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Chapter Text

When Sarge and his two remaining men jump out of Andy’s window, they don’t know where the wind will take them with their parachutes. In the arms of one paratrooper, Sarge keeps a careful eye on the other trooper, determined not to be split up. Wherever they go, it will be better than the trash bags so many of Sarge’s men had been sentenced to over the years.

Sarge figures they’ll be picked up by some boy or girl, even if just for a quick playtime. Or maybe join a new platoon of toy soldiers and mini Combat Carls.

Instead, a man nearing his forties plucks them off the ground where they landed after a ride on a Pizza Planet truck. He’s got dark hair and stubble, and Sarge can tell from the man’s mannerisms that he’s military, like them. Surely this soldier won’t play with them, but Sarge figures he has kids at home.

The man hangs the two paratroopers from the rearview mirror of his vehicle, then places Sarge on the dashboard and starts to drive, hardly giving them any notice. 

Mirror duty isn’t what Sarge would’ve assigned his men, but a human’s whims outrank Sarge’s own.

The man’s phone rings during the drive, and he answers “Rumlow.”

From the sound of the clipped, curt conversation, they’re headed off to base.

Despite his years serving under Sheriff Woody and Buzz in Andy’s room, Sarge has never been to a real military base before. He doesn’t expect to see this one either- surely they’ll remain on watch in the car- but Rumlow grabs the two paratroopers from the mirror and plucks Sarge from the dashboard, carrying them into the base.

Sarge is used to Andy’s bedroom and home. The base is sterile and impersonal. Hardly anyone’s wearing green, oddly enough- the soldiers are dressed in black tactical gear, Rumlow included.

They’re carried into a room with something like a dentist’s chair from Andy’s whispered childhood nightmares about huge needles. There’s an upright sort of coffin, too, which appears to be a sort of freezer.

Rumlow places Sarge and the others on a table, and Sarge stands motionless as he witnesses something almost as bad as Sid’s backyard.

Rumlow pulls a human soldier out of a freezer. Sarge remembers one battle Andy conducted in the freezer of his home, how he’d forgotten them in there overnight.

Sarge didn’t know people could survive the freezer.

The Soldier shivers on the floor. He has angry scarring on his chest, where metal joins his flesh.

Sarge knew Sid did this to toys, hacked them apart and added other bits, but he didn’t know real soldiers did it to their own troops. Sarge would never treat his men this way. 

“Get up,” Rumlow none-too-gently nudges the Soldier with the toe of his boot, and the Soldier silently stands at attention, still shivering.

The Soldier’s wet hair is longer than regulation, and he’s silent as he’s roughly toweled off. It’s nothing like when Andy used to take Sarge and the men on bathtime missions.

Sarge has to stand motionless as the Soldier is led to a chair. The chair has metal restraints that clamp around his limbs, and a scientist puts a bite guard in his mouth.

Are they going to swap his head now, like Woody’s harrowing tales of his and Buzz’s captivity in Sid’s room?

A metal halo lowers over the Soldier’s head, and hearing his agonized screams as he’s electrocuted is worse than watching Sid blow up Combat Carl all those years ago. That voltage surely would melt Sarge if he was too close. He has no clue how the Soldier survives.

None of the other soldiers or scientists show the slightest sympathy towards the Soldier’s suffering. A few even seem to find sadistic glee at his screams.

Afterwards, the Soldier slumps in his restraints, chest heaving, eyes empty. “Ready to comply,” he says in a lifeless voice.

Some other soldiers dress the Soldier like a Barbie doll, moving his limbs and maneuvering the clothes on. They strap countless guns and knives to his body, a bigger aresenal than Sarge has ever seen.

Then, with a smirk, Rumlow plucks Sarge from the table and slips him into a pocket on the Soldier’s tactical vest.

“What, you’re giving him a dolly?” another agent teases. The Soldier silently follows Rumlow, forcing Sarge to leave his last remaining troops behind.

Rumlow takes the Soldier to a van, and this mission is nothing like the missions to spy on Andy’s birthday presents or most recently, retrieve Andy’s cell phone for Operation Playtime. The Soldier is treated the way people treat toys, as if he doesn’t have any independent thought.

The Soldier expertly snipes a target, then takes out a few with close quarters combat. He’s bloody and efficient, and some blood splatters over Sarge’s green plastic skin.

For once, Sarge doesn’t feel good about a mission being accomplished. The mission feels more evil than anything Zurg did in the Buzz Lightyear cartoon.

The Soldier is silent on the drive back, though the rest of the team is rowdier than kids at a birthday party.

The other humans act as if the Soldier is as inanimate as Sarge, and he almost is, sitting motionless in the backseat.

The Soldier stares at Sarge with a bewildered crease to his brow as he’s forcibly stripped and hosed off upon his return.

The Soldier is put in that horrible chair once again. His screams drown out the electric crackles before the Soldier is placed back in the freezer. Nobody notices Sarge peering through his binoculars to memorize the key sequence.

Once the Soldier is frozen, the other agents leave for the night, and Sarge springs to life as soon as they're gone. “All right, men. We have a new mission, Operation Rescue the Soldier.”

“We can’t come alive. That’s disobeying the primary order.”

“Woody came to life to stop Sid from blowing up Buzz.” Sarge barks. “We can’t leave a soldier in this place. It’s worse than Sid’s room. Now, we need to parachute over to that keypad. Let’s move, move, move!”

Sarge jabs a finger at the freezer and they slowly climb their way up some shelves until they can parachute over to the keypad. Sarge hits the keys with a magnet, since he’s not heavy enough to press them on his own.

The chamber hisses open with steam coming out once more, and the Soldier falls to the floor, shivering.

“Bring that towel over, men!” Sarge orders, though the towel is much heavier than Andy’s sock with his cell phone inside. It proves to be too much for them to move, and Sarge frowns. The Soldier’s still shivering, and Sarge directs his men to grab a smaller hand towel.

It’s hardly big enough to dry his curtains of hair, but the Soldier doesn’t make a move to dry himself. He slowly raises his gaze, staring at them through his curtain of wet hair.

Sarge’s men freeze in toy mode, but Sarge forces himself to stay animate.

“Come on, Soldier, dry yourself off.” Sarge says, and only then does the Soldier take the hand towel and swipe it over his hair, like he really doesn’t know what to do.

“We’re here to spring you out of this place, Soldier.” Sarge says.

The Soldier stares at him. “Are you my handler?”

The idea is laughable. Humans are the ones who handle toys, that’s one of life’s rules. This human, despite handling himself with deadly competence in the battlefield, clearly can’t handle himself in any other capacity. 

Sarge thinks that chair must’ve emptied his head almost as much as if they’d chopped it off.

“My name is Sarge, and I’m in charge of this platoon.” Sarge gestures to his two frozen men, who slowly unfreeze.

“Sergeant.” the Soldier mutters, a faraway look in his eye.

“Come on, soldier, let’s suit up.” Sarge barks. The Soldier stands and follows Sarge over to the table with weapons and vests. He picks Sarge up and places him among the knives.

It seems the Soldier is able to dress himself, thankfully, but he hesitates over picking the weapons.

“Let’s move! Do you want to stay here?!” Sarge snaps.

The Soldier stares blankly, as if he doesn’t understand the question. Sarge mentally kicks himself- he’s seen himself that the Soldier’s preferences matter as little to his handlers as a toy’s wants matter to humans. They’re completely disregarded in the way nobody knows toys have feelings.

The Soldier stands at attention as Sarge pulls himself up the leather straps on his chest to perch on the Soldier’s shoulder, wedging the base under his feet under one of the shoulder straps. The two paratroopers fold their parachutes and nestle themselves in the Soldier’s pocket.

“All right, Soldier. March. Left, left, left, right, left. Left, left, left, right, left!” Sarge’s cadence spurs the Soldier into action, and Sarge keeps up the stream of instructions as the Soldier marches out of the room and down the hall. Luckily, the hallways are deserted, allowing Sarge to continue his cadence, guiding the Soldier’s march to freedom.

Chapter Text

The Soldier’s ownership has changed hands many times throughout his existence, likely more than can remember. His current handler, Sarge, is small enough to fit in the Soldier’s hand, as are the two paratroopers also under Sarge’s command.

Sarge perches on the Soldier’s shoulder, counting a cadence for him to march to. It quiets the Soldier’s mind as he exits where his HYDRA handlers left him.

The Soldier has been thawed by unfamiliar handlers before. Sarge is still a soldier, which is all the Soldier knows, even if he’s tiny and green and somehow sentient plastic. Something about his uniform and helmet are familiar, though they’re outdated and as green as his skin. 

“Let’s steal a car.” one of the paratroopers says from the Soldier’s vest pocket, and the other paratrooper says Buzz and the others got to steal and drive a Pizza Planet truck.

“He’s probably driving.” The first paratrooper pats the Soldier’s vest. 

The Soldier has no idea who Buzz is or where Pizza Planet is… he thinks humans had gone to the moon when he was frozen, once. Have they discovered another planet full of pizza? What is pizza?

“Negative. Stealing a vehicle is too conspicuous. We have to sneak out of here.” Sarge says.

One paratrooper grumbles slightly, and Sarge doesn’t punish him for his insolence. 

The green bases attached to the toy soldiers’ feet are inefficient for movement, but the Soldier had been forced to fight with his legs chained together before. One handler had said he looked like a deadly merman.

The Soldier’s the only one sneaking out on foot, because the toy soldiers are using the Soldier as transportation.

The Soldier expertly keeps in the shadows, avoiding any patrols or lights. Sarge stops his cadence, but the Soldier’s feet keep moving away from the chair and the cryo tube.

As he marches, the Soldier pries open a panel on the prosthesis and plucks out a tracking device, dropping it to crush under his boot. There are a few more trackers buried in unreachable places on his body, but he supposes the toy soldiers can dig them out.

The Soldier has no clue where Sarge is taking him, but it isn’t his place to ask.

When they’re off the base, Sarge asks “What’s your name, Soldier?”

“Soldier.” the Soldier replies. Others called him Soldat or the asset.

“Andy never bothered to name most of us, either.” One paratrooper sounds both fond and bitter about his own former handler.

The Soldier doesn’t know what to say to that, but it’s not his place to speak, anyway.

“My name’s Gordon.” the other paratrooper says. “Andy didn’t give it to me. I did. You could give yourself a name.”

The Soldier is not a person. He doesn’t need a name, but the toy soldiers aren’t exactly people either.

“Percy?” suggests Gordon, and the Soldier’s brow furrows as he keeps hiking through the dark suburbs. 

As he walks, the toy soldiers talk quietly amongst themselves, reminiscing about when there had been a whole bucket of two hundred green soldiers under Sarge’s command, some with bazookas and grenades, and they sound shocked to have seen the real versions in HYDRA’s armory. 

The Soldier is easily bigger than two hundred of the soldiers, and perhaps they’d picked him up as a replacement. He wonders if they’ll paint his prosthesis green and give him a green uniform.

“We lost Corporal Thomas to the Lawnmower Incident.” Sarge says on the Soldier’s shoulder, and the Soldier thinks he could have stopped a lawnmower.

Sarge mentions several soldiers by name, though Andy hadn’t named any of them. Private Benjamin, Mr. Plastic Explosives. Sarge reports that they’d been lost to trash bags, yard sales, getting stepped on.

When Gordon says “Captain Shields”, the Soldier suddenly pictures another colorful soldier, though he’s red, white and blue rather than green. His shield has a star and he isn’t plastic. He’s  leading a squad of human soldiers in uniforms similar to the toy soldiers’.

The Soldier frowns. Captain Shields was clearly one of Sarge’s tiny green troops, not… whoever that was. Another mission? A previous handler? The word Captain echoes in the Soldier’s mind, like how Sergeant had replayed through the Soldier’s head during Sarge’s introduction. It’s still echoing in there.

“What is my mission?” he asks, focusing back on his current superior.

“Your mission was getting out of there.” Sarge’s sharp tone becomes a bit warmer. “Mission accomplished, Soldier. Good work. With any luck, we’ll be long gone before they notice you’re missing.”

With the cryo chamber closed, his former HYDRA handlers may not notice until they go to thaw him again, and he thinks sometimes it’s years in between.

The Soldier nods. Success usually means a lack of punishment. Pierce praises and punishes him in equal amounts, but Sarge seems to lean solely towards praise. 

He keeps walking, but Sarge doesn’t offer another mission, revealing that they just left their own post with Andy’s toys now that Andy’s grown up. Sarge and his paratroopers were searching for their own next assignment when Rumlow picked them up.

Mission success usually means the chair and cryofreeze, but the Soldier is still walking away from them.

“You’re the human. You’re supposed to be in charge. We’re really breaking rank here.” Gordon says.

“I’m not human.” the Soldier says. “Proper protocol involves cryofreeze and a wipe after a mission.”

“We saw what they put you through, and we’re not putting you back there. A good soldier would never leave a man in that place.” Sarge barks in the Soldier’s ear. The Soldier hardly counts as a man, but he doesn’t argue. “That was worse than Sid’s house. They’re worse than the Evil Emperor Zurg.”

Gordon huffs in the Soldier’s pocket. “Bet Sid works there now.” 

“Nah, Woody scared some sense into him, remember?” the other paratrooper says.

“You didn’t enlist to work there, did you, Soldier?” Sarge asks, like he already knows the Soldier’s thoughts and opinions were never acknowledged or considered. He wasn’t supposed to have his own thoughts, was treated like a tool or, looking down at Sarge, a lifeless toy. Except Sarge and the others are clearly alive. “I saw what they made you do. They’re dirtbags with no honor.”

What does that make the Soldier? 

Gordon says that Andy often cast them as the Evil Doctor Porkchop’s army. 

“What we saw wasn’t playtime, boys.” Sarge’s tone is almost a growl. “I hate to say it, but not even Woody, Buzz and Jessie could take them down.”

The Soldier frowns. Who said anything about taking HYDRA down? His work was a gift to mankind. HYDRA was what humanity needed, and he was helping bring that change.

He keeps his voice passive while asking for clarification. “My mission is to destroy HYDRA.” They hadn’t destroyed anything at the base other than the tracker from the prosthesis. The Soldier’s steps falter and he turns back in the direction they’d come from.

“Not yet! Our primary objective is your safety! When I said we weren’t going back there, I meant it, Soldier!” Sarge almost shouts in the Soldier’s ear. He’s loud but not cruel. He doesn’t discipline the Soldier for forgetting he’d said so not long ago.

The Soldier swiftly spins on his heel to continue his march away from the base.

From his pocket, Gordon remarks that the Soldier switched allegiance faster than some toys getting new owners.

“I’ve had lots of owners.” the Soldier replies. His allegiance is expected and enforced.

“Did you ever get sold at yard sales?” the other paratrooper asks.

The Soldier shakes his head.

“Sir, where are we going?” Gordon asks Sarge. “We were letting the wind take us. We should have grabbed the Soldier his own parachute.”

“I know safehouse coordinates.” the Soldier offers. 

“We can’t go to a child’s room now.” the other paratrooper says. “You’d scare the kid.”

“And you’re not a toy.” Gordon adds.

“We’re not going to get playtime for a while more, boys.” Sarge says. “Operation: Find the Safehouse is a go. Let’s move, move, move!”

Chapter Text

The safehouse the Soldier takes them to is nothing like the safety of Andy’s first or current house. It’s completely impersonal, like a hotel room, and Sarge is sure he and his men are the only toys in the house before the Soldier has finished scouting and clearing all the rooms during his perimeter check.

Sarge does his own perimeter check, marching along the baseboards with his men.

The Soldier is the only human inside the house, just like they’re the only toys. Any other toys here wouldn’t have talked to Sarge and his men anyway, not after seeing them break the primary order of remaining still around humans.

Sarge has spent years observing Andy, Molly and their mom. The Soldier doesn’t do any of the usual activities people partake in. He doesn’t watch the television while lounging on the couch or read, or fix himself a snack. He doesn’t retreat to the bathroom.

He stands at attention, almost as still as when toys are in toy mode. He may have been treated like a toy, but he’s not acting like one now. When the owners are away, toys come out to play. They don’t wait lifelessly in toy mode. 

This soldier’s even more mixed up than when Buzz arrived believing he was really a space ranger. He seems completely unaware of his past, more so than Woody having no idea he was collector’s gold and the star of an old show. 

Sarge wonders what the Soldier was like as a child. Surely he had a real name. Did he play with toy soldiers like Sarge? Was he a good owner? How did he fall into the hands of those monsters?

The Soldier is still standing at attention, still as a statue. 

“At ease, Soldier.” Sarge says, and then, because the Soldier still seems completely at a loss for what to do with himself, says “Sit down.”

The Soldier sits on the floor, and Sarge sighs. “I meant on the couch.”

The Soldier’s brow furrows and he perches on the edge of the couch, as if it might zap him like that awful chair the evil soldiers- he’d said HYDRA?- put him in. He acts like he’s never been on a couch before but he also can’t fathom disobeying the order.

“Even Buster was allowed on the couch.” Gordon shakes his head. Andy had Sarge’s men use the gaps between cushions like trenches when he was younger, and they’d had to rescue Private Popcorn, who got his name from his time wedged under the cushions. They’d found some coins for Hamm too, so all in all it had been a successful mission.

The Soldier just sits there, and of course he wouldn’t perform any of the usual human activities.

“Mission accomplished, Soldier. Good job securing us here.” Sarge isn’t quite as warm as Woody can be, but the Soldier is clearly unused to praise without pain. 

The Soldier stands and heads towards the kitchen, but instead of getting a snack or meal, he finds a pocket knife and twirls it between his fingers. It’s the most life Sarge has seen from him since accompanying him on that brutal massacre of a mission. 

It’s a good thing Sarge is plastic, or he might have lost his lunch at the casual way the Soldier slices into his own flesh to dig out more tracking devices. Sarge remembers Andy’s mom talking about getting Buster a tracking chip, but to do it to a human…

“Don’t drop your pants in the kitchen!” Gordon hollers when the Soldier suddenly does so without a shred of modesty, not that those dirtbags had given him any. “Do it in the bathroom!”

The Soldier wordlessly relocates to a windowless bathroom and cuts into his thigh.

The Soldier’s wounds heal far quicker than any cut or scrape Andy got falling off his bike or skateboard or playing baseball. 

Toys, of course, can’t heal, but Sarge knows humans aren’t supposed to recover this quickly. By the time the Soldier digs a tracker out of his armpit, the cuts on his thighs have scabbed over.

The Soldier twirls the knife again before holding it out towards Sarge. “There’s one near the T5 vertebrae. Requesting assistance to extract it.”

“Whoa, whoa. We’re not Sid!” Gordon holds up his hands. “We’re not cutting you open!”

“Yes we are, and that’s an order! Now wash your hands, first!” Sarge snaps, already climbing up to the bathroom sink. Sarge turns on a trickle of water, but he’s too small to pump soap without the Soldier’s aid.

Once he’s done, he leaps down, grabbing the pocket knife. The Soldier lays face down on the bathroom tile.  Gordon reluctantly helps Sarge steady the pocket knife after climbing on the Soldier’s taut back. Sarge mourns the loss of Barton, who’d tended to the minesweeper Andy’s mom stepped on during that fateful birthday party when Andy got Buzz.

“Where’s the T5 vertebrae anyway?” Gordon grumbles. “This isn’t Battleship.”

The Soldier’s metal arm whirs and comes back to tap a silver finger against his spine.

“Ready.” Sarge and Gordon carefully slice into the Soldier’s back. Blood wells up among their plastic bases, but not as much as Sarge had seen on the mission.

The other paratrooper, who simply goes by Private Paratrooper if he’s not pretending to be Gordon like a twin playing tricks, hops down from the sink where he’d been disinfecting his plastic hands. He carefully reaches into the open flap of skin and grunts as he tugs at something. 

A muscle in the Soldier’s back twitches, but he remains still, like Woody had to when Sid burned his forehead with a magnifying glass (Sarge had seen Sid melt toy soldiers in his backyard with the same magnifying glass, and they’d had to remain motionless in their last moments).

“Got it,” the Private Paratrooper tugs the tracker out.

The Soldier crushes the trackers under his boot- the crunch is eerily similar to Sarge’s men getting stepped on- and flushes the remains down the toilet.

“Good work, men. Soldier, did they feed you at all, or did they switch you to running on batteries?”

Sure he bleeds like a human, but they’d clearly done all sorts of sick experiments, given the state of his arm. Maybe there are batteries hidden in the arm somewhere. Will they have to find replacements, or are they the rechargeable kind?

“Sustenance is required for optimal functioning.” The Soldier starts listing caloric requirements based on his level of exercise from the marching.

It’s not hard to scout out the pantry. The stashed MREs are almost as packaged as new toys, everything wrapped up individually. The plain brown plastic wrapping is as impersonal as the walls of the house, and a far cry from all the colorful presents Sarge and his men had spied on and reported back to Woody and the gang in Andy’s room.

Sarge has never tasted food but it all looks as bland as the wrapping. The pack comes with flameless ration heaters, which is just as well because Sarge certainly isn’t going to help the Soldier figure out the stove.

The MRE’s vegetable omelet looks so bad that Private Paratrooper calls it the Vomelet. The Soldier eats it without a hint of complaint, and Sarge has a sinking suspicion he would eat actual vomit if ordered to.

“We can find a better one,” Sarge uses his binoculars to peer at the brown packages. “Chicken. Chicken. Tortellini.”

The Soldier has already finished eating. He throws out the packaging and looks at Sarge for orders.

Sarge frowns. Is he going to have to order the Soldier to watch TV or something?

He probably doesn’t understand the concept of fun. Or relaxation. His total reliance on orders is unnerving, which is saying something coming from Sarge.

“All right, men! Operation: Playtime was a bust at Andy’s house, but it might just work here.”

“Andy’s not here.” Private Paratrooper casts a dubious look at the Soldier. “He’s going to play with us?”

The Soldier is listening with rapt attention.

“Hide and Seek?” Gordon asks. Even in this impersonal house, there are plenty of places for Sarge and his men to hide.

“Maybe later.” Sarge says. He has a better idea for a game that will teach the Soldier not to follow every order. “We’re going to play a game I call Sarge Says. It’s like Simon Says, except with Sarge, so clearly it is better.”

The Soldier is still listening intently but frowning like he’s missing critical intelligence. Who doesn’t know Simon Says? 

Sarge shakes his head. That blasted chair must have erased his whole childhood.

Maybe making a game of it will make ordering the Soldier feel less like a huge breach of rank. And it could jog a few childhood memories.

Their mission as toys is to ensure a child’s safety and happiness, but the Soldier clearly needs them more than Andy has in years, or any child might now.

It’s going to be a long, hard road getting the Soldier his humanity back, but Sarge has never backed down from a mission. He stands to his full two inches and starts to explain the rules.

Chapter Text

“If I say Sarge Says , you do the very next thing I say.” Sarge marches on his plastic base as he debriefs the Soldier on this training exercise.

The Soldier nods. He is ready to comply.

“If I do not say Sarge Says, you do not do it.” 

The Soldier frowns. He’s being ordered to ignore orders? It’s preposterous, unless it’s a new code phrase being programmed into him. The Soldier cannot recall how the other phrases were programmed.

“Example. If I say Sarge Says ‘Attention’, then-”

The Soldier snaps to attention, and Sarge holds up a hand. “Not yet, Soldier. We haven’t actually started the game.”

