The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2014-12-06 12:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | bucky barnes, maria hill, marvel, multi-parter, natasha romanov, novel, r-rated, sharon carter, steve rogers, tony stark, yuuo, yuuo: marvel |
[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: So Peter's a smartass, Tony's a badass, and everyone wants to help Bucky. (Note, this is not how I imagined Tony's press conference going originally. It was originally much more awesome, but alas, I went to sleep when I wrote this and forgot everything I was going to have him say.)
Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 17
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 3995
Summary: "Hey, Barnes," an unfamiliar voice said.
"Hey, Barnes," an unfamiliar voice said. "You made the paper this morning."
Bucky opened his eyes, staring out his door to see an MP that he didn't recognize with a folded up newspaper. "Haven't I been making it for the last two weeks?" he asked, not moving to get up.
The MP held out the newspaper with an impatient look. "You'll want to see this."
"Bucky, just get out of bed and get the paper," Steve said from the next room, sounding like he was still half-asleep.
Bucky grumbled at him, then sat up, running flesh fingers through his hair, trying to tame it. He got up and headed over to the door and held out his hand for the paper.
The MP, a young man that reminded Bucky of a younger Steve in a way, handed over the paper.
Bucky took it and unfolded it. "Oh hey, Steve, I made the front page."
While Bucky read, Steve left his room to read over Bucky's shoulder. "They didn't get your bad side this time."
"That's because I'm not wearing my mask," Bucky said, a bit distracted while he read.
SERGEANT JAMES BARNES IN CUSTODY
Associated Press
Sergeant James Barnes, known to many as the Winter Soldier, has been taken into custody at Fort Meade, the Pentagon has confirmed.
Earlier this month, the identity of the Winter Soldier, Captain America's unknown partner, came to light as Sergeant James 'Bucky' Barnes, childhood friend and fellow Howling Commando to Captain Rogers. Little has come out about how he has survived or where he has been the last seventy years.
The president promised an honorable discharge that never had a chance to go through before rumors began to surface that linked Barnes to several assassinations over the decades, many of which were considered turning points in history. One of these assassinations included Howard and Maria Stark.
Barnes and Rogers disappeared when the first rumors began to appear. There is no lead on where these rumors are coming from, but some have blamed the Russian government, while still others lay blame on Hydra, though no evidence has been presented for either theory.
According to Pentagon officials, Barnes and Rogers turned themselves in at Fort Meade at approximately 7:30 pm last night. There is still no information presently available to explain where Barnes has been, or if the assassinations attributed to him were carried out by him, or by someone else using his name.
The Pentagon says it will be conducting a thorough investigation.
Bucky skimmed the rest, it was mostly just more background on his past, a brief list of some of the targets he had under Hydra, a brief few paragraphs about his and Steve's work as mercenaries, and then back around to his custody and the Pentagon's investigation, along with a line about the White House not commenting just yet.
He offered the paper to Steve in case Steve wanted to read it in detail, but Steve shook his head, so Bucky handed it back to the MP. "I see the Pentagon is going to drag its feet, as usual," he said.
The MP took the paper back and folded it up. "What do you mean? You just got here, they can't possibly work that quickly. No one can." He seemed eager to defend the institution he worked for. Poor, naive boy.
"I already gave them pretty much everything they need," Bucky said. "It was the first thing they did after tossing us in an interrogation room. They already know." He leaned back against his doorway. "And I think your superiors would be upset with me if I told you what they have."
"Which is why I'm not asking," the MP said. "I know better than that."
Bucky grinned. "Good, you've been here long enough to learn that." He studied the MP, taking note of his rank of corporal, and a last name of Loos. Weird name. He wondered what part of Europe that came from.
The other MP, a short woman with dark hair and a rather cute face, gave Loos a stern look. "Loos, you know better than to interact with the prisoners."
Loos motioned to the open cell doors. "These hardly count as conventional prisoners," he protested. "They don't even get their doors shut at night."
Steve glanced up at the clock. "It's six in the morning," he said. "Do we get escorted to the showers to clean up for the day?" he asked, stepping into the middle of the scolding Loos was getting diplomatically.
Both MPs fell back into proper attention, escorting Steve and Bucky to the showers and restrooms to clean up for the day. Before they had a chance to get into the showers, having taken care of brushing teeth and other necessities, they were given a change of clothing, a uniform that made Bucky crinkle his nose in disgust, but it was clean, and that was all he cared about. They showered, changed, and were led back to their cells.
Bucky decided to be a good prisoner for awhile and buried himself in his book, staying quiet for a few hours. He assumed Steve was drawing in the next cell over, he was just as quiet as Bucky was.
