[ hey, i brought you this soulmate ]

[thefreakout]

soulmate meme ;
▸ post your character ◂
▸ you're now in a universe where destined soul mates exist! ◂
▸ rng for the type of au and for the ~situation~ ◂
▸ tag around ♥ ◂

type of au;

1. tats, your character has a tattoo of the first words the love of their life will say to them
2. familiars, your character has an animal tattoo representing their soul mate on them
3. glow, the first time your character sees their soul mate, their chests glow!
4. world in color, life is literally black and white, until you see your soul mate for the first time
5. choose your own, i'm definitely missing a milly because i'm lazy, pick your own

situation;

1. first meeting, you've never met this person before.
2. childhood mates, you've always known this person -- but on one particular birthday, everything changes.
3. together, you've been in a relationship for awhile now! happily wed or not, you decide.
4. not together, you've known you're soul mates for a long time, and yet have avoided a relationship.
5. choose your own, self explanatory c:

Comments

[freightcars]

The thing is, it feels like he's reading those questions and doing his best to answer them without saying a single goddamn word. He's got a lot to account for, he knows - a lot of things that make him a less than desirable partner. Truth be told, he actually feels bad for Tony. Of all the people in the entire world he could be saddled with...

He gets it.

Tony deserves better.

But here they are, and he's always had an intense kind of loyalty. The tendency to protect. The need to prove himself. It's surging forth over every other possible take he could have on this situation.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to convey all of that through looks alone, and so his gentle and compliant nod might seem underwhelming. Not good enough.

Steve takes up the forefront as he is wont to do, muttering to Sam about the things they need to get ready for this. Bucky fades into the background, quiet and studious, casting his last flickering observations over Tony before slipping out to head to the roof by himself.

This whole thing, this meeting, it doesn't supplant the urgency and fear he feels over what might come. What Zemo's capable of. What he might do if there's even more sudden visibility on project: Winter Soldier, and what people in charge are capable of gaining if they learn those words.

He wants this done, gone, buried before anyone else finds out.

[starkingenuity]

Being Tony Stark gets you a lot of leeway. Yes, people constantly watch you and they’re always trying to take photos of you. Sure, most people think you’re a pompous asshole and don’t always expect you to be doing everything on the up and up. But no one really stops you either. And, most importantly, no one questions why you stride into a SHIELD controlled disaster area on partial lockdown due to the Winter Soldier’s triggering event, walk right into the belly of an open quinjet and take off.

It probably has something to do with the swagger.

Tony puts FRIDAY on task of politely ignoring anyone trying to reach him by comms as he installs a program to fully clock his flight plan. It’s easy. He designed the plane for SHIELD in the first place.

Ten minutes after take off, Tony does one last sweep of the radar and then lands the quinjet a few meters away from the loan figure on the roof.

He can’t help but frown at the other man, unsure if Barnes can see him through the glass at that distance. The thought causes a tick at the corner of his lips and he finds himself leaning back in the jumpseat. If Barnes can see him, or feel him, or whatever else ends up being true about the bond soulmates share, he has a feeling he won’t be alone in the jet for too much longer. Tony’s chronic loneliness craves the company.

Hopefully Rogers and Wilson are close by.

[freightcars]

He's not wrong. He isn't alone for another minute before Barnes boards, thick boots deliberately audible to announce his presence and telegraph his movements, because he's incredibly aware of his reputation. About the fear people might have over what he'll do, and the absolute fairness that they feel that way.

He can feel something. It's small and it's new, alien, unfamiliar, foreign, and as such it's beyond his conscious mind to accept. It's up to that deep core in him, which is adamantly blocking outside intrusions. Refusing to allow through any kind of bond out of self-preservation, because the things that have invaded him in the past have dug their grubby fingers into the meat of his brain and started tearing out chunks of him without empathy.

The only thing Tony might get back is a subtle fear, and the corresponding rigid refusal to link.

He continues his short reputation of being an utter disappointment by sitting in the seat directly behind Stark, and not saying a single god damn word. Just chewing his lips, turning over his thoughts.