The Soldier falls back into parade rest.

“If I say Sarge Says ‘Salute’- ”

The Soldier salutes. 

“Not yet! The game hasn’t started.” Sarge is clearly exasperated, but offers no further correction or discipline. 

“If I say Sarge Says… ‘mmm mmm mmm.' ” Sarge makes a vague gesture with his hand.

The Soldier copies him, and Sarge sighs.

“I said if I say. If. It is a conditional statement.” 

The Soldier lowers his gaze. Failing such simple orders is inexcusable. He hasn’t been out of cryo for a full twelve hours and he’s malfunctioning.

“All right, men. Operation: Have A Good Time has begun! Remember, this is only a game, our mission is to have fun, Soldier. Now, Sarge Says ‘attention’!”

The Soldier stands at attention, along with the two paratroopers.

Sarge leads them through saluting and then presenting their arms, though not for maintenance, their legs, their elbows. Sarge says to present their heads, shoulders, knees and toes.

It’s the easiest training exercise the Soldier can remember.

Gordon and Private Paratrooper turn it into a song as they tap each body part, though Sarge hadn’t said to sing. They point to their eyes, ears, mouth and nose despite not being ordered to do so.

“See, we know how to have fun,” Private Paratrooper grins at the Soldier, even though he’s blatantly defying orders.

“Sarge Says Stop!” Sarge barks, but he doesn’t punish the paratroopers for their insubordination.

Sarge glances meaningfully at the Soldier. “I only saw a bit of what they did to you, but in my platoon, we don’t torture people for disobedience.”

The Soldier remains still.

“About face!” Sarge barks. Gordon jumps and spins around one hundred and eighty degrees, his plastic base clacking as he lands.

“Ah! I didn’t say ‘Sarge Says’!” Sarge points a finger at Gordon, and Private Paratrooper laughs teasingly, but it’s clear they still have an easy rapport and camraderie. 

“Good job ignoring that order, Soldier.” Sarge salutes him, completely nonsensically. Why would he praise dereliction of duty? Why is Sarge saluting?

Sarge leads them through marching in place, counting his cadence before increasing the pace to double time, then triple time, then-

“Hammer time!” Gordon starts dancing, and Private Paratrooper joins in. They glance at the Soldier, motioning for him to dance.

The Soldier doesn’t think he’s ever danced. He carefully copies Gordon’s movements, but suddenly he’s seeing young girls dancing ballet. He’d taught them how to shoot and how to kill with their bare hands.

“Are you with me, Soldier?” Sarge’s voice cuts through the vision of the young dancers.

The lapse of attention is unacceptable and a clear sign he’s in need of maintenance- Sarge hadn’t wiped him after defrosting him, and claims he’s never going to despite the disastrous consequences on the Soldier’s functionality.

“Yes, sir.” 

“You’re taking this too seriously. It’s supposed to be fun.” Gordon tells him. The Soldier isn’t supposed to have fun. Nobody tells a gun or a knife to have fun.

“People don’t tell us to have fun, either.” Sarge says, like he’s reading the Soldier’s mind. “How about you be Sarge, next? Go on, tell us what to do.”

The Soldier’s mind blanks out again, though not quite like a wipe. 

He’s laying on a table, muttering “Sergeant” and numbers. Three? Two? Eight? It’s hazy, like a chemical experiment with a new concoction sending fire through his veins.

”Sergeant.” the Soldier gasps.

“Sir, yes, sir!” the soldiers, including Sarge, stand attentively. 

“What does Sarge say to do?” Private Paratrooper prompts, only they’re looking expectantly at him like he’s Sarge. He’d been muttering it on the table, bound to cold metal by flimsier leather restraints rather than the standard metal clamps.

He’s laying on a cool, hard surface, only it’s not the metal table. It’s the kitchen tile. Sarge stands on the Soldier’s chest, gazing down at him with something like concern over his tiny plastic face.

“Are you all right, Soldier?” Sarge asks.

“Functional,” the Soldier replies, though his brain is buzzing at the thought of being a sergeant and giving orders.

“I thought playing that would help.” Sarge sounds almost apologetically, except nobody has ever apologized to him. Not even Pierce with his praise. “Sarge Says was a failure. Not your fault, Soldier!”

It very clearly was, but Sarge inexplicably blames himself. “This is uncharted territory, Soldier. We’re not used to interacting directly with humans.”

“Looks like you’re not either.” Private Parachute teases, although none of them are human.

Sarge easily switches the drill- or game, as he insisted- without commenting on the Soldier’s failure. The instruction to only obey orders preceded by the phrase “Sarge Says” seems to have ended. 

Sarge organizes an extremely simple target practice next, though the toy soldiers are clearly impressed with how accurately the Soldier can throw balled-up bits of paper into a wastebasket.

The Soldier fails to see why Sarge isn’t making use of the Soldier’s skill with firearms, or why the paratroopers cheer every time the Soldier lands the paper in the wastebasket, which is every time. The Soldier has hit much harder targets than a wastebasket.

They’re treating him like one of the team when he’s supposed to be beneath them all (despite being a giant compared to them).

“Let’s do a rhythm game, now. I’m going to tap out a rhythm, and you clap it back.”

Sarge jumps, tapping his base against the kitchen counter.

It’s not Morse Code- it’s a rhythm that seems almost musical. The Soldier dutifully claps the same rhythm back, and Sarge increases the complexity until they sound more and more musical.

This must be a memory test, evaluating his ability to recall orders after his inexcusable lapse earlier.

“That’s it! Good job, soldier! Is this better for you?”

The Soldier can barely understand what Sarge is asking. The Soldier is expected to adapt to orders or be corrected and reprogrammed.

He reminds himself that toys clearly have hidden preferences and thoughts, and they’re expecting the same of him.

“I am performing better.”

“Are you having fun?” Private Paratrooper spreads his arms.

Is having fun a code phrase for performing well? It’s the only explanation that makes sense. The Soldier slowly nods, and the two paratroopers cheer.

Sarge stamps out another meaningless musical rhythm that the Soldier copies as the two paratroopers nod their heads to the beat.

The Soldier is praised every time he remembers a rhythm, and after a few more, Sarge says “Operation: Have a Good Time is mission accomplished! Good work, men! And always remember, you’ve got a friend in me!”

The Paratroopers both say “And me!”

Nobody has ever declared themselves his friend, but they aren’t following any of the standard protocols.

Chapter Text

Sarge has his suspicions that the safehouse won’t remain safe forever, but he’s surprised that they hear a gunshot less than ten minutes after they finish their game.

Sarge leaps from the coffee table to the windowsill, hiding by the curtains and peering through his binoculars at the neighboring houses.

There’s nobody coming to the safehouse with guns, but another shot rings through the neighborhood. It sounds like it’s hitting a can, but Sarge still needs to perform reconnaissance and assess the situation.

The Soldier stills like a bloodhound tracking a scent, and Sarge calls his men over.

They hitch a ride on the Soldier again as he sneaks out of the house with a pistol. It’s morning, now, but the Soldier still expertly remains hidden as he sneaks through the suburban backyard.

Sarge spots a row of toy soldiers standing on a railing two houses down. They’re about twice the size of Sarge and his men, but similar molded plastic statues with bases. They’re a darker shade of green than Sarge.

“Come on, Bucky!” a girl of about eight calls, holding a twelve-inch caucasian Combat Carl action figure dressed in green camo fatigues, much like the one Sid blew up. In her other hand she’s holding a frisbee she colored over with the Captain America shield design.

The Soldier’s footsteps falter, and Sarge mutters “Come on, Soldier.”

The girl flings her frisbee at a row of toy soldiers, knocking several of them into the dirt, making Combat Carl Bucky stomp them into the ground.

At the other end of the yard, a teenage boy has been shooting cans with a BB gun, but he turns towards his little sister’s game. He picks up a paratrooper from the ground, tosses him in the air, and fires the gun at him as he floats down.

Private Paratrooper mutters a swear word that Andy never would have dared to say around his mother.

Luckily, the boy misses the paratrooper three times as he floats down. When the soldier lands, the boy scowls and hits him with the butt of the BB gun.

Meanwhile, the girl smashes her homemade Captain America frisbee into the soldiers in the dirt, screaming “die, HYDRA scum! Die, die, die!”

Sarge would approve the mindset if she weren’t destroying the toys. Of course, some kids play rough, but this is almost as rough as Sid. One soldier’s gun snaps under the frisbee, but the girl doesn’t seem to care. 

The teenage boy aims his gun at the toy soldiers that are still standing on the railing and fires. Another soldier falls to the dirt with a bullet hole in his chest, though he’s remained intact otherwise.

Sarge grits his teeth. His type are always relegated to canon fodder, or left uncaring in the sandbox, viewed as disposable and easily replaced, unlike fancier toys like Buzz or even Rex.

“You almost shot me, idiot!” the girl screams, stomping on one toy as she storms into the house with her Combat Carl action figure and makeshift shield. “Daaad! Brad almost shot me!”

“I was shooting at the soldiers, stupid!” Brad storms in after his sister. “It was nowhere near her.”

“You can’t shoot my soldiers!”

“They’re my soldiers, really! I can shoot them if I want.”

“No, you gave them to me!”

“I was loaning them.” Brad fires back.

There’s a heavy sigh from the father in the house, and he starts scolding both of them. “I spent good money on those toys, and you need to treat them nicer.”

Funny how Sid’s parents never said that. Sarge’s mouth twists, and he hops into the yard as soon as the coast is clear. The lucky paratrooper rushes over to the unlucky soldiers, kneeling to inspect the bullet hole.

“It should’ve been me.” the paratrooper says, practically weeping over his fallen form. “You should leave, before you get trashed.”

“I can’t leave you,” the shot soldier says.

From inside the house, Brad scoffs “What? Army guys are like two bucks.”

“The big ones cost more,” the dad says, like that’s all that matters. Sarge seethes, but the lecture buys them more time.

“You’re all leaving now.” Sarge stands to his full height, even though the other toys are twice his size. “You don’t have to stay and take this.”

Any response is cut off as the toys abruptly freeze into toy mode, the shot soldier falling back into the dirt.

The Soldier stands in the battlefield of a backyard, looking around like he’s half somewhere else.

Sarge grabs the shot soldier and starts hauling him through the dirt, while Private Paratrooper and Gordon start tugging the larger paratrooper.

Seeing their actions, the Soldier gathers up the other toy soldiers, stuffing them into his cargo tactical pants’ pockets. 

He plucks the shot soldier and larger paratrooper, stowing them away before placing Sarge and his men on his shoulder. 

And then the Soldier aims his gun at the children through the window.

“Abort! Retreat to the safe house!” Sarge shouts in his ear. The Soldier ghosts through the backyard and back to the safehouse. 

“Good work, men! But Soldier, you are not authorized to shoot children.” Sarge says once they’re safely inside. 

“They were your enemy.” the Soldier says, tonelessly. “I was awaiting your order to shoot.”

“They’re kids!” Sarge shouts. “We wouldn’t kill them, even if they kill us!” 

The Soldier hangs his head, like he’s awaiting punishment. 

Sarge scrubs a hand over his face. “Don’t shoot kids. Now, let’s give a proper introduction to these troops.”

The Soldier pulls the rescued toy soldiers out of his pockets, but they remain still and silent, even as Sarge welcomes them to the safehouse.

Really, this house is no place for a toy, not even toy soldiers. Instead of a playroom, the safehouse has an armory. The barrels of the bazookas are big enough that Sarge and his paratroopers could use them as tunnels. The bedrooms are full of impersonal bunks.

It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the fate any of them were left to before.

The toys continue to give Sarge the silent treatment. 

Right, Sarge is breaking the most important toy rule, and they won’t join in, despite just being saved.

The Soldier stares at the toys blankly, his mind clearly far away.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the Soldier asks, frowning and clearly bracing himself for further punishment. “I know that shield. Captain…”

“It’s Captain America’s shield,” Sarge says. He’d pored over Andy’s history textbooks, reading all about the famous soldier, although in fifth grade, Andy had preferred Buzz and Woody over a real, if long-gone, legend.

Andy’s history classes had covered Captain America several years from fifth grade through the end of high school, so Sarge had a lot to read. Some books had snippets of their childhood, stories of scrappy, sickly Steve Rogers standing up to bullies, and Bucky always being there to back him up.

Sarge bets their toys were proud.

Captain America was great, but as a fellow Sergeant, Sarge admired Barnes even more. 

“Sergeant James ‘Bucky’ Barnes was Captain America’s lifelong best friend and right-hand man in the war to defeat the Nazis and HYDRA-”

Sarge stops mid-sentence, staring at the Soldier’s face. Andy’s book had photos of Captain America and Sergeant Barnes. 

“Son of a gun.” Gordon mutters as he catches on.

The Soldier’s face is the same face as the black and white photo of Bucky with his cap tilted at a jaunty angle. The same features, but with dead, hollow eyes that have seen too much and sickly, sallow skin hidden behind his curtains of hair.

“Sergeant Barnes.” Sarge salutes his fellow Sergeant. How had he not seen it earlier? “Sir, it’s an honor.”

The Soldier- Sergeant Barnes- jolts like he’s back in the electric chair, his face twisting. He’s breathing harshly, practically panting, and his words slip out in a language Sarge doesn’t recognize. Russian, maybe?

It doesn’t make sense. Humans aren’t mass-produced with the same face like toys, and even a twin would be an old man by now. Sergeant Barnes fell off a train in the Alps less than a week before Captain America crashed his plane into the Arctic, saving millions.

Had they somehow found Sergeant Barnes and kept him alive in the freezer? Sarge wouldn’t believe it, but he’d rescued Barnes from the freezer himself, and Barnes had clearly survived the arm and cranial-electric torture that should have killed him.

Sarge shakes his head in disbelief. This is bigger than Woody learning he was an old-time star and highly valuable toy. This is the Sergeant Barnes from the history books, and he’d been warped and twisted more than Sid’s creations.

Far from being awed by the news, Barnes’s face is still screwed in pain, and he stumbles backwards, falling against the wall.

This is worse than the tale they’d heard of Buzz realizing he really was a toy, and his subsequent failed flight resulting in his left arm breaking off (luckily Buzz got his own reattached before Sid could replace it, unlike Sergeant Barnes’ metal arm). 

Sarge wasn’t there, but he’s willing to bet Sergeant Barnes is even more shocked at this revelation.

“I think you fried his brain, sir.” Gordon says. Sarge shoots a stern look at his troop. They’ve seen firsthand just how they broke his brain, and Sarge turns his gaze back towards the fallen form of Sergeant Barnes.

Chapter Text

Images flash through the Soldier’s mind, waging war for his attention. The Captain throwing the shield like the girl threw her disc, knocking down soldiers while punching others. 

He knew that shield. He knows the Captain. He’d seen the Captain in his head as soon as Sarge had mentioned Captain Shield, only Sarge’s debrief revealed the man with the star shield was called Captain America. 

Captain America must have been the Soldier’s superior at one point, because the urge to follow him is like a hook in the Soldier’s chest.

And Sarge had confirmed that, saying that the Soldier had served with Captain America, under the codename Sergeant Barnes. Bucky. James.

The Soldier sees the Captain rescuing prisoners, as the Soldier had just done. 

And then he’s on the table again, muttering Sergeant and numbers until the Captain comes to rescue him.

“I thought you were dead.” The Captain says.

“I thought you were smaller.” Sergeant Barnes replies.

Surely the Captain was never as small as Sarge.

Sergeant Barnes sees war-torn battlefields, blood, fallen soldiers sprawled like toys in the mud. He sees kill shots he’s taken, sees his metal prosthesis snapping the necks of targets, punching through car windows, his sniper rifle aiming at-

His head pounds, blood roaring like he’s in the chair as pain bursts in his brain. He sees too much, jumbles that don’t fit together, like a shattered mirror with shards ready to stab his brain if he tries to piece them together.

A bloody stump of an arm in the snow. Where is the prosthesis? 

“Sergeant Barnes-” 

A bespectacled bald scientist leaning over him, peering down. Choking him with the prosthesis. The cryo chamber. Orders in Russian and little girls attacking, screaming. The screaming girl with a plastic disc, decorated like the Captain's shield, smashing toy soldiers as the other girls learn to choke with their thighs.

“Sergeant Barnes!”

Pain lancing through the skull, blood pounding in the ears. A blinding light of the operating table, blinding white snow, all-encompassing pain that slowly, slowly abates.

The Soldier… the Sergeant Barnes opens his eyes. The light above him isn’t the light above the operating table. It’s a kitchen light.

He’s in the safehouse. 

Sarge has reassigned him the designation of Sergeant Barnes. It makes no sense, because calling him Sergeant is almost putting them on equal footing.

“Sergeant! I’m sorry.” Sarge says.

There he is with the preposterous apologies again, as if the- the Sergeant Barnes- is owed any explanation or apology. He doesn’t think he’d earned the rank of Sergeant, but Sarge is insistent on that designation.

Sergeant Barnes takes in the scene surrounding him in the safehouse. Sarge, Gordon and Private Paratrooper all have concern over their tiny green faces. The other toy soldiers rescued from the backyard remain still.

Sergeant Barnes has killed many- far more than the images that flashed through his brain. Perhaps he’d killed those toy soldiers too, when he was in his head, and that is why they aren’t moving like Sarge.

“Easy there, Sergeant.” Sarge says. “Didn’t mean to overwhelm you.”

It’s a clear indication of malfunction and requires recalibration in the chair, but Sarge is opposed to such standard procedures.

“Are they HYDRA?” Sergeant Barnes stares at the unmoving figures. Gordon says the girl just cast them as HYDRA in her pretend game.

“HYDRA’s gone. You helped Captain America destroy them before any of us were made.” Sarge says it like it’s a fact, though his expression darkens. “Unless they aren’t really gone. We thought you were gone, too, Sergeant.”

“They’d have to be hiding their existence as well as all of us toys do.” Private Paratrooper grumbles. 

Sergeant Barnes nods slowly. 

Sarge’s hand curls into a tiny fist. “When you said HYDRA earlier, I thought you had a screw loose from the chair. It was them, wasn’t it? They had you?”

Sergeant Barnes was trained to resist interrogation, to never give information on HYDRA away, but he finds himself nodding again.

Sarge is clearly disgusted in himself more than Sergeant Barnes. “I should have known it was them from the way they treated you.”

Sergeant Barnes thinks of surgeries, of sawing into his bones without anesthesia, eyes burning even though the kitchen light isn’t blinding white like the operating lights or the snow.

He forces himself to stare at the lifeless soldiers they’d rescued from the backyard battlefield. He refrains from mentioning the fake shield or the larger toy soldier the girl called Bucky. “Did I kill them?”

Sarge had praised them for accomplishing their mission, but he’d also verbally reprimanded Sergeant Barnes for pointing a gun at the children who attacked the targets they rescued.

Sergeant Barnes can’t remember the last time he had a rescue mission. He was made to destroy targets, not save them.

“They won’t come alive around you.” Sarge says.

Sergeant Barnes understands. They’re supposed to be unnoticed ghosts, like him.

“The girl said they were HYDRA soldiers.”

“That was just pretend.” Gordon reiterates. Nobody seems mad that Sergeant Barnes needs the intel repeated. “Kids cast toys in all sorts of roles during playtime.”

”If only the real HYDRA was just pretend.” Private Paratrooper snarls. “They cast you in the worst role.”

Had Sergeant Barnes really fought against HYDRA with Captain America? He thought he’d been created in a HYDRA lab, an asset with no past, no childhood. No existence except pain and obedience, cold and death.

Gordon says that the situation is a lot bigger than any of them. Sergeant Barnes looks at the toy soldiers’ diminutive forms, and Gordon’s eyes narrow. None of them have sculpted or painted eyebrows. “I meant it keeps getting bigger. Seriously, we rescued Sergeant Barnes from HYDRA.”

“You said Captain America did that.” Sergeant Barnes studies Sarge, who knows more about his past assignments as Barnes than he does, even if he’s catching flashes that should be wiped for optimal functioning.

“He did.” Sarge studies him just as intently. “Looks like we did too, men.”

Sergeant Barnes isn’t really the Sergeant, even if he’s been reassigned the code name and sees flashes of the Sergeant’s service under Captain America. Steve. 

His mind is still reeling from everything Sarge told him, but Sarge seems similarly shaken, shaking his head and muttering “Thirty hours ago, we were in Andy’s room planning Operation Playtime with Woody and Buzz.”

“What do we do now, sir?” Private Paratrooper asks Sarge, and they look at Sergeant Barnes like he’ll suddenly give orders. “We can’t take on HYDRA. We’re toys.”

“He’s not.” Gordon scoffs and makes a fist. “Let’s steal a car and blow up some HYDRA bases.”

Sarge had said they weren’t going back to the base they found Sergeant Barnes in, but he knows other bases.

Sarge salutes again, standing as tall as his two inches allow. “Sergeant, it would be my honor to continue to serve alongside you.”

Pain lances in the Soldier’s forehead. It’s not his choice. Nothing’s changed except his codename. He says what comes naturally, his proper, programmed response. “Ready to comply.”

Sarge’s face falls slightly before he straightens up. “All right men, we can’t stay here forever. Sergeant, let’s get suited up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Private Paratrooper says “Are we just waltzing in there?”

“That’s how we saved Sergeant Barnes,” Sarge points out, but he shakes his head. “No, this will require planning.”

Gordon grins. “We’re driving this time, right, sir?”

Chapter Text

Sarge gives the hand gesture for Gordon and Private Paratrooper to stay with the rescued toy soldiers while he accompanies Sergeant Barnes to the basement armory.

Likely the rescued toys won’t talk to them even once Barnes is out of earshot- they’ve already seen Sarge and his men breaking the rules- but Sarge gives them the chance. 

Sergeant Barnes disassembles and reassembles guns with sure, practiced movements, as efficient and purposeful as any of Sarge’s men. More so, if Sarge is being honest with himself. 

As Sergeant Barnes works, Sarge tells the tale of Woody and Buzz escaping Sid’s house of horrors, how Woody organized for the mutant victims of Sid’s sick games to turn on him and scare him senseless. None of Andy’s toys got to witness that battle like they saw Sid’s destruction in his yard, but the story is legendary in Andy’s room.

It’s a story Sergeant Barnes needs to hear. He needs to know escape and revenge are options.

Sarge hopes the story won’t overwhelm Barnes like the information his own past had. Woody and Buzz were only at Sid’s for two nights, rather than the decades Barnes was apparently alive. How many of those years was he frozen?

Sergeant Barnes simply observes that their rescue of the soldiers had different mission parameters, and that the toy soldiers hadn’t come alive to scare the kids that had tormented them this morning.

Sarge had been tempted to try that, but the kids had run inside bickering before it could even become a proper plan.

Sergeant Barnes’s steely blue gaze falls on the open lockers of spare uniforms. Most are black tactical gear, like his own but with decidedly less leather and straps, but there are green camo fatigues as well.

“I belong to your green army now.” Sergeant Barnes says slowly, like he’s seeking clarification if he should color-coordinate with Sarge and his paratroopers.

Sarge bites back a sigh. Of course one conversation isn’t going to bring back the autonomy HYDRA had so cruelly crushed, not even a conversation as crucial as discovering Sergeant Barnes’s identity. It really does seem as if someone had swapped his head, despite him sharing the same face as the legend from World War II.

Still, Sarge tries to hammer in that Sergeant Barnes has choices now.