Bucky had gotten through a few chapters before he head footsteps coming down the hall. He looked up, marking his place and setting his book aside. He saw Loos salute as the footsteps stopped just outside of Bucky's cell, off to the side and out of his sight.
The lieutenant colonel from the night before spoke up. "Escort the prisoners to interrogation room one," he said.
Great, more bullshit.
Bucky set his book aside and obediently went to his door, waiting for Steve and the MPs to take their places. Up ahead, he could still see the lieutenant colonel, although he had a feeling that the officer wasn't going to go into the room first. They never did, at least not on TV. Having only been interrogated once before, very unsuccessfully, by some amateur cops in Ohio, Bucky didn't have a lot to go on as to how these things really worked, but he still somehow had the feeling he'd be left to stew.
He was glad when he was proven wrong, led into the interrogation room to see the lieutenant colonel already seated and waiting.
Once Steve and Bucky were seated, the officer slid over a folder to Bucky. "Here are the photographs you requested," he said. "I trust I will have your cooperation?"
"I said you would, didn't I?" Bucky said, then opened the folder. It was a stack of photographs, as the officer said, and Bucky immediately recognized the face on the top photo. He picked up the photo, flipping it over to see if there was a name on it. 'Eva Volkov 1967' it read. "This one's true," he said, setting it aside. The second picture was like a shot to the gut, a picture of Howard and Maria. He'd never met Maria, Howard was still single when Bucky last saw him. But seeing Howard brought back the crash, the heat of the fire, the loud crack of his neck, and it took all of Bucky's willpower to keep his hands from shaking. "This one too," he said, setting it aside.
All in all, there were about thirty pictures, and all but two were ones he recognized. Those two he admitted might still be true, he didn't remember everything, but since the others he'd recognized with absolute clarity, it was unlikely that they were his. He wasn't sure why Hydra would release false accusations, unless the two in question had just popped up because of the rumors going around.
It took an hour to go through all of the pictures and answer the officer's questions about each. He couldn't remember details, couldn't answer at all why they'd been targeted. "I was never told," he said. "I was just told they needed to be eliminated to continue Hydra's work towards a safe world."
"And you believed that?" the officer asked, his tone not revealing his opinion of Bucky's statement one way or another.
"I had no reason not to," Bucky said. "They were all I knew. There was nothing before them to give me reason to think they weren't on the level."
"The problem of the brainwashing," the officer said, asking for confirmation while still making a statement rather than a question.
Bucky crossed his arms and sat back. "You don't believe that, do you?"
"I don't think anything of it, Sergeant," the officer said. "My job is not to interpret the evidence, simply gather it and submit it."
"That doesn't stop you from having an opinion."
The officer looked like he was considering giving Bucky an answer. "I am not unsympathetic," was as close as he came. He nodded at the MPs. "Take them to the cafeteria," he said. "I believe it's past their morning meal."
Oh thank god. Bucky was getting hungry; they hadn't been given food the night before. He didn't point out that oversight, though, just quietly let himself be led to a large room with some round tables and four seats around each one. The stockade was hardly bursting to the seams, but there was a cook on-hand that normally served the MPs. Bucky almost wondered why the place acted like they were a proper prison.
There was a TV in the cafeteria, leading Bucky to suspect that this wasn't actually where a prisoner would take their meals, but where the MPs on duty took their breaks. Weird set up, this place had.
He didn't complain, though. Their food was better than he would've gotten in a proper prison, at least. Not by much, but it was the military, one could only ask so much.
Their next few days fell into routine. There were a couple more questionings, but nothing new came of them, they were mostly more attempts at getting information about why the targets were chosen, and every time, Bucky had to remind them that he was the weapon, nothing more. They questioned Steve about Bucky's attempt on his life, which was an unpleasant trip into the past that Bucky forced himself to detach from, but other than more insistence at Bucky's lack of memory and complete brainwashing, not much came of that, either.
Which left them waiting for Washington to decide what to do. Bucky would give them a week before letting Steve know to contact Sharon and let the CIA take over. He knew he should logically give them longer; the government liked to drag their heels about everything, but he wasn't interested in hanging around prison any longer than that. He had to hope that Sharon and her group had everything already set up and ready to go.
It was day five of imprisonment before anything changed in the routine. Bucky had long since finished his book and was rereading it for lack of anything else to do, but even he was getting tired of seeing the word 'Hodor'.
"Barnes, you have a visitor," an MP said outside his cell.
He looked away from the ceiling he'd been staring at, on his back with his book resting open on his chest, abandoned for the past hour. He frowned. Who the hell was visiting him in the stockade? He closed his book and set it on the ground and sat up. "Hear that, Steve?" he said. "Someone's come to see me."
"That's because you're special, Bucky," Steve said, with that sort of tone that said 'special' had a few sparkles on it.
