章 1505: 4
Chapter 4Summary:
A sit-down between Tony, Barnes, Howard and Maria.
Notes:
Mio dolce regazzo. = My sweet boy.
Oh, Caro mio. = Oh, dear God
Chapter Text
"Right. This is going to sound… impossible, but I have the means to prove it, so hear me out." Tony took a deep breath. "Let's start with Zola. Okay?" He was looking at Barnes when he spoke and the other man tensed but nodded. "In 1944 the 107th infantry were sent to Azzano…"
~~~
December 16th 1991
"… And now the factory is up and running." Tony finished off his explanation to Barnes and his parents. "I have contracts with the DoD for body armour, Army Rangers' battledress, Navy Seal battledress, communications sets, as well as a selection of other infantry-based accessories. The cell phones are due to be released on Wednesday and the civilian versions of the DoD gear, minus the battledress, are already on the market." He turned to Barnes. "Your turn, now."
Barnes grunted and swallowed the mouthful of coffee he'd just taken. "Thanks, pal. So… The snap was… eh, can't say I remember much of it, coming back was painful, worse than waking up after cryofreeze. But we still had a war to win, so we got back up and T'Challa saw to arming us. When we'd dusted, our weapons hadn't and Okoye had ordered the weapons collected and stored." He took another sip of coffee. "We fought, we won. Tony covered that. Afterwards, we gathered at Tony's lake-house and had a… memorial, I suppose you'd call it… for those we'd lost. Then I watched as Steve took the stones to put them back in their right times. Banner said he'd be gone for five seconds, but I knew Steve. He wasn't coming back. He had a chance to be with Carter and he was going to take it."
"Carter? Peggy?" Howard asked. "But she married Luca DeSousa, her SHIELD partner's brother."
"In this timeline she might have, but not in the one we came from." Tony said.
"What makes you think this isn't the same timeline?" Maria asked.
"Let Barnes finish his story and then I'll explain why." Tony advised.
"Very well. Please continue, sergeant." Howard said.
"Steve came back, just not via the time thing." Barnes said. "He was an old man, he'd lived a full life and he was sitting on a bench, waiting for us to notice him. He gave Sam the shield and basically told him that he was Captain, now. It took a while before Sam got it together. Steve died an old man, something I never thought would happen. I figured either, he'd get into a fight I couldn't get him out of, or some illness would take him out, instead he lived the most amazing and confusing life and I can't get my head around it, sometimes. Sam gave the shield to the Smithsonian but the DoD decided that we needed Captain America again and they pulled it out to deal with the Flag Smashers. It… it didn't go the way they planned. Walker lost his cool at the wrong time and used the shield to kill someone when he shouldn't have and it was down to Sam and I to arrest him. We did but we kept the shield, Sam took it home with him."
Barnes poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and continued. "We went to Louisiana and stayed with Sam's sister for a bit, worked on their parents' boat and just… began to heal. It took a while." He paused when Tony snorted. "It did, but like I told Tony, Sam's good at the counselling and tough love thing. Enough that I actually heard him, anyway. I wasn't… it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, to tell someone that my hands took their loved one from them." His head hung and his jaw was tight. "But I did it, the people I killed deserved it. But the Flag Smashers were still there and who else was going to deal with them? I called in a few favours and got Sam a new Captain's outfit from Wakanda and we headed off to stop them."
"Your war was over, sergeant," Maria said quietly, "why would you walk back into another one?"
"Because someone had to have Sam's back and that shield is the closest thing I had to a family, left. But mostly because it was the right thing to do. If I could make a difference, if I could save one life? It was worth it."
"So that's why Steve turned out to be worthy of Thor's Hammer, in the end." Tony huffed. "How could he not, with that as a role model?"
"Shaddup, Stark." Barnes muttered, ducking his head.
"Did you stop them?" Howard asked, causing Barnes to look up.
"We did." Barnes nodded. "Cost some good people their lives and others got hurt, but we stopped them. We went back to Louisiana and finished up the boat. Had a party for the whole town when we did." He shrugged. "And that night we went to sleep in Sarah's living room and I woke up in a Russian bunker, coming out of cryofreeze."
"Ooh, ouch…" Tony grimaced.
"Oh, yeah. I killed three of their scientists before I realised it wasn't a nightmare." Barnes shuddered. "They tried to use the triggers on me but apparently, Wakanda does better work than the Russians."
"They're Russians, what do you expect? Look at that arm." Tony screwed up his face in disgust. "It's too heavy. It's pulling on your spine and compressing your ribs, if they kept you out of the freezer for any length of time, they'd have had to invest in a traction set, just to keep you mobile."