“I’d be honored if you joined the Green Army, sir.” Sarge pointedly doesn’t think about how he hardly has an army now, with most of his bucket of two hundred troops lost to yard sales and donations and trash bags over the years.

Sergeant Barnes furrows his brow again, as if Sarge is spouting nonsense, as confused as he’d been during Sarge Says. Then his face clears and he strips out of his black tactical vest and pants, pulling on green fatigues and green gloves, effectively hiding his metal arm that stands out like a beacon.

It’s a much more modern uniform than his wartime photos, or even Sarge’s uniform molded into his plastic, but the effect is striking, making him look more like the Sergeant Barnes that Sarge read about. His hair is still longer than regulation and somewhat greasy. His face is still haunted. There’s a bit of a spark in his eyes, but it’s subtle, the way adults think children imagine the spark in their toys’ eyes.

Sergeant Barnes stares at his untied boots, and Sarge wonders if he knows how to tie them. His captors had dressed him like a Barbie doll.

“Are bases part of Green Army uniform regulations?” Sergeant Barnes asks, glancing between his own boots and the base attached to the bottom of Sarge’s.

Sarge barks a laugh. “No. We’re just molded with them so kids can stand us up easily.”

Sergeant Barnes ties the boots swiftly- they’re tan, not green, but the helmets almost match. Barnes tucks his hair up in one, and he almost looks like an ordinary soldier.

Sergeant Barnes stuffs a few duffel bags full of guns, ammo, knives, explosives and his old uniform. Not to wear, he reports, but to keep anyone off their trail. Several more weapons disappear in pouches and holsters on his new uniform before he silently ghosts back up the steps.

Upstairs, Gordon reports that rescued toys have remained in toy mode the whole time, and Sergeant Barnes offers his skills in interrogating prisoners.

“We’re not interrogating them.” Sarge casts a meaningful look at the motionless soldiers. “We saved him, just like we saved you. We had to break the rules.”

“Already divulged that, sir.” Private Parachute says.

Sarge continues staring at the still soldiers. “Listen up, men. Ordinarily, I’d say go on your own path.”

After all, Sarge and his men had just done so while leaving Andy’s room. It feels like weeks ago already. 

“However, you just heard some very classified intelligence, so we need you to stick with us for the foreseeable future, or until you can prove yourselves trustworthy. Am I understood?”

The soldier who’d been shot with the BB gun suddenly salutes. “Understood, Sir.”

The paratrooper who’d been luckily avoided being shot twitches, sending the shot soldier a betrayed look.

“Nobody will want me like this.” the shot soldier says, turning back to Sarge before the lucky paratrooper can reply. 

“Lieutenant Ryan, Sir. Not quite Private Ryan, but thanks for saving me.” His mouth twists. “Brad would have shot me to pieces.”

The lucky paratrooper heaves a sigh. “I’m never letting you leave me, sir.”

He salutes Sarge as well, and says, “Private Rogers, at your service.”

Sergeant Barnes twitches at the name and studies them intently. Their bond seems like it might rival the one between himself and Captain Rogers in the history books. 

“Is he really Bucky Barnes?” Lieutenant Ryan gapes, and of course he would’ve heard all about him with that girl. “What happened?” 

“Long story, boys.” Sarge figures it’s not his to tell.

“You need food,” Sarge tells Sergeant Barnes. It feels even more wrong ordering him around now than when he was a nameless human soldier with an entirely unknown past.

Sergeant Barnes stuffs another duffel bag with protein bars and pre-packaged shakes, MREs but no real food.

“Can you drive?” Private Parachute asks Sergeant Barnes, who nods stiffly. Sarge wasn’t sure, since Sergeant Barnes had ridden in the truck like cargo on the mission Sarge had unwillingly accompanied him on.

Sarge peers through his binoculars out the window, where a Pizza Planet truck is pulling into the driveway diagonally across from them.

“Come on, men! There’s an unattended Pizza Planet truck at two o’clock. Let’s move, move, move!”

It takes less than a minute for Sergeant Barnes to grab the duffel bags and commandeer the pizza truck idling on the curb. The driver turns around with a panicked shout as the truck peels away, but doesn’t manage to properly see Barnes.

Lieutenant Ryan and Private Rogers leap onto the stereo knobs to turn on the radio, while Gordon and Private Paratrooper dance and lip sync along.

“It’s our mission to bring the music,” Lieutenant Ryan flicks through several channels, while Gordon and Private Paratrooper demonstrate their adaptability by rolling with the musical changes.

They’ve practically turned the truck into a party, but Sarge allows it after everything they’ve been through. His men are professionals but they know how to have fun.

Sergeant Barnes doesn’t join in. He grips the steering wheel tight enough to damage it, though his eyes aren’t fixed on the road. They’re skittering around, trying to take in everything like he’s scanning for snipers in every passing tree or rooftop. He undoubtedly was the sniper on the rooftop before.

Sarge whips out his binoculars, scanning the surroundings. “I spy with my little eye, something that is orange.”

“Traffic cone.” Sergeant Barnes says immediately, eyes still darting around.

Sarge keeps him grounded by continuing the game (and despite everything he’s seen, Sarge is a toy, and the game soothes him too, even if it’s not the usual playtime a toy would have with a human).

They’re still going by nightfall, and they’re outside the Tri-County area. Private Rogers had suggested a Poultry Palace drive through, as if it wouldn’t be conspicuous to have a Pizza Planet truck order at another chain restaurant, but Sergeant Barnes has only eaten one protein bar. Barnes had ditched the truck in the parking lot and swiped a car that was the same silver as his arm. His gaze had slid toward a green one, but his training to be inconspicuous seemed to have won out.

At last, he stops the silver car at what must be another safehouse. Gordon’s clearly disappointed that they haven’t blown up a HYDRA base yet, grumbling as Sergeant Barnes does a perimeter sweep and Sarge scans the area with his binoculars. It’s a bigger mission than scouting Andy’s birthday and Christmas presents.

Sergeant Barnes clearly isn’t used to sleeping outside of being frozen, and he still refuses the bunks or couch, stretching on the floor. Sarge stands watch, and to his surprise, his troops, both new and old, march in formation, singing a cadence they must have come up with while having their music party in the truck. Gordon calls out each line, and the others echo them back.

“I don’t know if you’ve been told

We’re keeping you out of the cold.

Go to sleep, we’ll watch your back.

We’ll keep watch for an attack.”

The attack strikes in Barnes’s head, in the form of a vicious nightmare that has him screaming in his sleep. 

It’s worse than listening to baby Molly cry before Bo Peep and her lamp arrived to comfort her by casting a soft glow throughout Andy’s room. Even when he wakes up, he’s not truly aware.

Sarge tries to get him to spy his surroundings, but he’s lost in his head. The troops start up their march again.

“We know now you’re Sergeant Barnes,

We will keep you safe from harm.

We’ll do a perimeter sweep.

So lie back down and try to sleep.”

Chapter Text

Sergeant Barnes peers through the scope of his sniper rifle while Sarge stands on his shoulder with his tiny binoculars that evidently work, despite the lenses being the same opaque green plastic as the rest of him. 

Sergeant Barnes doesn’t question it. After all, molded plastic soldiers shouldn’t be able to move or talk. A tiny part of him wonders how there are living toys now but not flying cars, but he crushes the thought.

They’re scouting a HYDRA base that should be abandoned in the Rocky Mountains- if his patchy recollection is anything to go by, Rumlow was about a decade younger the last time Sergeant Barnes was deployed from this base. 

He’s seeing no signs of activity in his scope. No tire tracks on the dirt road besides their own. No footprints either.

“Let’s move,” Sarge hops off Sergeant Barnes’s shoulder, and the others jump out of the pockets on his new green uniform. The paratroopers deploy their parachutes, even though Sergeant Barnes could have easily set them down.

Sergeant Barnes hands them one of the two walkie-talkies clipped to his chest. Sarge had mentioned several reconnaissance missions to spy on Andy’s presents using baby monitors, but they’d been unable to procure those in any safehouse.

The toy soldiers march in perfect formation towards an air vent that’s too small for Sergeant Barnes to squeeze into, carrying the walkie-talkie above their heads. Sarge has a miniature screwdriver tied to his waist.

Sergeant Barnes admires their professionalism. For all that Sarge constantly breaks Soldier-handling protocols and tries to defer to Sergeant Barnes, he’s a competent leader to the toy soldiers, guiding them with silent hand signals.

While the other soldiers have confusing missions to dance and play games, they march with steely determination towards the air vent.

Sarge quickly unscrews the vent cover and the toys march inside, their plastic bases clicking slightly on the metal. 

Sergeant Barnes doesn’t remember the codes to gain entry- he wasn’t even reprimanded for his lack of intel. Even if he could remember, they’d likely changed in the years since he remembers being here.

He scowls, hoping he doesn’t slip into the memories of his time here. Nothing in particular stands out about this base in his memories. His treatment was the same as always. Rumlow used to offer him cigarettes after a successful mission, but sometimes put them out on the Soldier’s skin to watch the burns heal before his eyes. The agents used to hold competitions to see could make a burn stay longest on his skin.

Sarge’s games are nothing like that, but Sergeant Barnes is relieved to finally have a mission.

Sarge had said they should start with an abandoned base to lessen the possibility of Sergeant Barnes being reclaimed by HYDRA.

He said it more like he was worried about Sergeant Barnes’s safety than about losing a valuable asset on his team, but Sarge hasn’t been making use of Sergeant Barnes to his full potential. They were more eager to reassign him his past identity of Sergeant Barnes than to make use of the Soldier.

Sergeant Barnes is… relieved to finally have a purpose, after days of idling listlessly in safehouses and driving with no clear destination. The lack of the chair has increased the phantom visions flashing through his head, and the mission is giving him something else to focus on.

He gets flashes of trekking through other mountains with Captain Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Sarge said they’d raided HYDRA bases back in the war, before HYDRA had turned Sergeant Barnes to their side.

He hardly remembers it, but the current mission is similar to the last time he’d been Sergeant Barnes.

Sarge’s voice crackles on the radio. “Come in, Summer Sergeant.”

Sergeant Barnes huffs, regretting mentioning his previous codename of Winter Soldier, because Sarge had insisted on using the opposite for this mission.

“This is Rogers.” Private Rogers interrupts, clearly thinking he’s being funny. He can’t be demoted below private, unless he becomes a new Asset, and Lieutenant Ryan tells him off in the background.

Sergeant Barnes remembers banter and bickering between Strike team members and, vaguely, the Howling Commandos.

Sarge’s voice pulls him back to the present. “This is Plastic Commando. Come in, Summer Sergeant.”

Sergeant Barnes ducks his head so his mouth is millimeters away from his walkie talkie. “Copy.”

“You were right, Sergeant. Base seems to be abandoned except for nonhuman vermin. Good work.” Sarge says easily, like Sergeant Barnes hadn’t forgotten the codes. “We’ve exited the vents, and we’ll open the door for you shortly. Stand by.”

“Copy.” Sergeant Barnes repeats. It’s clear, from his lapses in mental functioning, that he needs a wipe, another reason they’re hitting an abandoned base. Yet Sarge insists the wipes did more harm than good, calling them barbaric.

A few minutes later, the door shudders and slowly slides open with some protesting groans. 

Sergeant Barnes stalks into the base on silent feet, and takes the walkie talkie back from the toys.

Gordon debriefs him on their battle against a mouse in the air vents. Sergeant Barnes could have easily handled that, but the plastic troops clearly had it covered without his backup.

The soldiers continue to march through the base, and Sergeant Barnes joins the formation, practically having to march in place to avoid stepping on anyone.

The interior is dusty and dark, a sharp contrast from the blindingly white sterile environment Sergeant Barnes remembers, but the memories come flooding back all too fast. Endurance tests, pain threshold tests, experiments on his healing.

Sergeant Barnes is grateful that Sarge keeps calling the cadence of “left, left, left right left.”

The operating theater is similarly dark and deserted, save for mice scurrying in the corners, but they hide and don’t attack the toys. 

The metal slab waits with reinforced metal restraints.

Sergeant Barnes’s metal fist clenches, whirring, his breath harsh in his ears.

“Go on, punch it.” Gordon says.

“Smash it.” Private Paratrooper chimes in.

Sergeant Barnes glances at Sarge, who nods and gestures for him to proceed.

The clang of his prosthesis against the metal table rivals the volume of a gunshot, the noise echoing through the operating theater as memories of medical experiments echo through his head.

He can almost feel the scalpels, the drills, every burn and cut and spark in the arm.

The clanging gets louder, his metal fist smashing into the restraints, the table, which slowly dent and warp the more he pummels them. There’s another sound, too, a scream, a roar of pure fury, and he belatedly realizes it’s coming from his own throat.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on, but eventually he’s panting and the table and restraints are warped beyond usability. They’ll never hold him again.

“Good work, Sergeant.” Sarge nods approvingly. 

“Bet that felt good.” Private Paratrooper whistles. “I felt vindicated just watching.”

Sergeant Barnes keeps panting, though not from exhaustion- his endurance has been tested thoroughly beyond that.

Seeing the destroyed table, knowing it’s useless now, brings a satisfaction Sergeant Barnes didn’t even know he could feel. 

They continue to move through the deserted base, planting explosives from his backpack at strategic points. Sergeant Barnes remembers being deployed from here, but the cryo tube had moved with him.

At the shooting range, they find not a human but a toy, laying sprawled under a fallen target. Sergeant Barnes knows those blue tights with stripes and a star practically painting a target on the chest.

He almost says “I thought you were bigger” but bites back the words. He’d said the opposite when Steve pulled him off the table, freed him from the restraints. He doesn’t remember Steve smashing it like he just had.

“First Sergeant Barnes and now Cap.” Private Rogers shakes his head. “If only Combat Carl Bucky could see us now.”

Lieutenant Ryan slings an arm around Private Rogers’s shoulders, and Sergeant Barnes recalls the phantom sensation of doing the same to the real Captain despite being way too informal and familiar. 

“Captain,” Sarge calls out to the motionless toy. “Captain, can you hear me?”

The Captain America action figure shifts before wiggling its jointed plastic body out from under the fallen target.

Private Rogers swears at the sight that’s revealed.

The Captain figure’s head has been removed, and his shield is glued to the knob of a neck joint as a makeshift sort of face. Two bullet holes form a crude approximation of eyes on the shield face, while a frown has been painted on with what looks like blood.

“Are we sure Woody scared Sid for good?” Private Paratrooper mutters.

Sergeant Barnes’s stomach churns, even more than when he’d been seeing the operating table. He may hardly remember the Captain, but seeing a mutilated version is pinging more alarm bells in his brain than the sight of the operating table.

The bullet hole eyes somehow widen, the blood mouth forming a surprised O when it sees Sergeant Barnes, but the Captain figure doesn’t flop over lifelessly. Instead, his little plastic hand taps out morse code, spelling B-U-C-K-Y.

He’s not Bucky, and this isn’t really the Captain, merely a toy made to look like him. How could he have the Captain’s memories? Does he have more memories than Sergeant Barnes himself? 

Sergeant Barnes wonders how he sees without his head, with a cruel facsimile in its place, but there’s no logical explanation for any of this.

“You’re not him,” Sergeant Barnes says in a low voice. “I’m not him.”

The shield face slowly nods.

“Are you joining us, Captain?” Sarge asks. “We’re going to detonate as soon as we leave.”

Sergeant Barnes wonders if it’d be a mercy to leave him here, but Lieutenant Ryan is offering a hand. The shield’s bullet hole eyes seem to linger on the hole ripped through Lieutenant Ryan’s chest.

“Yeah, me too.” Lieutenant Ryan says. “Come on, Captain Shieldface. Let’s get out of here.”

The Captain figure stands all on his own, determined. He’s bigger than the other toy soldiers, but only about six inches tall. 

He sticks close to Sergeant Barnes, even if neither of them are quite who they look like, who they represent.

Sergeant Barnes supposes that, if Captain Rogers were alive, he’d be more upset at seeing Sergeant Barnes in his current state than Sergeant Barnes is at this mutilated action figure.

“Good work, men. Let’s move, move, move!” Sarge hollers.

They march their way back through the base and into the sunlight. Sergeant Barnes’ mouth twists. Even with his smattering of memories, he recognizes the irony of breaking a Captain America figure out of a HYDRA base, roles traded from a lifetime ago.

Captain Shieldface tries to chase all the mice out, and Sergeant Barnes ends up collecting them all in his backpack. He has enough lives on his hands already.

Once they’re a safe distance away, he detonates the explosives, then sets the mice free, figuring they won’t run into a fire.

“Mission accomplished. Good work, men.” Sarge says.

Captain Shieldface pumps his fists in the air, not needing Morse code or even a face to get his satisfaction across. 

Gordon cheers as the base continues to burn into a smoldering wreck. “I can almost see why Sid loved blowing stuff up!”

Chapter Text

Sarge never had the opportunity to meet a Captain America action figure- he’d always wanted to talk battle strategy with one, hear of what missions a toy Captain America led compared to the real hero. Sarge privately thought a toy Captain America’s missions would be even more impressive than the missions led by Woody and Buzz, and he respected them greatly.

He’d always wondered if a Captain America figure would think himself the real hero, like Buzz did, or if he would have no idea of his own fame, like Woody.

Captain Shieldface has been twisted and hurt in horrific ways, to the point he’s hardly who he resembles anymore. Of course, he’s not the only one. Over half of the current squadron is traumatized to hell and back, having spent far too long there.

Half of them jump when a stick snaps under their car’s wheels, alert like it’s a gunshot.

His men crank up the radio after that, celebrating blowing up the base. Captain Shieldface dances on Sergeant Barnes’s flesh shoulder while Sarge stands atop the metal one, not dancing.

Sergeant Barnes scowls at the road and keeps sending little glances toward Captain Shieldface. “Captain America couldn’t dance.”

“Is he going to lead us now?” Private Rogers whispers to the other soldiers in the passenger seat. “Captain outranks Sergeant.”

“So does Lieutenant.” Lieutenant Ryan points out, though he’d been perfectly willing to defer to Sarge or Sergeant Barnes. As toys, their titles are mostly cosmetic- children can change them on a whim, after all, can have them completely switch sides during playtime. One playtime’s fearless hero can become the next playtime’s evil minion.

“Here we go again,” Gordon mutters to Private Paratrooper. “Cap’s gonna be the new favorite toy, even looking like that.”

“Yeah, but Sarge won’t get jealous like Woody did.” Private Paratrooper sighs. “We little army guys are never the favorites.”

Sarge would be honored to serve with a Captain America figure, almost as honored as he is to serve with the real Sergeant Barnes, but Barnes certainly isn’t in a stable position to lead right now. Captain Shieldface somehow seems much more together mentally, despite literally missing his original head.

Sarge himself is, of course, quite proficient and professional in leading his troops, but Woody had always filled the role of top brass with his golden sheriff’s star. Like Sergeant Barnes, Sarge feels unmoored without a superior’s leadership, but he’s had to step up since leaving Andy’s house.

He takes a moment to wonder what became of Woody and the others. Surely Andy wouldn’t have thrown them in the trash like Andy’s mom did with some of Sarge’s men.

“You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?” Sergeant Barnes suddenly asks. 

The bite marks littered over Captain Shieldface’s plastic body tell a harrowing tale of facing those literally. His left foot has been almost chewed off, which would have made him an odd match with Barnes. The Captain doesn’t balk at the mention of jaws, clenching his chewed fists with determination.

Clearly he’s ready to go destroy HYDRA bases like his historic counterpart.

Sarge’s men have raised a valid question about leadership. Will Sergeant Barnes cast Captain Shieldface as the leader from his apparently rusty memories of the real Captain, or still submit to Sarge’s leadership? He clearly knows Captain Shieldface isn’t the real Captain.

Really, none of the toys should be leading a human, that’s completely unnatural, but so is talking and moving around people- a grown man, no less.

“Hell no,” Sergeant Barnes replies to himself, causing a few raised eyebrows from the passenger seat. “That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight… I’m following him.”

“Knew it, Captain Shieldface is the new favorite.” Private Paratrooper says in an undertone to Gordon. 

Gordon turns to Sarge. “Sorry, Sir. You’ve been replaced.”

“We watched both Woody and Buzz share the favorite status for almost a decade.” Sarge reminds them.

Sarge really doesn’t care about being the favorite, but he knows any army needs a good chain of command to operate smoothly. Luckily the new recruits found their places easily, but Captain Shieldface is throwing a wrench in things without trying. Sarge remembers all too well how chaotic Andy’s room was when Buzz first showed up and seemed to usurp Woody as the favorite.

“Carl Bucky was Sara’s favorite.” Private Rogers chimes in, though he clearly holds no animosity towards Sergeant Barnes. “I got to play Morita once before being cast as HYDRA scum.”

Captain Shieldface has yet to offer any opinion of his own, though according to the history books, Cap always stood up for what he believed in and famously disobeyed orders to rescue Sergeant Barnes and other prisoners from behind enemy lines.

The Captain’s shield face turns to Sarge, and he taps a red, chewed hand on the bottom of the shield where his “chin” is before extending the hand towards Sarge. 

“That means thank you , ” Sergeant Barnes says, then blinks, like he hadn’t realized he knew sign language.

“A good soldier never leaves a man behind.” It’s almost become Sarge’s motto, and Captain Shieldface nods his shield empathetically. Sarge wonders if he knows about Captain America rescuing Sergeant Barnes from the HYDRA camp back in the war.

“So who’s giving the orders?” Gordon asks, folding his arms. “Is it going to be a joint leadership, like Woody and Buzz?”

Captain Shieldface nods at Sarge and gives a salute. Sarge salutes back, reiterating that it’s an honor to serve with him.

Captain Shieldface gives a series of rapid taps on Barnes’s shoulder. Sarge’s morse code is a little rusty, but he catches the word “base.”

“He knows other bases.” Sergeant Barnes reports.

“Let’s go blow those up too!” Private Paratrooper pounds his fist in his hand.

Sergeant Barnes nods stiffly, his gaze is distant as he drives through the Rocky Mountains.

They pass a ski resort, which Sarge would have expected to be abandoned over the summer, but appears to still be occupied by civilians. They have to freeze when Sergeant Barnes drives past a few mountain bikers and hikers.

Given Sergeant Barnes’s history on snowy mountains, Sarge is glad it’s currently August.

They leave the ski resort behind and end up at a cabin in a more secluded area of the forest. Sergeant Barnes patrols the perimeter, and Sarge scans with his binoculars. They work well together, as if they’ve been a team for years.

Sergeant Barnes methodically clears each room of the cabin, which is much like the other safehouses, save for the rustic feeling of the wooden walls. Woody and Jessie would have liked to come here, Sarge thinks.

Captain Shieldface finds a stack of sticky notes and a pen. It takes a bit for him to get a good grip on the pencil with his chewed up hands, but his strokes are sure and steady once he starts to draw maps indicating the location of bases.

Sergeant Barnes watches him draw like he’s seeing a ghost, then mutters a list of coordinates that Captain Shieldface jots down on another note.

While the Captain draws, the other soldiers slide down the staircase railing like Andy used to do with Woody, only it’s closer to snowboarding on their plastic bases.

Sergeant Barnes tears his gaze away from the Captain’s drawings to a green snowboard resting by a door. He swaps out his combat boots for the snow boots, seemingly unbothered by how much clunkier they look, then slides the boots onto the base.