He shot the wall between them a dirty look, but got up and went to his cell door. Two MPs he didn't recognize from the rotation were waiting for him. They moved into formation to escort him, the rather large Hispanic man taking the lead, leaving a somewhat smaller than average white woman to pull up the rear. Bucky understood the need to have an armed guard behind him as well as in front, but it seemed rather pointless, given that it'd take him about a second to kill them both and escape.
Let them have their security blankets.
Like the rest of the place, the visitation room defied what Bucky was expecting from the media. There was no glass wall with individual cubicles and little phones inside, it was just a room with a few tables and chairs. It almost looked like the dining area in the cafeteria, just without a TV.
Bucky took a seat at the guards' rather pointed suggestion, and tapped his metal finger on the table top in nervous habit while one of the guards stepped over to a phone on the wall and informed whoever was on the other end that 'the prisoner' was ready.
Bucky wasn't sure who he was expecting, if he was expecting anyone at all, but somehow, he wasn't entirely surprised when Peter was escorted in. He gave his little brother an exasperated look. "Peter, what the hell are you doing here?"
Peter sat down across from him, setting down a book and sliding it over to him. "I know how bored you get," he said. "I brought you something to read. You're welcome, you ungrateful jackass."
Bucky picked up the book, eyeing the title. 'Storm Front' by someone named Jim Butcher, marked as part of a series called The Dresden Files. "I've heard of this series," he said. "I'm going to assume my baby brother isn't enough of an asshole to give me a shitty book to read and that it's a good series."
"If you were at home, I might," Peter said. "But since you're in the brig, I thought I'd be nice."
"This is the first book?" Bucky asked, turning the book over in his hand to skim the back.
"I'm being nice, remember? Of course it is." Peter sighed, and didn't speak again until Bucky had set the book down and gave him full attention. "What's going on? I know you said you can't tell me everything, but for the love of God, tell me something. Why'd you run? You were gone before the press knew what was happening with the bullshit accusations about the Starks and the others."
Bucky sighed. "How'd you get in here, anyway?"
"I drove thirty six miles," Peter said. "You didn't answer my question."
Bucky frowned. "I'm trying to figure out how without saying too much. As far as why I ran, wouldn't anyone? Nobody wants to be arrested by the government for shit like that."
Peter sat back, folding his hands on the table in front of him, and Bucky could easily picture him in a Naval officer's uniform, a younger man, eyes as hard as steel and his kindness streak still a mile wide. "How'd you know to run before the government?"
"I had my ear to the ground," Bucky said. "It'd been there pretty much since people figured out who I am."
It didn't take more than about three seconds for Peter to read between the lines. "Which means you knew these accusations were out there. How?"
Bucky hesitated. "Because they're not not true. But they're not exactly true, either." He shrugged. "Depends on your point of view."
Peter looked like he couldn't believe what he was hearing, and he probably didn't. Bucky had never been the sort to pull punches or hesitate to pull the trigger when the time called for it, but he'd never been the sort for assassinations, either. Not before Hydra. "So you did kill those people." At Bucky's silence, Peter swallowed tightly, looking less and less like a former officer and more and more like the kid that Bucky remembered, despite the grey hair and the age lines on his face. Young, scared, and horrified. "Why? Bucky, one of those people was Mister Stark, you liked him, you never would've hurt him."
"Not willingly," Bucky agreed, keeping a neutral tone and expression.
That sank in pretty fast, too, and the fear turned into a hard, cold anger. "Who got ahold of you?"
"And that's the part I can't tell you," Bucky said. "You'll find out within the next week. That much I can promise you. In the meantime, try not to worry too much. You're already halfway to bald."
Peter was silent, studying Bucky in a way that made Bucky feel like he was being interrogated by someone far more effective at it than the lieutenant colonel that ran the place was. After a few seconds, Peter mercifully stopped drilling holes into Bucky's brain. "Do you need a lawyer?"
There was a good question. Bucky tilted his head back, looking up at the stark white ceiling. "I don't know. Maybe. Why, you got one?" He lifted his head. "You can't exactly get someone from the Pentagon, they're going to be the ones prosecuting me, if charges are pressed."
"It'll be the Army that's prosecuting," Peter said. "Maybe not even them. It's hard to say who would be filing charges. Either way, I have some friends, if they can without conflicting interests, I'll throw a call their way."
Bucky sighed. "If they're friends of the family, they're already at a conflict of interest."
"No, that's just bias," Peter said. "But I'm not going to argue semantics with you, Bucky. You have my number, call if you need help. Or another book."
Bucky smiled, grabbing the Dresden book again and holding it up. "This should last me until tomorrow, so get the second one ready."