How do you fix something this big?
How do you make yourself worth someone's while after what he did?
Most of all, how do you do it when they don't trust you as far as they can throw the building you're in?

The answer, like Barnes, is silent.

Tony can probably feel the eyes on the back of his head, practically drilling holes trying to see through.

[starkingenuity]

Though textbooks and documentaries would have a person believe that soul bonding is not a completely biological decision (which wars with the more romantic notion of soulmates meeting and bonding on the spot as a fulfillment of the so called love at first sight phenomenon), Tony’s hedonistic but scientific mind is still afraid that turning his chair towards the other man will turn their mission into a figurative shit show. Unfortunately, he can’t just sit there with silent, stoic eyes prying open the back of his neck like that either.

As Tony turns the chair around, he strategically lowers his eyes. It’s not like him, not when he’s known for smiling as he stares down the opposition. This is not a boardroom drama, however, and Bucky is not a shareholder in his company.

“So question.” The silence is unbearable. Tony can’t even work in silence. He usually blares music to force himself to focus on just a few strands of the thousands of thoughts he has each minute. “When did that show up?” He points at Barnes’ chest like he’s pointing a gun at the man. “Before you spent two years running away from the Man with a Plan? Sometime during the whole brainwashed soldier for hire?” That’s not accurate. The Winter Soldier had never been for hire but Tony isn’t as quick with the quips today. “Because mine showed up sometime after your sixty-seventh birthday.”

[freightcars]

Tony turns around, Bucky seems unresponsive - but that's only on the surface. Tony wears a suit made of iron to protect him from the world, Bucky wears a mask made of iron to protect his mind from people who punish individual thought. Inverse but proportional. Complimentary angles, maybe.

Question.

Sure.

Sixty-seventh birthday; where was he then? In the 80s, when Tony Stark blossomed into an adult and the universe stamped scar tissue onto him? Beirut, maybe Lebanon. Somewhere in the middle east, sowing seeds of destruction and causing one country to believe it was another, whatever suited Hydra needs at the time with no true loyalty to any one place.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

Shifts his mind back farther, which is harder to do - but it's there, in the compartment he keeps the man he was.

"Before you were born," He answers tonelessly, distant, thinking back. "I was sixteen. Nobody had a god damn clue what it was. Usually if you can't recognize it, it means..."

You're never gonna find them. Too hard to look for something like that, too hard to describe it in the classified ads of the newspaper. Hell of a lot harder before the internet.

[starkingenuity]

Tony can almost taste the hopelessness in Bucky’s voice. He doesn’t have the statistics of what the chances of meeting your soulmate had been back at the start of last century or if most people just went about their business and fell in love with a person and not a cosmic matchmaker’s selection. He doesn’t know if people had soulbonds. He hadn’t believed those things could even exist until he’d found himself staring at Bucky’s chest half an hour ago.

HYDRA had to have known. Maybe it would have been part of their long con or maybe they were less skeptical about the whole thing and knew Stark would immediately see through any ruse if they put their brainwashed weapon into play with him.

Maybe that’s why he’d been on the destroy list of the helicarrier two years ago.

That had been right after he did the interview about the scar around his left shoulder, wasn’t it?

Tony feels his stomach sloshing around and threatening to pull itself and all the rest of his innards with it into his throat. He lifts a hand to his mouth, briefly, to try to keep it all in. To cover for himself, he plays his forefinger and thumb along his facial hair, as if pondering the next move.

“It means,” he decides to finish Bucky’s phrase, “that you had to wait for me.” And in turn, Tony had to wait for Bucky too.

The universe is shit.

[freightcars]

His eyes had tracked away sometime during his quiet, succinct answer. They'd settled somewhere in the middle distance, looking inward rather than outward. They flit back to Tony at the conclusion he draws, and something in his stomach twists.

When he was seventeen, he'd been impatient. When he was 20, he'd been hopeful. Optimistic, a bit of a dreamer. At 24 he'd enlisted, and he'd given up hope. He was off to join the war, off to die for his country, he doubted he'd ever make it back let alone fall in love. In a way, it made things easier - knowing no girl or guy he left behind could have been the one for him. No what if.