“I told you bases aren’t a requirement, Sergeant,” Sarge almost smiles as Sergeant Barnes proceeds to march around like it’s always been attached to him, even hopping up the steps with the snowboard taking up the entire width. An ordinary human should have fallen, shouldn’t be nearly so coordinated. There’s almost something superhuman about Sergeant Barnes, even though Captain America was reportedly the only one who received the serum. Sarge is beginning to think there was a second, secret serum.

Sergeant Barnes glances at the railing, then simply slides back down the steps. The other troops cheer and holler, applauding and whooping as he snowboards downstairs.

They start egging him on to go again as soon as he reaches the bottom, and then Private Paratrooper turns it into a friendly competition, doing spins and flips on his way down.

Sarge claps as Sergeant Barnes makes his way down again. Even Captain Shieldface looks up from his drawings to watch the proceedings. 

Private Rogers must have watched the Olympics, because he starts doing commentary.

Captain Shieldface goes back to his drawings. Instead of maps, he’s now sketching impressively realistic renderings of what must be HYDRA operatives.

Gordon sails off the railing and lands on the floor, skidding to a halt by Captain Shieldface and Sarge. He glances down at the latest sketch. “Hey, it’s that Rumlow creep who picked us up. Pity he wasn’t in the base we burned.”

Captain Shieldface has captured the mean look in Rumlow’s eye, the cruel smirk as he aims a gun at the viewer. No doubt it was aimed at Captain Shieldface, too.

Neither Captain Shieldface nor Sergeant Barnes are sure which base Rumlow will be at, and Sarge isn’t sure what Barnes will do if faced with a former handler. He wonders if they should play it out, the way children act out scenarios with their toys.

When they retire for the night, Lieutenant Ryan and Private Rogers cuddle up together as they have every time, though Lieutenant Ryan keeps Private Rogers away from the bullet hole in his chest. Sarge doesn’t say anything- he and his men used to be one giant huddle in their bucket, after all, and toy boxes leave little room for privacy. Toys can’t afford to have the same hangups about personal space that people have.

Sarge is surprised when Captain Shieldface cuddles up under Sergeant Barnes’s chin, and is even more surprised that Sergeant Barnes lets him.

Private Paratrooper mutters about Captain Shieldface being the favorite again, though Sarge wonders if this is Barnes thinking he has no say. 

“You can tell him no,” Sarge says, and it’s surreal saying that to a human, when toys have no say in how people treat them. The squad is evidence enough. 

Sergeant Barnes doesn’t move, allowing Captain Shieldface to stay with him. Sarge wonders if it brings any comfort the way Woody did to Andy.

Sarge has been on bedtime duty before, but never in the bed. After Bo Peep solved baby Molly’s nighttime crying, Andy started fearing monsters under the bed, and Bo Peep’s lamp hadn’t helped him like it had Molly. 

Instead, Andy had set Sarge and his men up around the edge of the bed to stand watch while he hugged Woody under the covers.

Andy hadn’t treated them like fodder for the imaginary monster, clearly trusting them to keep the enemies at bay. 

Sarge stands watch over Sergeant Barnes and Captain Shieldface in a similar manner, although the monsters in Sergeant Barnes’s night terrors are much more real.

He wakes up screaming again, and seems to view himself as the monster, if the way he looks at his hands is any indication.

Captain Shieldface jolts awake from where he’d been tossed by Barnes’s thrashing. He starts frantically tapping morse code Sergeant Barnes’ thigh, likely spelling out reassurances.

Sarge tries to talk him out of his head, but Barnes curls against the wall, lost in the aftermath of his nightmare.

Chapter Text

Things had been simpler in cryo. He didn’t dream in the ice. As much as it hurt, it was a respite, a time when his mind could simply be switched off rather than conjuring up a barrage of confusing and painful images.

This is why the chair was protocol. Pain is an inconsequential part of his existence; a necessity for his proper functioning. He’s not sure why Sarge thinks the lack of a chair results in a lack of pain. Erasing the images would almost be a mercy in addition to improving his functioning.

Sergeant Barnes’s mind reenaged after cryosleep or even the chair quicker than after this odd, almost human sleep. 

When Sergeant Barnes comes to, he finds himself in the cabin, surrounded by log walls rather than the cold concrete of the base or the rooftop he shot a mother from. He’d watched her baby tumble from her arms as she collapsed like a lifeless doll. 

The fall might have caused the baby more brain damage than his own.

Captain Shieldface stands by him, rapping out morse code on Sergeant Barnes’ new green fatigues, which are drenched in sweat. S-A-F-E.

The mother wasn’t safe from him. He doesn’t know what happened to the baby, and he’s sure that this squad wouldn’t be happy if they knew about it. They hadn’t liked him pointing a gun at the children despite the way Brad had aimed his at the toy soldiers.

“Area’s secure, sir.” Sarge tells him. “We’re on watch.”

“I shot kids.” Sergeant Barnes says. Not the baby, he thinks, but he’s sure he sighted other kids in scope before rescuing the toy soldiers, and he must have pulled the trigger.

The Captain’s hand stills for a second against the Soldier’s rapidly-cooling sweaty fatigues. 

Maybe they’ll send him back to his previous handlers, back to a world that makes sense, and all the confusion will be scrubbed from his brain in the chair.

Several toy soldiers shift uneasily, even Lieutenant Ryan with the BB hole that a kid put in his chest. 

“I know they made you do horrible things,” Sarge starts. “But that wasn’t you. Look what you’ve done since you escaped. You saved three of us and blew up a base that held you captive.”

Sergeant Barnes frowns at his hands. He was just following a new superior. He’d been ordered to execute HYDRA traitors before. He’s killed far more than three people, and he doubts he remembers everyone he killed.

Captain Shieldface stops rapping morse code on his thigh and simply rests a hand there.

Sergeant Barnes knows he’d sighted the real Captain America through his scope before. Had he been ordered to kill that former commander? Only he sees bullets picking off the HYDRA agents attacking Captain America. He was watching the Captain’s six, shooting enemies as Captain America flung himself and his shield around like a maelstrom, with the same enhanced superhuman efficiency as the Soldier. He clearly had no concept of self preservation, hence Sergeant Barnes’s duty of watching his back.

Sarge urges Sergeant Barnes to stand up and head to the bathroom, and he hears the other toys remark that he’s like a child who needs to be told when to bathe and eat.

Sarge shouts at them to stop.

Sergeant Barnes strips out of his fatigues and, with some guidance from Sarge, places them in the washing machine next to the sink. 

As the Soldier, he was expected to clean the weapons he used on missions, but never had laundry duty before. He thinks, at one point, laundry involved washboards and vigorous scrubbing instead of a machine. He pictures clotheslines between city buildings with clothes hung out to dry. 

Sarge finally used Sergeant Barnes for what he’s made for- destruction- only to turn around and put him on laundry duty. He wonders if this is some strange punishment for reporting on shooting kids, but the machine makes the task far too easy. Punishment is supposed to hurt, but that doesn’t seem to be Sarge’s style.

Sarge briefs Sergeant Barnes on a previous mission to another washing machine to rescue a few green plastic soldiers from Andy’s pockets.

The fatigues tumble around behind the circular glass door, much like the jumbled images in Sergeant Barnes’s head.

The toys don’t have to worry about laundry with their molded plastic uniforms, or eating or sleeping; they’re clearly aware of their surroundings when frozen, so they’re not sleeping then.

Toys don’t require the same maintenance as Sergeant Barnes. It seems much more efficient than this hassle of upkeep, except for how they have to act lifeless around humans. The toy soldiers clearly experts at covert movement and remaining undetected by humans, like Sergeant Barnes himself. 

Sarge directs Sergeant Barnes to wash his body and hair, insisting he use warm water instead of the coldest setting. 

Captain Shieldface climbs into the sink to wash the blood mouth from his face while Sarge directs Sergeant Barnes through the process of using shampoo.

“What happened to the real Captain America?” Sergeant Barnes asks as he awkwardly tries to rub shampoo in his hair. The handlers usually did this for him. 

Sarge doesn’t smack him for asking like Pierce would have. Was he ordered to shoot the Captain later, in one of the memories of watching him through a scope? 

“He died crashing a plane into the Arctic, just a few weeks after you fell.” Sarge sounds uncharacteristically hesitant. “Unless he didn’t. You survived your fall, and being frozen alive who knows how many times. Cap had the serum too. If anyone could survive that, he could.”

Sergeant Barnes’s heart stutters oddly, the way it had when he saw the gnawed, wrecked form of Captain Shieldface. 

“We have to find him.” Sergeant Barnes shuts off the shower spray and steps out. The washing machine has finished with the fatigues. He tosses them in the dryer and Captain Shieldface helps him figure out the knobs.

He cringes slightly at being so brazen; he’s not in charge here, as much as Sarge likes to act like they’re equals. But if their mission is taking down HYDRA bases, Captain America would be a tremendous asset to that mission. Not in the way the Soldier was an asset. The Captain is even better.

Had HYDRA found Captain America the way they found Sergeant Barnes in the snow? Do they have him stashed away in another base like Captain Shieldface? 

Sergeant Barnes’s blood boils at the thought of the Captain being mutilated in a similar manner, although the real Captain might not have lasting scars like Captain Shieldface’s chewed body.

“Did they mention having the Captain?” he asks Captain Shieldface, who now only has eyes and no mouth. 

He shakes his shield head and raps on the countertop that they hadn’t mentioned Sergeant Barnes either.

Sergeant Barnes strides naked into the main part of the cabin. His green uniform isn’t finished in the dryer yet, but he’s accustomed to being nude around clothed soldiers. 

Should they search the arctic? He’s woefully unequipped for that, even if he’d survived cryo. Or is it more likely they’ll find him locked in a HYDRA base somewhere?

According to Sarge, the history books all said the Captain died, but they said the same thing about him, too.

Rumlow might know where the Captain is. He’d had a high enough clearance to know about the Soldier, after all.

Sergeant Barnes scans the sticky notes of coordinates and maps. Surely if HYDRA hunted him down after his fall, they would have tried to find the Captain too. 

He takes a moment to jot down that the Captain might have survived on another sticky note, and a few of the memories tumbling through his head. That he’d had the Captain’s six, had watched his back. They’d marched through the forest together, he’d seen the Captain drawing like Captain Shieldface.

His hand switches between English, Russian and Chinese between sticky notes. He hadn’t realized he knew how to write kanji characters.

As Sergeant Barnes writes, Captain Shieldface draws a new, smiling mouth along the bottom of one of the rings of the shield.

Everyone except Lieutenant Ryan is missing, and he reports they’re doing a stealth exercise (or game) called Hide-and-Seek.

“Fall in!” Sarge calls, and the troops exit their hiding places to form a line, which Sergeant Barnes tries to join until Sarge beckons him to stand next to Sarge and Captain Shieldface.

“Are we ready to blow up another base?” Gordon asks almost gleefully.

“Affirmative. We’re still going to be hitting HYDRA hard, but we have a new mission parameter. It’s likely Captain America is still alive, so we’re adding a search and rescue too.”

“Wait, the real Captain America?” Private Rogers eyes are wide with disbelief.

“We already have Sergeant Barnes.” Private Paratrooper nudges Private Rogers with his elbow. “Sarge wants to complete the collection.”

Lieutenant Ryan shakes his head in disbelief. “This is wilder than any of Sara’s playtimes, and she had us fight a wizard guinea pig.”

“You might want to put on some clothes before we go.” Gordon tells Sergeant Barnes.

The green fatigues are still in the dryer, so Sergeant Barnes pulls on orange snow pants for the time being, frowning at the color contrast to the rest of the troops. Both the color and the sound they make when he walks make them as conspicuous as possible. They clearly weren’t made for stealth, and won’t serve for covert operations.

Sergeant Barnes fastens the clunky boots attached to the board to his feet as the other toys rush off and hide again. Even with their diminutive sizes allowing a plethora of hiding places and a board attached to his feet, tracking them down will be far too easy.

Chapter Text

The missions they go on are so real that Sarge almost forgets he’s a toy sometimes. He and his men sneak through even occupied bases skillfully enough that he hasn’t frozen up in toy mode in days.

Other missions remind him he’s a toy when he and the other toys ride in a pouch hanging from Sergeant Barnes’s belt near his metal hand.

Captain Shieldface and Sergeant Barnes know the layout of the bases and the movements of the guards almost as well as Sarge knew Andy’s house and the activities of Andy’s family. Captain Shieldface had even drawn handy maps on sticky notes.

Any worry Sarge had about Sergeant Barnes freezing up around his old handlers seems, so far, to be unfounded. He tears through the agents and scientists with the same brutal, superhuman efficiency that he’d used on the mission Rumlow sent him on. 

Sergeant Barnes’s green fatigues end up splattered red with blood, as does his snowboard when he practically crushes an agent’s head with it still attached to his boots. 

It almost seems like showing off, how he still stomps the enemies flat with his feet locked to a snowboard. He wasn’t made with it the way Sarge, Gordon and Private Paratrooper were, but Sarge forgets that with how seamlessly he blends it into his combat.

At one point, Sergeant Barnes twists to take a bullet that would have hit one of the toys in his pouch. A bullet in the thigh doesn’t even slow him down. He tears into the base’s operatives with an increased brutality, sometimes literally tearing them apart.

“Even Brad would be shocked by this.” Lieutenant Ryan mutters from inside the pouch as some agent’s gargled, agonized scream is abruptly silenced.

Nobody seems to recognize Sergeant Barnes in his green outfit, with a balaclava leaving only his stormy eyes visible. Do they still believe him to be in the freezer? Or perhaps these members don’t have a high enough clearance to know about him in the first place; his existence seems to have been a strictly need-to-know basis.

He kills them before they can get the word out of the mysterious, murderous soldier. 

“Where’s Captain America?” Sergeant Barnes growls as he roughly shakes a scientist by his throat.

“In the ice.” the scientist sputters.

“Which tank?” Sergeant Barnes squeezes tighter.

The scientist’s mouth starts to foam, and Sergeant Barnes flings his lifeless corpse away like an unwanted rag doll.

“Clear.” he mutters, and Sarge leads the rest of the men out of the pouch.

“You’re bleeding.” he frowns at the deep red stain on Sergeant Barnes’s other thigh.

“It will heal.” Sergeant Barnes says, unconcerned, but he yanks down his pants and digs around for the bullet, showing a disconcerting lack of response to the pain of fishing around his own open wound with tweezers.

He pulls the bullet out and lets it clatter on the floor. Captain Shieldface rests a hand on his leg, careful not to touch the wound.

“You took that for us?” Lieutenant Ryan asks in disbelief.

Sergeant Barnes looks at him like he’s an idiot. “I heal. You have no healing capabilities.”

“Yeah, well, they don’t kill me.” Lieutenant Ryan pointedly pokes his hand through the hole in his chest. Private Rogers looks more squeamish at that than he does at all the bodies.

“Wish my gun worked.” Gordon frowns down at his plastic firearm, which Sergeant Barnes had noted was a M16A1 and M7 bayonet earlier. “I’d love to shoot some HYDRA scum.”

While planning the missions, Sergeant Barnes had asked why Sarge’s pistol and the others’ guns don’t fire, citing that they can move and speak despite being molded plastic and can think without brains (Gordon had taken mock offense) but their plastic guns can’t shoot. 

Sarge hadn’t been able to offer up any explanation, but Sergeant Barnes had eventually shrugged it off. 

Gordon and Private Paratrooper are delighted to help set up the charges to blow this base, and there are no mice to rescue this time. 

Sergeant Barnes looks almost satisfied when he detonates the base.

“Who wants ice cream?” Private Rogers asks as they drive away in a stolen jeep. Sergeant Barnes had taken the snowboard off for the drive, but is still wearing the extremely cumbersome boots that attach to it that clearly weren’t made for driving.

“He was frozen alive, you idiot.” Gordon shakes his head. “Of course he doesn’t want ice cream.”

“It’s what Sara’s parents did after her soccer games.” Private Rogers says defensively. Sarge remembers hearing about Andy’s mom taking him out for ice cream after baseball games.

“What about coffee?” Lieutenant Ryan suggests. “Brad and Sara’s parents can’t get up in the morning without coffee. I don’t know how you survive without it.”

Sergeant Barnes reports that some of the breakfast MREs have a powdered coffee mix that he’s consumed, and it’s currently 13:13, though the clock in the car reads 1:13.

Sarge thinks the MRE coffee looks like dirt, although all coffee comes from beans. That morning, Sergeant Barnes had scowled more while drinking it, as if he privately thought it was terrible but wasn’t about to say so. Then again, he probably hadn’t been fed well in ages.

The others keep shouting out suggestions.

“Cake?”

“Hot dogs?”

“Burgers?”

“Pizza?”

Sergeant Barnes seems confused why they’re talking about a reward only he would be able to eat, and Lieutenant Ryan is adamant that he can’t just eat sad MREs all the time.

The team has, of course, turned on the radio to dance to the music as they drive.

Sergeant Barnes’s flesh fingers are tapping lightly on the steering wheel in rhythm with the beat. Sarge doesn’t know if it’s a sign of his old self leaking out or if he thinks he’ll be tested on it like when copying drum sequences, but it’s better than the almost toy-like stillness and blankness. Sarge nods approvingly, while the others cheer him on like he busted out breakdancing.

They ditch the jeep to steal another pizza car, though it’s not a Pizza Planet truck and is for some other chain. There’s a stack of pizzas cooling in the passenger seat, and Gordon hops on the top box, urging him to try it. The squad even lifts the lid for him.

Sergeant Barnes reaches over with his flesh hand and grabs a triangular slice. Some of the sauce drips onto his uniform, but it’s already stained by blood.

He takes a bite and his usual mechanical chewing turns more eager. As he drives, he devours the entire stack of pizzas, which is more than Andy ever ate as a teenager, once his mom started saying he ate her out of house and home.

The next safe house is nestled in the suburbs like when they’d rescued the toy soldiers. There’s a handy stain remover on top of the washing machine that hopefully will get the blood and sauce out of Sergeant Barnes’s uniform. Sarge frowns as he realizes the agents who stayed here also had to remove blood from their uniforms, and likely far more innocent blood.

This safe house has an abandoned remote control jeep without the remote. It still runs, like how RC sometimes drove himself, even though Woody and Buzz had to drive him while catching up to the moving truck.

“Sweet! We finally get our own ride!” Gordon vaults into the driver’s seat, leaving Private Paratrooper to the passenger seat while Lieutenant Ryan and Private Rogers cuddle in the backseat.

They careen around the safe house, weaving through the legs of kitchen chairs, racing laps around the couch. They go on simple, unassigned missions to bring Captain Shieldface more pens, more sticky notes and bring Sergeant Barnes a bag of chips that he munches more mechanically than the pizza.

Sarge lets his men have their fun, but he, Captain Shieldface and Sergeant Barnes are all business, already planning out their next attack. From what he read, the real Captain America rarely stopped moving during the war.

The next safe house they reach is occupied, and Sarge peers through a gap in the curtains with his binoculars. 

“It’s Rumlow.” he reports.

“Let’s pay him a visit,” Private Paratrooper says darkly. They sweep the perimeter, and Rumlow seems to be the only occupant.

Sergeant Barnes picks the lock on the backdoor and slips inside. The door creaks.

“Rollins, we’re supposed to be planning, not hooking up with some floozy.” Rumlow calls from the other room.

Sergeant Barnes materializes like a ghost in front of Rumlow.

Rumlow is the first person to recognize Barnes in his new outfit. “Hey! How’d you get out of the ice?” he asks, quickly turning his shocked expression into a sneer. “What, you’re trying to be a real boy now, Pinocchio? All dressed up like a human soldier, free of your strings? I guess it’s up to me to remind you that you’re HYDRA’s puppet.”

Rumlow barks a word in Russian, and Sergeant Barnes collapses like a marionette with cut strings, or Woody.

Rumlow stares down at him, eyeing the snowboard. “Wait, are you dressed up like those toy soldiers I gave you? Damn, your brain really is fried to a crisp isn’t it?”

Rumlow kicks Sergeant Barnes’s fallen form, then plants a boot on his face and grinds his face into the floor. “Guess you had enough sense to report, but still. You’re in for a world of hurt.”

Sarge’s fists clench as Rumlow twirls a taser in his grip. “This doesn’t have nearly enough zap to reset your brain, but it’ll be fun. I promise.”

Sarge fumes at how Rumlow treats Sergeant Barnes like a toy to play with and abuse however he wants.

Rumlow pauses, then grabs a stun baton instead, tossing the taser on the couch behind him. He jabs the stun baton into Sergeant Barnes’s stomach, switching it on and chuckling as Sergeant Barnes twitches helplessly on the floor.

Sarge has seen him walk off a bullet in the leg, so the word Rumlow used is clearly more powerful than the taser.

Sarge motions for his team to climb onto the couch and commandeer the taser. They brace themselves against the backrest as they fire, and the taser line shoots into the back of Rumlow’s neck.

Rumlow swears, twitching like Barnes before collapsing backwards.

Lieutenant Ryan and Private Rogers rush forward. Lieutenant Ryan pulls the gun out of Rumlow’s holster, pushing it away with all the strength he can muster from his five inches of height.

Sarge hops onto Rumlow’s upper lip, staring down into his eyes, trying to seem as tall as his height allows.

“You thought HYDRA was the only secret hiding everywhere.” Sarge all but snarls at him. “Well, we toys see everything, and we see what you did to Sergeant Barnes. We let him out.”

“Bet you regret picking us up now!” Gordon crows, still aiming the taser at Rumlow, firing again for good measure. Sarge grips Rumlow’s nose to avoid being tossed by his twitching.

Sergeant Barnes is no longer twitching from the stun baton, but he’s not getting up.

Captain Shieldface stalks towards Rumlow, climbing atop his face and planting his boot just as Rumlow had done to Sergeant Barnes. 

“Did someone spike my beer?” Rumlow mutters.

Sarge stares down at him. “We thought Captain America stomped you heinous HYDRA dirtbags out ages ago, but it looks like Sergeant Barnes has to finish the job now.”

Rumlow hacks a laugh. “You really think he’s Sergeant Barnes? We burned that outta him, just like I’m going to burn you on the grill. Or should I melt you in the microwave?”

Rumlow jolts, flinging Sarge off him. He lunges for his gun, but a boot stomps on his hand, still attached to the snowboard underneath.

Sergeant Barnes is up, staring down at Rumlow as he grasps his injured hand.

“Soldier, you little-” Rumlow grits out. 

“Where’s Captain America?” Sergeant Barnes asks, tone quiet.

Rumlow starts to say another Russian word, but Sergeant Barnes presses Rumlow down with his full weight on the snowboard, his voice growing harder. “Where is the Captain?!”

“We never managed to dig him out.” Rumlow says. “Would’ve been way better than you, you defective piece of-”

Sergeant Barnes shoots him in the head, and blood splatters his uniform again.

Gordon says they should get going, but Sergeant Barnes shakes his head, waiting for Rollins to appear and executing him as soon as he stumbles in the door, drunk. He doesn’t even recognize Sergeant Barnes before he’s dead.

“Good work, men. Sergeant.” Sarge says. “All right, men, let’s move, move, move, move, move!”

Chapter Text

Sergeant Barnes’s prosthesis is malfunctioning, and he’s killed several scientists, technicians and handlers who would have been able to fix it.

