Creepy Warehouse, Creepy Siberia [Who Even Knows, Thursday]

[heroic_jawline]

The flight to Siberia was a mostly silent one with Bucky and Steve each lost in their own thoughts. At one point Bucky cleared his throat and asked quietly, "What's gonna happen to your friends?"

Steve's eyes closed briefly as he recalled the many pages in the Accords regarding incarceration. "Whatever it is, I'll deal with it," he said with a little shake of his head.

"Even with Tony?" Bucky asked. The pieces hadn't all fit together for him yet, but he could tell something was off.

"Even with Tony," Steve said.

"I don't know if I'm worth all of this, Steve," Bucky added.

Steve's jaw clenched as he looked back to where Bucky was seated. "What you did all those years...it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice." And Steve was a little focused on choice right now.

"I know," Bucky said, barely audible. "But I still did it."

After that there wasn't much left to say.

Steve	Why was HYDRA so obsessed with putting lairs in ridiculous places? Steve brought the Quinjet down beside a all-weather truck at the top of a remote, icy mountain top. The truck made him think the doctor had beaten them here, but he didn't know by how much. He took a deep breath, then pulled the cowl back over his head and headed to the back where Bucky was already going through the weapons cache. Steve smiled to himself. Bucky was taking some of Natasha's weapons. He wasn't sure if she'd approve because hers were clearly the best or hate it because they were clearly marked as hers. Steve pressed the button to open the cargo bay doors and the cold air brought back an extremely old memory. "You remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?" he asked.
MCU!Bucky	"Was that the time we used our train money to buy hot dogs?" Bucky asked, smiling back.
Steve	And that smile, right there, was what Steve had been needing to see for years. He'd missed his best friend beyond the ability to verbalize it. He'd missed the easy patter. Every time he'd tried with another Bucky, they'd been...off. He wasn't thinking about how that had also been true with a second Tony. He wasn't. "You blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead," he corrected, smiling back.
MCU!Bucky	"What was her name again?" Bucky asked.
Steve	"Dolores," Steve said. "You called her Doll."
MCU!Bucky	Bucky chuckled. "She's gotta be a hundred years old now."
Steve	Steve reached out and squeezed Bucky's shoulder, grounding himself in a moment of normal teasing before facing whatever was waiting for them in the warehouse. "So are we, pal."

