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Tony couldn’t really say how it had come this. He certainly hadn’t invited any of these people; so what were they doing in his tower, on his couch, eating his pizza?!
But nonetheless, when he went to Pepper, she turned down his request to kick the Boy Band- and girl assassin who betrayed him and his trust… and stabbed him in the neck! Out of his beloved tower. Something about needing to interact with more people because of reclusive habits were bad for his health.
Anyway, once the DC mess was over and done with, there another bird of prey...ing on his food and not paying rent. Not like he needed their rent money, but SEMANTICS!
It was his house! Constantly being invaded by people who wanted more, and more, and more! This was becoming absolutely ridiculous! AND THEN CAPTAIN AMERICA HAD THE AUDACITY TO TELL HIM THAT HE WAS GOING TO FIND THE WINTER SOLDIER AND BEING HIM IN FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY AND A HOME AND FOOD AND-NO!
Tony had his limits, and he knew when they were crossed, there was a reason he didn’t do BDSM anymore, and that was because TOO MANY PEOPLE always crossed the point of no return and took and took and took from him and never gave or asked for permission or even checked with him if it was ok. This was the final straw.
So when a few seconds later, the elevator had dinged open and out had stepped the smug little bitch with a duffle bag over his shoulder and his hair in a ponytail with a smug little glint in his eyes. No! This would not be happening. Steve narrowed his pretty blue eyes at him in a narrow glare when Tony opened his mouth complain. Don’t you dare say anything.
The alarm shrieked, and sent all Avengers running for their suits and various weaponry. Saved by the bell, mused Tony inside the armor.
The mission was a bad one. It was Hydra. Because of course it was. Why not? Why was it always Hydra.
"Hydra sucks" groaned Clint through the comms from where he was sprawled across a building ledge a few blocks away. Tony agreed, how could he not? Of course it was a bad mission, Hydra missions always were but he didn't say anything aloud, not with Steve the way he was clearly looking for a fight against anyone who would dare set his precious Bucky off, speaking of which, "Any one seen Bucky? I can't track him, I never added him to my suit watch when I do updates."
"Why the hell wouldn't you add him to your suits tracking list, Stark?!" roared Steve through the comms.
Tony sighed wearily, and then replied with a bite of anger in his voice, "Well maybe, Captain Rogers, maybe I had no clue I would have to track him, maybe I have to know before hand so that I can add the coding to the prepared update information, maybe I had no idea you would pull a Clint Barton and try to recruit a jumpy Hydra brainwashed assassin to the team, NOR DID I KNOW YOU WOULD LET HIM ATTEND A MISSION BEFORE HE EVEN UNPACKED HIS FUCKING BAG."
"Language," chided Steve.
"FUCK YOUR LANGUAGE COMMENTS ROGERS! FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR FUCKING ATTITUDE. I'M SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF EVERYTHING YOU DO!"
"Tony." Warned Steve in a tone that conveyed danger to him should he continue down this path.
"NO! Shut the fuck up Rogers, you can't tell me what to do! I'm sick and tired of all of you using me and using my stuff without anything, no question, no thank yous, just take, take, take, take. You've never even asked me if I was oh, I don't know, okay with housing superheroes, or feeding them or giving them money to shop with or anything that I do. I'm sick and tired of it all. And most of all, I'm sick and tired of you, Steven Grant Rogers.”
“What did I do?” Steve sounded confused and slightly offended. Tony gritted his teeth and screamed inside of his helmet. There was a ping, on Steve’s shield. Like the sound a small pebble would ,make if dropped from a large height.
Steve spun around looking for where the sound came from while Tony looked up. “Steve.”
“What?” snapped the irate supersoldier. Tony didn’t say anything, he only pointed up.Steve followed the path his finger pointed at, eyes widening when he saw the unconscious winter soldier being heft over the edge of another building. Without saying another word, Tony engaged his thrusters and streaked off towards the Hydra goons, one current, and one who was currently not being used by the Hydra forces.
He didn’t understand why they were killing him, probably if they couldn’t use him, they’d kill him so that no one else could use him either. Tony grimaced at the thought. He might not like he man,but he didn’t want him dead either. At least, not without first explaining why he had killed Tony’s mother. Goddammit, he wanted answers from the man.
Unfortunately as the fight with the Hydra goon, brought more men out of the shadows and into the light, Tony soon found himself overwhelmed. His suit, already dented and malfunctioning slightly from the earlier struggles, soon fritzed out completely and he found himself down to one repulsor, and the edge of the building two steps behind him, hemmed in by menacing Hydra agents all carrying the same type of gun, overwhelming him and sending him to his doom. He was grounded, his boots having been taken out early on in the fight above Bucky. It had been a good thing though, that when his boots had been taken out, he had landed on top of the Hydra goon that had been shoving Bucky backwards and attempting to toss him over the ledge of the building.