It’s not a deadweight yet, not completely shorted out, but it does stall sometimes, and the grinding sounds it makes as he turns the steering wheel indicate a need for maintenance. 

They always performed maintenance after the chair, but nobody has done so after Rumlow punished him with the shock baton.

He reports this to Sarge, who frowns, but not at him. He doesn’t blame Sergeant Barnes for the malfunction or insist on discipline for harming HYDRA property.

Private Rogers turns to Lieutenant Ryan and all but whispers in his ear “Remember when Sara got bubblegum in Combat Carl Bucky’s joints?”

Lieutenant Ryan pokes the hole in his chest and asks if it’d look better with a wad of gum filling it up, or if it would look like a cheap imitation of the guts spilling out of the bodies Sergeant Barnes left behind.

“I don’t want to feel gross, dried up gum when we cuddle.” Private Rogers grimaces.

Sergeant Barnes pries the panels open and Sarge peers in with his binoculars. There might even be room for him to crawl into Sergeant Barnes’s prosthesis himself, but he doesn’t.

Sarge knows even less about prosthesis maintenance than Sergeant Barnes and asks with a sigh, “Am I correct in assuming the only people you know who can fix it are the bad guys we’re hunting now?”

Sergeant Barnes nods. Returning to a HYDRA technician for maintenance is clearly not an option.

“And we can’t just take it to the shop like a car.” Gordon says.

Sergeant Barnes scowls. Finding a trustworthy technician will impede their progress on the other objectives of eliminating HYDRA and finding the Captain. The team here is small, not nearly varied enough to provide proper maintenance and upkeep, even if they keep him fed and clean.

Sarge’s army used to have a mechanic, but no longer. The toys discuss whether they should get a medic or a mechanic (apparently someone named Barbie has both professions, along with astronaut, figure skater and president. Sergeant Barnes can’t recall a president named Barbie).

There’s a heated debate whether or not any toy would know how to fix something as complicated as the prosthesis. Sarge voices his doubts that his old mechanic could.

That night, Sergeant Barnes breaks into a thrift store, which is child’s play compared to sneaking into a base. The few cameras are easy to avoid as he marches down the racks of hanging clothes. There’s another camo jacket and fatigue pants hanging from the racks, and Sarge grumbles that it’s disrespectful that anyone can buy that uniform.

Barnes folds it carefully and tucks it into a bag. He lingers for a moment by a record player, hearing phantom music in the silent store, before returning to the mission.

As he scans the shelves for tools, the squad marches off to the toy section, though Sarge and Captain Shieldface stay with Sergeant Barnes. 

He wonders what the toys were doing before their arrival. Perhaps dancing to the record player, the way the soldiers dance to the radio in the car.

He gathers several tools into a toolbox, inspects some other walkie talkies, comparing the quality to their current equipment, then heads to the toy section in the back.

Bags of assorted toys hang from hooks on the wall, and Sarge immediately clocks a bag containing around two dozen plastic army men just like him, only they’re a mix of green and tan. 

“Some of my men ended up just like this,” Sarge’s tone is uncharacteristically solemn.

Sergeant Barnes plucks the bag of army men off the shelf and tears through the flimsy plastic, sprinkling the unmoving soldiers onto the floor.

Sarge is clearly pleased that they’re rescuing more troops, and Sergeant Barnes finds another bag of soldiers hidden behind a bag of plastic chess pieces.

He pours that bag onto the floor, too. 

“Any of you men serve in Andy’s room?” Sarge asks, but the soldiers remain still, some kneeling with bazookas, some posed to throw plastic grenades or with minesweeper equipment. Although their guns don’t fire, Sarge reminisces about playing baseball with the grenades, the bazooka men playing the batters. 

Sergeant Barnes mentally calculates that there are enough soldiers of each color to form baseball teams. How does he know how big a baseball team is? He’s never watched baseball. Had he heard it on the radio on the way to a mission?

There’s even another Sarge, the exact same mold with binoculars and a pistol, which could become confusing.

Sarge makes no comment on some of the soldiers being tan, and some part of Sergeant Barnes thinks Captain America didn’t care about the color of his soldiers, either.

He finds an orange bucket shaped like a pumpkin on a shelf and carefully deposits the soldiers inside. Sarge says he’s done a good job, even though Sergeant Barnes knows they won’t replace his old bucket of soldiers any more than Captain Shieldface can take the place of Captain America.

Other bags contain a plethora of woman dolls, mostly blond and naked, dinosaurs, building blocks, game pieces and assorted plastic figures. Captain Shieldface seems to stare at a brown-haired doll with perfect makeup painted on her face.

“Should I free all of them?” Sergeant Barnes asks Sarge. They’re probably not suffocating in there, toys don’t need to breathe, but seeing them trapped in clear plastic, waiting still and lifeless to be unleashed, reminds him of the cryo tube. 

They’re a squadron of soldiers, not civilians. The toys likely wouldn’t all join the squad, but they could be free.

Sarge shakes his head, saying kids will come buy them, though he’s voiced his distaste for yard sales before. Captain Shieldface taps out that the doll isn’t Peggy.

The shelves are packed with more toys than Sergeant Barnes knew existed. Stuffed animals are piled high. A bear wearing a blue coat makes him suddenly remember a Bucky Bear with distaste, but he doesn’t recall a red hat or boots, and the bear’s tag says Paddington.

There are colorful plastic toys with buttons that Sarge says are designed for infants and toddlers. There’s a crowd of dolls that resemble mostly babies and little girls, and Sergeant Barnes suddenly pictures dark-haired little girls crowding around the Captain as a small skinny child, begging him to draw pictures for them. “Stevie, draw a castle! Draw a dragon!”

“Sarge, it’s Buzz!” Gordon calls from next to a plastic astronaut with buttons on a glowing green chest plate. It’s a different shade of green, but Sarge clearly doesn’t care about color.

Purple wings with vertical red and white stripes like the ones around the Captain’s waist dangle uselessly from Buzz’s jetpack, and the stickers on his chest and forearms are mostly torn off. His uniform is about as ridiculous as the Captain’s, designed to draw attention rather than camouflage.

Sarge hops from Sergeant Barnes’s shoulder to peer at the purple sole of a green and white boot. “He’s not our Buzz. Andy’s name isn’t there.”

“Do you think Andy donated our Buzz?” Gordon asks. “It’d be better than trash bags.”

As Sergeant Barnes digs a screwdriver out of his toolbox and starts to unscrew Buzz’s jetpack, he accidentally presses a button that makes Buzz say “Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!”

Like with the army men, Sarge looks at Buzz like he’s too familiar, even knowing it’s not Andy’s. Sarge and Gordon briefly recount their Buzz finding a whole aisle of himself in a toy barn and how Hamm, Rex, Slinky and Potato Head were fooled by an imposter Buzz with a utility belt.

“Speaking of utility belts, they’re old news now.” Private Paratrooper calls from the other side of the shelf, where yet another Buzz Lightyear lays among the jumble of toys. 

Sergeant Barnes places the first Buzz’s wings so they can swivel down and fold up into his jetpack, then screws the pack back together. He carefully presses the big red button on his chest plate to deploy them. Landing lights blink on the ends of the wings. 

It’s much easier than trying to fix his prosthesis.

Sarge has mentioned serving under Woody and Buzz for at least a decade. Will these other Buzz Lightyears become the new leaders, or will they form a four-way command with Sarge and Captain Shieldface. 

Gordon and Private Paratrooper are busy debating the same thing aloud, claiming that Andy only got one Buzz when they spied on his birthday presents.

“Do they think they’re space rangers?” Gordon asks, glancing at the two Buzz Lightyears, who have identical raised eyebrows and somewhat ridiculous toothy grins rather than serious expressions like the soldiers.

Sergeant Barnes tucks them into the bucket, careful they won’t weigh down the soldiers inside, though Sarge insists toys are accustomed to being thrown in a heap in a box.

Sergeant Barnes moves down the shelf and finds a sturdy, clear plastic box containing two twelve-inch Combat Carl action figures. The bearded, caucasian one is dressed in dark tactical pants, a vest and boots like Sergeant Barnes’s old Winter Soldier uniform. The other one, a gray-haired, dark-skinned Combat Carl, wears green fatigues like his current uniform, but is missing his boots.

Sergeant Barnes frees them from their clear, hard plastic prison before Captain Shieldface has finished tapping out that they’re prisoners. They both have moveable joints like Captain Shieldface or the Buzz Lightyears. The bearded one even has flocked hair, including the beard, but Sergeant Barnes’s attention is drawn to the metal dog tag on a chain. The chain isn’t around his neck like a necklace, merely hanging from a tiny hole in his chest; it’s not a bullet wound hole like Lieutenant Ryan’s, and was clearly built in.

“Woody and Jessie had pull strings.” Sarge says. “Never met anyone else with one.”

Sergeant Barnes gives the dog tag an experimental tug. The cord slowly reels back in as a record player scratches to life inside the doll, releasing a mechanical voice from inside his chest.

Sergeant Barnes half expects the toy to recite a series of numbers, but he says “Combat Carl’s got a mission!”

His face and body remain frozen when the voice comes out.

Sergeant Barnes wonders what happened to his dog tags. He hadn’t even realized he had dog tags until he saw these, but he must have, as Sergeant Barnes before.

Sergeant Barnes turns the tag over in his hands. The name Combat Carl is engraved on it. He tugs it again, and the voice inside says “Follow me, Soldier!”

“Are we going to have to negotiate the chain of command again?” Private Paratrooper asks from where he’s sweeping the interior of a plastic castle fortress further down the shelf. “The big guys always think they’re in charge, that we army men are too small and cheap. Combat Carl Bucky-”

“He’s not Bucky.” Sergeant Barnes says, and pulls the dog tag again. Combat Carl says they have to rendezvous before dark, and then they have to scout out a base.

The next time he pulls it, the string comes out but doesn’t go back in.

There’s a moment of silence, which Private Paratrooper breaks by saying Woody's never broke like that. Suddenly, Combat Carl’s face moves, growing even sterner than his molded soldier expression.

“You broke Combat Carl.” he scowls up at Sergeant Barnes, wriggling in my hand. “That string has lasted longer than you’ve been alive, son.”

Gordon snorts that he doubts that. The name Phillips flashes inexplicably through Sergeant Barnes’s mind- isn’t that the surname of that Sid kid Sarge mentioned?

Combat Carl isn’t finished. “It’s been a rappel line, survived the rowdiest kids yanking it. It’s never failed Combat Carl before! And then you come along and wreck it right away?! Shame on you, Soldier.”

The Soldier hangs his head. He shouldn’t have pulled it with his prosthesis, but even his flesh hand also contains far greater strength than a standard human. He was trying to be careful, but clearly he’d failed.

“Hey!” Private Rogers marches over to shout at Combat Carl despite being a fraction of his size. “He saved my Lieutenant from getting shot to pieces. He’s taken bullets for us! He’s the last person to break you on purpose.”

The sight brings back memories of Steve squaring up to bullies twice his size in alleyways, of Sergeant Barnes diving into the fight with him. He’d had two flesh fists back then.

Sergeant Barnes frowns at his prosthesis. If he doesn’t get maintenance, it’ll be about as useless as Combat Carl’s string dangling out of his chest. Well he could use it as a bludgeon, like how Combat Carl can reportedly use his string as a rappel line. He doesn’t say so out loud.

“He fixed my wings, soldier.” a voice says from the bucket on the floor. One of the Buzz Lightyears quickly climbs the shelves and dramatically flips up next to the Combat Carls, deploying his wings. “It would’ve been a quick fix for Justin, but he just dumped me here. I suppose I’m lucky they decided to resell me despite the damages, instead of tossing me in the trash receptacle.”

“Can you fix my string?” Combat Carl crosses his poseable plastic arms under the loose string.

“I can!” a Barbie with a purple fish tail instead of legs scoots out from underneath a remote control car. She must have been working on it before freezing up after Sergeant Barnes broke in.

She keeps scooting due to her lack of legs and grins up at Combat Carl. “Take off your vest, please.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Combat Carl smirks, and Barbie swats at him before yanking him down, running a hand over his bare plastic chest.

“Should they be watching this?” Gordon gestures to the baby and little girl dolls lining the nearby shelf.

Private Rogers shakes his head. “Sara made me and Lieutenant Ryan make out several times.”

“Well, that explains some things.” Private Paratrooper teases, and Private Rogers smacks him far harder than Barbie had smacked Carl.

Barbie carefully unscrews Combat Carl’s body, prying his torso apart to access his voice box. Sergeant Barnes is an expert at hiding reactions to pain, but Combat Carl acts as if he doesn’t feel it, even when his head rolls out of the disassembled torso. Buzz Lightyear makes a face but forces himself to keep watching the equivalent of toy gore. The rest of the team has seen plenty of organic gore from their recent missions.

Sergeant Barnes places his toolbox so Barbie can have easy access, and the soldiers hand her different tools she requests. 

Barbie keeps a cheerful stream of conversation, chatting about how her old owner pretended she was an underwater vet even though she never came with a doctor’s coat and how she once fixed a toy car with a somewhat similar mechanism.

HYDRA handlers were certainly never so happy, although they often casually discussed their weekends while taking the Soldier apart.

Barbie does something and Combat Carl’s string slowly pulls the dog tag back to his chest as his voice box says “Good work, Soldier.”

“Did you make it say that on purpose?” Barbie laughs.

“If I say yes, do I get a kiss?” Combat Carl wiggles his painted eyebrows.

Sergeant Barnes slips off his camouflage shirt like Combat Carl had, and Barbie turns to him and freezes, staring wide-eyed at the arm.

“We had to break a few rules saving him,” Sarge tells all the toys in the store.

Combat Carl shakes his head, aghast. “That’s worse than if you’d broken my string off entirely, Soldier.”

The Buzz with fixed wings rubs the little curly mark on his chin. “I know I don’t have to follow the Star Command regulation manual, but it’s a pretty big rule we’re breaking.” 

Sergeant Barnes pops open a panel and sits docilely as Barbie pokes around with a flashlight. She apologizes profusely when she accidentally jabs something, even though his only outward reaction is a suppressed twitch.

“Who did this to you? This is horrible!” Barbie sounds hurt on his behalf, her voice trembling even as her hands stay steady.

“People worse than the evil Emperor Zurg.” Lieutenant Ryan gives a pointed glance towards the Buzz Lightyears.

Barbie frowns. “I’m sorry, this is beyond my skills.”

Sergeant Barnes closes the panel and pulls his coat back on. He gathers up the toolbox and the bucket of toys, then stops at the cash registers and deposits the appropriate amount of cash on the countertop. It makes him feel more human than he can recall; he often feels the toys move around him because he’s not really human and his existence is as big of a secret as theirs.

Mermaid Barbie drives a hot pink jeep with both Buzz Lightyears and Combat Carls crammed into the passenger seats. Sergeant Barnes figures she spends a good amount of time driving since she can’t walk anywhere, and he drops some extra bills for the jeep.

Sarge gives them a sitrep, and Combat Carl becomes far less abrasive once he learns who Sergeant Barnes is.

“Do you know any good mechanics?” Gordon asks the others.

The dark-skinned Combat Carl speaks for the first time. “What about Tony Stark?”

“The billionaire?” Private Paratrooper’s tone is incredulous. “What, we just waltz up to his mansion and ask for help?”

“He builds weapons, so he’s good with his hands. And his dad worked with Cap.” Private Rogers immediately jumps in to support the suggestion. A technician with intel on Captain America sounds almost too good to be true.

Captain Shieldface taps out H-O-W-A-R-D, but the name means nothing to Sergeant Barnes.

“We still can’t just go there.” Private Paratrooper scoffs.

“He brings random women to his house all the time.” Private Rogers says, glancing at Barbie.

“Yeah, women. Sergeant Barnes isn’t his type.”

“I’m not seducing him.” Barbie crosses her arms and flips her fin indignantly. “What kind of doll do you think I am?! I’m made for little girls, not-”

“I’m not saying we seduce him.” Private Rogers holds up his hands in surrender. “Just that he clearly lets strangers in his house sometimes.”

“No way to know until we scope the place out. Let’s move out!” Sarge glances at the new toys and asks. “Are you coming!”

If they do, they’ll be leaving the store with a much larger squad than when they entered, including some much larger members; He won’t be able to carry them all in his pouch anymore, but the jeep sort of fixes that problem.

The two Buzz Lightyears glance at each other and the Combat Carls have a silent conversation. Sergeant Barnes fights the urge to eliminate witnesses; they’ve seen too much, but from their perspective, he’s seen too much by seeing them move.

Chapter Text

Sarge is glad that the squad is growing, though Sergeant Barnes seems somewhat overwhelmed by all the new additions, particularly all the chatter. Sarge knows that the Howling Commandos had been a small, tightly-knit platoon, but Sergeant Barnes doesn’t seem to remember them beyond vague flashes, even less than what Sarge read in Andy’s history books.

Luckily there’s no battle for hierarchy with the new plastic troops, not even the tan ones that are advertised as the green army’s enemy. They have all the same positions as Sarge’s men did; snipers, minesweepers, riflemen, radio operators, men with mortar and bazookas.

Gordon and Private Paratrooper eagerly fill everyone in on their recent missions.

“So you really rescued prisoners of war from bases that were even more heavily guarded than Zurg’s fortress? It wasn’t just playtime?” Utility Belt Buzz glances towards Captain Shieldface and Sergeant Barnes.

Private Paratrooper nods.

Utility Belt Buzz whistles, clearly impressed. “You, uh, know you’re toys, right?”

“I didn’t.” the other Buzz with newly repaired wings says. “I only realized when I met another Buzz Lightyear at a playdate. I thought he was an imposter.”

“I saw the ads for the utility belt.” Utility Belt Buzz claps a hand on the other Buzz’s shoulder in sympathy.

“I’ve never actually raided a base.” Utility Belt Buzz confesses to Sarge. “Lucas took me to raid his sister’s bedroom, but the only resemblance to Zurg’s fortress was the purple walls. I’m happy to help you on your mission, soldier, but I should warn you that my laser’s just a light bulb.”

It brings Sarge back to Woody mocking Buzz’s laser on his arrival. 

“Our guns don’t work, and we still go in.” Private Paratrooper nods at Sergeant Barnes. “He’s got more than enough guns.”

Sarge stands proudly on Sergeant Barnes’s shoulder. “Sergeant Barnes here is practically a one-man army, but we’re still glad to have you. We mostly handle recon and infiltration through spaces too small for Sergeant Barnes.”

“You shot Rumlow with a taser.” Sergeant Barnes points out, and there’s just a twitch of his lip, but Sarge counts it as a smile.

“Know any other safehouses on the way to Malibu?” Private Rogers asks Captain Shieldface and Sergeant Barnes.

“Malibu?!” Barbie gasps, putting extra speed into the jeep. “That’s where I’m from in my backstory. I can’t believe I get to actually go there! Sofie never even had the beach dreamhouse. This is like a dream come true!”

“Tony Stark has a beach house,” the barefoot Combat Carl says, his feet kicked up casually on the dashboard of the jeep, and Barbie, if possible, beams even wider. 

Lieutenant Ryan asks, “We’re not going to stay at all the same safehouses, are we, sir?”

They’re currently heading back to the one they’d camped at before raiding the thrift store, but Lieutenant Ryan says “They’re probably watching them in case they’re hit like the bases. And they’ll notice when Rumlow and Rollins don’t respond.” 

Gordon’s grin is a cross between grim and wicked. “They’re probably cowering in their safehouses since we’ve been blowing up their bases.”

Both Buzzes, despite their lack of field experience, seem to keep some of those space ranger tactics and ask detailed questions about the base’s security. Bearded Combat Carl seems like he’d charge in headfirst, fake guns pretend blazing. 

“I thought we were going to Malibu,” Barbie steers the jeep around a stick in the sidewalk, swerving in front of Sergeant Barnes, but he doesn’t trip over the car full of toys.

The bearded Combat Carl says “You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you, Barbie?”

“‘Course she has. Barbie’s been everything.” the other Carl says, his grin flashing against his dark plastic face, like a proud grandpa. “Soldier, baker, astronaut.” 

“I fought fishermen and oil tankers in pool games.” Barbie sighs wistfully. “But I’ve never gotten to see a real ocean.”

“We’re going to Malibu.” Sarge tells them. Captain Shieldface nods in agreement, and Sarge starts a new cadence, calling out each line for the troops to echo back.

“ We’re glad you’ve joined our small platoon,

We hope to find Tony Stark soon.

After that it’s the Captain,

So let’s move to make it happen!”

“Wish we’d taken our jeep, too.” Gordon grumbles from the bucket as Barbie pushes the jeep faster, even though being carried like precious cargo is an honor. The troops in the bucket are swapping their own stories of battles against squirrels or mousetraps.

This squadron still feels small to Sarge. He’d commanded a bucket of two hundred soldiers in his prime, not to mention living with the many other toys in Andy’s room, though the casualties from yard sales and donations steadily dwindled the population in Andy’s room over the years. 

It feels odd to be leading two Buzz Lightyears when he’d called Buzz “sir” for a decade, but it’s far from the strangest thing he’s experienced recently. He ordered a taser shot at and openly threatened a high-ranking HYDRA operative before witnessing his death, for Lego’s sake. 

Sarge shakes his head. If only Buzz and Woody could see him now…

They’re lucky they found two other Buzz Lightyears, because Buzz is one of the few toys crazy enough to go hunting humans, even evil ones. Then again, Woody had been the one to plan the attack on Sid and would definitely be on board for this.

Sergeant Barnes and Sarge sweep the safehouse, performing a perimeter check to ensure nobody has entered during their trip to the store. The other soldiers and Buzz fan out to assist, though Sergeant Barnes still scouts the whole area himself before being satisfied.

When they reenter the safe house, Captain Shieldface and Sarge immediately start poring over maps. Sergeant Barnes jots notes on sticky notes, while Barbie and Private Paratrooper race their jeeps around the house. This house has a floor plan that allows them to drive laps through the kitchen to the eating area, then the living room and back to the kitchen.

Eventually they tire of racing and drag out a box of checkers, only to discover half the pieces are missing.

“Take position for Operation Checkers.” Gordon takes command of the game while Sarge and Captain Shieldface plan, and the green and tan soldiers split up, standing on the squares the checkers would have been on.

Sarge leaves them to their fun, but Private Paratrooper turns to the planning table. “Sergeant Barnes, sir! Requesting you to move us?”

They freeze in their poses, and Sergeant Barnes frowns, carefully plucking them up and setting them down randomly. Apparently nobody taught him to play checkers, and the Buzzes and Combat Carls team up to explain the game.

“It is a battle simulation.” Sergeant Barnes says.

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be fun.” Shoeless Combat Carl smiles sadly at him. “Seems like it’s been even longer since you got to play, Sergeant Barnes.”

Sergeant Barnes takes the game overly seriously, the way he had with their dance parties, but the troops look refreshed and relaxed after the playtime, which in turn, makes Sergeant Barnes relax marginally at a job well done.

Later, when Sarge has to remind Sergeant Barnes to eat, since nobody else here has to, one of the tan snipers scoffs at the MRE and marches to inspect the pantry. He decides he’s in charge of ensuring Sergeant Barnes eats better, coaching Barnes through making a chili with entirely canned ingredients. It doesn’t require any chopping, but Sarge knows Sergeant Barnes would have been more comfortable chopping than stirring.

