idfc - blackbear
Would you tell me pretty lies
Look me in my face
Tell me that you love me, even though it's fuckin' fake
I don't fucking care
At all
Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes approached the abandoned bunker and when it was directly in front of them, Steve flicked a few switches and landed the jet on the ground.
Bucky headed to the weapons bay and opened up a compartment with the word Romanoff on top of it.
He grabbed one of the large guns and walked back over to Steve, who was now standing in front of the ramp leading down to the ground.
Steve looked over at his friend, "You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?"
"Was that the time we used our train money to buy hot dogs?" Bucky asked.
"You blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead," Steve replied.
Bucky laughed, "What was her name, again?"
"Dolores. You called her Dot," Steve nodded.
"She's gotta be a hundred years old right now," Bucky said, shaking his head.
"So are we, pal," Steve replied, clapping Bucky on his back.
They gave each other one more look to silently tell each other that they were ready for whatever fight was waiting for them inside that bunker, and walked out.
They stood outside the entrance and Steve said, "He can't have been here more than a few hours."
"Long enough to wake them up," Bucky said, cautiously.
—————
The two super soldiers stood in the elevator and waited as it jerked to a stop and the doors opened. Steve pulled the mesh door up from the ground to let them out.
Bucky had his gun aimed into the darkness, both of them looking around warily.
They made it to the stairs on the other end of the room and began climbing up, when they heard a loud thud coming from the elevator they had just taken.
Steve stood in front of Bucky, holding his shield out to protect both him and his friend, while Bucky aimed his gun over the top of the shield, ready to fire.
The door creaked and Steve spoke, "You ready?"
"Yeah," Bucky replied instantly, the both of them tightening their grip on their respective weapons.
The doors began to open, actually they were being pried open by someone.
Steve's heart was beating fast, but when he saw the glow of Ironman's arc reactor in between the doors, he froze in shock.
He had found them. Was he going to arrest them? Steve slowly began walking closer to Tony, his shield still up and leaving Bucky on the stairs.
Tony walked forwards, but took his mask off as a sign of maybe not being here to fight.
Tony looked around the room, "You seem a little defensive."
"It's been a long day."
Tony looked up at Bucky and his gun still raised up at him, "At ease, soldier. I'm not currently after you."
"Then why are you here?" Steve asked.
Tony shrugged, "Could be your story's not so crazy... maybe," he looked around and came to a stop now that he had met Cap in the middle. "Ross has no idea I'm here. I'd like to keep it that way. Otherwise I gotta arrest myself."
"Well, that sounds like a lot of paperwork," Steve said, finally lowering his shield, slightly.
Tony scoffed in agreement and Steve took that as his final confirmation, he put his shield to his side, "It's good to see you, Tony."
"You too, Cap," Tony looked up at Bucky who was still holding his gun firmly up. "Hey, Manchurian Candidate, you're killing me. This is a truce here, you can drop..."
Steve held up his hand to tell Bucky that it was okay and he finally put down the gun.
Steve turned back to Tony, "How's the kid?"
"She's upset. But that's to be expected. You guys are her family. She doesn't like how everything's ended up."
"Does she...?"
"Does she what? Know I'm here?"
Steve nodded once.
"Of course she does. She's back at the compound keeping the wraps on this whole..." he gestured between the three of them, "thing. She sends her regards."
Steve nodded.
"What are we waiting for? Christmas? Let's go," Tony said, gesturing for Steve to lead the way.
—————
The three unlikely teammates made their way into a large, dark room. The door was wide open, but the lights had all been switched off.
Unbeknownst to them, the Black Panther also lurked behind a nearby wall, watching as he waited for his perfect moment to strike at Barnes.
"I got heat signatures," Tony said.
"How many?" Cap asked.
"Uh... one," Tony said, unsure.
They stepped into the middle of the room and watched as the suspension chambers for the winter soldiers lit up a sickly shade of orange.
In each chamber, some kind of gas leaked through the top and circulated inside and as they walked closer to the chambers they noticed the bullet holes.
