Chapter Text
Bucky had crossed the rivers and the rainforests of South America but, to this day, Argentina had the highest concentration of HYDRA agents. They felt safe away from the horrors they’d wrought when even seasons were upside down.
The Wolf had known them then; underneath it all, he could still find them by scent alone.
Adhering to old superstitions, the Wolf started tracking with the Moon, Witching Hour, and the peak, finding his prize just after 1500 Hours; but, he wouldn’t be denied his fun, and just as the sky got to its most darkened, the Wolf howled as he crept closer.
The cocking of a rifle and the scrambling footsteps against a wooden floor...heart rate ascending, alarmingly so.
A futile endeavor to pray now, the Wolf was patient; born and beaten into it.
Pants came closer and closer, intermingled with saints and empty repentance. Any minute now…
Any minute now…
And the Wolf didn’t even have to huff and puff, the Little Piggy walked right into his mouth.
Quit while you're ahead. Or when you're back where you started , Tony thinks unkindly as the city stretches before him. Once again he's alone in the rubble, left behind in destruction of his own making. There's no Pepper—hasn’t been for months—because he was Iron Man, and Iron Man was Tony Stark. There was no Rhodey—his time divided between his old job with the Air Force and his new one as an Avenger. No Bruce—the Hulk had run off to parts unknown to protect his alter-ego from the aftermath. Lastly, no JARVIS—his friend and companion, memory made code, his best and brightest- now there was only Vision; old and new, unknown and foreign and gone.
Poor little rich boy , Tony thinks and it sounds like all of their voices. Tony takes a swig from the bottle and looks on.
“Maybe it’s for the best”, he repeats in his stupor, too drunk to taste the lie for what it is.
In the morning, Tony feels worse. The hollow space is almost physical, like the absence of the reactor...heavy.
He apologizes to FRIDAY, because it's not her fault he's miserable, that his life is in the shitter. She's a baby,
“FRIDAY?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"I'm sorry ,” and he's still drunk enough to be earnest with his honesty. He owes her at least this. His daughter, awakened to war, something he never thought any of his sentient creations would have to go through, “This was never the life I envisioned for you. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“Boss?” She couldn’t see him here, not really. her access was limited to the electronics on him and the suit. And, God , Tony knew, he knew she didn’t deserve to be cramped in a CPU and limited to tiny connectors. “The contractors are waiting on your say so to start the remodeling of the living floors, when do you want me to pencil them in?”
Tony sighs, there are nuances of existence FRIDAY is too young for still—his girl— he at least should guide her along, “Whenever you think is best, Fri.”
“Sure thing, Boss,” She chirps. at least it’s not “sir.” That would be salt in a still bleeding wound.
The bots are distressed when he gets to the lab; a lab in a shambles like his personal relationships at the moment. Tony’s weak heart thuds painfully at the picture in front of him; Dum-E, U and Butterfingers are poking at the broken pieces, beeping and then directing their cameras to JARVIS.
“He’s...He’s not here, not anymore.”
Dum-E whirls and rolls toward him with an excess of movement that speaks of high distress. It’s the human equivalent of ‘Explain Yourself’
“Ultron, remember him?”
U runs and he can’t blame the bot. Ultron had been terrifying but then U is there with a goddamn blowtorch!
“U! Put that down, baby. Ultron is gone too.”
Butterfingers wheels back and forth, claws coiled together, as if the bot is holding himself. Dum-E pulls on his rumpled shirt. A series of beeps and whirls and his claw at the camera. “Dum-E, buddy JARVIS is...he’s… Ultron, he- JARVIS is dead, boys, he’s not coming back, he’s gone .”
Dum-E tries to dry his tears with his clumsy claw and Tony is enough of a mess himself that the only comfort he gets to have comes in the form of mourning helping bots as Dum-E, U, and Butterfingers huddle around him and grieve their brother in code.
Friday has been around the towers that made JARVIS’s body, kept receiving the bots inquiries and has been around just long enough to grasp a loose understanding of her Creator.
She wakes him before the screaming starts, “Boss? Boss!”
Tony starts and jumps out of bed. He sheds his clothes, tramps to the shower and doesn’t say a word until the hot water thaws him out. A new nightmare full of howling winds and a snow-covered graveyard.Violent—it felt angry and violent and definitive. Bloody and painful.
“Tell me something new, baby girl.” He pants as the water sluices down his back and as he tries his damn hardest to shake off the horror his subconscious had conjured for him.
Hell is empty, all the demons are here.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Should I pencil in an appointment with a doctor, Boss?” FRIDAY chirped in his ear.
Goodness he loved the fact that she had refrained from using the speakers, “I said the latest suit is ready for testing and the coordinates have been programmed.”
“What about after that, huh?” Tony waits her out. He might have coded FRIDAY but all the same, they were still new to each other.
In the end, she settled for, “Step into the suit and find out, Boss.”
Tony kept his head down as he finished his shower lest FRIDAY finds him smiling at her ballsy reply. His girl was shaping out to be fire.
With no pressing matters—well, none that he could do more than he’d already done— Tony took a fortifying breath and stepped into the suit. The HUD lights up and FRIDAY’s voice surrounded him.