"I know that it hurts, again." Barnes grunted.
"Yeah, we'll get rid of it, give me a few weeks to get a shoulder implant and a new arm made up." Tony requested.
"But that will mean surgery." Howard warned. "Who will do that?"
"JARVIS will."
"Jarvis…? Our butler?"
"No. JARVIS is my… did we decide whether you were my son or if you were going to stay as an AI, J?" Tony asked.
"I think, Sir, that I shall stay an AI for the present but you will always be my parent." The same voice from earlier spoke.
"AI?" Maria asked.
"Artificial Intelligence, dear." Howard answered. "It started as a computer and became more."
"Yeah, J is more." Tony said.
"Steve said he was good at dealing with nightmares and at explaining things so he could understand them." Barnes added.
"I started work on him, just after Mr Jarvis died in 1995. A drunken binge that went for weeks, over the Christmas/New Year's holidays." Tony ducked his head to avoid looking at his mother. "December 16th was the anniversary of your deaths and Mr Jarvis died on the 22nd. So, yeah, Christmas wasn't a good time of year for me, not for many years."
"Oh, mio dolce regazzo." Maria whispered.
"You woke up and killed people." Howard dragged them back onto track.
"I was shocked to find that I had this arm back, again." Barnes said. "I clearly remembered losing most of it to one of Tony's repulsors. Then they dropped the mission briefing in front of me and... I... I went cold… it was you." He nodded to Howard. "I remember the faces of everyone that died while the Russians and HYDRA controlled me and I knew that you'd died years, decades ago. I let them think the triggers worked and laid out a plan, I made sure to give myself extra time as I hoped that I could get you to help me."
"I would have."
"But things didn't go the way I planned." Barnes huffed. "First, you were later than expected. Then there was the tree and Tony."
"Scared the crap out of me, to see a man floating in the air, like that." Howard acknowledged.
"I don't think I've ever been so pleased to see someone that had ability and the motivation to kill me." Barnes said. "It meant I wasn't the only one on this ride and if it was going to be anyone, he's the person that could make the most difference."
"Aw, thanks, snowflake." Tony ducked his head again.
"So, what happens, now?" Maria asked.
"Dad needs to declare the super-soldier serum a bust and destroy it." Tony said. "The chances that the scientists in SHIELD, are actually HYDRA, are too high. Steve said that SHIELD's lead STRIKE team were actually HYDRA. And that SHIELD had been the ones to dose them with a watered-down version of the serum."
"I think…" Barnes hesitated.
"Go ahead, Barnes, you're in this just as much as I am." Tony said.
"I think you should be dosed with the serum." Barnes held up a hand when all three people cried out. "Wait! Hear me out. Please?" When they nodded, he went on. "There were five bags, right? Russians took a sample from one, they planned to recreate it, but found without the formula, they couldn't. So they dosed five soldiers," he turned to Tony, "the five in Siberia." Tony nodded. "I trained them, at one point. They were good, better than me, but it didn't change them, physically, not like it did Steve. They kept the same height and built, it just made them… better. What Zola gave me was based on Erskine's formula before he defected to the US. Before he perfected it. It makes me stronger than a baseline human, more durable and I heal faster. But that's it. Your serum," He nodded to Howard, again. "Is closer to the original, but it still doesn't change the outward appearance of the treated person."
"And you think I should be dosed?" Tony said.
"I do." Barnes replied.
"Why?"
"We need you." Barnes stated. "You were the deciding factor in taking down Thanos. You were the one with the tech to stop him. You were the one that everyone pulled around. Not Steve, you. He might have called the shots on the battlefield but everything revolved around you. Banner came to you. Steve left you a burner phone. Spider-man was your kid, he had one of your suits. Thor brought his people to you. T'Challa let Shuri work with you on my arm. You were the one to talk to Strange. You. You were the one person we all had connections to, in one way or another." He was adamant. "But you died using the stones. If you weren't a baseline human, you might not have."
"I did have Extremis in my system." Tony corrected. "Not much but it was there."
"But it wasn't enough to keep you alive." Barnes argued. "The serum might be. At the least, it might be enough, to buy enough time for more medical treatment."
"Who else?" Howard asked. "There's five doses, there, and one in my workshop. Probably how SHIELD got a hold of it, to dose that STRIKE team. Who else would you dose?"
Barnes and Tony looked at each other.
"Um…?" Barnes raised a brow to Tony.
Tony sighed. "Rhodey, Clint, Coulson, Sam and Pepper." He said.
"Reasoning?" Howard asked.