Steve	Steve and Bucky walked up to the still open door leading to the underground bunker. Bucky's finger was resting on the trigger of his weapon and Steve had his shield ready to deploy. "How long do you think he's been here?" Steve asked. "No idea," Bucky replied. "Could be hours, could be days. Definitely enough time to wake them all up." Steve took a deep breath. "Well. Here goes nothing." They eased in through the door and made their way down a corridor that ended in a freight elevator. With no other options, they got in, weapons at the ready, and took the elevator all the way down. Steve wondered if this was sublevel five, too. He heaved up the cage keeping the elevator closed and they made their way down another poorly lit corridor. "Fun place they have here, Buck," Steve murmured.
MCU!Bucky	Then, of course, came the clanging noise of something, or more likely, someone hitting metal against metal. Which was great. Just greeeeat. Bucky nodded in the direction it was coming from, automatically falling into a position that could meet them and stay defensive when it inevitably went bad.
Steve	"Ready?" Steve murmured from behind his shield. Multiple Buckys, plus the guy who woke them up. This would be a tough day.
MCU!Bucky	Did they really have a choice? "Yeah," Bucky said, nodding as he took aim.
MCU!Tony (with guest star FH!Tony)	How did a pair of very familiar armor covered hands look, prying the door apart? Was it cinematic? Or maybe a second pair digging in shortly after, just below the first to help finally rip them open.
Steve	Steve's first reaction was knee-buckling relief because old instincts died hard, but he still made sure his shield was covering Bucky. Because the airport had been a shitshow. "Tony?" he called softly. "Stark?"
FH!Tony	"Steve!" Tony said, moving past his counterpart toward him. Just because everyone here was acting like a moron, didn't mean he wasn't so, so relieved to see Steve was okay.
MCU!Tony	"Cool it with the defensive thing," the other Tony called, helmet retracting so he could make a face about getting passed by after all the work he'd done to beat Steve and Bucky here because that was definitely how time worked in this movie.
Steve	"I didn't take it off," Steve murmured, ignoring the first Tony to step closer to his husband for a second. The "A" was gone from Steve's uniform sleeve but he'd kept his wedding ring.
MCU!Tony	Bucky was looking slowly between the two Iron Men? Was Iron Men the plural? "I think I'm missing something," he finally managed. "Is Stark a twin?"
MCU!Tony	"Wait, did he not know?" Tony, don't sound so thrilled to be in the loop on something.
FH!Tony	Tony let his helmet retract as well to look at Steve with his own eyes. "Well, I wouldn't have used it unless this was important," Tony replied, just as quietly. They were in their own world for a moment there, weren't they?
Steve	Always. "I'm glad you're here," he said. He stopped looking at one Tony long enough to include the other Tony in his gaze. "Both of you."
MCU!Bucky	"Yeah," Bucky said. "Explain the both of them."
MCU!Tony	"Calm down, Manchurian Candidate," Tony said, looking around the bunker for any signs of their maybe Nazi friend. Or the still to be seen super soldiers that caused this goose chase. "It's just a little...alternate reality."
FH!Tony	Tony reached out for the hand that still had the ring on it for a quick squeeze so they could focus on the task at hand.
Steve	Steve squeezed back before letting go. "Two Tonys are better than one," he agreed with a tiny smile, feeling Bucky's eyes burning into the way he'd been holding Tony's hand. "I married this one. So you've confirmed Bucky's intel?" Like that wasn't some kind of giant news to drop on a best friend.
MCU!Tony	"That the shrink your pal met murdered the actual shrink and that his information all come back to a Sokovian special ops guy who is apparently a Nazi?" Tony asked over Bucky's wheezed-out, "You got married?" This was absolutely not the time to deal with Rogers' personal life. "Yes. The super soldiers, well that's what we're here for. Off the books."
Steve	"On the books, what happened to everyone else?" Steve demanded.
MCU!Tony	"Exactly what I told you would happen," Tony replied, clearly aggravated by the question here and now.
Steve	"You didn't have to follow through on it," Steve snapped back.
MCU!Tony	"Oh, how kind of you to think I had a choice," Tony shot back. Because this was clearly what they needed to do right now.
MCU!Bucky	"Steve," Bucky said, calling on decades of history to infuse the name with all of his experience watching Steve's stubbornness get him beat up in every alley in Brooklyn.
FH!Tony	"Guys," Tony said at almost the same time as Barnes spoke.
Steve	Steve should be listening, but he wasn't, and that shouldn't really surprise Bucky or Tony. "But what about the team?"
T'Challa	"Your team is on The Raft," T'Challa said, seeming to just separate from the shadows into into their presence. "For now." How had he gotten there? Don't ask questions!