And then he'd had his everything erased, and after that, it just... wasn't a possibility. Laying low, staying off the grid, hiding in Romania away from all American news and any potential eye. Even if he'd somehow found out, the thought of dragging a civilian into his life and the risk it'd put them at?

The truth is, a better term might be outright given up.

"To be fair," he starts, dark, faintly bitter, and a lot resigned, dropping his eyes to Tony's chest. "I spent most of it not knowing I was waiting."

[starkingenuity]

And Tony’s spent his youth waiting to be rescued from his own loneliness until his parents died. And then alcohol did the trick where his fame and brilliance couldn’t. He feels himself trying to leave a gaze with Bucky before the other isn’t giving in this time. Tony’s own gaze shifts fo about where the ramp meets the floor behind the scrim seat Barnes is sitting in.

“To be fair,” Tony replies in a childish need to one up the other, “I didn’t believe you existed anyway.” Either time, he wants to say, but Ghost jokes probably would be too soon.

Soulmates are fairytales. They’re not promises. They’re a lottery. A pipe dream.

Bucky’s truth is Tony’s truth. He’s not given up so much as let apathy take him.

“I—“ Tony doesn’t finish and rolls his eyes as two shadows show up to ruin the party. He turns back around in his seat and starts the takeoff checklist. “Everyone strap in. I’m not as bad as Rogers is at this but safety first.”

[freightcars]

Is it strange to be faintly amused at the attempt to win at being jaded? He's not sure which one of the two of them would come out on top of that particular contest, they've both got their fair share of demons. Fortunately, they don't get the chance to try.

Steve's steps are impossible not to place, the sure and confident gait of them as though he's Taking Charge of the walkway itself. He doesn't seem to present any qualms about Tony piloting, though, nor pitch any fits that he's going. It's not about him, and it's not about a control thing - it's just his best friend and potentially the world at stake. He's all business.

Barnes straps in, with only the faintest huff of a laugh maybe for the first time since he woke up. Steve casts a sideways look at him, as though stunned to hear it.

He might be, too.

There's no denying that Tony's resources - more specifically, Tony's jet is better than anything a singular operative like Zemo is able to get his hands on. They make good time on him, but when they land the place has already been cracked open.

They'll arrive just in time to see Zemo unfrosting his second toy soldier, but before he can put a bullet in its brain.

[starkingenuity]

A single syllable of half hearted laughter shouldn’t spark the way it does, but Tony is harboring a small, persistent flame in his belly by the time the come upon the villain of this scenario. He wants to switch off his mind to Barnes and focus on dressing down the idiot in front of them, but he can’t. Nothing witty comes to mind and frankly, this is all a big waste of his time here. He’s not in the mood to play when they have a window of opportunity here to stop Zemo and then make sure Bucky doesn’t have to go away for life...or worse.

Cap is on point, somewhere in the middle of his first sentence of what will surely be a resounding speech, but Tony is a loose canon much of the time and he shoots a blast from his repulser at Zemo instead.

The man ducks behind the super soldier, who falls even as she absorbs the blow. It won’t kill her, and thanks fo programming that isn’t entirely functional or fully triggered, she still staggers back to her feet. That would be muscle memory there, taught by pain and reinforced through terror.

Iron Man doesn’t back down and his shoulder blade compartments open to reveal a line of missile charges. War Machine follows his friend’s lead even as Rogers calls their names.

Tony doesn’t usually listen to the blond, though, and now is not the time to change that habit. He has a fiercely protective need setting fire to his belly. Barnes is in danger. And if Zemo is given the chance to open his mouth, everyone else will be in danger too.

[freightcars]

Zemo makes for the only play he knows in the heat of the moment - ducking around a console and keying as quickly as he can while out of any immediate line of fire. Around them one by one, the remaining three cryogenic freezers begin to open.