"Rhodey will get a suit like mine. Not quite as advanced, but that's only because I won't release it to the DoD in full. Clint is… right now he's in the Army but soon he'll join SHIELD, unless we headhunt him first. Him and Coulson. Both are excellent at what they do. Master Assassin is what I called Clint and that pretty much says it all, he's also a Master Marksman, give him a bow and he'll never miss at shot. Coulson is probably the scariest man I have ever met, he looks like a paper-pusher but he could kill you with a paperclip, if he wanted to." Tony shrugged. "Sam? Well, I think Barnes has covered that. Pepper?" Tony grimaced. "Pepper is my wife."
"Wife?!" Howard squawked.
"Yeah, been married five years, got the most beautiful little girl, Morgan. Pep also is Rescue. She got a nearly lethal dose of Extremis, that took me week to stabilise, or did in 2010. So we try to not bring her in, too often, because if we need her, it's endgame level. She doesn't pull punches, she's there to end things, not to arrest people. If she's called in, it ends."
"Right…" Howard blinked.
"And yes, dad, she's like that in the office, too, she's been my CEO for the last fifteen years." Tony smirked. "Took SI from a multi-million-dollar, national company to a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporation. In the week before the first snap, we had over a million employees world-wide." Howard's eyes widened and his jaw fell. "SI was the leader in communications and technology. Not weapons, we hadn't made weapons for anyone other than the Avengers since 2008 and I won't do that again. If you get rid of Obie, you'll find that your faulty-destroyed rate drops by over 90%, he was selling on the black-market."
"Oh, God…" Howard groaned.
"Time to clean house." Tony suggested. "Obie's dealing in theft, embezzlement, espionage and, given enough time, he'll add extortion and murder to the list. Namely, mine. That trip to Afghanistan? Obie organised that, both sides of it. He sold me out to the Ten Rings, they were supposed to kill me for him, not kidnap me. It didn't work out the way they wanted. Obie wasn't pleased and decided to do it himself, we fought, I won, he died."
"Oh, caro dio…" Maria whispered.
"Removing Obie now, actually does more good than you'd think." Tony said. "He sold bombs to HYDRA who used them in Sokovia. No Stark bombs in Sokovia and the Maximoff twins are unlikely try and join HYDRA, or if they do, they definitely won't be blaming me for their parents' deaths. Which will mean that Wanda won't be playing psychic scrambler in my head."
"But she was there, against Thanos." Barnes reminded Tony.
"Ugh…" Tony sighed. "She was, which means we need her again… Dammit… That means that HYDRA has to get the sceptre, at least long enough to use it on her and her brother." His head lifted and his face brightened. "But she can mind reads. She'll know everything I've done, she'll know what I've tried to achieve…"
"So she's less likely to want you dead, this time." Barnes smiled.
"And if we can keep her brother alive, she'll have even less reason." Tony added, finishing on a jaw-cracking yawn.
"I think we should leave this for tonight." Maria said. "We're all tired, we need rest. We'll think clearer in the morning."
"She's right, Tony, you know that." Howard cut in before Tony could do more than open his mouth.
Tony sighed. "Yeah… Okay." He nodded. "You pair take the car, I'll ride with Barnes." He stood up and the other three followed him back to the office.
"And how do we explain him joining us?" Howard asked.
"Hey, Barnes? How would you like a job?"
"Doing what?" Barnes narrowed his eyes at Tony, as the office began to rise.
"Bodyguard. At least in public." Tony said. "Otherwise, you're lead coordinator on the Thanos project."
"What's that entail?" Barnes was the first to leave the office and headed for his bike.
"I'll set you up with your own AI, Friday would work for you. You get to keep track of what we need, who we need, who we need to eliminate or neutralise and when. Etc, etc, etc."
"But in public, I'm the bodyguard?" Barnes asked.
"Yep. That will provide a reason to have you around all the time." Tony climbed onto the bike behind Barnes and let him follow the Buick into the night, knowing that JARVIS would shut the garage behind them and that security would close the gate, once they were clear of the property.
"Let me think on that overnight. Dealing with a third reckless idiot might be too much. First Steve and then Sam…"
"Only going to get worse." Tony warned. "We'll bring in Clint and Sam and go fetch Capsicle a little earlier than last time. Early enough that we can help him integrate into the modern world.
"But not too early." Barnes warned. "We need him at his peak, health and fitness wise." No matter how much he wanted his friend back, he had to think about more than just himself, too many lives depended them.
"I know." Tony agreed. "Last time he was found in 2011, less than six months before the sceptre arrived."
"That would have made him … Um… Twenty-seven, or there abouts."
"Hmm… in that case we could probably spring him in 2000."
"Wouldn't want to go much earlier." Barnes agreed.
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