Work Text:
Thunk.
A gun landed on Peggy’s desk—long range rifle, sniper scope, looked to be Russian made—right over the Unexpected Loss of Enemy Life paperwork for Agent Fury’s latest mission that she was trying to review. Her intercom hadn’t buzzed, and she hadn’t heard the door opening, much less her assistant asking for her attention. Peggy looked up.
Howard Stark was standing on the other side of the desk, both hands braced on his hips. He was scowling, his face a livid red behind his grey mustache.
In the doorway behind him, her assistant, Angie, was also scowling. Hers was aimed at Howard, though, just like her pistol.
Satisfying as it would be to let Angie shoot him with a sedative round for barging in, he’d do nothing but whinge about it for weeks after, and Jarvis would be upset. Probably Maria Stark wouldn’t appreciate it, either, for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t as though their son, Tony, needed the example. All available evidence suggested he was already an expert at whinging.
“Did you need help with something, Howard?” Peggy asked, making sure to keep her tone mild, as she called Angie off with a sharp sideways flick of her eyes. Angie scowled harder a moment, then huffed, and shoved the pistol back into its holster. Good woman, she didn’t leave the doorway, only stepped inside and closed the door.
“I pulled this off a goon hiding in my bushes last night,” Howard snapped. “My bushes, Peggy!”
“Upsetting as I’m sure that is,” Peggy said, not reacting to his accusing tone. “I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
Howard let out a hissing noise through his teeth that reminded her of nothing so much as steam out a kettle. “I want you to stop it, that’s what!”
“Surely you don’t think I’m responsible for sending such an inept gunman,” Peggy replied, honestly offended.
“Of course I don’t,” Howard said, flapping both hands to wave this away.
“Good.” Peggy paused to smile. She made her voice teasing, as she said, “SHIELD employs only the best assassins, you know.”
“Right, yeah,” Howard agreed, not teasing at all. He stabbed a finger toward the gun. “But that’s not SHIELD, it’s some—some Hydra knock-off.”
Peggy glanced at the unmarked gun, and arched one brow up. “I see how you might draw that conclusion.”
“Peg, this is the fourth assassin this week!”
“How unfortunate.”
“It’s Tuesday!”
“Actually, it’s Wednesday, Howard, you really should keep better track of—”
Howard leaned over and slapped both hands flat against her desk. Peggy didn’t flinch or jump—she’d been expecting the maneuver, since Howard in a temper reminded her of nothing so much as her children when they’d been toddlers; which was to say, predictably prone to tantrums—but Angie’s gun made a reappearance.
“One tried to sneak in and boobytrap my lab,” Howard said, and his voice had lost most of the high edge of drama, gone grim. Peggy sat up a little straighter and started paying closer attention.
What could have caused that tone? It wasn’t anything Peggy had said.
“He didn’t succeed, surely,” she said, trying to look Howard over for clues. There weren’t any, beyond his suddenly serious tone, which just made the whole thing more alarming. “The security at your home lab is—”
“Top of the line, yeah. But he got too far, Director,” Howard said, still grim, biting out the syllables of her title like an accusation. “Tony was down there.”
Peggy’s eyes widened. Behind Howard, Angie’s mouth fell open and she took a step back in horror.
“What was your fourteen year old son doing alone in your lab?” Peggy demanded.
“Yeah! You keep bombs in there!” Angie snarled. She stalked across the room and poked Howard hard in the side with her gun. “What’s wrong with you?”
Howard grunted, straightening up. He batted the gun away, as if it wasn’t a loaded weapon being wielded by one of the people on the planet the least impressed with him.
“Who cares about the bombs, Tony made half of those anyway,” he snapped. “Nobody cares about the bombs.”
“What was he doing in your lab, Howard?” Peggy demanded again. She didn’t think she needed to point out that Howard had classified SHIELD projects in that lab—because he was a walking security risk who insisted on whisking anything he felt like away on the merest excuse, so he could fiddle with it in private and nobody would be able to witness it blowing up in his face—but she absolutely would remind him if it became necessary.
Tony Stark, all the genius of his father and not even a tenth of his, already rather meager, self-restraint? Lay hands on some of SHIELD’s most top-secret projects? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Peggy could practically hear the explosions already—both literal and verbal.
Howard huffed again, and flapped his hands some more. “Relax, would you? He’s fourteen, he’s got a one-track mind. The only thing he cares about down there is The Arm.”