Peter looked amused, though not quite as carefree about it as Bucky was, then glanced at the guards, then back to Bucky. "I suppose they'd shoot me if I tried to hug you."
"Probably," Bucky said. "So go on, just get out of here. Keep an eye on the news, you'll get your answers soon enough." He paused. "You know I don't like hiding things from you."
Peter's smile softened. "I know. You never did. But shit happens. I'll keep an eye on the news, and ear out for the phone. I can be here in less than an hour. Keep me in the loop."
"As much as I can," Bucky promised. He waved to his brother as Peter got up and was escorted out by a guard. He studied his new book, then glanced up at the MPs that stepped forward to take him back to his cell. "Don't suppose either of you know if this series is done yet?"
"It's not," the female of the two said, looking at least somewhat sympathetic. "Come on, Sergeant Barnes, it's time to go back. You can read that there."
Bucky sighed and got up. "Yeah, Steve's probably worried by now anyway," he said, falling into place between them.
Another day passed. Peter had good taste in books, Bucky had to admit. Dresden was a smartass. Bucky could appreciate that.
They got their dinner at promptly six, three on the west coast, and the evening news was on. Bucky paid it little attention, focusing on his food and mentally taking notes on what the plan was for the next day. It'd be day seven, time for Steve to contact Sharon. They'd agreed that Steve would contact her under the premise of getting Bucky a lawyer. By tomorrow, it'd be obvious that they weren't planning on letting Bucky go, and it'd be time to call in legal counsel.
Steve nudged his arm. Bucky looked away from mystery meat that claimed to be chicken cordon bleu, looking at Steve. Steve motioned to the TV. Without question, Bucky looked up, and his stomach clenched up and threatened to fight back against that food. The news was on, cameras focusing on a podium that had the logo for Stark Enterprises on the front. There were camera flashes, murmurs of reporters, and Tony walking from off-screen to stand behind the podium. He was holding something in his fist, something he set down on the podium. Cameras clicked.
"Looks like the press finally cornered him into a statement," Bucky said, then tried to return to his food.
Steve poked his arm. "Pay attention," he said. "Give him a chance to prove you wrong."
Bucky sighed, glancing at Steve out of the corner of his eye, then up at the TV screen.
Tony took in a deep breath, studying something on the podium, probably notes, then looked out at the reporters. "So, some of you have been all but knocking down my door to get a statement from me about the issue of Bucky Barnes. I've been doing my best to ignore all of you, but you're persistent, I'll give you that. So here's what you want to hear. Yes, I knew that the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes for almost a year now. I was friends with him. Visited him. Repaired his arm when it got damaged in the Ukraine."
Tony shuffled a card. "The news that he was responsible for the death of my parents, however, I hadn't known. He never told me. He let me go on thinking it was an accident, that he hadn't rigged their gas tank to explode, that he hadn't gone in and personally made sure the job was done. He called me, not long ago, I assume only to give me a chance to end our contact, to try to kill him with my brain. I haven't talked to him since."
He looked back down at the cards. "My legal team is encouraging me to press charges, along with the rest of the world. Yes, he committed those crimes. Yes, he pulled the trigger on those people. But I'm not going to do that." He lifted the small stack of note cards he'd been reading from and tore them in half. "And the reason is that he's not guilty. The reason is because he did none of them willingly.
"You know how I know?" He held up a tiny thumb drive. "I have on this drive a digital copy of something he and Captain America were given from a Hydra base in Kiev. It details the work done to him by Hydra as part of the Winter Soldier Project. It was Hydra that he worked for. They found him after he fell from the train. They replaced his arm. They pumped him full of chemicals, chemicals that did damage, then more chemicals to correct that, to enhance every bit of him to replicate- as closely as they could -the serum used on Captain America."
Bucky stared at the TV, jaw slightly agape, food forgotten entirely. Steve had been right, Tony was stepping up to bat for him. He was offering forgiveness. He was fighting for his friend.
"They did more than that," Tony continued. "They ripped open his head, they put in chemicals, they applied shocks to just the right areas, reducing them to shreds that removed all sense of self. They destroyed Bucky and inserted a weapon, instead. He spent decades going into cryo, being taken out, thawed, handed a gun, told to kill someone, had his memory wiped and then back into the freezer. You want to hold someone who went through that accountable for something they had no choice in? Then you are a worse person than those who did it to him in the first place."
He tapped the thumb drive on the podium a couple times. "I'm sure the Army has this information by now, and they aren't working fast enough to clear my friend of any charges for my liking. So here you are, world. The truth. Bucky Barnes is not guilty of those deaths. Hydra is. You want someone to hate, hate them. Bucky was an innocent victim."
Tony stood up taller, expression cold. "And if you want to pursue charges against him, you're going up against me."