Right in the centre of their foreheads, each and every one of them.
"If it's any comfort," the attention was drawn away from the dead figures and towards the unmistakable voice of Zemo. "They died in their sleep."
They walked around the room, looking at each of the chambers, perhaps it was a trick. But the bullet wounds were very real.
"Did you really think I wanted more of you?" Zemo's voice sounded.
Bucky tightened his grip on his gun, "What the hell?"
"I'm grateful to them, though," Zemo continued. "They brought you here."
Then they heard a click; a light switching on and Zemo's face appearing in a window opposite them.
Tony held up his repulsor and Steve threw his shield without hesitation, but it instantly rebounded off of the wall and back to him.
"Please, Captain," more lights turned on, lighting up the whole room. "The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets."
"I'm betting I could beat that," Tony said as they all stepped around the machine in the centre.
Bucky averted his eyes from his torture machine, unwanted memories threatening to return to him.
"Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr Stark. Given time. But then you'd never know why you came."
"You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?" Steve declared.
The Black Panther looked down, realisation finally taking over. He had been wrong about Barnes.
Steve had come face to face with Zemo, separated only by the thick glass between them.
"I've thought about nothing else for over a year," Zemo replied, stepping closer to the glass. "I studied you. I followed you. But now that you're standing here, I just realised... there's a bit of green in blue of your eyes," he chuckled. "How nice to find a flaw."
"You're Sokovian," It wasn't a question, Steve stated the fact. "Is that what this is about?"
"Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell. No. I'm here because I made a promise."
Steve nodded, "You lost someone?"
Zemo clicked his tongue, "I lost everyone... and so will you." Zemo clicked a button and a screen switched on behind Steve.
Steve turned around to see what he had done and Zemo continued, "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That's dead. Forever."
Tony looked at Zemo with a suspicious expression and walked to where Steve was now staring at the screen in front of him. His eyes widened in recognition.
"I know that road," he looked at tha date of the tape, and although it was in Russian, he knew what it meant.
16 December 1991.
"What is this?" Tony asked, loudly, at Zemo, but the man simply stared back at him solemnly.
Tony turned his attention back to the screen and watched as the car he knew all too well crashed into the tree on the side of the screen.
But then he saw a motorbike park up next to the car and then the man riding it getting off of it.
He saw his father, blurred, but no doubt his father, exit the car, on the floor. He called out to the man who had stopped next to them.
"Help my wife," he said. He thought the man would help them and Tony's stomach dropped.
"Please. Help."
Barnes grabbed Howard Stark's hair and pulled his head back to face him.
Howard scrunched his eyebrows. He knew this man, "Sergeant Barnes?"
"Howard!" A woman's voice called out from the passenger seat.
Tony looked up from the screen and saw Barnes looking down in shame, before turning back to the screen.
Barnes had delivered three punches to his father's, already bleeding, face. He fell to the ground.
"Howard!" Maria Stark's voice grew more and more distressed.
Barnes picked Tony's father up by the back of his neck, as if he was some form of roadkill and placed him back in the car. Resting his head on the steering wheel to face his heavily panicked wife.
Tony watched with rage as the Winter Solider walked around to the other side of the car, to where his mother was sat. He couldn't see much from that angle, but he knew. Barnes had choked the life out of his helpless mother. Then he walked back around to face the camera, held up his gun and shot, screens turned to black.
Tony stepped back, the anger clear on his face.
Steve looked at Tony, scared of how he might react.
Tony quickly turned, facing Bucky and attempted to charge towards him but was held back by Steve, "No, Tony."
Tony turned back around and looked down at Steve's hand on his shoulder. He looked him right in the eyes, "Did you know?"
"I didn't know it was him."
"Don't bullshit me, Rogers! Did you know?" Tony said, aggressively.
Steve looked back at Tony, "Yes."
Tony pushed Steve and moved away from the man he used to call his friend.
He stared at the ground for a split second before punching Steve to the ground and then turning to Barnes.