Steve	Steve definitely didn't jump. In a noticeable way. Probably. "Your Highness."
MCU!Tony	"Jesus--" Yeah, consider this Tony also surprised. "It's a party, I guess!" Tony snapped, throwing his hands up in the air.
T'Challa	Did Bucky hide a little bit behind everyone else? Yes. Yes, he did. Which was why T'Challa cocked his head to the side, considering him. "The evidence you released to the media was compelling. I'm here for justice. Not vengeance."
Steve	Steve's forehead wrinkled until the cowl and he shot a questioning to towards his Tony. Because he hadn't released anything to the media.
FH!Tony	Tony shot Steve a look that let him know it was a collaborative effort. "Ross can't ignore it now," he said. Then he remembered that this T'Challa hadn't been in the 'there are two Tonys' meeting.
Steve	Well, Steve wasn't going to explain it if T'Challa didn't ask. He was just going to pretend like everyone knew there were two of them. "So. Assassins," he said. He felt a lot better about their odds right now. "Let's go."
MCU!Tony	This Tony rolled his eyes as his helmet re-assembled around him. "I've got heat signatures."
Steve	"How many?" Steve asked.
FH!Tony	"One," Tony filled in for the other. "Wait... six. But the others are too low still." They had, somehow, gotten here before Zemo could wake them all up.
MCU!Tony	"I was getting there," Tony muttered.
T'Challa	T'Challa moved past them since everyone else seemed too caught up in their drama to lead the way forward toward the ridiculously large chamber where primitive cryogenic chambers lay open.
Steve	Steve bit his lower lip, thinking of Bucky spending decades in one of these things. "Keep your eyes out for the doctor."
MCU!Bucky	None of them were awake just yet, but one seemed to convulsively twitch as he unthawed much too quickly to be merciful, and that got Bucky's gun trained on him. "What the hell?" Bucky muttered. Hadn't Zemo had a good amount of a head start? Why were they still coming out of cryo?
Fucking Zemo	"Don't worry, they're not conscious," a voice came from over an old speaker in the room. "Not yet. I don't want any more of your kind, but they'll serve their purpose."
Steve	"What purpose?" Steve asked, hefting his shield and wondering if vibranium would go through cryogenic chamber glass.
Zemo	"To bring you here, of course," Zemo said, flipping on a light and coming into view in the control room, separated from them by what looked to be a glass window.
Steve	Steve was going to the let the shield fly right at the window. This jackass.
Zemo	It bounced away harmlessly. Because someone needed to finish his speech. "Please, Captain. The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets."
MCU!Tony	"I'm betting I could beat that." Of course he did.
Zemo	Wait, were there two Iron Man armors out there? You know what, it wasn't important. His plan was so close to being finished. "Oh, I'm sure you could, Mr. Stark. Given time. But then you'd never know why you came."
Steve	Well, now they knew what Zemo was doing before they showed up: practicing his monologue. "You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?" Steve demanded.
Zemo	It was a very good monologue! "I thought about nothing else for over a year," Zemo said, stepping closer to the window to look at them. Steve, mostly. "I studied you. I followed you. But now that you're standing here, I just realized...there's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes. How nice to find a flaw." He noticed that ages ago, but it was part of the monologue.
Steve	Right. Creepy. "You're Sokovian," Steve said. "Is that what this is about?" This insanely complicated plot?
Zemo	"Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell," Zemo scoffed.
MCU!Tony	"Okay, now I'm seeing the Nazi thing," Tony said, helmet retracting.
T'Challa	"Nazi...thing?" Look, T'Challa was not enjoying being out of the loop on this ridiculousness.
FH!Tony	"Back home, the Zemo I know is a Nazi," Tony filled in, helpfully. "Like, an actual Nazi Nazi." Because most of Steve's bad guys were.
Steve	"Honest to God, how are they still around?" Steve demanded. Sorry, Zemo, you get to be subjected to the sidebars, too.
Zemo	"I'm not a Nazi," Zemo attempted to interject. Because they were ruining his big moment here with this.
MCU!Bucky	"HYDRA were Nazis," Bucky pointed out. And they stuck around for far, far too long. He was basically proof that they weren't that easy to stamp out.
T'Challa	"So he is HYDRA?" T'Challa asked, trying very hard to follow this messed up train of logic.
Steve	"Well, he's taken their stuff, so he's definitely HYDRA adjacent," Steve decided.
Zemo	If they were going to continue to slander him like this, he was just going to push play on a very specific movie. "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That's dead forever." They didn't get to ruin this for him any longer.
MCU!Tony	"...I know that road," Tony said as the video began to play.
Steve	Steve's eyes went wide as he took in Tony's body language combined with the smarmy "crumbles from within" thing.