The tan trooper barks orders about cooking with almost more gusto than Sarge himself and seems to have experience commanding a kitchen, even if has to give the stove a wide berth to avoid melting. Apparently his owner used to set his soldiers up around the house, and left the sniper on the spice rack for weeks, where he’d watched the kitchen preparations. To top it off, in backyard games, the sniper had been sent to forage twigs and leaves for survival meals and mix them in an old paper cup to feed the army.

Sergeant Barnes follows the cooking directions with single-minded determination, treating it as critical as the missions sneaking into bases. Thirty minutes later, a pot of chili is bubbling softly on the stove, and Sergeant Barnes eats the entire thing.

On the road, Sarge and Sergeant Barnes still play I Spy while the troops have dance parties; Mermaid Barbie is the best at breakdancing on the car floor, but Utility Belt Buzz busts out some impressive moves.

Sergeant Barnes alternates between unwavering focus on the destination and mission and confusion. Barbie wonders aloud about the sea and all the cars and gadgets in Tony Stark’s house. 

Sergeant Barnes mutters something about a flying car as if it’s something in the past, not the future.

They’re almost at Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion and are going over their entry plan when they hear their target’s name on the radio while Gordon switches radio stations for a new song. “Tony Stark is still unaccounted for after a mine blew a military convoy in Afghanistan. It’s currently not known if he’s alive or dead, but we can only hope Mr. Stark and our brave troops make it home.”

Sarge’s life has become infinitely more complicated since jumping out Andy’s window. He straightens up, noticing Captain Shieldface is already rigid.

“Looks like we’ll be putting our sandbox training to use.” Sarge switches to his command voice.

Gordon shakes his head. “And we thought Buzz had it hard rescuing Woody from across town. How are we going to get to the other side of the world?”

“It’s a quick step on a globe.” Buzz with the broken wings says. “I

“Are you sure they didn’t break your head, too?” Bearded Combat Carl rolls his eyes. “What are we going to do, steal a plane?”

“Pity you guys can’t fly.” Lieutenant Ryan glances at the two Buzz Lightyears. Sarge doesn’t mention the time Buzz had, and thankfully Private Paratrooper doesn’t distract them with that tale.

Private Rogers points out that there’s too many twelve inch toys for them to carry anyway, not to mention Sergeant Barnes.

“I have flight training.” Sergeant Barnes says, without a hint of pride, even though his skillset is almost as varied and impressive as Barbie’s long list of careers. 

Barbie sighs as they turn away from the coastline, but soon has a smile. “I’ve always wanted to see a real plane, too.”

Chapter Text

Tony’s long given up hope of being rescued. Rhodey has no idea where he is, nor does the rest of the military. He’s probably presumed dead. The poor bastards in the humvee in front of his definitely died in that explosion, and the only reason Tony survived the shrapnel is a car battery and now a reactor.

His stay here has been zero stars- the explosion that led to his kidnapping, a horrific surgery that left him with a damn car battery attached to his chest, waterboarding, other torture, threats and only one kind face, Yinsen. Not that Tony had many actual friends on the outside, either, but still. There’s definitely a shortage of friendly faces here.

He doesn’t want to think about how long he’s been held in this cave as they try to force him to make a Jericho missile. Long enough to miniaturize the arc reactor that replaced that awful car battery keeping him alive, and work on another secret project.

Tony’s rescue is finally coming, courtesy of himself. He’d built a suit instead of a missile, and he’s ready to blast these bastards to hell. He’d already blasted a few with the explosive rigged to the door.

The computers they gave him are ancient crap, practically relics, and the thing’s taking forever to initiate the power sequence on the suit.

Yinsen grabs a gun, ready to sacrifice himself to buy them time, but then there’s gunfire and screaming from elsewhere in the cave, and to Tony’s relief, Yinsen hangs back.

It sounds like a damn massacre, screams cut short, people choking on blood and last, dying gasps.

The progress bar finally reaches one hundred percent and Tony ejects his armor from the shitty laptop. He smacks the terrorists outside the door, heading towards the fight, sure to keep himself in front of Yinsen.

There’s a lone figure fighting a crowd of terrorists, dressed in green camouflage fatigues that are splattered red with blood. Oddly enough he has a snowboard strapped to his feet, not that it seems to be slowing him down as he flips and bashes it into a man’s face, sending him into the rocky wall.

Despite being outnumbered, the fight is clearly unfair to the terrorists, because the soldier is absolutely obliterating them. 

Sheesh, it’s like listening to Dad’s tales of Captain America single-handedly taking out entire Nazi squads. There’s definitely something superhuman about the way this guy moves, even if his left arm appears to be injured, not reacting nearly as well but oddly not seeping blood all over his left sleeve.

The soldier is like a goddamn tank, like this armor is supposed to make Tony, and Tony’s feeling suddenly left out.

“Hey, save some for me.” Tony grouses, because the only satisfaction of this hellhole will be sending his captors straight to hell.

The soldier backs off, surprisingly, and Tony fires at the terrorists. The soldier readies his own rifle, but only picks off the terrorists Tony misses as they make their way through the cave.

The soldier keeps bending to pick things up and stash them in a pouch or an inexplicable pumpkin-shaped Halloween candy bucket hanging from his belt. Tony can’t tell what they are in the poor light inside the cave, but he doesn’t really care.

One of the things Tony can make out is a walkie-talkie. The soldier mutters that he’s found Tony, but there’s no reply from the other end. If the army really has sent, well, an army to save him, surely they would have sent everyone in the cave, guns blazing?

At last, Tony’s stomping towards the light shining from the mouth of the cave.

A battle clearly took place outside the cave. Bloody bodies litter the sand, but corpses aren’t the only thing scattered around. There’s not one but two Buzz Lightyear action figures sprawled in the sand, and a hot pink Barbie jeep holds a mermaid Barbie behind the wheel and a pair of twelve-inch Combat Carl figures.

Tony quickly glances away. It’s like a colorful diorama of the humvee ride that landed him here.

“Finally,” Tony gasps as he gazes at the desert. “Took you long enough. I had to go invent this badass suit. How’d you find me anyway? Where’s Rhodey- Colonel Rhodes?”

“I don’t know Colonel Rhodes.” the soldier replies as he collects some of the tiny plastic green and tan army men from various places in the encampment, the kind Tony had blown up with his first homemade explosives as a kid. 

Tony glowers at the missiles in the encampment, all emblazoned with his name. He wants to torch everything, but the soldier’s moving around, collecting the toys.

Tony realizes that he’d been grabbing more soldiers inside the cave, and how the hell he saw them in the darkness is anyone’s guess. The tan soldiers almost blend into the sand here in the sun, and the soldier is very careful not to step on them, despite the army guys being essentially disposable toys. 

A slightly larger plastic paratrooper has a hole clean through his chest, and okay, that’s hitting uncomfortably close to Tony’s situation, too. Tony can’t recall the terrorists having the army guys around, but it doesn’t make sense for this guy to have set them up either, especially in the middle of a battle.

“This is Lieutenant Ryan,” the soldier holds up the paratrooper for inspection, like he can sense Tony’s gaze despite the mask.

Tony glances at the snowboard attached to the soldier’s feet in a new light- literally. He’s dressed like one of the tiny plastic soldiers, the snowboard resembling the plastic bases the toys stand on. What the hell?

“What’s your name, Soldier?” Tony asks.

The soldier stares at Tony with intense blue-gray eyes, the only part of his face visible under a balaclava. They’re the eyes of a man who’s seen too many horrors, and Tony knows his own eyes will hold that same haunted look when he finally sees himself in a mirror. 

The Soldier picks up a little green army guy with binoculars and a pistol clutched in his hands, staring at him like he expects him to talk before glancing back at Tony and Yinsen.

“Sergeant Barnes.”

Tony snorts. Delusions of grandeur on top of probable hallucinations. It’s clear this guy really is a soldier from the way he fought, and Barnes isn’t exactly an uncommon last name, and he could have been a sergeant before going round the bend, but delusions seem more likely.

Then again, he did seem superhuman, so perhaps the grandeur isn’t quite so delusional. If the army had another super-soldier, surely they would’ve paraded him around like Captain America and dressed him in a ridiculous costume.

Speaking of Cap, the soldier picks up a scuffed-up, chewed Captain America figure with his iconic shield where his head should be. Howard would have a conniption seeing a Cap figure mutilated like that, and there are bullet holes like eyes in the shield, when the real deal had blocked bullets.

He tucks the Captain America figure in his breast pocket, next to a tiny green army guy holding binoculars and a pistol.

“I’m not imagining this, am I?” Tony asks Yinsen, not bothering to lower his voice.

“No.” Yinsen says slowly. “This is not how I pictured today going.”

The soldier picks up one of the Buzz Lightyear figures from the jeep, ejecting the wings with the push of a button. “You okay?” he mutters to the grinning Buzz.

“Are you okay?” Tony raises an eyebrow under his iron mask. “You sure you don’t have a few screws loose, buddy?”

Working with the military, Tony of course knows that soldiers don’t always come home okay, physically or mentally, and he sure won’t be okay either, though he tries not to think about that.

“I tightened his screws when I fixed his wings,” the soldier says about Buzz, before seeming to realize Tony was talking about him, and he continues his report in a rather monotonous voice. “The prosthesis is malfunctioning, but it’s bolted on correctly. I was told you could fix it, Tony Stark.”

The soldier shrugs off his fatigue shirt, revealing a gleaming silver prosthetic arm going up to his shoulder. The scarring where it’s attached is horrific, like the still-healing scars around Tony’s arc reactor, but the arm itself is way smoother and more streamlined than the armor Tony’s wearing. It’s the sort of elegance he’d be able to make if he had access to his whole workshop back home rather than just the scraps in this cave.

They don’t make this sort of prosthetic for veterans. Where had he gotten it?

The soldier glances back at the cave, like Tony might return for the tools, but there’s no way Tony’s going back in there. And as sweet as the arm is, he just wants to get home.

“We can go home now,” Tony tells Yinsen rather than inspecting the arm. “Let’s get back to your family.”

“My family is dead.” Yinsen tells him. “I was going to join them.”

Tony freezes, glancing at the missiles and realizing just how Yinsen’s family died.

He’s ready to burn this place to the ground. It seems the soldier has collected all his little toys, and Tony readies his flamethrowers.

“You can come with me.” Tony says. “I’ve got a huge place in Malibu, better sun than here. It’s the least I owe you.”

“Barbie wants to go to Malibu,” the soldier says, and wow. 

“Guess I owe you too, even if you’re completely nuts.” Tony says. “I can fix your arm up there, but I’m sure as hell not spending another minute here. It’s time to blow this popsicle stand.”

The soldier nods and shrugs his fatigue jacket back on, sliding into a waiting car with his collection of toys. Yinsen slowly climbs into the car as Tony starts scorching the camp with his flamethrowers.

Once it’s burning to his satisfaction, Tony readies the rockets on his suit. “I’m way better than Buzz Lightyear,” he says, shooting into the sky, only for his thrusters to fail and send him crashing, like if someone tried to make one of the Buzz figures fly.

Tony lays in the sand, his armor in pieces around him. Great, looks like he’s taking a ride with a crazy soldier. Hopefully it goes better than that damn humvee ride.

Chapter Text

It would be far simpler for Sergeant Barnes to disappear, to go back to Malibu with the rest of the team and rendezvous with Stark there. Instead, he drives and listens to Stark’s unending chatter about how, with proper tools, his suit would have way more functions than Buzz Lightyear’s and how he’ll make the toys look lame.

Stark frequently tries to get Sergeant Barnes involved in the conversation, but he gives short, clipped replies only when necessary. Technicians usually don’t like him to be so chatty, and the toys stay unmoving.

Stark mentions the soldiers in his other humvee ride being just as silent at first, then abruptly switches topics.

Stark requests the radio, but it’s odd seeing the toys sit silently instead of holding a dance party as they usually do.

“So, you clearly have training, but are you wearing the uniform just to fit in with the army guys? Because they make green and tan camo, if you wanna match both sides. Or are they supposed to be enemies? And seriously, why hinder yourself with that snowboard? They only have bases so they can stand up.”

Stark says so many things that Sergeant Barnes wouldn’t even know where to begin to answer.

“You clearly didn’t come with the army, aside from your little toy army here. So, what’s the deal?” Stark asks.

As if summoned, the sound of choppers can be heard, and Sergeant Barnes, despite his uniform and soldier companions, wants to avoid the military at all costs.

He should retreat, reconvene later, but Stark is the sort of man who attracts trouble like a magnet while having not an ounce of self preservation. It’s a familiar thought, despite the memory wipes.

Stark is far from helpless; with that suit, he clearly would have escaped without Sergeant Barnes’s assistance, and Colonel Rhodes would have found him, but Sergeant Barnes knows Stark needs him watching his back.

The Captain- Steve- flashes through Sergeant Barnes’s mind. Even big, the idiot had thrown himself in front of bullets and needed Sergeant Barnes to cover his six, possibly even more than when he was small and skinny and Sergeant Barnes was constantly joining his alley brawls.

Stark is the exact same sort of reckless idiot, despite his genius intellect and brilliant inventions. Colonel Rhodes seems practiced at reigning him in, keeping him on track, but Colonel Rhodes hadn’t stopped Stark from getting captured.

Stark is too important a target to leave to the military. Sergeant Barnes needs him not only for prosthesis management- and seeing the suit Stark made with scraps, it’s abundantly clear he’ll be able to fix the prosthesis- and information on the Captain’s location.

“Don’t mention me,” Sergeant Barnes warns. “You escaped with your suit, alone.”

Stark’s eyes are calculating, but he nods.

A man called Colonel Rhodes exits one of the helicopters and embraces Stark tightly. Stark introduces Yinsen and thankfully does not mention Sergeant Barnes. Nobody else spots him; he’s a master of disguise and remaining unnoticed, like the toys. There’s a reason nobody knew of the Winter Soldier’s existence.

Sergeant Barnes stealthily tags along, following Stark, Yinsen and Colonel Rhodes to the plane. Cramming himself into the cargo hold on the plane isn’t pleasant, but the toys had been boxed for longer, and it gives them an opportunity to whisper among themselves. Both Buzzes are offended that Stark thinks he’s cooler, and the paratroopers enthuse about seeing real airmen and wonder if they’re going to a real airstrip.

Sure enough, they land on an airstrip that makes Sergeant Barnes twitchy, glad for the sleeve and glove covering his prosthesis. He snags a pair of sunglasses from a passing airman to cover his eyes, even though he shouldn’t be noticed to begin with.

The toy soldiers are still and unmoving but likely excited to experience a working military base that they’re not blowing up, the paratroopers particularly. A small part of Sergeant Barnes thinks that airmen are not as skilled as infantrymen, though Gordon, Private Paratrooper and Lieutenant Ryan are vital parts of their platoon. 

Watching Colonel Rhodes support Stark down the ramp brings back memories of hauling Steve home when he could barely walk, and then Steve supporting Sergeant Barnes in return after freeing him from the table.

Waiting at the bottom of the ramp is a woman with reddish-blond hair pulled into a ponytail and the easy competence and kindness of Barbie. From her and Stark’s banter, Stark is her boss but not a commanding officer. 

Sergeant Barnes suspects that, like Barbie, this Ms. Potts can do anything.

She thanks Yinsen for all his help with Stark and says Stark’s legal team can expedite his immigration status. Nobody welcomes or thanks Sergeant Barnes, which is just as well.

A car picks up Stark and his crew, then once they’re away from the crowds, swings off to the side, and Stark hurriedly beckons Sergeant Barnes in. Apparently he wasn’t totally invisible to Stark.

“Who’s this?” Ms. Potts asks as Sergeant Barnes awkwardly crams himself in the backseat with Stark and Ms. Potts. There’s not enough leg room until Yinsen moves his seat up.

The driver glances at Sergeant Barnes from behind sunglasses, but doesn’t question Stark like Miss Potts did. Sergeant Barnes sits stiffly, unused to being observed by civilians.

“Long story, he helped me out, but he’s, uh, not really in service anymore and not totally upstairs. Or he’s a super spy and on a need-to-know basis, he’s certainly got moves like an action hero. But I owe him, so… Miss Potts, Happy, meet Sergeant Barnes, or so he says.”

“A pleasure, Sergeant.” Miss Potts says, and Sergeant Barnes can see her reviewing his name even though she doesn’t comment on it. She thanks him for his service in assisting Mr. Stark.

Stark instructs the driver to get cheeseburgers and tells Miss Potts to set a press conference, in that order. 

The driver swings by a Pizza Planet, but they don’t enter the restaurant through the airlock guarded by robots, instead driving to the side and ordering some Super Nova Burgers at an electronic machine. Happy pulls the car up to the window, where an employee hands a whole stack of blue boxes to Happy while Sergeant Barnes tries to remain unobtrusive.

Stark immediately opens a box and starts digging in. There’s meat in a bun, like a hot dog, though the meat is a patty instead of a frankfurter, and it’s closer to a sandwich. The smell is oddly familiar.

Stark groans as he crams a huge bite into his mouth, and gestures his burger at the boxes. “Dig in. We’ve got plenty.”

Sergeant Barnes gingerly takes a Super Nova Burger box and pulls it out. He bites in, and it’s like a hot dog but not. He gets a flash of eating hot dogs by a pier, and a large ferris wheel. The name Nathan flashes through Sergeant Barnes’s brain without context, since he most likely would’ve accompanied the Captain. Steve.

The car pulls away again, and their next destination has a crowd that bursts into applause. Sergeant Barnes tenses.

An older bald man embraces Stark tightly when he exits the car, but there’s something possessive about his hold that makes Sergeant Barnes frown. Sarge and the smaller troops might need to go on a recon mission to eavesdrop on this man, because something isn’t sitting right in Sergeant Barnes’s stomach. It’s the same fake kindness Pierce had, which Sergeant Barnes only realized was fake after receiving real kindness from Sarge.

Stark welcomes the hug, eagerly leaning into it and calling the man Obie.

Still clutching his burger, Stark heads off with Obie, drawing the attention of the crowd with him, leaving Sergeant Barnes space to slip out, although he’s ghosted through crowds before.

Miss Potts and Yinsen follow and Miss Potts ends up next to a bland looking man who nevertheless has clear tells of being a skilled agent. Agent Coulson acts friendly, but Sergeant Barnes is immediately suspicious when he spouts SHIELD’s full acronym. Sergeant Barnes clenches his teeth when Miss Potts agrees to set up a meeting between SHIELD and Stark.

Stark sits in front of the podium, still munching his burger, and tells everyone else to sit too. Slowly, everyone complies. Sergeant Barnes frowns as Stane pats Stark’s shoulder, though Stark still seems unbothered.

Stark talks about seeing soldiers die, and eventually stands and announces that Stark Industries will immediately halt all weapons manufacturing and is met with shock and shouted questions from the crowd. Even Miss Potts seems shocked, and a look of fury flashes across Stane’s face before he puts a hand on Stark’s shoulder and attempts to shut down his announcement.

Everyone seems to think Stark is an idiot, but not for the same reasons Sergeant Barnes does.

Sergeant Barnes frowns. The prosthesis arm is a weapon; he is a weapon, himself. Does this mean Stark will refuse to fix the arm? He’s also talked of building a better suit.

Stark strides through the flashing cameras, which Sergeant Barnes avoids for obvious reasons. One downside of Stark’s assistance is he attracts attention like a magnet. If Sergeant Barnes were an ordinary soldier, if he was less skilled, he would have been spotted a dozen times in this press conference alone. 

He’s still twitchy and paranoid as he slips into Stark’s car, thankfully well away from the paparazzis’ prying eyes. "Come on, Sarge," Stark says, and it takes Sergeant Barnes a second to realize Stark is calling him that. Of course, he views Sarge as lifeless plastic.

“Let’s go home, Happy.” Stark says to the driver, before turning to Sergeant Barnes and smirking at Barbie. “My place is even better than Barbie’s Malibu mansion.”

Chapter Text

Sarge stays in stealth recon mode, an unmoving tiny figure in Sergeant Barnes’s breast pocket beside Captain Shieldface as Stark leads Sergeant Barnes and Yinsen towards his mansion, which is built into the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Even without moving, Sarge knows Barbie is as blown away by the Malibu coastline as the paratroopers were by the air force base. It’s not every day a toy gets to actually visit the real environment they were molded for rather than a playset.

“See? Way better than Barbie’s dreamhouse!” Stark throws his arms wide, strolling into the wide, sunny interior. It’s the exact opposite of the cave they’d rescued Stark from, open and sunny without being almost plastic-meltingly hot like the desert.

Sarge has to agree with Stark, though Andy mostly used the dreamhouse as a base for One-Eyed Bart and Betty and Doctor Porkchop more than Molly ever played with it, same with how the villains in Andy’s games rode in Barbie’s pink corvette.

Stark’s mansion has a waterfall inside, numerous skylights, rounded white walls and pristine floors. 

Yinsen relaxes visibly at the contrast to the cave, but despite the open and inviting aura, Sergeant Barnes’s eyes sweep the windows. He’s clearly not a fan of how many sightlines enemies could have looking in the wide windows that overlook the sea, though any enemy would need a helicopter to approach from that direction.

Sarge guesses that even some of the artwork and decor alone cost more than the chicken man Al would have gotten for his entire Woody’s Roundup collection, had Woody not escaped with Jessie and Bullseye after Buzz’s whole rescue mission. Not to mention the house itself.

Despite its obvious size and cost, the mansion looks less lived-in and far less personal than either of Andy’s houses. It’s almost as impersonal as the safe houses they’ve been crashing at, though of course far more luxurious.

“Welcome back, sir.” a British man’s voice says from nowhere, and Sarge feels Sergeant Barnes tense. “I must admit I was quite worried for your safety. As it turns out, not watching over you is even more stressful than watching over you, sir.”

“Missed you too, J.” Stark says. “Guys, this is Jarvis. Think of him as an artificial butler, you can ask him if you need anything, and don’t worry, he won’t spy on you in the shower. He’s far more of a prude than I am. Not that I’ll spy on you either, though you have that whole cyberpunk soldier fantasy going for you, Sarge.”

Sarge has to remind himself that Stark is talking to Sergeant Barnes, not him.

“Don’t worry, there aren’t cameras in the bathrooms, either.” Stark says, which means it might be the only place in the house Sarge and the toys won’t have to remain frozen in toy mode. Sergeant Barnes is probably already clocking the cameras in the main area.

“Jarvis, these are Ho Yinsen and Sergeant Barnes. They both helped me out over there, so mi casa es su casa, and all that.”

Stark doesn’t bother introducing the toys, but that’s not uncommon.

“A pleasure, sirs. If you require any assistance, please do not hesitate to ask.” Jarvis hesitates, then says “I’m programmed to help anyone in the house, but assisting Mr. Stark has won you my sincere gratitude. I’d be delighted to assist you with whatever you need.”

“You said you’d fix the prosthesis,” Sergeant Barnes turns to Stark, 

“Straight to the point, huh? No kicking back and relaxing for you after that hellish desert, huh? Man, you sound just like Cap.” Stark says, though Sarge can tell he’s straight to the point, too. “All right, Sarge, c’mon down to my lab. Yinsen, you can come, or Jarvis can direct you to your room and you can shower or whatever. Get all that horrible sand out for good. Sarge, at least change outta those bloodstained fatigues. I can have ‘em washed for you. Or burned. Is that brain matter on your sleeve?”