Zemo, who had been watching his plan unfold, turned away from the window and walked out of the building, leaving the three men to their battle.
—————
Amara finally reached the base. But not before she saw the parked Wakandan ship on the other side of the building.
King T'Challa's here. That can't be good.
She ran, quickly, towards the entrance, but she saw a dark figure, dressed in all black, with silver claws leave from a side entrance.
She scrunched her eyebrows, his entire goal was to kill Bucky. And if he had, Steve wouldn't have just let him go. And he wouldn't leave without good reason.
Amara sighed, "Guess I'm following you, now, your highness."
She floated towards him to avoid the loud crunch of the snow under her boots, before landing directly behind him.
T'Challa stopped in his tracks.
"Daughter of Stark. Not many people can say that they have snuck up on the black Panther."
"I'm not here to get in the way. I want information."
"And what information would that be?"
"I'm guessing you saw the truth. That Zemo's the mastermind behind all of this. Vienna, Berlin. So you know you were after the wrong man?"
T'Challa nodded.
"Well, I also know that Zemo's plan was never about the Winter Soldiers. He killed then all."
T'Challa stepped back, "How do you know that?"
"I know a lot of things. But apparently not enough to figure out what Zemo really wants. But you do," she nodded to him.
He looked at her.
"You were in there. What am I walking in to?" She nodded to the base, buried under snow.
"This Zemo. He planned to break the Avengers from within."
"From within? Hello? Where has he been? The accords already did that."
"The accords separated you. He aimed to destroy you for good."
Amara breathed in deeply, "And how is he planning on doing that? My dad's in there right now, fixing the bridges he thinks he burnt."
"You mean, how he did that? I have no idea. All I know is something serious was kept from your father. And now, the three of them are at each other's throats."
"What?" Amara asked, in fear. She looked down, shaking her head, "We were played. This was never about Bucky!"
Amara looked to the right as she saw Zemo himself walk nonchalantly out of the base from the back exit. Her eyes glowed in rage and her hands formed right fists.
She could kill him right where he stood. She could torture him for all the pain he had caused so many innocent people. She felt the rage that she had bottled up inside of her for so long finally reach the surface.
She could explode at that very second, and take down the rotten man with her.
She wanted him decaying away in prison for the rest of his life. She wanted to make him pay in ways he hadn't even thought possible.
But then she thought of her father. She thought of Steve, Natasha, Bruce, Peter.
All of the people who had been affected by her impulsivity in the past.
She thought back to her father's harsh words, And that's your problem. You act on emotions. Your number one weapon that you always resort to is emotions and you can't control them. But you need to learn how, before the world judges you for something that's out of your control.
She couldn't let her emotions get the better of her. She needed to be better. And she needed to remember that she is in control.
Amara shook her head, uncurling her fists and turning to face T'Challa once more.
He stared at the young girl, marvelled at how she grasped hold of her emotions before they got too out of hand. He recognised her previous expression. One of rage. One of bloodlust. And she had managed to fight it much quicker than he had.
"You have to get Zemo. I need to try and control the situation inside," Amara said to the king, who nodded once.
Amara turned away, but was stopped by T'Challa, "I watched you just now. How you controlled your anger to focus on the bigger picture. Miss Stark, if anyone can calm their anger, it is you."
Amara smiled, "Thank you, your highness."
He reached his hand out for Amara to shake, which she did.
"Good luck," Amara said to him.
"I think you need it more than I do," King T'Challa said.
—————
Amara ran through the hallways and corridors, trying to find the source of the fighting, but all she heard were echoes.
It took her a few minutes, but when she finally located them, they were fighting in the middle of some kind of hangar. The ceiling replaced with an opening for fighter jets or helicopters.
She watched as her father opened up his mask and shoot a rocket at the mechanism that was holding the roof open.
"Steve!" She shouted at her friend. He was the closest to the ground and therefore the only person who would have been able to hear her.
"Amara!"
"What happened?"
"You have to stop your dad. He's not thinking straight."