MCU!Bucky	Bucky didn't recognize it right away, but it didn't take long for him to have those memories come back with the evidence directly in front of his face like this. He couldn't retreat, but he lowered his eyes so he didn't have to watch the footage or Stark's reaction. Or Steve's. Because he'd done this, and knowing generalities was different than seeing it play out in lurid detail. It was bound to shake anyone's faith.
MCU!Tony	"That was your big plan?" Tony demanded as the short, brutal clip of his parents' murder played out.
Steve	Steve and Tony'd been...well, "having their differences" seemed to be vastly understating things...but Steve would never be enough of an asshole to let this kind of deliberate hurt go unremarked on. He pressed his hand into Bucky's upper arm, giving him a quick squeeze, then moved next to Tony, standing shoulder to shoulder. "I told him about his parents years ago, after SHIELD collapsed."
Zemo	"What?" That...that wasn't possible. He watched them, waited for just the right moment.
MCU!Tony	Yeah, screw this. Tony hauled off and punched the window separating them from Zemo hard, causing the man to jump back in shock. "You really thought you could do this, didn't you?"
Steve	Steve's jaw clenched. "You thought he'd...what? Murder Bucky right here in front of you?"
Zemo	"Of course not," Zemo said. "You'd be here to stop him."
Steve	"So this wasn't really about Tony at all?" Steve asked.
Zemo	"It was about ending your entire team," Zemo said, glancing past them for a moment. "And perhaps this didn't work. But the Winter Soldiers will certainly keep you too busy to catch me. And I won't ever stop."
FH!Tony	One of those pods very suddenly had a fist slamming into the thick glass. "Okay, he's nuts in every reality," Tony said, twisting around to focus on the Winter Soldiers. "Life signs are back to normal, guys!"
MCU!Tony	"Hit the window with your shield on my mark," Tony said, the unibeam on his chest whirring and glowing brighter and brighter as he prepared to show Soviet ingenuity what they could accomplish here. "Now!"
Steve	Steve let the shield fly with the force of the frustration, anger, and pain from the past few weeks behind it.
Zemo	That combined force caused a spider web of cracks, but the window still held. Zemo took a step back at that and then simply left them to their fate as more of those cryo-tubes were smashed open by five very angry HYDRA operatives.
T'Challa	"Take care of the soldiers," T'Challa ordered, putting his helmet back on as he went to give chase to Zemo. How? Again, stop asking those kinds of questions. Time and distance made no sense in this movie.
Steve	At least the soldiers hadn't just been killed immediately for no reason? "Okay, there's enough assassins for everyone," Steve said a little dryly. "Don't get greedy."
MCU!Bucky	"Don't underestimate them," Bucky warned, pointing his rifle at the nearest tank.
Steve	"Don't suppose there's an emergency shut off switch that isn't a bullet?" Steve asked. It was HYDRA. He wasn't optimistic.
FH!Tony	"I could get the tanks working again," Tony volunteered, eyeing the pretty-damn-primitive tech. "They'll be a problem for future us, but..."
MCU!Tony	"It's as much of a plan as any," Tony replied, jerking back as one of the soldiers tackled him.
Steve	"Think the tanks can fit in a Quinjet?" Steve asked. "We can just...move them somewhere else."
MCU!Tony	"Plan later, fight now!" Tony managed, throwing the soldier off and into a wall, but now the other four were out and rushing them.
Steve	After a few minutes of hand-to-hand combat with one of them, Steve could see why they'd used Bucky for the important missions. This guy, at least, had no finesse. That did not mean it didn't hurt like hell when he punched Steve in the stomach and then the face, though. He bounced off a wall and went back for more.
FH!Tony	"Keep them busy!" Tony called, ducking down to work on a control panel to fix whatever damage Zemo had done them.
MCU!Bucky	"Keep them busy?" Bucky snapped, getting knocked into Steve's back by one particularly angry one. "You sure know how to pick 'em."
Steve	Steve ricocheted the shield off the wall, into one of the assassins, and back around so Bucky could catch it because that was the best part of this scene. "You'll like him when you get to know him," Steve promised.
MCU!Tony	Tony, meanwhile, was trying to get a little distance from his opponents to take to the air so he could fire on them without getting his bell rung again so soon after the airport. It worked until one of them snagged hold of his ankle and slightly dented the delicate metal that protected the flight capabilities there. "Left boot jet failing. Flight systems compromised," FRIDAY chimed in helpfully. "Oh, come on here!" Tony snapped, shooting the man off with a repulsor blast to the face.
Steve	Steve, grabbing the shield on a ricochet from Bucky's throw, threw it straight into the soldier's back. "One down," he said. No one could beat up Avengers but him, apparently.