Even though he was thoroughly pissed off at Steve, and then by extension Steve’s precious Bucky, he wouldn’t let someone be killed, not at least when he could do something, anything to do so otherwise.
He had enough red in his ledger, and with every single new cell of his old weaponry, or weaponry based off of his designs popped up, his kill count went higher. He was the Merchant of Death, and he refused to let anyone die by his hand. And these guns were ones based vaguely off of his tech. Vaguely enough as to not be able to have J.A.R.V.I.S. not be able to hack into the mechanics of their design and pinpoint the destruction point. Vaguely enough to have him scream with frustration inside his helmet at another group of individuals taking from him, and never giving back, although if killing or attempting to kill certain serum enhanced supersoldiers was their way of giving back to him, no thank you. He wasn’t done with these idiots just yet.
Tony’s eyes glinted with a hard edge inside of his helmet just before J.A.R.V.I.S. beeped a warning onto the overlay of the holoscreen to warn him of a sudden target lock and incoming missile. He could step out of the path, but that would then mean uncovering Buck- James Buchanan Barnes’ unconscious body and having him take the missile intended for him. There was nothing he could do in the short time until the missile hit home.
White hot anger tore through him, and made his eyes water as Tony took the second before being hit with the missile to gaze at the battlefield. He saw separate fights slowly being lost, exhaustion evident in the slow dragging swipes of Natasha dancing around her Hydra agents blue electricity sparking at her wrists, Clint swinging his bow like a bat next to her. Steve was punching anyone that came within arm's reach of him, cornered by the door to the rooftop, his shield behind him, wedged into the metal frame of the door, unable to retrieve it without turning his back on the Hydra agents. Thor was off world, and therefore unable to aid in the fight, otherwise things would have never gotten to this point, Bruce not being on scene, as he had never received the all clear for code green.
Tony braced himself for the impact as the missile landed home.
He screamed, the pain all encompassing, Fire burning at him, licking at his bones and melting him to slag, then being rebuilt by the molecule, flesh growing over crimson bones, muscle fibers stretching beyond capacity and tearing to cover joints, collagen pouring out of cracked bones, and slotting into the spaces between the bones, hardening as the eternity of pain stretched into the beyond.
He couldn’t be alive, there was no possible way this wasn’t Hell. Tony wasn’t religious, but there was nothing he could do for the irrefutable pain that nothing like this could happen on Earth, that there was no pain like this on the mortal plane.
Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. There was no more of that tearing and burning sensation, now it was a crawling and itching and burning sensation, burning him stronger than before. Suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel, a cool wash of freshness swept his cramped self and he felt himself uncoiling, it was forever and nothing more than a passing moment before the pain burst forth again and the burning and coiling and cramping and twisting was back, tearing his mind asunder through the pain. It stretched on in an eternity, and then it stopped as suddenly as it began again.
The freshness was back, and Tony sank into it with bliss drumming through his senses. Pure and utter relief was freedom indeed. But it was over far, far, too quickly. Hell began again, and Tony wanted to scream.
Who was doing this, why was there nothing but pain. The world was nothing, and all the knowledge he had amassed in his life was meaningless, if this excruciating hell was unending.
Tony was powerless, more so than when he was falling, falling, falling in an eternal void and death was imminent ad nuclear weapons were the heros of the day, and he the package mule delivery a ticking bomb, a bomb planted inside his chest ticking, ticking, ticking, to his demise, whether fast or short, pain and death were the future nothing else but this was what he deserved.
He was a murderer of a million families, he the demon children feared at night, and why? Because he designed products to keep his platypus safe, the one true friend he never had to lie or buy simple friendship from. So he designed and tick, tick, tick, down into the rabbit hole he fell, wide open eyes, a teenager laughing in a seat next to him, a teenager shouting at him to keep his head down, right before light filtered through tiny holes punched through the vehicle, and a rainbow of grey brain matter and slick, crimson blood, was painted across the window.
Tony screamed.
Nothing made sense, there was noise now where there had previously only been the silent crackling of fire roasting him to a fine char, there was fear tangible in the air, and he reveled in it.
His scream, their fear.
A new wave of fire lanced across his senses and he flinched, a hoarse groan weakly falling into the air. He felt like death had taken him out for a night on the town, and then proceeded to let him be the punching bag for every person he’d ever hurt with his words, or actions, or weapons. The blaze flared once, twice and then settled down, simmering deep in the recess of his being, just hot enough for him to feel it licking at his core, his very center, before he dared to move or engage the world with his outwardly senses.
Tony steeled himself, before opening his eyes. Not what he had expected, maybe just a little, okay a lot bland. A white wall looked back at him, not even a textured wall, just a plain white one. No nothing, no anything.
Perhaps shifting his head would help? He turned his head cautiously to the side, and flinched backwards when he saw a ferocious beast lying next to him, mouth gaping open.
Drool clung to sharp, white teeth, and a quiet growl emitted from the gaping cavern as Bucky snored in his sleep.