That was all she needed to hear when she shot to the top of the structure, where her father and Bucky Barnes were fighting.
She stepped in front of her father and grabbed a hold of the pipe that Bucky was using to hit him with and she threw it over the edge.
"Kid! What are you doing?!" Tony shouted.
"Clearly, you can't do anything right, without me," she said, turning her head slightly to see her father better.
But she quickly turned back around when he sensed Bucky about to deliver a punch to her stomach.
She stopped his hand right before it made contact with her torso and stared back up at him.
"You gonna hit me while my back is turned? I'm trying to help you, dickwad!" She shouted at him.
Then she kicked him off the ledge, letting him free fall down to the ground, shouting in fear, before she caught him 10 feet from the ground, then let him drop the rest of the way down.
Tony jumped off of the ledge too to go after him, when Amara grabbed him arm both of them still heading for the ground, "Dad! What are you doing? You came here to help them!"
They landed on the ground and rolled down towards a large ledge overlooking the snowy landscape outside.
Tony stood up to look at his daughter. And Steve and Bucky jumped down to join them on the ground.
"Tony, try to understand. It wasn't him," Steve said.
"What wasn't him?" Amara asked looking between her father and one of her closest friends.
Tony took his mask off and stared at Steve with pure rage, "You wanna tell her or should I?"
Amara looked at Steve but he just looked away.
She looked back at her father, "He," he said pointing aggressively at Bucky. "He killed my parents."
Amara scrunched her eyebrows up, "No. no, your parents were in a car crash."
"Caused by him. After the crash they were still alive. They could have been saved. He took out my dad and then choked the life out of my mom. Your grandparents, Amara. And Steve knew. The whole time."
Amara's eyes welled with tears. She had always wondered what her grandparents were like. What it felt like to have grandparents. And how she always felt like there was something missing about the family. That she had never felt the love of a grandparent. She had confided in Steve about that very subject. And yet he sat there and acted oblivious when the whole time he knew exactly what happened to her grandparents.
Amara whipped her head around to face Steve, "What? Steve?" Her voice was shaky.
"It wasn't him, Amara. It was Hydra. It was whatever Hydra put inside of him. He wasn't in control... Amara?"
Tony looked at Bucky Barnes, "Do you even remember them?"
"I remember all of them," Bucky replied.
Tony lifted up his hand and aimed it ay Bucky's face, his repulsor lighting up.
Steve looked at Amara for help, but she was having a tough time deciding whether or not to kill Barnes herself.
Steve looked back to Tony, "This isn't gonna change what happened."
"I don't care He killed my mom," Tony said before shooting his repulsor and Steve threw his shield to push Bucky out of the way.
Tony and Steve delivered punch after punch to each other until Steve was on the ground trying his best to avoid the punches from Tony who was on top of him.
Bucky noticed this and grabbed the shield from next to him and jumped up, bring the shield down to hit Tony on the back.
Tony moved back and instantly shot his repulsor at Bucky and shield.
Bucky threw the shield back to Cap while Tony got back to his feet. Then Bucky kicked Tony twice, sending him backwards.
Then Cap hit Tony with his shield at the same time Tony punched Bucky.
Tony was on his knees after being hit over and over from both sides. But he had grown sick and tired of playing around.
He shot Cap right in the stomach and sent him flying to the wall. Then he turned his attention back to Bucky, punching him three times, on the fourth time, Bucky caught his hand and Tony let off his repulsor once again, the beam moving up above his head as Bucky used the opportunity to punch Tony in his, now, unguarded middle.
That was when Amara looked up, tears of betrayal still falling from her red eyes.
Tony was sent flying back to the wall and Bucky moved quickly to pin him there.
She stood back up and breathed heavily, gathering up all of the strength inside of her.
Bucky used his real arm to keep Tony's head pushed up to the wall and used his metal hand to attempt to claw out the arc reactor from his suit.
Tony screamed out in pain and Amara gritted her teeth with determination.