“If I knew you’d heed my words I’d suggest a nap, Boss.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, FRI.”
Not that Death would take him.
“Next Stop: Paris.” Tony wanted to do a double take but he was already encased in the suit. He was also in a state of deep denial that his youngest ‘child’ had just tricked him.
He sighed as New York became microscopic under him and he gave the thrusters a push.
_
Bucky was trying his best to disappear through the cobbled streets saturated with tourists. It was the best way to avoid standing out. He was trying his damn best to pass undetected and since his last stint, he was the very best.
Another thing he was avoiding, besides sleep, was staying too close to the population. It wasn’t because he feared being recognized but because what he was, what he is —what was inside him—is an unpredictable variant nigh unstoppable.
So he walked as the sun moved over the city and the temperatures dropped along with the autumn leaves. Maybe if he was any other kind of man the imagery would stir something in him, alas he was not.
-
As they pass over the Iron Lady and the thousands that visit her, Tony’s curiosity peaks. He’d seen the coordinates but had yet to find the reason behind the destination. All the same, he is at FRIDAY’s whim. It was a beautiful, clear night in Paris and the moon was round and bright over the city. His Italian heritage prohibited him from agreeing with the cliché of calling it the City of Love but it’s pretty all the same.
As they began the descent, Tony banished his musings, “FRIDAY?”
“While revising previous files, I stumbled upon this location.” The HUD flashes with a map full of red x’s all over… “It is to my understanding that the organization formerly known as SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA and to this day, a number of their bases are still unsearched.”
“You-” Tony laughs, wily child! “You just spirited me away to Paris to search a HYDRA base?”
“Boss, you didn’t set any parameters to my choice of venue or my reasoning.”
“Ok, little devil. Bring us down.”
The irony wasn't lost on Tony; a HYDRA base in the middle of Paris, underneath Les Cimetière des Innocents no less, which validated his aversion of both. The suit hovered behind him. His shoes creepily echo as he goes deeper and deeper into the catacombs.
The place is a strange agglomeration of ancient and old. He doesn't get why he is here—why FRIDAY had chosen this obviously deserted place to explore of all places.
“If I die, make sure U is kept from the flamethrower.”
“Are you doubting my abilities?”
“If I die, U will snap, I'm sure.”
He thought out loud to distract himself from the width of the tunnel and the dank smell that seeped through. It took him a bit to catch on, “Oh, Fri you have my total trust. I'm just prone to find myself in all kinds of situations.”
Because he'd been coming up with horror movie scenarios that would give hardcore fans the heebie-jeebies.
“I walk this road alone…”
“I take offense to that!”
-
Motor oil, hot metal, grief.
The grinding of gears, hundreds and thousands of small pieces moving together. A whirling humm that should hurt but doesn't.
Coconut?
-
Tony is rethought his whole 'total trust’ spiel because…
And Ok, he'd stepped back into the suit once they made out what constitutes the entrance all the same…
He can't be bothered by FRIDAY's scans on the HUD, his focus zeroed in on what is smack dab in the middle of an obvious, abandoned HYDRA laboratory. The place looks fixed in time: old, industrial, and sterile in a macabre sort of way.
He could be kind and call it by any other name, but he wasn't—kind that is. A shudder seized his bones and for the life of him, Tony couldn't look away. There was a glass cage and it wasn't empty.
“FRIDAY?”
“That was not in the data, Boss.”
Her youth shows through her words. His darling daughter… “We are fully equipped to neutralize this kind of egg surprise.”
“No! FRIDAY we're not the FBI or SHIELD!”
She could see how hard he was working on being stern but she also bore witness to how epically he failed.
There was also part of Tony that agreed wholeheartedly with FRIDAY; a bit more so because what was inside the glass cage was staring directly at Tony.
Marching forward was not a conscious decision. It felt like a reckless game of chicken. He deliberately walked slowly, taking in the crude mechanism that locked it in place, as iridescent eyes—cold as a corpse— sized him up.
Just sitting there was a hulking beast with a rich coat of brown fur. Besides the eyes, everything was covered by a muzzle. Tony was still a bit incredulous at the sheer mass of it as he continued his perusal down to where one of the arms was completely made out of metal…
'Holy shit! Tesla's coils the fucking Winter Soldier is a werewolf!’
The Wolf- Winter Sold— James Buchanan Fucking Barnes’ ears perked up. The two really fluffy looking triangles had Tony warring between logic and want.
He walked closer...maybe two feet away from the door. He hardly dared to breathe too loud. They fell into an impasse—assessing each other. Tony wondered why no one bothered to inform him about this little tidbit about the infamous assassin. Darwin’s balls knew what was going through the Wolf’s mind as he stared Tony down.
“Boss?” FRIDAY’s voice seemed to snag the wolf’s attention. Could he really be categorized as a wolf even? There was no growling, no warning signs of any kind. It was as if he had been waiting for Tony to make a move; to break there staredown.