A sharp scream, comparable to a whistle screamed from his core.It was a funny sight to see, if it hadn’t’ve been so fearsome. Bucky, still with his eyes closed and half asleep, jumped vertically into the air, somehow straightening from his crouched position over the edge of Tony’s bed, into the perfect fight position, with his left arm to the door, and a knife having materialized in his right hand, as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Only when Bucky had settled into his fight position did his eyes open, and the expressive brown, was tinted dark, almost into a gleaming black. The black cornea retracted into smaller and smaller circles, until the black of the iris was almost the only thing visible. Bucky crouched down, and hesitated for a count of three of Tony’s pounding heartbeats.
When a whiff of burning cloth reached his nose, Tony shook himself out of his daze. There on the bed, where his hand was laying, a small curl of smoke made its way out from underneath his palm, and drifted lazily in the air before dissipating.
“HOLY SHIT!” Tony screeched, and snatched his hand off of the bed, just in time to see a small spark, explode into flame on the bedsheet. Pain was exploding up his arm and down his shoulder, but Tony still scrambled off the bed as fast as he could, ignoring the pain to the best of his abilities.
It was the tiniest of trembles that shook his frame, as he stood in the center of the hospital room, wearing only a pair of plain boxers, as he watched the hospital bed be engulfed in flames. He didn’t even react as he felt Bucky draw up next to his shoulder and whistle lowly.
“What the hell happened?” demanded Tony in a low voice.
“You died. Pepper made an agreement with an old work buddy of yours, and used my blood and the serum in it to stabilize it for it to be injected into you to work a healing miracle on you.” Bucky explained, somewhat hesitantly.
Tony snorted in disbelief, “Yeah right. That wouldn’t work. If I were dead you would’ve had to shock my heart, and with the arc reactor, it’s pretty much impossible to do so; unless of course you were to take it out and use it as a defibrillator, and then jam it back into the socket right as my heart jumped but before the shrapnel moved, which would be impossible to do, unless you had like superspeed or something.”
Bucky turned Tony so that he could stare into the eyes of the ex-Hydra ex-weapon, “I swear it Tony.”
Tony scoffed, “Yeah, no. Besides we’re obviously different blood types, I’m quite obviously more motor oil than blood, and I know for a fact that your blood type is A+.”
Bucky felt that if he were any more confused, his emotions would solidify into a physical shape and wallop Tony across the face. As is, Tony cocked his head to the side and began blabbing at a greater speed. “Well, you see as for my blood being more motor oil than blood, it’s a joke see? Because I’m an engineer, and engineers normally work with engine grease, also the Iron Man suit uses motor oil to lubricate the joints. And well, for the fact that I know what your blood type is, my dad had a few vials of your blood back in the day and he played around with it. I know yours was A+ because he told me that a friend like you to a guy like Steve must’ve had a good strong blood type and that he couldn’t believe that his son was a worthless nothing. I mean Dad, honestly compared everything I did to you or Steve, so is it really that hard to believe that I don’t like Stev-”
Tony paled and snapped his mouth shut with a painful click of his teeth snapping together. Something he hadn’t meant to mention, his father. He never spoke of his father, and apparently for good reason too. “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing that your dad isn’t really your dad. It must’ve been pretty hard growing up with a teenage genius who everyone hails as your prodedgy and it not even being your own flesh and blood. Damn.” Bucky trailed off, thinking about the past, before being snapped out of it by Tony stomping on his foot.
It hadn’t hurt, but it didn’t amuse the Soldier in the back of his mind either, even if Tony… was currently interrupting his mental thought process. “What the hell are you talking about, Barnes?”
Bucky stared at Tony quietly, musing over how to best break the news to him. “Tony… I am… your father.”
Clint howled with laughter, as he dropped the popcorn all over the sofa in the common room. Stark might have been worth trillions, but this was priceless. He gasped for air, choking on the laughter stuck in the back of his throat, until Natasha caught her own breath after her own hysterical bout of crying and screaming laughter, and thumped Clint on the center of his spine until; wheezing and coughing he weakly asked J.A.R.V.I.S. to save him a copy and to send it to his Starkpad.
“You were right Clint, this was definitely worth watching. But when did Bucky watch the Star Wars movies? That makes no sense.”
“Meh.” Clint shrugged, “Oh! Look! Tony’s saying something!”
Tony spun around dramatically and screeched, “WHEN DID YOU WATCH THE STAR WARS FILMS! THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE INDOCTRINATION FILM FOR YOU WHEN STEVE FOUND YOU!”
Bucky was nonplussed, what was he supposed to do now? What were you normally supposed to do when you reveal yourself as the father to your best friends’ and on-again-off-again boyfriend team tech leader.
Tony snorted, and then laughed until he sank to the floor in a heap. “Don’t think I’m going to go around calling you Daddy, now though. If anything I’ll be calling you Darth Vader, or a variation thereof.”