“Yes,” Sergeant Barnes sounds completely unconcerned.

“You know, I’m surprised you’re not rushing to play with your Barbie and army men in the bath. Though I have to say, don’t put your Buzz Lightyears in the water. Water and batteries don’t mix-”

Stark’s face tightens, expression going haunted for a moment before he forces a carefree smile. What did they do to Stark in that cave?

“Maintenance is more important than hygiene.” Sergeant Barnes says.

Stark shakes his head. “I have a machine in my walls who sounds less robotic than you, sheesh. All right, c’mon Robocop.”

Sergeant Barnes readily follows Stark downstairs to his workshop, despite having probably hundreds of horrific experiences in labs over the decades. Sarge remembers cutting him open early in the journey and how Sergeant Barnes had barely flinched.

Stark’s lab, like his house, is far more welcoming than the cave or the base they’d rescued Sergeant Barnes from. Sleek, fancy cars are parked on the sidelines, and two robots that look like metallic, clawed arms on bases putter around. They’re not quite the Frankensteined creations Woody described from Sid’s room, though Sid’s toys ended up helping save Buzz in the end.

The robots beep and speed up to Stark, whirring excitedly and waving their metal arms.

“Yeah, Daddy’s home.” Stark says, and he sounds somewhat choked up as he pats the camera on one arm, which is the closest thing the robots have to a head. The claw clutches Stark’s shirt desperately. The toys had always come alive around pets, but perhaps these robots will report back to Stark.

The other bot dips its claw into the bucket of toys- and wasn’t that how Sid got ahold of Woody and Buzz in the first place?- and snags Bearded Combat Carl’s pull string by the chain of the dog tags, pulling and pulling until he’s dangling by the string like a puppet.

“Stop hanging his toys, Dum-E.” Stark scolds, and the bot abruptly drops Carl. 

Carl’s pull string thankfully whirs back in, and his voice box says “Enemies at two o’clock!”

The robot pokes his claw curiously in Sergeant Barnes’s bucket, and Sarge has to remain motionless rather than protect his men. The claw looks like it could break one of the smaller soldiers.

Luckily, Stark shoos the robot away from the bucket.

Sarge hasn’t seen real robots like this before, just Andy’s old robot toy with letters and numbers on his treads- poor fellow was KIA, he stopped working, even with new batteries, and was thrown away- and the Zurg bots in the Buzz Lightyear show and video game.

These robots are almost as fantastical as toys themselves.

Stark waves a hand, and holographic images appear in midair. Those, Sarge is sure, are only science fiction in most people’s minds, but Stark had designed a suit to rival Buzz Lightyear’s. Perhaps he could be trusted with the toys’ secret, but Sarge remains motionless for now.

“Okay, let’s see what we’re looking at.” Stark claps his hands and rubs them together. 

Sergeant Barnes pulls off his fatigue shirt without a shred of self-confidence, and Stark whistles, though whether that’s at the arm or Barnes is anyone’s guess. Probably the arm.

Sergeant Barnes carefully hangs his shirt on a rolling chair so Sarge and Captain Shieldface can still see the proceedings. 

“Jarvis is going to scan your arm. It won’t hurt.” Stark says.

“Pain doesn’t matter.” Sergeant Barnes replies, standing almost at attention.

Stark snorts. “As someone who just got tortured, pain very much does matter. And from the looks of you, you got the same sort of loving hospitality I received.” 

Stark’s eyeing the angry red scars where the metal meets flesh and absentmindedly rubbing the glowing light in his own chest.

A holographic image of Sergeant Barnes appears in midair, and Stark reaches out to spin it and zoom in.

Sergeant Barnes watches avidly before seeming to catch himself and stare blankly ahead.

Stark ushers Barnes to sit in another rolling desk chair, then throws himself in another and propels himself with his feet, gliding around the room to gather tools and flashlights.

“Jarvis, drop my needle.” Stark says and a loud, thumping beat fills the room. Stark glances at Sergeant Barnes, as if wondering if the sound will set him off, but Sergeant Barnes continues to wait, still and obedient. He’s not spinning the chair around the way Andy did even as a teenager.

“The soldiers like dancing.” Sergeant Barnes says. That earns him another strange look from Stark, who not so subtly glances at where Sarge and Captain Shieldface wait, unmoving, in the pocket of his hanging shirt.

“Dad always said Cap couldn’t dance. About the one thing he couldn’t do after his super special serum.” Stark mutters bitterly, though he nods his head along to the pounding beat of the music as he pushes snags a rolling cart and wheels himself and the cart over to Sergeant Barnes.

“Where is the Captain?” Sergeant Barnes asks as Stark opens up the arm and peers in with the flashlight.

Stark frowns. “Hell if I know. Dad only spent my whole childhood scouring the Arctic for him. Wouldn’t shut up about good old Cap.”

“The Captain is a good man.” Sergeant Barnes nods, like an indisputable truth.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re clearly a fan, even if you mutilated his action figure. Pretty sure that was vintage, too.” Stark glances at Captain Shieldface before turning his attention back to the prosthesis, poking around with a tool. “Seriously, even Buzz Lightyear is cooler, even if he’s designed for like, six-year-olds. At least he’s got lasers and wings, whereas Cap has a glorified frisbee.”

“The Captain likely survived the ice.” Sergeant Barnes says. 

“Uh, people can’t just survive being frozen alive.” Stark seems to be further questioning Sergeant Barnes’s sanity and then his own. “How the hell did you survive this? I can see your bone. This is almost as brutal as that goddamn battery.”

“Cryofreeze was a standard procedure for maintenance.” Sergeant Barnes reports tonelessly, though he shivers minutely. His prosthetic arm remains still.

“And I thought people struggled to keep up with me.” Stark mutters to himself. He pokes something and Sergeant Barnes twitches. 

Stark winces apologetically.

“I survived numerous cryofreeze sessions.” Sergeant Barnes says. “Maintenance and information on the Captain’s whereabouts are required for optimum mission performance. Captain America is vital for taking down HYDRA.”

“Are you drunk?” Stark asks, peering at Sergeant Barnes. “Damn, do I need a drink after all this shit.”

Sergeant Barnes shakes his head, and Stark decides to take control of the conversation, extolling the virtues of his various cars and his favorite rock bands to Sergeant Barnes as he fixes up the arm.

“Go on, pose for me.” Stark waves a hand impatiently once he closes the panel.

Sergeant Barnes moves through a series of stretches to test the motion, and his arm moves as fluidly as his flesh one, with none of the stalling or grinding.

“You are a skilled technician.” Sergeant Barnes says. “I need the Captain’s location for mission success.”

“And I need a drink,” Stark says again, ushering Sergeant Barnes out of the lab, barely letting him scoop up Sarge and the other toys. 

Chapter Text

Sergeant Barnes has been dismissed from the lab without critical mission info. Stark is both the most skilled and the strangest technician he can recall. 

The music wasn’t that uncommon, but Stark had insisted on conversing with the Asset past basic reports of functionality. He’d been overly concerned with the possibility of adding to Sergeant Barnes’s pain, though that might have been due to the glowing metal implant in his chest.

There are cameras and microphones hidden throughout the mansion, monitored by the intelligent system, Jarvis. 

“Might I assist you with something, Sergeant?” Jarvis asks as Sergeant Barnes prowls through the house, sweeping for additional cameras or microphones and casing exits and sightlines. There are far too many sightlines for his liking. “I can dim the room, if you’d like.”

The windows suddenly darken, blocking out the ocean view and cutting out the streams of sunlight. Sergeant Barnes isn’t supposed to have opinions on superiors, but he likes Jarvis. Jarvis, like him, is programmed to comply and carry out orders, programmed to defer to Stark. 

Jarvis’s seeming deference to Sergeant Barnes is confusing. 

“Rest assured that nobody can see in, now, either, and I constantly monitor the premises for threats to Mr. Stark’s safety. Now that you are staying here, your safety is also my responsibility now, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Barnes lets out a slight breath. Captain Shieldface and Sarge are still unmoving plastic figures in his breast pocket.

“You may help yourself to any food in the fridge, pantry or cabinets,” Jarvis says. “Or, if you like, I can order something for you. Just name it.”

“Where are the rations?” Sergeant Barnes asks.

“I’m afraid we don’t have military rations, even if they might be an improvement from Sir’s usual diet of alcohol, coffee and fast food.” Jarvis sounds regretful for a machine. “Sometimes he eats sushi. Do you like sushi, Sergeant?”

Once again, there’s a slight lapse when Sergeant Barnes realizes Jarvis is addressing him and not Sarge.

“Unknown.”

“Shall I order some and we can see if you like it, Sergeant?” Jarvis’s tone is as pleasant as always.

“Sustenance is not supposed to be enjoyed.” Sergeant Barnes says, remembering how the toy soldiers tried to get him food as a reward. But he hasn’t done anything to be rewarded here, just submitted to basic, expected maintenance. Or is Jarvis attempting to reward him for saving Stark? Stark truly could have escaped himself, and he has critical skills and mission info, so there’s no need for the rescue to be rewarded.

Sergeant Barnes assumes Jarvis outranks him, though he’s being shockingly subservient to Sergeant Barnes himself, like the toys. None of them put him at the bottom of the chain of command, where HYDRA had made it clear was his place.

Stark had dismissed Sergeant Barnes, so perhaps Jarvis is in charge of his remaining maintenance. 

Sergeant Barnes nods, showing his acquiescence to Jarvis’s suggestions. Suggestions are merely disguised orders.

He’s so used to Sarge reminding him to eat or shower that he keeps glancing surreptitiously down at the toys in his pocket, but this isn’t the first time he’s changed handlers and been forced to adapt.

“Very well, Sergeant. I’ve placed an order of sushi that will be delivered in half an hour. Might I recommend taking a shower or bath in the meantime? I can order you other clothes, as I have for Dr. Yinsen.”

Maintenance on the prosthesis was more important than hygiene, but now that Stark repaired the arm, it’s evidently time for hygiene. Jarvis directs Sergeant Barnes to what he assures him is a private bathroom, as if Sergeant Barnes has any right to privacy, and once again insists he has no cameras in the bathroom.

Sergeant Barnes inspects the tiles and realizes it’s true; there are no cameras here, though there are microphones.

Sergeant Barnes and Captain Shieldface come to life in his pocket, gesturing for the other troops to remain silent, but beckoning them to hop out of the bucket hanging from Sergeant Barnes’s belt. Both Buzz Lightyears flip onto the sink in a completely unnecessary show of acrobatics, while the Carls simply climb up onto the countertop.

Sarge silently directs Sergeant Barnes to turn on the shower. Sergeant Barnes starts to remove his clothing, knowing the drill, while the toys take the opportunity to conceal their conversation under the sound of the shower spray.

“What do we do?” Carl hisses. “We can’t let Tony Stark know we’re alive. He’s one of the most famous people on the planet.”

“You’re the one who told Bucky Barnes to go to Stark to get his arm fixed.” Gordon fires back, jabbing a tiny green arm at Sergeant Barnes. “Good luck keeping that a secret.”

“He’s kept Jarvis and the robots a secret.” Private Rogers has his arm around Lieutenant Ryan. 

“He’ll likely keep his robot suit a secret.” The Buzz that Sergeant Barnes fixed says.

The other Buzz scoffs. “He’ll announce it to the world.”

Captain Shieldface claps his chewed hands together to get everyone’s attention. He points to his bullet hole eyes in his shield face, then mimes checking a watch.

For now, they’ll wait and see.

Sergeant Barnes steps into the shower to begin hygiene protocols. Rather than spraying from a nozzle, the water falls gently like rain from the ceiling. Not the torrential downpours in practically flooded trenches that leave feet and socks wet for days, leading to trenchfoot, but a gentle rain.

Sergeant Barnes showers quickly- there’s no use wasting time- and the towels are far fluffier than anything at the safehouses or bases. He struggles to dry his hair and leaves the baclava off.

“We don’t have regulations about shower length here, Sergeant.” Jarvis says as Sergeant Barnes emerges from the bathroom. “Mr. Yinsen is still enjoying his bath. There’s no need to rush. Your clothes and sushi have not yet arrived.”

Sergeant Barnes falters. Is that an order in disguise?

“You do look remarkably like Sergeant Barnes. My scanners detect a 95% match between your features.”

Stark’s talking before he even fully comes up the stairs. “Hey, I realized you deserve a drink too. As a thanks, and since you’ve clearly seen some shit too. You know, I can get you help with that. Get you to see a shrink, fix your head some.”

Finally, someone’s making sense, but Sarge had said there was to be no chair. The toys tend to defer to humans. Will Sarge relent and let Stark reset Sergeant Barnes to the Soldier?

Stark seems slightly surprised to see Sergeant Barnes there, even though he could surely ask Jarvis where he was.

“I thought you’d be playing with your Barbie in the bathtub. You know, it’s easily big enough for a real, human companion, if you wanna find a real blonde lady to keep you company.”

Stark isn’t looking at Sergeant Barnes too closely, too busy pouring scotch into the glasses.

Sarge said the history books said Sergeant Barnes was good with the ladies, but Sergeant Barnes can’t possibly imagine being so now. The Widows were trained to seduce and use their bodies as weapons, but the Soldier was not.

“You know, I’d even offer to join you. I know it’s all Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but I wouldn’t tell, and you’re not a soldier here. You can be a civilian. Speaking of which, Jarvis, did we get new clothes ordered? Something besides bloodstained camo, hopefully?”

“Yes, sir. Might I advise looking at our guest?”

Guest is a strange word for Sergeant Barnes’s station, especially when Stark is an acting technician.

The glass shatters on the floor, making Sergeant Barnes twitch. “Holy shit, you really are Sergeant Barnes. Only like, the cooler, edgier cyberpunk reboot.”

His shock, the way he says Sergeant Barnes, brings to mind shooting out the tires of a car, grabbing the driver, who looked like an older version of Stark. He’d said “Sergeant Barnes” in the same disbelieving tone, like he was seeing a ghost. 

Stark Senior.

“I killed your father.” Sergeant Barnes says.

“Is this some crappy Star Wars reference?” Stark asks, seemingly trying to brush Sergeant Barnes’s words aside. “Next someone’s going to tell me that you are my father.”

Sergeant Barnes frowns, bewildered. “Howard Stark was a-”

Hadn’t Howard helped in the war? He’d looked for the Captain too, but HYDRA sent the Soldier to kill him.

“He was driving drunk.” Stark says. “He crashed. It killed mom, too.”

“I shot the tires.” Sergeant Barnes reports. He’s sure he’ll be punished for it, but he’s deserving of any punishment technicians and handlers give him. “Stark saw me, and just like you-”

“You killed my mom?” Stark asks slowly. His hand tightens on the other glass.

The toys come pouring out of the bedroom, Sarge hopping as fast as he can on his base, still barely keeping up with the Buzz Lightyears, Carls, and Captain Shieldface.

Captain Shieldface flings himself between Stark and Sergeant Barnes, holding out his arms as if he can shield Sergeant Barnes with his six-inch body.

Sarge rapidly climbs up Sergeant Barnes’s pants and shirt to perch on his shoulder. “I know it looks bad, but we can explain. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Stark blinks at the moving toys, then down at the broken glass at his feet. “What the hell? I haven’t been drinking enough for my brain to cook this up.”

Chapter Text

Tony’s headache rivals any hangover he’s had, but he’s barely had anything to drink yet. 

He stares at the face of Bucky Barnes. He’s not grinning like in the history books. His hair hangs in damp curtains covering his face as he falls to his knees and hangs his head, hands held behind his back. “Ready to comply with punishment.”

He looks like he’d accept anything; beatings, electrocution, water torture. All of the above. It makes Tony’s stomach heave. He’d fought the tortures the Ten Rings put him through until he couldn’t fight anymore, though he’d still gotten the last laugh with his suit. 

Barnes seems to have long since reached the point of not fighting and resigning himself to his fate. His badass cyborg arm was half torturing him and while he’d fought like a one man army in the desert, he now looks like a wet, abused old dog huddled on the floor after pissing on it.

Earlier, he’d quite literally soldiered through what had to be excruciating pain with the arm maintenance, dismissing his own pain as irrelevant, like his body wasn’t his own. And now he’s inviting more pain, asking for a punishment?!

Barnes seems unsettingly ready to acquiesce to torture, but the toys aren’t. They stand in front of him in military formation, the Buzz Lightyears and Combat Carls towering over the little green and tan army men. Mermaid Barbie looks ready to ram her beach jeep into Tony’s shins if he tries to hurt Barnes.

“Nobody’s punishing you, Sergeant,” the tiny green soldier with binoculars says in Barnes’s ear before turning to Tony. “HYDRA messed with his head. I saw how they erased his mind and made him obey. They had him in a chair that shocked his brain.”

Barnes shivers minutely but keeps his position and reports that the chair is necessary for cognitive function and standard maintenance, like Tony really ought to use it on him later. 

“This isn’t a Warp Darkmatter situation,” the Buzz Lightyear without the utility belt tells Tony seriously. “Warp was a double agent from the start, secretly working for Zurg even while he was my partner at Star Command. I thought he died, but he was evil the whole time!”

“He didn’t have a say in it,” one of the green troops says. “Like how we have no say if we’re cast as the villain in playtime.”

“That’s not real!” Tony snaps. Damn, he hopes everything Barnes said isn’t real. If Barnes killed his mom…

But Barnes had saved him, and he’s clearly been through the wringer. Or a meat grinder. He’d apparently survived an electric chair multiple times, which should be impossible. Getting shocked by the car battery while being waterboarded was torture enough; Tony can’t imagine electricity being pumped directly into his brain.

The little bit of alcohol Tony drank threatens to come back up. Even so, he pours himself another glass and downs it, fighting to keep that down, too.

“Did they put you in the electric chair before you-“ Tony almost can’t finish.

Barnes nods. “Before every mission, after being thawed from the cryogenic tube.”

Tony had been questioning Barnes’s sanity before; cryogenic freezing seemed a bit too sci-fi, but so are flying metal suits and arc reactors.

“The chair fixes neurological malfunctions, like visions.”

“You’re saying a goddamn electric chair fixes you?!” Tony throws his hands up in disbelief. “That’s probably what made you cuckoo in the first place. And all the shit you’ve been through. Hell, I must be losing it if I’m seeing living toys. Jarvis?”

“I’m not sensing any robotics in them past the usual electronics for a Buzz Lightyear’s lights and sounds.” Jarvis reports, sounding puzzled. “The soldier figures are plastic.”

They’re supposed to be solid plastic. The little green guys aren’t poseable at all, shouldn’t be able to move as toys, let alone on their own.

“How are you alive?!” Tony demands, and he’s not sure if he’s directing the question more at the toys or Barnes. Seriously, Barnes had fallen off a mountain, how had he survived that, let alone an electric chair and having a prosthetic arm grafted onto his bone?”

“Regular maintenance,” Barnes says flatly, though he begins to glare. “If you experiment on them, don’t… don’t tear them apart.” 

His voice grows quieter the more he speaks, and he pales, as if he’s committed high treason for telling Tony not to hurt the toys. Do toys feel pain? The thought of testing pain tolerance is a non-starter. Tony’s no torturer.

“I’m not going to test pain tolerance or anything-” Tony says.

“It’s a standard experiment.” Barnes’s jaw clenches, like he’s steeling himself up for it. His pain tolerance is already through the roof, from what Tony’s seen.

Tony’s heart aches, and not just from his handy dandy new reactor.

“Sergeant, you don’t have to submit to this man.” Utility Belt Buzz says, still standing protectively between Tony and Barnes. 

Non-belt Buzz says “He fixed my wings, like you fixed his arm.”

“Get up, Barnes.” Tony sighs, running a hand over his face. “I’m not gonna punish you. I might drink myself into a coma, but you’re welcome to join me in that.”

“I’ll try to cut you off before you reach that point, sir.”

“Alcohol does not affect me,” Barnes says.

Tony squints at him. “Did you secretly get the serum too? You’d think Howar- that he wouldn’t have shut up about it if you had.”

Barnes frowns, as if trying to remember. “Zola-”

“Zola?” Tony frowns. The name rings a bell.

Jarvis helpfully chimes up with “Dr. Arnim Zola was a Swiss scientist in HYDRA in World War 2. He was captured by the Strategic Science Reserve and given a place among SHIELD when it was formed by Colonel Chester Phillips, Agent Margaret Carter and Howard Stark.”

Jarvis sounds regretful about Howard, yet there’s no blame at Barnes in his tone.

Tony resolutely ignores the mention of Howard, glancing at Barnes to see if Phillips or Carter are ringing any bells (especially with Carter’s possible relationship with Cap).

“HYDRA’s still around.” the tiny green soldier on Barnes’s shoulder says sternly. “We’ve been hunting them down, destroying their bases. We rescued Barnes and Captain Shieldface here from two different bases.”

Tony downs some more scotch in disbelief. They’d beat the Nazis and HYDRA in World War 2… but then again, he’d just seen his own weapons used by terrorists. Was HYDRA involved in that somehow? 

“Now Zola’s a real Warp Darkmatter case,” the non-utility-belt Buzz says. “Evil all the way through. Makes you wonder why the good guys hired him after the war.”

Buzz strokes the little curly mark on his chin.

“Zola was there when I had the arm. Sergeant Barnes, You are to be the new Fist of HYDRA, ” Barnes says slowly, as if suddenly remembering, staring at his gleaming silver hand. “I choked him.”

“Good work, Barnes,” one of the green paratroopers whoops.

Barnes scowls, as if thinking of all the other work he’d done, and nope, Tony doesn’t want to think of that right now either. He just got back from being tortured, sheesh.

“Is every toy real?” Tony asks.

“All of us,” an army guy with a bullet hole in his chest nods, then stands up for Barnes more “Sergeant Barnes saved me from being shot to pieces.”

Tony swears. He’d tested weapons on toys, thinking they were too boring to play with as a child. He’d methodically disassembled his battery-powered robots along with the toaster and blender as a child. He’d definitely used the same type of army guys as target practice when Aunt Peggy taught him to shoot.

Had Tony murdered them unknowingly? Tortured them? Shit, looking at the hole in the guy’s chest, he’s all too aware of the hole in his own chest.

Finding out his weapons were going to terrorists was bad enough, and now this. Shit, every single conversation topic is full of landmines. And that thought brings him back to the humvee.

Tony takes another swig of scotch, relishing how it burns on the way down.

“Why don’t you say you’re alive when kids torture you?” Tony asks.

“It’s breaking the primary objective,” one soldier says. “We’re made to be played with.”

The two paratroopers briefly tell of a cowboy named Woody and several mangled toys coming alive to scare a kid named Sid and save another Buzz Lightyear from being blown to pieces.

Tony wonders why his toys hadn’t done that when he shot them. He swallows more scotch. 

“So, you really were frozen.” Tony says, probably tactlessly, but Barnes hasn’t really aged. Okay, he’s aged in the fact his eyes are haunted by horrors, his face is haggard. He’s a man who’s seen some of the worst the world has to offer. But he’s not going gray, his face isn’t wrinkled beyond confusion, he doesn’t look older than late twenties, maybe thirty at the most.

He’d fallen in what, 1945? Born in 1917, so he’s physically twenty-seven, hadn’t even turned twenty-eight when he fell. 

He’s physically a decade younger than Tony, but has been alive for decades more, seen horrors Tony can barely comprehend even after the cave.

