only been a matter of time before someone put two and two together.

"Two of the founding members of our organisation were Howard Stark and Peggy Carter," Fury revealed. "Although Howard always kept his work for Shield and his work with Stark Industries separate. Mr Stane continued this trend after the accident and separated Stark Industries almost completely from Shield."

"Not really endearing me by talking about either of those men," Tony warned. "What do you want from me?"

"The opportunity to call if our country or our agents end up in a situation where Iron Man can help. For you to sign a consultancy contract and give Shield a set portion of your time and attention. We'd like you to work with us, Mr Stark."

"Still not enamoured with you muscling your way in here, but I'm willing to compromise," Tony decided. "Get out. Send me a contract to review, and I'll get back to you. As a gesture of good faith, I will tell you that there are currently two operational suits, the second is piloted by my bodyguard, Mr Buckworth. A third is in production and will be piloted by Colonel James Rhodes, subject to a final agreement between myself and the American Military."

Fury inclined his head and raised an eyebrow at Bucky, who lowered his gun but didn't holster it. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Agent Philip Coulson will be in touch," he said as he slipped out of the room.

Tony and Bucky remained standing until JARVIS quietly confirmed that the man had left the building, and then they slumped together onto the leather sofa opposite the desk.

"What do you think?" Tony asked, eyeing the minibar. He didn't get up though, if he started drinking after every tense conversation he might not stop. Plus he had his soulmate to keep him grounded.

"He's a slippery one," Bucky concluded. "I couldn't quite get a read on if he knew what I was, but I didn't think so."

"I don't think he did," Tony said slowly, going over the conversation in his mind. "I think, with the way he threw the Iron Man thing at me, that if he did know he would have made a reference to it, however obliquely. He didn't put a strange emphasis on your name even, so we're probably safe. We should be on our guard just in case though."

"When are we not?" Bucky grinned at him, settling his flesh arm around Tony's shoulders in a warm half hug. He smelt of oranges and machine oil and Tony relaxed further.

"We need to know more about this Shield organisation, find out who is pulling the strings," Tony decided. "J, get on that will you please?"

"Certainly, Sir."

*2011*

Tony stabbed the end call button and slumped against the cool metal of his workbench. "Shit. JARVIS, where's Bucky?"

"Sargent Barnes is in the gym Sir."

Bucky was indeed in the gym, running through his usual weightlifting routine, specifically designed by JARVIS to keep his right side balanced with his left. HOPPIT was busy cleaning the weights that he had already used with a soft cloth while they both listened to the AI's preferred genre of music - J Pop.

"I know it's the culture," Bucky was saying as Tony entered. "But I don't get the random insertion of English words. Japanese is beautiful, why not sing in it?"

HOPPIT made a buzzing raspberry sound that was his was of indicating that he disagreed.

"Ok, you like what you like, no judgement here," Bucky soothed, looking up to grin at Tony. "What's up buttercup?" he asked, putting the weight down and taking the towel that HOPPIT handed to him to wipe his face and hands.

"I had a phone call," Tony started, reluctant to share but knowing that hiding this information wouldn't do more harm than good, no matter how much he wanted to bury his head in the sand. "From the last team sent to the Artic. They found him."