Amara closed her eyes, fighting the dizziness she was feeling and her astronomical headache. She gained control of Bucky's arm and commanded the metal to vaporise, which it did, it's grip on her father's lifeline, gone.
But that wasn't enough. She felt angry. So when Bucky fell to the floor and looked at his disappeared arm in shock, she used her powers to lift him off the ground and slam him into the wall. Then again for good measure. He lay in a sputtering mess on the ground, and Amara ran back to her father.
She helped him up and watched as Steve charged forwards.
Tony pushed Amara out of harm's way and shot his repulsors at Steve's shield, the two of them trying their hardest to stand their ground.
That was when Amara remembered what T'Challa said. If anyone can calm their anger, it is you.
She took another deep breath in, bracing herself.
Her powers reached outwards, aiming to grab a hold of the three superheroes. She stiffened up, forcing all three of them to do the same.
They still lunged and charged at each other but it was at a much slower pace.
Amara sighed in frustration as she closed her eyes to try again. This time she aimed to control their limbs, holding them in place so they couldn't move.
They turned to look at the girl, whose eyes were glowing a bright shade of white.
"I think that's enough fighting for one day," Amara said, panting heavily from all the energy she was using up to keep them in place.
"Amara, kid," Tony said. "What's going on?"
"You need to listen to me," she looked to Steve and, momentarily, to Bucky, too, "We are giving Zemo exactly what he wants. He wanted to tear us apart, and he succeeded. Look at us, we're at each other's throats."
She looked around at them and then to her father, "We have to be better. We have to be smarter."
"I don't care," Tony said, full of rage. "My parents would have been here, right now, if it wasn't for him. I would have my parents. What he did is unforgivable, whether he was in control or not."
Then he turned to face Steve, "And you. What you did was worse. My father considered you a friend. I considered you a friend. Now I learn you've been protecting his killer this whole time?!"
"He wasn't in control, Tony. Hydra's the real enemy, here."
"But you were in control. You could've told me the truth. But you chose to protect him," he pointed at Bucky, "Instead."
"He's my friend, Tony."
"So was I."
Amara could see the rage in her fathers eyes, refusing to leave so she stepped forward.
"Dad. You have every right to be pissed. I'm pissed. But we can't let that cloud our judgment and block out all logic. We need to think rationally. If we take Bucky out, which, I can't lie, I'm seriously tempted to do, then we just let Zemo win. We let him turn us into murderers. Into the people who killed the Avengers. We can't let that happen. I won't let it," she said staring her dad straight in the eyes.
She saw Tony's face scrunch up in frustration, he knew what Amara was saying was right, but he couldn't let Barnes just walk away.
Amara saw that she was getting through to him, so she continued and held up her hand to Steve, almost to say, give him a second. "You once told me that my problem was that I act solely on my emotions and that I need to learn how to control them before-"
Tony cut her off, "Before the world judges you for something that's out of your control. I know. I remember."
"You've come so far. Don't let them judge you, now. Dad? What he did is unforgivable, I know that. But you can't kill him. You're a hero, we're the good guys, you can't do this! You're better than this. You're better than your rage. Think of Pepper. Think of the man she fell in love with, the one who fought to protect people, not to take revenge. Please. Think of me, your daughter, who loves you and who cares about you and who will not, under any circumstances, let you go down this path. Because I love you, Dad. You're all I have."
Tony's face softened and he finally put down his repulsor and Amara finally let go of the hold she had on the three of them, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Now let's get on the Quinjet and talk things out. Like rational adults," she looked around at everyone, "is that okay with everyone?" She looked around and didn't wait for an answer before saying, "Great. Move your asses."
(A/N: Okay so I really didn't want to let them keep fighting until there's no possibility of return, but I also didn't want to glaze over the revelation that Bucky is the one who murdered Howard and Maria Stark because I think there's no way Tony wouldn't have got a few punches in. I'm not sure how well I handled this I can't lie, but I hope it doesn't seem like the whole thing's just been brushed to the side, cause that's definitely what I don't want to do.)