Work Text:
Bucky knew it was going to be a Bad Day™ when he woke up later than he wanted, Starkbucks got his order wrong and he caught three separate people staring at his arm on the Subway on his way to therapy. He knows what he looks like and five years of freedom hasn’t quite managed to change his resting murder face to something even slightly less murder-y.
So, he was expecting a bad day, but a normal bad day, that normal people have, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. He’d had his usual staring contest with his new therapist (he didn’t trust her yet) and gone on his merry way only to receive a video from Steve’s phone clearly filmed by someone else because Steve was very much unconscious and tied to a chair.
He sighed and watched the rest of the video, demanding he meet someone unarmed by the docks. He rolled his eyes, people could be so stupid, as if he needed a weapon to kill them-they should know by now-he’s the weapon, and when hurting Steve Rogers, one must always fear Bucky Barnes.
He sends the video to Tony to trace, because doesn’t have the software he’d need on his phone, CLEARLY an oversight on his part. He was still waiting to hear back when he heard someone approach him from behind.
“If you shoot me with that dart, you’re going to be very sorry. I’m willing to just go with you, but if you shoot that at me, I’m going to get upset. It’ll be messy. People will die. Your choice.” The moron shoots the dart. Bucky reaches back and throws the stiletto he’s been using as a hair-stick straight into the guy’s eye, and later he’s going to be super embarrassed to have missed the fact that moron-the-dart-shooter wasn’t alone.
The last thing he hears before he gets knocked out is “We have ten minutes. Then he’s going to wake up and we’re going to die. MOVE.” Well, he thinks, at least they’re right about that.
He’s even more surprised that when he wakes up, he’s in a room with Tony, Steve, Nat and fucking Thor of all people. How do you even kidnap a god? What the hell. He’s less pleased when he realizes they’re all unarmed and there’s a screen in the corner that just so happens to come on with perfect timing, and why the fuck do the bad guys always have perfect timing?
“Greetings Avengers,” says the smarmy voice of Helmut Zemo and Bucky can’t help but look at Steve. “Oh, don’t kill him Buck, he deserves a chance blah blah blah, I’m gonna to kill him with extreme prejudice when we get out of here.”
“Now now, Solider, not so fast,” and Bucky snaps his teeth and glares at the screen, he’s even more pissed now that he knows this is live.
“If he doesn’t, I will.” Nat chimes in helpfully and Bucky gives her a short nod.
“I see where I went wrong last time,” Zemo continues “it will be far more destructive if you tell each other the things you’ve been hiding, after all, what is a team without trust? I have, on tape, secrets that each of you have only told one other person. You’re going to share them among yourself.”
At this, Steve gets up and starts trying to pull the grate on the floor up, only to hear that smug fucking voice again, this time saying “Be careful Captain, if that grate comes up, the bomb underneath will explode, if the soldier tries to punch through the wall, that bomb will, explode, if the Godling or Iron man try to summon…”
“Jesus Christ, we get it” Tony snarks “if we try to get out the bomb explodes.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Stark, when you’ve completed the task I set forth for you, you’ll be able to leave, no problems and no resistance, but you’ll never look at each other the same way again, and it will eat at you slowly until everything falls apart around you in slow motion, but this time, this time you’ll know, it was you that caused it, you, your friends and all your secrets. After this you won’t know who to trust, after all, I got these tapes somehow, didn’t I?”
Tony spends about ten minutes trying to find a work around, but there’s only so much he can do without his tools.
“Well, I vote Captain Tightpants goes first!” Tony offered unhelpfully. “What’s he going to confess? That he didn’t help an old lady cross the street? That he accidentally parked in a handicapped spot one time at the store? That you’re secretly in love with Bucky-boo over there?”
“I’ll go first.” Nat says and he’s pretty sure she’s only saying that to get the focus off him, but he’s thankful either way. She looks at Bucky and she looks about 10 years younger, “You confuse me.” She tells him. “Watching you get better makes me hopeful, because if you can find a way to be okay, so can I. But I’m terrified of you. You’re the only person in the entire world that scares me.” And everyone silently absorbs that knowing how much it cost her to admit that out loud.
Thor has been uncharacteristically quiet the entire time, so much so that almost everyone had forgotten he was even there. Thor was so cheerful and kind, what skeleton could he possibly have hidden in his closet?