Peggy did not feel especially reassured. The last version of The Arm she’d seen had featured a laser saw and a rocket launcher.
Then again, Starks were weapons contractors, so it wasn’t as if Tony didn’t know what to do with either of those. As Howard had said, Tony’d already produced his fair share of bombs.
Even so, an assassin getting that deep into Stark Mansion, getting that close to Howard and Maria and their child?
“What are you asking me to do?” Peggy asked, at last treating Howard’s complaint seriously. “I can assign agents for the protection of your family, but I'm sure you could hire comparable individuals on your own.”
“Already done,” Howard assured her. He seemed to have calmed a little, at this evidence that Peggy was really listening to him.
That was the trick to Starks—you just had to show them you were taking their crazy seriously.
“Then what do you need?” she asked.
Howard rocked back on his heels, gave her that shark smile she’d got used to back during WWII. It was an expression she was most used to seeing when they were out in the field providing support for Steve and James and their boys.
“I just need you to figure out who’s running the many-headed beast these days,” he said, in the voice of impending mayhem that usually accompanied that toothy grin. “I wanna send ’em a little message of my own.”
#
Lay off, read the note pinned to the failed assassin’s chest, or I’ll start sending my own hitmen.
I do that better, too.
It was signed ’Howard Stark’, and an hour after it made it to the desk of the top Head of Hydra, the man himself exploded.
Once Hydra found a new Head, he declared Stark off limits, at least until they could figure out how he’d done that.
#
“That really shouldn’t have worked, you know that, right?”
Howard stopped his self-satisfied and not at all megalomaniacal chuckle in order to glare at his son, leaning on the doorframe and apparently reading Howard’s memos from across the room. Or more likely he intercepted it in some devious new-tech way. “What?”
“I mean it, that was a ridiculous plan. Hydra must really be losing their edge,” said Tony, crossing his arms. “I remember them being much craftier in your Cap Stories.”
Howard narrowed his eyes, and pointedly did not agree with Tony even though there was a part of him that wanted to. “Why don’t you go do your homework.”
“I’ve never done my homework, Dad.” Tony pushed upright and started to swagger away. It was a terrible habit of his—Howard had no idea where he’d learned it. Over his shoulder, he said, “I just like to do yours.”
#
“Well, Howard,” Peggy began, as they were sitting together over scotch in Howard’s study one evening. There were fireworks lighting up the sky outside intermittently, but they were both pretending not to notice. They’d just returned from the Annual Steve Rogers Memorial Independence Day Barbecue, and neither of them felt much like celebrating anything.
“Well, Peggy?” Howard returned. He toasted her with his scotch. “Need a refill already?”
“No, no. I wanted to ask,” Peggy said, then hesitated. Her brows drew together a moment, before her face cleared, and she finished, “Have there been any more assassination attempts?”
Howard raised his eyebrows. “Not since I had that…special package delivered over Christmas,” he said, carefully.
“Ah, good. I'm glad to hear it,” Peggy replied. She looked relieved. The kind of relieved you were the first time you heard good news.
Only thing was, that wasn't the first time Peggy'd heard it. It had only taken them six years to get a reliable lead on Hydra’s underground boss, and another to put together an actual plan against the guy. You'd think that’d be the kind of thing the head of an intelligence agency would remember.
“Yeah,” Howard said. He debated whether to say the next bit, but—aw, hell, what good had caution ever done him, anyway? Best to stick to what you knew. “You were glad to hear it both times I answered that same question this afternoon, too.”
Peggy’s eyes widened, just a fraction before she stopped them. Her face went still. “Ah. I see. Yes, of course.”
She didn't look surprised, but she also didn't seem like she'd asked more than once on purpose, either, and that—that wasn't good.
“I don't suppose you’ve had more to drink today than I thought?” he asked, without any real hope.
“No, I'm sorry,” was the rueful answer, “I haven't.”
Howard’s stomach sank.
“You're just forgetting things.” This time it wasn't a question. Peggy nodded, anyway.
“You’re… forgetting things?” Howard repeated, frowning as he thought it over.
“So they tell me,” Peggy said. She had a tense set to her mouth, not quite a frown of her own.
“No,” said Maria, from the door way.
“What?”
“You are not leaving me alone with him,” Maria snapped.
Peggy blinked. Her face softened, and in a solemn, regretful tone, she said, “I don't imagine I'll have much choice.”
Maria narrowed her eyes. She swung her gaze around to Howard.