MCU!Tony	"Behind," Tony said, seeming to shoot at Steve, but winging the very pissed off super soldier behind him instead. "These guys really don't want to stay down."
MCU!Bucky	"They're not even at full strength," Bucky grunted out oh so helpfully, straining against one who ended the struggle with a headbutt that sent Bucky reeling.
Steve	"That's not the most reassuring thing I've heard today," Steve said, sending the shield flying again.
MCU!Bucky	Which was when one of the soldiers finally caught the shield, very much like Bucky had been doing. "Wasn't tryin'," Bucky said, looking suitably concerned by that change of events and not taking his eyes from that soldier or that shield.
Steve	Steve was already launching himself at the one with the shield but it was too late. "Bucky, look out!"
MCU!Bucky	Another of the soldiers grabbed Bucky from behind before he could get out of the way, trapping him so the shield-wielding partner could take a hit. The soldier used the shield like a battering ram, slamming it hard into the side of his metal arm and denting the star with the force behind it. Bucky gritted his teeth and refused to scream.
Tony	Tony twisted around from where he was covering the other Tony's back and shot at the shield. It worked too well: the blast ripped the shield straight of the soldier's hand and, heated up and moving twice its normal speed with far too short a distance to cover, sliced into Bucky's metal arm and stuck fast.
Steve	"Bucky!" Steve yelled, tossing the soldier he'd been fighting with into a wall.
MCU!Bucky	The hit wasn't clean and it wasn't immediate. And the adrenaline surge from that pain was what he needed to jerk back and smack one of them with the shield before ripping it--and the good majority of his arm--free.
MCU!Tony	"We need those tubes working now," Tony snapped, feeling more shocked at that than he ought to. All things considered. Because he kind of hated that guy. A little. Justifiably. But holy shit, ow.
FH!Tony	"They're up!" Tony replied as the power flickered in and out before finally coming through them in a steady hum.
Steve	Steve had the soldier who'd taken off Bucky's arm by the throat and he heaved him towards the working tubes. Knocking them out against the glass was probably not what Tony had in mind.
MCU!Tony	Especially not with that amount of force, no. The shield was scooped up by one of the last three soldiers and slammed into Tony's faceplate while he tried to drag Barnes out of the way, stunning him enough to taking a step back. Then he was hit again with enough force to set off alarms all over the HUD inside. "FRI, we need to reroute some things here." "On it, boss!" she chirped, the voice fritzing in and out.
FH!Tony	"Steve, c'mon," the other Tony said, taking a shot at one of the remaining ones.
Steve	Steve had watched his shield do damage to two people who meant a lot to him. Reason was not his strong point right this second. "That's mine," he growled, yanking the shield back and punching the soldier across the room where he hit a wall with a crunch and stayed down. Finally.
FH!Tony	Which only left the two remaining soldiers, one of which took this as a perfect time to try to get the hell out of the room while the other turned to take on Steve. "On him!" Tony called as his counterpart stumbled a little jerkily in his armor and Barnes was down for the count on the floor.
Steve	"You're in Siberia," Steve yelled at the last one in absolute frustration. "Where are you running to?"
FH!Tony	Tony fired a rocket ahead of him before he could get to the door, causing an explosion that managed to knock the soldier back into the wall across from it. The one going after Steve reconsidered and made a bee-line for the other Tony and Bucky instead.
Steve	"The hell you will," Steve snarled, tackling the last one.
MCU!Tony	The HUD was so scrambled and the suit messed up from this newest fight that Tony had to rip the faceplate off in order to see where to shoot, aiming at the very last one's face. The bunker was half blown up and they were all in a much worse state than they started, but...
Steve	Steve's breaths were coming out in heaving gasps and he was bent over trying to collect himself. One of the soldiers who'd caught the wrong end of the shield was in his prereferral vision and he had to turn away before he added losing his lunch to the list of things that had gone straight to shit today. "Buck? Tony? Tony? You good?" For given value of good right now.
T'Challa	Just in case anyone was wondering where T'Challa had wandered off to, there he was, dragging a cuffed Zemo back into the bunker to take in the sheer chaos therein. "...I gather we will be needing more transportation to leave here."
Steve	And that was the last straw for Steve, who collapsed on the floor and laughed until he was hiccupping around the tears.

[OOC: And we're done! Follows this and the zillion other posts over the last week. A thousand thanks to imafuturist for listening to me whine about this movie for LITERAL YEARS NOW and for her NPC and PCing help. Especially during the fight scenes because they suck. NFI & NFB.]