“Captain America is frozen,” Barnes says, glancing at the six-inch mutilated Cap figure. Had it really been rescued from a HYDRA base? Can he feel his missing head, the bullet holes for eyes in the shield? Did he feel the pain of being chewed by some dog?

Tony grabs another glass and pours a generous helping for Barnes. Too bad toys can’t drink. They look like they deserve it, too.

Chapter Text

Sarge quickly realizes that Tony Stark is hardly a good role model for Sergeant Barnes on how to function as a human being. Stark forgoes eating and sleeping as he throws himself into projects, and Jarvis has to remind Stark about meals and showers just as Sarge has to remind Sergeant Barnes.

Jarvis frets and watches over Stark in a similar manner to toys, but can interact directly with his human unlike the silent observation most toys have to contend with.

Stark spends nearly all his time in his workshop, diving headfirst into designing a new, better suit as well as searching for Captain America. “Howard only spent my whole childhood searching and never found him.” Stark says once, when Jarvis forced him up for food. “If I manage, that’s a huge middle finger to dear old Pop. Always said I’d never measure up to Cap, well, I'm gonna be the one to save him.”

The Buzz Lightyears join Stark in his workshop frequently, commenting about his suit upgrades. They seem shocked that Stark’s designs don’t include wings, instead having thrusters in his hands and feet. Stark boasts that his repulsor blasts will be even cooler than a laser, but claims he’ll have laser beams on his fingertips too.

Stark’s first several attempts at flight aren’t even falling with style. He crashes spectacularly, and it’s a wonder he doesn’t break something important. The two Buzz Lightyears try to give him tips, but rely heavily on their wings and acrobatics that Stark can’t possibly achieve in his own suit.

Stark builds another arc reactor, too, and several of Sarge’s men take part in a daring mission to replace the old one, forming a chain like the plastic monkeys to reach into the metal cavity in Stark’s chest to detach the old one, thankfully avoiding sending him into cardiac arrest.

“Huh, I bet you guys kill at Operation. That’s a figure of speech, by the way, since killing is the exact opposite goal of an operation. You’re toys, you know that board game, right? It buzzes obnoxiously when you bump the edge?”

Sarge nods and tells his men good work. They had played Operation back in Andy’s room, but since leaving Andy’s room have had to perform medical procedures on both Barnes and Stark. Sarge can still hardly believe his life. Performing medical procedures on humans while living in a mansion with one of the most famous men in the world. Surely they’re the first toys to ever see Stark’s house now that he’s famous.

Pepper Potts has the first arc reactor engraved with “Proof Tony Stark has a Heart.”

Sergeant Barnes, like Stark, doesn’t know how to relax. He finds the gym in Stark’s mansion and spends hours putting himself through grueling physical workouts. Sarge runs drills with the toys, keeping them in shape and giving Sergeant Barnes a sense of community, so he’s not working out alone. 

It’s nice, staying in one place, no longer constantly on the move. Stark’s house is even starting to feel like a home. Not in the way Andy’s houses had, but Sarge’s troops are settling in. 

Stark- or maybe Jarvis- has tons of clothes delivered for Sergeant Barnes and Yinsen. Sergeant Barnes still favors military fatigues but has begun branching out to Henley shirts, which Barbie says he looks great in, and she’s coaxing him to try jeans, but he’s only tried cargo pants with storage for knives.

Barbie herself receives a whole wardrobe of dresses that fit over her mermaid tail, and she’s often dressed in sparkling princess-type dresses as she inspects the engines and undercarriages of Stark’s huge collection of fancy cars. She gives Sergeant Barnes hair advice since he clearly has no idea what to do with his hair, and even sneaks out to splash around the ocean in Stark’s private beach.

The Combat Carls get tons of spare clothes, including boots for the shoeless one. Most of their wardrobe still consists of military attire. A bunch of Ken clothes arrived with Barbie’s, and while the pull string bearded Carl can fit in them, the other Carl’s molded muscles make him too big, and they certainly don’t fit the Buzz Lightyears or Sarge and the smaller soldiers.

The tan sniper takes over the kitchen, trying to get Sergeant Barnes and Stark to eat healthier, though Stark usually has Jarvis order takeout if he eats anything at all.

The one time Stark comes upstairs for dinner with Sergeant Barnes and Yinsen, he raises his eyebrows at how the tan sniper barks orders and yells at everyone, how the other troops shout “Yes, Chef!” in a manner similar to how they reply “Yes, sir!” to Sarge. 

“Sheesh, you’d give Gordon Ramsay a run for his money and he’s like, a hundred times your size. How do you even yell that loud with no lungs? And you’re tiny, shouldn’t your voice be high and squeaky, like a mouse?”

Ramsay tells Stark to stop distracting the cook as he whips up a dish full of rice and veggies and spices.

Sergeant Barnes obediently eats whatever he’s given, and the tan soldier grills him for opinions on his creations, since he can’t eat it himself. 

When he’s not throwing himself into his work, Stark drinks a lot, eyes as haunted as Sergeant Barnes’s.

Sarge assigns the Buzz Lightyear toys to stand guard when Stark finally does sleep, despite Jarvis’s assurances that he’s monitoring the whole mansion.

Buckets upon buckets of army men arrive at the mansion, to the point Sergeant Barnes retreats into the closet to avoid the crowds, and Sarge and Captain Shieldface have to appoint several Corporals to command smaller units. 

The dance parties become, as Stark puts it, wilder than his own birthday bashes, practically raves.

Soon there's practically a battalion of Buzz Lightyear figures as well, like the aisle Buzz described from Al’s Toy Barn. A few arrive still in their boxes. Sergeant Barnes stares, almost frozen, at the motionless Buzzes waiting behind the flimsy plastic windows of their spaceship boxes, and the instruction manuals that tumble out when the other toys free them cause him to spiral downward.

The fresh out of the box Buzz Lightyears believe they’re the real Buzz, bringing Sarge back to when Buzz first arrived in Andy’s room, though this is far less adventurous and Sarge spends most of his time with Sergeant Barnes, leaving the Buzzes who know they’re toys to deal with the deluded ones. 

Stark’s not exactly tactful with telling them that they’re toys, but then again, Woody wasn’t either, and Stark grills them on why they initially freeze around him despite not believing they’re toys.

Several of the secondhand Buzz Lightyears have broken wing mechanisms that Stark builds new parts for, getting them back in working order, and fixing the broken electronics of one unfortunate Buzz is child’s play compared to Stark’s other projects.

One Buzz gets a prosthetic leg that Stark customizes to resemble Commander Nebula’s from the Buzz Lightyear cartoon.

Stark orders tons of Barbies and Combat Carls, joking that one of the toys has to be a playboy like him. One of the Buzzes strokes his chin swirl. “Where’s the boy who’s going to play with us?”

Stark gestures grandly at Sergeant Barnes. 

Not all of the newcomer toys move around Stark, Barnes and Yinsen, but even the ones that refuse to move are watching. There are eyes everywhere, but there already were, with Jarvis.

One of the new Carls, dressed in winter gear, and some of the Buzzes volunteer to look for Cap when they hear of Stark sending drones. It’s taking longer to find Cap than it took to find Woody, for the obvious reason of him being in the arctic instead of across town.

Stark waves the offers aside.

Sergeant Barnes, when asked, sometimes sets the soldiers up in tactical positions when they go into toy mode, but it’s not quite the same as a child’s imagination. It seems to quiet Sergeant Barnes’s mind, somewhat, until certain arrangements of soldiers seem to bring back bad memories and he gets lost in his head.

With all the packages arriving, Sarge would be on constant reconnaissance if he was still reporting to Woody, but Jarvis assures them they’re all screened.

“Got you this,” Stark rattles a box at Captain Shieldface, whose bullet-hole eyes widen after lifting the lid. “Some guy named Geri does amazing toy restorations and customizations, which I totally could have done but I’m kinda busy building a suit and tracking down the real deal version of you. It cost a fortune but you know, billionaire, so…”

“Oh crap, it looks like I just got you your own dismembered head.” Stark says, as Captain Shieldface pulls out a toy Captain America head sized just right to fit his body. “It’s a custom, we didn’t mutilate another Cap for you, and it should work. I mean, clearly you’re still functioning with your damn shield for a head, so a real head should be an upgrade. But it’s not your original head, so would this be like if I got a head transplant? That would be a damn tragedy since I’m such a genius, anyone else’s head would be a major downgrade, plus I’d lose this handsome face.” Stark gestures grandly at himself, then shoves his hands in his pockets trying to look like he doesn’t care about Captain Shieldface’s reaction to his gift.

Captain Shieldface slowly removes his shield head, then places the Captain America head atop the joint on his neck. Slowly, the eyes under the famous blue cowl blink, the square plastic jaw works, and he says “I’m still the same toy I was. Getting the serum didn’t make the real Cap more valuable, and getting an actual head doesn’t mean I was worthless before.”

“Leave it to Cap to give an inspiring speech right off the bat,” Stark mutters, hands still jammed in his pockets. “Buddy, you’re pretty valuable. Those HYDRA goons were idiots, shooting you up. But, no offense, the real deal is gonna be way more valuable. And really, the whole world said Cap turned into a hero because of the serum.”

“Steve was already a hero,” Sergeant Barnes says, voice strong with conviction despite the fact he’s disagreeing with Stark who is, in his mind, a superior. “The serum gave him the strength to fit the strength of his heart.”

“Didn’t know you were a poet,” Stark stares at Sergeant Barnes, wide-eyed. “Was HYDRA unable to wipe your complete adoration of Cap, or did it come back gradually?”

Sergeant Barnes’s eyes are distant as he mouths Steve, and Stark seems to regret his words for once and quickly heads back to his lab.

During his inventing marathons, Stark even gets spare plastic and fills in Lieutenant Ryan’s bullet hole. He offers to fill in the plastic on the Captain’s shield, but Cap says he’ll keep the bullet holes as a reminder.

Whenever Potts visits, the Barbies all giggle and whisper adoringly before finally revealing themselves. Pepper lets them play with her hair while telling them all about her own childhood Barbie dolls. The Barbies put their hands on their hearts with pride when she says her own Business Executive Barbie inspired her into her current career at Stark Industries, and the Barbies tell her she could be more than just Stark’s personal assistant.

Stane’s visits are much less jolly, and he’s extra critical of all the toys in the house. Sarge orders his sneakiest, smallest soldier to cling to the underside of Stane’s collar with an even tinier electronic listening device when Stane’s talking to Stark. It feels far more advanced than their old recon missions with the baby monitors, but will allow them to listen in as Woody had when Sarge reported Christmas and birthday presents.

The news from Stane will likely be even more harrowing than the possibility of a cool new toy replacing someone. 

There are so many toys here now- far more than the two hundred troops that used to be in Sarge’s bucket; far more than Andy ever owned. There are more Buzz Lightyears alone than Andy’s whole collection of larger toys, and an XR action figure arrives with another used Buzz. 

From what Sarge remembers of the Buzz Lightyear show the toys watched together at Andy’s, XR was almost as snarky as Stark.

True to character, the XR figure immediately makes himself at home snarking with Stark and Jarvis in the workshop, but at least he already knows he’s a toy.

It’s hard to keep track of all the new arrivals, which puts Sergeant Barnes on edge, eyes skittering over the massive crowd of toys.

Unfortunately their infiltration mission is a failure. Stane tosses his dress shirt in the washing machine upon arriving home, and they’re forced to listen to the washing machine until it destroys the bug. Luckily, the soldier will survive, like the buttons on a shirt.

Sarge is glad they haven’t lost another man, and expects he’ll listen in and report when he hitches a ride back. Stark’s been equipping the Buzz’s with working communicators in their wrists, and a few offer to go spy on Stane or, once again, offer to help the drones search the arctic.

“You really think Obie’s a bad guy?” Stark asks, eyes narrowed, It’s really the last news he needs after everything, but Sarge can’t let it rest just to spare Stark’s feelings.

A few of the Buzzes head off to infiltrate Stane’s office.

Stark, meanwhile, finally gets his suit to fly, hovering triumphantly before rocketing out the tunnel and soaring recklessly through the sky, flying so high his suit almost completely freezes over. He comes back wide-eyed, exhilarated, the happiest he’s been since they met in the cave under such gruesome circumstances.

Sergeant Barnes is steely-eyed and lists everything that could have gone wrong, but Stark waves it aside, still riding high from his successful flight. Several of the Buzzes show off their own flight (Sarge mouths “falling with style”) and XR and Jarvis give sardonic ratings like it’s a talent show.

One of the newer Buzzes, with a blue and silver color scheme instead of the classic green, white and purple, convinces Jarvis to pull up the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command cartoon. Sarge reminisces about crowding around the small TV in Andy’s room with Andy’s Buzz and Woody and the others to watch.

Here at the mansion, they can spread out on couches in front of a massive flatscreen, even with their higher numbers. Ramsay insists on making popcorn and asking Sergeant Barnes if there’s too much butter.

“Bringing back memories of your own heroic buddy?” Stark asks when he finds them watching an episode where Buzz and Mira are battling Zurg. “Buzz is almost as disgustingly goody-two-shoes as Cap.”

Sergeant Barnes shoots Stark a look of disbelief and mutters that Steve was a punk, looking just as surprised when he says it as Stark does, though Stark quickly seems delighted when Barnes shares a few clipped anecdotes of Cap’s misdeeds, like lying on enlistment forms.

Stark tsks in mock disapproval, grinning the whole time.

The Buzzes watch with pride as their onscreen counterpart defeats Zurg, but Sarge starts to wonder if the “Good always wins” message is almost mocking Sergeant Barnes. It’s extremely sanitized compared to his own experiences, though Sarge supposes it’s geared at kids.

Sergeant Barnes compliments the cartoon Buzz’s agility and skill with his laser and hand-to-hand combat. Several Buzzes jump up to demonstrate, sparring with each other on the couch and floor, rolling around and trying to pin each other down. It morphs into Buzzes vs. Carls, before Sarge’s men try pinning the bigger toys down like in Gulliver’s Travels.

Some of the Barbies join in, others cheering from the sidelines, while the lifeguard and nurse Barbies watch like hawks for any foul play or broken parts.

“Well, don’t tear the house down while I’m out,” Stark says, wandering off to get dressed in a suit that likely costs more than both the Davis family cars combined. “Jarvis, you’re on babysitting duty.”

The toys and Sergeant Barnes return to the cartoons, and Stark comes back a few hours later, looking as furious as he had behind the armor. 

“Christine Everhart told me my weapons are still in their hands.”

Stark suits up and rockets off, leaving Sergeant Barnes and Yinsen behind with the army of toys, Jarvis, and the bots. The cartoons are switched off when Yinsen realizes the photos Stark saw of the Ten Rings’ target is his own village.

Jarvis promises he’ll look after Stark and Yinsen while Sergeant Barnes, Sarge, Cap and Utility Belt Buzz go to hunt down Stane.

Sergeant Barnes gets lost in his head on the way over, driving halfway across California in Stark’s most discreet car (which is still ridiculously fancy) until they end up at a safehouse that’s disconcertingly close to Andy’s house, right around the corner on Sycamore Street.

“Is Stane coming here?” Utility Belt Buzz asks as Sergeant Barnes rifles through supplies and spare cash. He’s crouched, ready, finger poised over his laser.

Sarge peers out the window and does a double-take when he sees a little girl playing with Woody, Buzz and the rest of Andy’s toys in her front yard, directly across the street from the safehouse. He checks his binoculars just to be sure, but there’s no mistaking the toys he left behind.

Hamm seems to have teamed up with a purple-haired rag doll in the girl’s playtime, and Rex is placed with a blue triceratops who looks to be from the same toy line. Looks like Rex found another member of his toy line, just like Woody found Jessie and Bullseye.

The girl makes Jessie ride Bullseye while Woody and Buzz ride a stuffed unicorn with heart-shaped nostrils. 

Sarge wonders what happened to them. Had Andy really donated them? Was Rex kidnapped by the little girl? Do they need help to escape? 

The girl pauses her game, running inside for lunch.

Sergeant Barnes is still scouring the house and gathering money, possibly to pay Stark back for everything.

Sarge lets him know where he’s going, that he’s spotted some old friends, then darts across the wide street while Cap stays behind with Sergeant Barnes.

Sarge is easily able to hide among the grass once he reaches the yard. He slips between the blades, watching as Woody and the others get to their feet.

“Sir,” Sarge salutes Woody, standing at attention near his boot. 

Woody blinks and looks down. “Sarge?”

“Do you require an extraction, sir? I’ve saved other toys since I’ve left.”

“No, no, we’re fine.” Woody glances at Sarge. “Where are your men?”

Sarge gestures over his shoulder.

“Yeehaw! We can have playdates!” Jessie leaps up in the air. “Bonnie’s our owner now. Andy gave us all to her.”

“Even though Woody was gonna go to college,” Slinky says.

Slowly, the story of what happened after Sarge, Gordon and Private Paratrooper leapt out of Andy’s window unfolds. Andy had put the toys, except Woody, in a garbage bag bound for the attic, but they’d ended up on the curb. Sarge still isn’t convinced Andy wouldn’t have thrown him and his men in the trash. 

They’d wound up at Sunnyside Daycare, which was run like a prison by an evil bear named Lotso.

“And then Lotso used Buzz’s manual to turn him back into an astro-nut,” says Hamm. “He forgot all about us, thought he was a real space ranger again.”

“Lotso brainwashed Buzz into thinking we were Zurg’s minions.” Mr. Potato Head adds. “He beat us up and locked us in cells. Hey, I bet you could’ve squeezed through those bars.”

Buzz looks incredibly guilty, as if it’s his fault somehow. Woody puts a hand on Buzz’s shoulder, Jessie slings her arms around Buzz’s neck, and Sarge feels a sinking horror. Are all Buzzes able to be reset that easily? Their memories erased without even an electric chair? If he could convince Andy’s Buzz to break the rules around Sergeant Barnes, he’d be able to talk to someone who truly understands what that feels like. Or maybe neither of them want to dredge up that horrible aspect of their past.

Have any of the battalion of Buzz Lightyears back in Malibu been reset? Surely the odds are at least one had, if not several.

Potato Head and Hamm are still bickering over whether Sarge and his men would have been put in the Caterpillar Room at Sunnyside, being living choking hazards and all, and Hamm argues that Buzz is hardly a toddler toy either. Potato Head complains that neither is he, griping about the days when baby Molly would drool on him and bash him around her crib. “I can’t believe I had to go through that again, with a whole army of kids!”

“Guys, that’s not important right now.” Woody shushes the two of them and kneels to be more level with Sarge. “What’ve you been doing?” 

Sarge succinctly reports about his own whirlwind of adventures since leaping out the window, though he leaves out killing Rumlow and various terrorists. Rex still yelps at some of Sarge’s exploits, and the others listen, wide-eyed. Mr. Potato Head stares dubiously as Sarge tells his tale.

Buzz whistles. “You make our adventures look like child’s play.”

“Wow, you’re living the high life in one of the most expensive residences in Malibu.” Hamm looks impressed. “And you have a whole Barbie aisle with you too? What’s a piggy bank have to do to be as lucky as you, Sarge?” 

“Hey, we have a good home here,” Woody reminds Hamm, even if his face drops slightly, probably thinking of Andy.

“Yeah, but it’s no mansion.” Mr. Potato Head mutters.

The familiar beeps and clangs of a garbage truck echo down the street, and several of Andy’s toys shudder, haunted by bad memories like Sergeant Barnes and Stark.

They’re forced to flop over as a neighbor rushes outside with their trash. They drop a bag, swearing, and several stuffed animals fall out of it.

As soon as the neighbor rushes back inside, Woody, Jessie, Buzz and Sarge spring into action. Buzz spares a glance to see if Bonnie’s coming, though Jessie is already darting to the neighbor’s yard with Woody.

Jessie gives a soft yodel at the stuffed animals. “Come on, critters. The dump’s no place for you. Trust me, I’ve been there and it ain’t no picnic. Now we gotta hurry before that truck comes!”

“We’ve got bedbugs,” a morose stuffed moose says, staying almost motionless.

“Nobody’s going to want us if we spread vermin,” a stuffed dog hangs his head, his tail between his legs. “It’s not like lice where we just wait in a bag. Or a real dog with fleas.”

“Well, you don’t have to go to the dump!” Jessie folds her arms. “Come on, it’s almost here!”

But she’s clearly wary of getting bedbugs herself and possibly being put in storage.

“We’ll just get thrown out again,” a pink snake hisses as it curls around the others, trying to offer a shred of comfort that’s clearly not working. Andy’s toys are completely stricken, and from what they’d said about almost getting incinerated, Sarge can tell it’s hitting far too close for comfort.

They’ve been so busy arguing that they have to flop over when the trash truck pulls up. The garbage man drums the metal bings as he throws their contents in the truck, then stops abruptly.

“No way,” the garbage man mutters, scooping up Woody and Buzz. “What? Giving me the silent treatment, after traumatizing me?” 

He thumbs Buzz’s button, and his voice box says “To Infinity, and Beyond!”

Sid Phillips is a grown man now but still wearing that skull on his shirt.

Woody scoffs and comes alive. “You’re the one who was torturing us.”

“Yeah, well, you ended that. I haven’t forgotten that day.” Sid huffs. “And looks like we’ve gone full circle, and you need me to save you now.”

“What?” Buzz asks, breaking character and moving.

“Get your hands off of them,” Sarge says, because he’s used to moving around people now. “We all heard how you tried to blow Buzz up, and burnt Woody.”

Jessie springs to life and kicks Sid’s foot. “You better let them go, you no good, rotten, prickly-”

“Hey, I learned my lesson. I rescue you guys now.” Sid cuts her off, glancing back at the truck. “You wouldn’t believe how many people just throw you guys out.”

“Yes, we would. We’ve seen it happen,” Woody says coldly. “And we have an owner. We’re just saving these guys.”

“Are these your friends?” Sid nods at the stuffed animals, a tad apprehensively, like they might come up and attack him.

“They said they have bedbugs.”

“Poor guys.” Sid says. “Well, I’ve dealt with nastier stuff from landfill rescues. Even dealt with bedbugs before. I can take care of them.”

His voice no longer has the menacing, sinister edge, but their hackles still rise.

“Like you took care of us?” Buzz folds his arms. 

“Believe it or not, trash bags are your friends here.” Sid addresses the stuffed animals directly. “If I stick you guys in a black trash bag and leave you in the truck for a bit, the bugs’ll cook and die and you’ll be bedbug-free.”

The pink snake tightens around her friends. “Really?”

“Yeah, and if any of you get ripped, I can fix you up.” Sid says, before eyeing Woody. “This isn’t my first rodeo saving toys, cowboy. I play nice, now, just like you told me.”

The dog hopefully wags his tail, the moose perks up a bit. 

Sid squints down at Sarge. “I saved a ton of you army guys from the trash, soldier.”

Sarge mentally calculates when they’d been chucked, if Sid would have been old enough to have a job. 

The truck honks and Sid says “I gotta go. You coming or what?”

The snake slowly uncoils and slithers towards Sid, who whips out a garbage bag. Jessie gasps, but the snake slithers in, followed by the puppy and moose. 

Sid slings the bag over his shoulder instead of in the truck, climbing up onto the side and banging it.

The truck pulls away, and Sarge realizes Sergeant Barnes and Stark aren’t the only ones trying to redeem themselves.