Oh, boy. That was a look he recognized.
“Howard,” said Maria.
“Yes, oh light of my life? My dearest, my loveli—”
“Fix it,” said Maria.
Howard sighed.
Exactly a month later, Stark Industries announced the opening of the Maria Stark Institute for Dementia Research.
###
“I need the arm!”
Tony’s head jerks up, the safety goggles on his face wobbling with the sudden movement. Dammit, he knew he shouldn’t’ve used the generic spares after he accidentally melted his last custom pair. Anything mass–produced can’t hold a candle to hand-crafted Stark work, he knows this.
It’s Dad busting into his lab, of course—nobody else is crazy enough to butt in while he’s running the blowtorch—and he’s got, huh. A really crazy look in his old man eyes.
“Hey, pops,” Tony says, shutting off the torch and pushing the goggles up his forehead. “Sup?”
Dad’s face creases, impatient. He waves a wrinkled, spotty hand toward the back corner of Tony’s lab, the section reserved for—
“Didn’t you hear me? I need The Arm,” Dad says, voice rising. Tony blinks. Oh.
The Arm’s been Tony’s exclusive domain for years, ever since that Thing They Don’t Mention happened in Afghanistan. The only reason Dad’d be asking for it is if—
Oh.
Holy shit.
“Oh my god please tell me you’re not pulling my leg,” Tony says, even as he’s hastily wiping his hands on the nearest semi-clean piece of cloth he can find—his discarded shirt, oh, gotta find a new one before they leave.
“Do I look like I’m pulling your leg?” Dad asks, pushing past Tony, his chair hovering across the lab in the direction of The Arm. “What are you waiting for!”
Tony can’t think of a single thing. He gets to The Arm before Dad can, despite his headstart, but hesitates over the case. “Ah, crap.”
“What?” Dad demands. He comes up behind Tony, poking at him. “What is it, Tony? Why aren’t you moving?”
“I just finished the latest remodel last night,” Tony admits.
“So what?”
“It’s not done, Dad! JARVIS hasn’t had time to graft the dermal layer.”
“Skip the spinning rims,” Dad says, jarring as always when he tries to use ‘newfangled slang’, and pokes harder. “We’re on the clock!”
Tony glares at The Arm and doesn’t dignify Dad’s comment with a response.
A pause. Dad huffs. “Then get the last version. I don’t see why you’re letting this hold us up. They could be awake!”
They. Oh god, they’ve really been found. Tony’s going to get to meet them. He feels giddy as a schoolboy. Still—
“The last version had that short in the pseudo-neural relays,” Tony reminds Dad, twisting to glare down at him. “You remember, the one that delivered a fatal electrical shock when pressure was applied to the thumb?”
“Ah, crap. Right, fine, then just bring the latest one. The cosmetics hardly matter.”
“Dad, it’s all metal. It barely looks like an arm!”
“For God’s sake, Tony,” and now Dad sounds well and truly annoyed. “Rogers practically slept with a vibranium teddy bear, and the way Barnes fondled his sniper rifle used to make hardened soldiers nervous.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard your war stories. What does that have to do with—”
“I don’t think either of them are going to care what it looks like,” Dad finishes. He holds out both spindly arms and makes grabby hands like a toddler at The Arm. “Just give it to me, already.”
Well, when he puts it like that.
But, just as Tony moves to pass it over, Dad adds, “And then get the suit, son. We’ve got an appointment at SHIELD HQ.”
Tony stalls, which isn’t a small feat considering he’s holding a crapton of metal a foot off his father’s ancient lap, and gives Dad the Stark Eyebrow. “You want me to fly you all the way to NYC? With The Arm?”
Dad narrows his eyes, and gives Tony the Stark Eyebrow right back. “Have you got a faster idea?”
Tony doesn’t, surprisingly. Which is how, twenty minutes later, he finds himself in the suit, most of the way across Arizona, carrying his father’s hoverchair with The Arm strapped across his lap.
He at least stopped to make Dad put on the flight suit and helmet with the oxygen feed, though. He’s not an idiot.
No matter what Aunt Peggy said last week when she heard about his latest crash.
#
Steve and Bucky only get about four blocks before they’re surrounded.
Easily half a dozen large, black vehicles roar in out of nowhere, spitting out three times that many men and women in black suits.
Only once a loose perimeter has been formed does the rear door of the first vehicle open, and an imposing man in an eyepatch and a black leather trenchcoat gets out. The boss, then. And one with a weakness for a dramatic entrance.