They won't be programmed, they won't be reset. They're going to be wildly unpredictable, and if Bucky had to hazard a guess they'll do exactly what they've been influenced to - kill on site until there are no more targets, then report themselves to one of the closest ingrained coordinates to wait until they're picked up and processed.

The missiles do a good job of taking out their target. By the time they finish blasting her body into pieces and painting the console in front of Zemo, the other three have recovered and Zemo bolts up to make a break for the nearest exit.

Tony's the most obvious target in the room with his ostentatious armor, though War Machine is a close second. Two go for him, one for Rhodey, and so he yells out, "Steve, Zemo-" before launching himself at the first bastard bolting toward a red and gold suit.

Steve goes for the target.

Bucky slams into his, and they roll end over end before spring-boarding to their feet in the same artful, efficient way.

He recognizes this one. It says, "ты предатель своего народа."

Bucky answers, "They're not my people."

Those are the only words that are said before he's dodging blows and throwing himself into the defensive.

[starkingenuity]

Fighting these super soldiers is like fighting a miniature Hulk. They are relentless and ruthless, violent in nature in the way Barnes had been under the influence of the trigger words. Tony, thankfully, does not have any numbing flashbacks of Bucky, face blank, lifting that gun to his face. He doesn't need the distraction.

The blows that fall on the armor are hard enough to crush it on impact, something Tony had not been prepared for. War Machine is fairing better, but Rhodey's armor is more heavy duty than his own and made to withstand more than Iron Man at the cost of being somewhat less nimble. War Machine, for all it's brutal strength and resilience, finds himself on his back a moment later.

Sam joins in the fight just after that, taking to the air only to drop and attempt to rip away one of the super soldiers. It's a standard bird of prey tactic, and given the lack of space on the horizontal plane, it's one that seems like it will prove effective as Falcon climbs several stories with the wriggling soldier in his grasp.

The fall doesn't do as much damage as one might suspect, however.

"Stand back," Iron Man bellows through the external speakers on the armor, charging up the central pulse weapon at the reactor site. Overload is always a possibility here, but the frenzied soldiers are just about two much. Without Cap's shield to play deflector dish, the blast from the reactor will be brutal and unpredictable. He uses it anyway.

[freightcars]

Can't exactly stand back when one of them's got him by the throat, though he does grab onto wrist and do an interesting little maneuver where he slams both his feet into the guy's chest. It gets him down onto his back, gets his assailant staggered away by two or three feet, but it doesn't get him out of the way of pulse. Impact's minimized at least, so that he only goes rolling a few feet with his elbows up near his ears and gripping tightly at his head.

It's effective. The three others stagger with the onslaught, temporarily thrown out of balance - enough, at least, for Barnes to roll over on his back and shoot cleanly through one of their heads from his place on the ground.

The other two rip their eyes to him, incredulously dumbfounded that their third was dropped so easily.

"What? We're soldiers, not god damn vampires," he manages, only to go wide-eyed a second later when they both break toward him in a staggered pulse-injured sprint.

Time to go--

[starkingenuity]

Tony might have made a comment about any of this being easy right now. He's got a lot of pressure around his right elbow and a substantial loss of feeling in his fingers because of it. FRIDAY has a warning up about the limb, but he doesn't take the time to see if he's bleeding or if there's more damage than that. The way that the armor is will keep him together until he can get into triage.

And it will take a lot more than a potentially broken arm to put him down.

Taking off to go after than, not quite as stabilized as he would be with two working gauntlet repulsers, Iron Man banks hard against the wall. In response, the whole silo shudders. The cold has taken it's toll on the place and it's more than willing to crack under the pressure of a heavy object smashing against it.

It really is time to go after that. The silo coming down on them isn't something anyone wants to attempt to survive.

[freightcars]

The place starts cracking at the seams, and his eyes go first to Tony - who's got his suit, who can get out just fine on his own in about an instant. Same for the guy he brought, and same for Wilson. Steve on the other hand has got no such means of flying and he's chasing Zemo through the halls of this place unaware.

He curses under his breath, then makes a break after his best friend.