He clears his throat, he’s sure this has to be what the man was getting at, besides this one thing he had no secrets from his team. He wonders what this is going to change-he hopes nothing, but lately hope has been in short supply. So he looks at the floor so he doesn’t have to see their faces.
“I love my brother.” He says and waits for the fall out. Tony is the first to speak, “Well yeah, Point Break, he's your brother and no matter what he’s still your family.”
“No, you misunderstand. I love my brother.” The silence in the room tells him everything he needs to know, he shrugs “he’s my brother, and we’re immortal, it’s just the two of us, we don’t have anyone else.” He’s not sorry about it, but he does feel like he owes his team an explanation after everything his brother put them through. He’s expecting disgust, or anger, what he’s not expecting but should have been is Tony’s “Kinky.”
“The way I look at it, is people deserve to have some secrets, and the only reason we’re learning these is because we don’t have a choice. So, let’s all try really hard not to judge each other.” Thor hears the truth in the words, but it makes him wonder what Tony is withholding.
“Alright, Robocop, you’re next.” Tony says, pointing in Bucky’s direction. Bucky’s not sure how this is going to go over, especially with Tony, this could be very bad, but what choice did they have?
No one is expecting this, he’s sure. “I love being alive. I love my life now. It’s such a gift, to be here, now, in this time, when I can be who I really am, to build this life with Steve-“
“Okay, okay, we get it, things are great over in the village of gay centenarians.”
“Shut-up, Stark, I’m not done. I’m so sorry about your Mom, but I love being alive so much so that, if I had to go back and do it all over again, all the death and 70 years of unrelenting agony and biweekly screaming nightmares-I think I’d do it all over again. Because-“and he turns to Steve here “I’ve never been as good a person as you think I am, and I am that selfish.”
“Buck no-“Steve starts, but all Bucky really wants is to get the fuck out of this dystopian hellhole and home where he can process all of this in private with Steve.
“Not now, Steve, we can talk about it when we get home. Your turn, Stark.”
Tony takes a deep breath, he wonders if Barnes knows what he’s going to say next, he hopes not. Because if he does, it makes what happened in Siberia about a thousand times worse. “In 1947, Stark industries filed two private patent requests-directly from my father on behalf of Arnim Zola, one for a cybernetic arm and one for a specific kind of chair, that would be strong enough to restrain and contain a super soldier. I did some more digging and the evidence suggests he knew it was you.” Steve looks outraged and Bucky just looks really fucking sad, which makes Tony think he already knew. “But you already knew that; didn’t you, Barnes?” Bucky nods. “Good, because that isn’t my secret. My secret is, that in his final moments I hope he knew it was you, and I hope he knew it was his fault, and I hope he lived long enough to realize it was revenge, even if you didn’t know it at the time.”
“Your turn, Steve.” Bucky says gently and Steve’s still worried, but less worried than he was before he heard Tony’s confession about Howard, but still.
And Steve knows this is going to be bad, okay, he knows this is going to change the way everyone looks at him forever, but he’s not sorry that he did it, he’d do it again, and he’d have the same sense of righteous fury it he did the first time. Because that disgusting excuse for a human being had deserved it.
He’s pretty sure that Nat and Bucky already know, because they seem to know everything, but knowing and being able to prove it are two different things.
So, he steels himself, looks directly at Tony and says, without emotion, “I skinned Alexander Pierce alive and listened to him scream and beg for death. I found him in an old HYDRA base while I was looking for Bucky. When he wasn’t dying fast enough, I put him in a chair and shot 30,000 volts of electricity through his brain. I left him crucified against a wall as warning.”
“Wow, Cap, that’s…that’s really fucking dark.” Tony tells him and looks a bit green.
“Oh, I’m not finished. That’s not the worst part. I’m not sorry, and I’d do it again.”
Nat looks unsurprised but, if he’s reading her right, she’s proud. Bucky looks unruffled, which makes sense, he’s seen-and been party to worse, Thor looks completely unphased, like this sort of behavior was par for the course when it comes to enemies.
The door clicks open and they’re free to go. And Bucky, Bucky knows this place, he spent three years here in the 60s. He grabs the gun from his waistband and barges into the room next to where they were being kept.
He points the gun at Zemo, “I said once that I didn’t do this anymore.” He clicks the safety off, because he will always, protect his team no matter what, and fires “I lied.”