Not that Steve would know anything about that.
“You’ve been asleep, boys,” Trenchcoat says. “For almost seventy years.”
There’s a twitch in the corner of Steve’s vision that means Bucky’s turned his head. Steve twists to meet his eye, finds him looking incredulous.
“Well, that’s a hell of a nap,” Bucky mutters.
“Yeah,” Steve agrees, getting more uneasy with every new gun he spots in this remarkably adept circle.
“Out of my way!”
The shout comes from back through the sea of suits, in a voice that Steve can almost place—familiar, but not quite right, not for the person Steve wants to say it belongs to. Surely, though, he can't be right; that old-man voice can’t belong to Howard.
“Our way,” another, louder voices adds. This one is entirely unfamiliar, which is at once a relief and entirely the opposite of one. “You heard the old man, are you deaf? Clear a path.”
Trenchcoat closes his eye, a long, slow blink, with the air of somebody dreading something. Bucky used to look like that, when his ma’s knock sounded on their apartment door.
“Who alerted them,” Trenchcoat demands, eye still closed.
“I’d lay odds on Agent Coulson, Director, sir,” replies a woman at his right shoulder.
“I was afraid of that.”
“Coming through,” that almost-familiar voice insists, and a gap forms in the wall of bodies around them.
Through the gap between all the suits comes a frail man with white hair and mustache, riding in a wheelchair—without wheels? What? Is it hovering?
Shining up from the man’s lap is a big hunk of metal, suspiciously appendage-shaped, and his eyes have a lunatic gleam in them that Steve has seen before. Usually right before a certain brilliant mechanical engineer went all mad genius and showed off another unnecessary way for Jacques to blow something all to hell.
“Welcome back, boys,” declares Howard Stark, in tones of glee, and he thrusts a goddamn robotic arm at Bucky. ”I brought you a present.”
#
A robot arm.
That's a robot arm, and it's being waved with a demented grin by Howard Stark, who somehow got old.
None of this would be a problem, really—Bucky likes to think he’s pretty good at rollin’ with the punches; witness the champion way he did not ever lose his shit over his shrimpy best pal showing up on the wrong side of the front lines, grown up into somethin’ off a splashy Hollywood film poster—except its being waved directly at Bucky.
Bucky figures he's entitled to just a little bit of concern, here.
“Steve,” he says, real level, without looking away from the goddamn robot arm.
“Yeah, Buck?” replies Steve, in that sideways distracted tone that means he's not looking at Bucky, either.
“You see that, too?” asks Bucky.
“Yeah, I see it,” says Steve.
“It what I think it is?”
“That depends. You think it's a robotic arm?” Steve says. Bucky grunts an affirmative. “Then yeah, it's what you think it is.”
“It's a present,” says Stark’s extremely Stark-like shadow. Probably another Stark. Damn, as if one of them hadn't been enough to give Bucky nightmares, always aiding and abetting Steve’s tomfool plans.
What were the odds this one wouldn't want to supply the firepower to fuel all Steve’s crazy ideas and make him think he was invincible?
“And it ain’t even my birthday,” says Bucky, staring down at it. He glances at Steve, in time to see his fingers twitch. Suspiciously like the tell before he used to steal Bucky’s beer, back when Bucky’d only ever let him have one because he was too short and skinny to handle his booze.
Bucky hastily sticks his arm out to hold him back. He gets glared at for his trouble, but at least Steve doesn’t move. Bucky looks toward Eyepatch. “Is that gonna explode?”
“Don’t ask him,” snaps Other Stark. “I’m the one who built it, ask me.”
“Okay,” says Bucky. “Is it gonna explode?”
The guy grins, the gleam in his eyes almost a dead ringer for Stark’s, for all they’re different colors. “Only if you want it to.”
Oh, just what Steve doesn’t need in their arsenal.
“And that means?” Bucky asks.
Other Stark completes the picture of insanity by grinning Stark’s same smug grin, and says, “It can launch six different kinds of mini grenade.”
Those odds Bucky’d been thinking about? Very low, then. But also—
“On-board ammo capacity?” Bucky can’t help asking.
Eyepatch makes the kind of noise you make when you just lost a battle you couldn’t afford to. Bucky was real familiar with that kinda noise, after following Steve around for—apparently, ninety years or so.
Stark cackles. “I always knew you boys’d get along great.”