It's not much of a choice, really, between leaving him behind or potentially getting buried with him. Fortunately he isn't hard to find. Zemo's smart but he's no super soldier, and when he stumbles across Steve, it's with Steve toting his unconscious body back toward the silo.

"Building's coming down- we gotta go-" if it isn't already too far gone to get out the way they came in.

[starkingenuity]

Steve's not alone. T'Challa had helped with Zemo's capture and the man in the black vibranium armor tilts his head towards the silo as if listening. "He is right," comes the conclusion. "I have made arrangements for transport."

Captain America trusts his team to make it out all right, and after Falcon confirms that the other three are indeed safe on the other side of the mountain ridge, Steve turns back to T'Challa. "For Bucky too," he asks, trying to confirm what the prince is offering.

It sounds a lot like asylum and that's exactly what Barnes needs now. It's something that they may both need if Ross decides to lump Steve in with the terrorism charges, or the whole Accords fiasco.

Black Panther bows ever so slightly and Steve's bright blue eyes plead towards Bucky to accept.

[freightcars]

He wants to run. Everything in him wants to run, and it's clear by the way he falters, frozen, in a hallway outside of a collapsing building as though risking it would be preferable. Staring back into that black mask that nearly took him out once already... He's not picking up on that offer being for something greater than just a ride. Can't fathom asylum.

But Steve's pleading, and there's a guy on the roof upstairs he owes a favor.

Reluctantly, finally, he gives a single nod.

They bolt.

It's a precarious game of hauling ass around falling chunks of concrete, of climbing something that requires launching their entire damn bodies at a platform and hoping it's stable enough to carry them, but before the interior control room collapses proper they're peeling themselves out one after the other, Barnes last of all.

They stand in the snow, all of them but two wanting him either dead or arrested, and he can't help the way his eyes clock the treeline. The internal debate on whether or not he could make it before someone with wings or claws managed to subdue him.

Finally, there's a detached sort of tiredness that settles over his eyelids, ripples down his expression.

Life in a glass prison. He's hoping that's the way this goes, and no worse. Already thinking about an appeal to impress the urgency onto Stark, so they keep everyone but the people in this circle far the hell away from his cell. It's the only way to know.

[starkingenuity]

As usual, Captain America gets the final say in everything, though in this case, that say is silence. Stark, Wilson and Rhodes have caught up with the, the rubble of the silo like a big black scar in the snow. It's the first time that most of the others have seen Black Panther, and though Tony doesn't really see much beyond his own nose, Rhodey and Sam are impressed.

And Tony is quiet too, his armor dented in places, missing in others. His arm still isn't right but FRIDAY has confirmed that it's only got a hairline fracture close to his elbow joint and while he'll be in a cast for a little while, a few runs under the regeneration machine will make him right as rain. Just the same, he doesn't bother to drop his helmet. It's cold...and he's good with not having another staring contest with Barnes right now.

As the ash settles and the silence gives them all time to reflect, Steve finally lifts his chin to dole out orders.

"We have two crafts. Buck, T'Challa and I will return in the prince's. Stark, you bring the quinjet back and try to leave it where you got it." It seems all on the up and up, but Steve has been known to lie and cheat when need be.

Today is just the same.

The moment they split up, T'Challa will be cloaking the plane and taking them to Wakanda. He doesn't want to leave Sam behind, but it's necessary to protect Bucky.

[freightcars]

He gets the feeling that as soon as they're gone from here, it's going to be the end of something. If he sees Tony again it'll be through a plate of glass, and that's only if T'Challa doesn't declare midway through that they won't be extraditing him to the US. He shares a look with Steve, a glance at Tony and back, an unspoken just give me five minutes.

And he peels away from the rest of them toward a dented suit of armor.

It'd be nice to have that space and that face-to-face they had in the jet, just those few stolen seconds of conversation where it felt like they established something even in that short, short stretch of time. Unfortunately, what he's got is about ten feet of distance from the group in the snow through a face plate, but all the same...