He knew he should step away and leave to live another day. He could come back anytime. He could call Steve or Natasha and let them deal with this. But then, the place was clearly abandoned except for the life form that shouldn’t exist in the first fucking place for many reasons ! He shouldn’t have been in the glass cage if the gutted cables and decaying machines were any indication. The mechanisms on the door seemed to operate on both sides but only if you possessed the dexterity of opposable thumbs.
“Boss, I should advice you against this.” FRIDAY is so young , which is why she seemed both curious and wary.
“Maybe he’s friendly?” Tony really wanted to buy into his own bullshit and, as always, his children call him out on it.
“Aren’t canines of the friendly kind supposed to wag their tails?” Her question was framed so innocently but he knew better.
“Don’t buy into stereotypes, FRI, we don’t do that.”
“If you say so.” He saw her— tiny and fiery in his mind— shrugging insolently. Like a Stark.
Tony knew he shouldn’t, still… he opened the door.
As is wont to happen to him, all Hell broke loose.
-
He pounced on the bright suit that contained the squishy insides of Tony Stark inside. HYDRA had trained him on Anthony Edward Stark once when he was leashed by them. He was a man with incredible potential; destruction by his hand on the side of HYDRA would be a triumph on many levels. The Wolf knew what was inside the neat wrapping and he wanted to tear it apart and play.
The Wolf landed and the yelp not even the metal can hide from his ears made him chuff; the whine and roar that came from the pretty weapon as it glides up made him give chase.
The man-weapon turned glowing hands to the Wolf as he tried to catch the pretty shiny.
“Hey Fido! Stand Down!”
Down? No, the Wolf doesn’t follow commands. The Wolf is free. The Wolf wants.
He swatted and missed by an inch. The whine made the Wolf’s ears ring and then the light almost singed his fur.
The lightbulbs exploded like little stars where it ricocheted.
He let the pretty shiny man-weapon dance and maneuver around with the light hands steady on him. He liked them. They too looked like stars. The Wolf had seen them upon the darkest hues of the celestial dome, along the Moon Mother that flows through him.
He wanted to touch the stars the man-weapon had, so he waited.
Then, as it hovered ten or fifteen feet away, he used all the power in his cold paws to propel himself.
He wanted to howl his victory to the Moon Mother as the brightest star rested under his hot paw. He closed his claws around it and heard the yells inside...there were two.
The man-weapon, Tony Stark, and another that looked like fire to the Wolf.
They hit his muzzled snout and then with a heavy kick to the chest, the Wolf slid on his hind legs and shook his head in confusion. His ears rang.
A growl tumbled off his chest as he gulped the musty air which was full decay, death, and old blood splatters that time had tried to erase but had seeped deep into the earth; but he also smelled coconut and fire. Something stirred in his chest cage, shifted and slotted.
They seemed to be back at the beginning.
The Wolf went under and the shiny, Stark, went up, tumbling like a little Black Widow through the air, but the Wolf had him now. He reached with his hind legs and kicked it off the air. The thud reverberated as he turned and he wanted to open his maw and show his teeth off. He couldn’t, so he jumped over and closed in on his prize. He wanted.
The head with the little stars that glared and turned between the cold paw and the Wolf’s eyes. Then the Wolf breathed dust and there was a weight on his back. Metal snagged on his fur, pulling, becoming smaller, trapping him .
Fool!
A turn and two shakes, the cold paw reached back as the strident screech of metal on metal burst in the air,
“Let go of my head, Mutant Goofy!”
There was a strain in the voice and then a punch to his side so he let go. He brought his hot paw to pay in kind but the shiny upped the ante; face to face man-weapon and man-made-monster, “I’m not a chew toy, you Flea Factory!”
The glaring star dots disappeared as the plate slid away. Blood, hot rich sweet, hit his snout and his eyes took in the chocolate eyes. Would they taste as sweet? Are they bitter?
“That was not nice!”
The Wolf reached for the bright warm light of the man-weapon and it blocked him, it stung, and then…
They danced, blow for blow, metal legs and fur-full hind legs swiped and fur burnt, metal bent, pant, pant, panting. Blood, his own and the man-weapon’s, and the fire voice. The walls shook, and glass shattered.
The man-weapon flew and pirouetted in the air, trying to get him again and corner him into the cage, so he ripped the lock and lobbed it at the pretty shiny.
The muzzle came off with daylight and he wouldn’t let the man-weapon pretty shiny stars get away. He wanted: hot fire, bloodless want that could melt the frozen cradle he’d been born into.
At last, he wrapped his paws; cold metal and hot fur around the man-weapon and squeezed; felt the cold glassed warm light of the star against his chest and he rumbled with satisfaction.
The whine got higher and higher, and it hurt, higher and the plate disappeared, higher and eyes the color of chocolate that might be sweet or bitter narrowed on his, higher and he wanted to lick the blood and taste coconut, higher and the pretty shiny gasped,
“Night-night, you fucking Rabid Yeti!”
A dozen sensations assaulted him at once; the high whine of the stars, tingling of electro-currents, the smell of burnt hair, the call of the Moon Mother, the wash of sedatives - high grade, good kind - the heaviness of his bones, fire voice like a flash that made his ears twitch, a drumming heartbeat…
Coconut.