"Thank you," spoken with a stoic sort of sincerity. For listening, and for helping with the fight, even though you had no reason to aside from the sense of obligation his tattoo brings. A glance down, then somewhere off to the side as he throws out, "I don't have a phone."

Just... so you know. So he can't keep in touch, regardless of whether or not he wants to. He's thinking about it.

But it means this likely ends here, because he doesn't exactly have the resources or the bodily autonomy to make any kind of choice that would allow him to reach out to Tony once they part.

It shouldn't matter, maybe - they spent their entire lives without one another, and they've had five total minutes of conversation, but... Still. It's important to him that he makes the effort anyway.

And hey - odds are if the guy's interested he can always hit up the Wakandan prince to inquire about visiting hours at the pokey.

[starkingenuity]

For being a smart guy, Tony hadn't seen through Rogers' plan until this moment and it leaves him colder than what even Siberia can do. Bucky striding across the snow, the sound of it crunching under his boots akin to what it might feel like to have his heart run over on a gravel driveway. He's holding his breath, not that anyone can tell, though Rhodes does shift his weight to intervene if something snaps in the other man again. He'd seen the footage of Barnes' escape and he's not letting his best friend take the hit.

Tongue too dry in his mouth to speak at first, and the mechanism to actually peel down the helmet stuck from the escape of the collapsing silo, Tony instead struggles to rip the face plate off with one hand.

Steve might be having a flashback of doing just that, considering the look he's giving the two.

"Where are you going? Wakanda?" There's something strangled in Tony's voice. It's unpleasant, acidic. Wakanda is closed off from the world. If Bucky goes there, that might just be it.

And hadn't Tony just said to him that they had already waited their entire God damned lives to find out that they both did still have a soulmate? Tony's anger isn't anger at all.

It's fear. Bucky might be able to smell it on him.

Not that Steve cares. "We don't have time, Buck. We have to go now." Five minutes might be all it takes for Ross to track down that quinjet now that they've advertised what they've done.

[freightcars]

The face plate goes, and he's surprised to see the fervor with which Tony peels it off - happy that it's gone, just the same. There's a sudden lurching feeling in his chest, something twisting up tight for reasons he can't quite put a name to. The tenor of Tony's voice, maybe, or the gravity of the situation.

Thickly, he manages, "I don't know. Wherever they wanna throw me, I guess."

A cell in Wakanda, a cell in the States, maybe back into cryo if he's considered too dangerous to even keep awake - the last one wouldn't be so bad, he thinks. He could understand it, and he'd rather be frozen in a dreamless sleep than wake up in a cot to the sound of someone calling желание.

There are things he considers doing, absurd notions that involve moving toward him, except there's a suit of armor between them and pulse weapons aimed at his back if it seems like he's making a sudden move on Iron Man. All the same, they don't know each other, and Tony's sentiment on this whole thing has been less than receptive as far as he can tell.

So he checks his impulses, dips his head, and with pursed lips he peels away under Steve's orders.

They gotta go.

[starkingenuity]

This is honestly par for the course. Tony can't even be properly upset about it because it's just so typical. He can feel his eyes start to sting, but no one else is really paying that much attention to him, so he doesn't bother to swallow back the pain in his chest this time. Instead, he admonishes himself on feeling it in the first place.

People leave him. Unless they're assigned to him because they need to watch over his end of filling military contracts (Rhodes), under his payroll (Happy, and Pepper), or constructed by him (DUM-E, FRIDAY), no one stays. Pepper and JARVIS are very good examples of what can happen when the ties that bind are broken.

As logical as Tony likes to think he is, he's still ruled by irrationality and whim. Genius doesn't really follow the straight and narrow and he has trouble checking himself when impulse strikes. He's not a soldier. He doesn't have the training Bucky does not to be an idiot.

"You knew about this, Rogers," Tony calls across the icy landscape to Captain America and his stoic, handsome face. The venom is jarring. "You knew and you kept it to yourself. People are supposed to trust your judgement."

Sam and Rhodey, and poor T'Challa, have no idea what any of this is about, but of course Steve knows. You don't grow up with someone and not know about the tattoo on their chest...or what it means the first time you meet their soulmate and decide to keep all of that to yourself.

Steve doesn't say a word. He just heads towards the waiting plane, to where he knows Bucky will be able to get the help he needs. At this point, Tony's feelings just don't matter to him.

[freightcars]

The realization startles Bucky, too. Something he hadn't thought about - something he didn't have time to think about. Steve must have known, because he'd seen Bucky's tattoo a dozen times or more when they were kids. When they were in the war together. He'd have probably known about Tony's through pre or post mission medical care, or at the very least he'd be able to recognize the position and shape of an arc reactor. He'd be able to tie it back to his best friend, and he'd have been able to do it in the early days of meeting Tony.

Clearly he didn't breathe a word of it to Stark himself. There's no question, otherwise things might've played out differently.

Otherwise, Stark might've gotten involved in looking for him - not that he wanted to be found. But this might've gone differently, he might've had more time to find a way to work this out.

For the first time, he falters. Stares at Steve's back with lips parting, stricken with a sudden inexplicable betrayal that he can't quite articulate.

His last backward glance at Tony might make it clear that the wheels are turning, that he hadn't made that connection until now, and that something foundational has been a little bit cracked.

But he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Without a word, he boards the aircraft.

The doors seal, they take off, and it isn't more than forty seconds before Bucky's breaking in with a rusty, carefully measured, "Why didn't you tell him?"

[starkingenuity]

"There is a place to talk in the hold," the prince says calmly while Steve is left trying to formulate a plan of action here. He does it with all the grace royalty has instilled in him and returns his attention to his flying. The blond murmurs a thanks and then nods for Bucky to follow him into a very small portion at the rear of the small plane. It's not exactly comfortable to be there, both because of the tight quarters and because Bucky is obviously torn up about his inaction.

He sighs slightly through his nose and leans awkwardly against the curved side of the plane, arm lifted to brace himself from shifting on the low ceiling.

"You were dead when I met him," Steve says, hiding nothing from Bucky. "And when we were looking for you... I should have told him. He wouldn't have listened or believed me, but I should have told him."

Steve had been in DC. He hadn't seen Tony in a long while. Sam was his literal wing man on Bucky's trail for the last two years and Stark was a guy he didn't really get along with. At all.

"I didn't trust him. I still don't. Not when it comes to you." He holds up his other hand, covered in shoot and concrete dust to stop Bucky from saying anything more. "It wasn't my call to make, keeping it from him. I shouldn't have and I'm sorry."

[freightcars]

There's a burning, steadily rising fire in his chest that he can't quell. It's not easy to get him to this point, he's not temperamental in the least. Even when he was back in his younger days, back when he was quicker to an outburst, it still took time to get him there - time, and a lot of cracks against his mask to make him slip.

It rises up with unprecedented quickness and ferocity, at least as far as his best friend is concerned. Never been so angry at Steve so fast, and it makes the plates in his left arm shift into position as though preparing to take a swing.

He doesn't.

It's excuses. A lot of them, layered on one another, back to back, and all of them sound cheap. The muscle in his jaw thumps as his teeth grit, as he tries to reign himself in, and--

Maybe, maybe what's making this so big inside him is bleed-through from what Tony's consumed with at the same exact moment.

"Tell me something," He starts, a quiver in his otherwise steady voice. "If it was the same situation, but it was you and Peggy, would anything coming out of your mouth right now be enough for you?"

It's such a god damn complex moment, such a thick and layered situation. Steve just saved his life, his freedom, his reputation. Steve just gave up everything for him to get him here. He's still got an insurmountable load of guilt on his mind for leaving Steve on the banks of a river in the first place for nearly killing him, for not reaching out the entire time Steve went looking.

These two things make it hard to feel justified in his anger, hard to feel like he deserves to be angry, so rather than waiting for an answer he just shakes his head and pulls back. Slips from the hold back into the craft proper, to sit down silently for the remainder of the flight.