sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.

That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome

I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"House until I get an extension of the smithy built." It's not that the house is so damnably quiet. It's not. It's not that he's unaccustomed to living so utterly alone- that's not the kind of thing you admit to...anyone. You don't hand out ammunition against yourself you can help it. so. It's- he's too used to being able to roll out of bed and right back to work in the wee hours of the morning. Having to walk (which is and isn't an issue much anymore but could be an issue) is a little bit vexing when he's trying to keep his fingers clasped tight around the latest idea. Having a journal to write them down in? Helps. Having something to record what he's mumbling for playback later? Would be better. But that goes on the longterm, they're so far out from his usual set up it almost makes him want to cry.

Alternatively.

Drink more. So he does with a long sip and a sigh, shoulders gradually going loose. "I'll need a bigger woodshed and a charcoal bin anyway. Won't take long."

Or it will till the ribs are better but they're healing quick. Can't ask for much more than not being laid up forever.

Eyebrows creep up at the thought, but who is he to tell Stark not to build a room onto what is, essentially, his place of business? Can't say he's not bemused by the concept, but it rolls off with the casual next sip of whiskey. It's definitely easier, he thinks, having what amounts to small talk after a few drinks are already in his system. Even so, he can still feel a subtle strain - whether that's between both of them or it's solely hovering in his own mind, he couldn't say.

He just knows that it's there, itching like a mosquito bite. He tries not to scratch it, and instead focuses on turning the glass in small circles upon the wood of the bartop.

"Been to the spring? Anyone tell you about it yet?" That's where he'd been banished when the wendigo fucked up his own ribs, spent hours neck-deep in hot water just trying to be able to take a deep breath without aching. He still goes when his shoulder flairs up - a couple times a week at least, because it's the type of permanent nerve damage that only super serum seems to be able to keep in check.

"Yep. Ran into Wanda." So the trifecta of people he'd really rather not exist around for the most part is more or less complete- even if Barnes is slowly becoming not a part of that trifecta. More a dour duo of drama. He takes another slow sip, eyes settled on the middle distance. Not like it's any easier or worse to consider when Barnes is all but radiating heat at his elbow. He exists, he is here, he's been here long enough to have some claim to the village and Tony's not about to be chased out by him-

But he gets the feeling he's...trying not to stir up trouble.

Which is fucking new on so many levels and all the more baffling since for once he is more or less directly responsible for some of the shit that's gone wrong for him.

"Magic makes me twitchy but apparently it's a thing? When I get a lab setup made I'll be doing some tests."

He nods; he's only recently run into Wanda again himself. She hadn't been here until recently, but she's evidently got memories from years back of this place, and with him in it. Peggy too, though they don't talk about it much anymore. They liked to say he spent lunches looking like he was trying to bend a spoon with his mind which... unfortunately, he can estimate what point in his timeline that probably was.

He doesn't like to think about it.

And no, he's not trying to stir up trouble. The opposite, in fact. This village has begun to feel like home, more than Wakanda ever did, more than Romania, more than any of the hostels or hotels or apartments he'd stayed in or squatted in over the last few years. He wants it to continue to feel that way even with Tony here, even with the onslaught of troubles and guilt it brings him. He wants to make it work.

So this is him, trying to make it work.

He huffs out a breath.

"Yeah, I don't know. If it's magic, why would they need an underground bunker full of machinery?" Seems to him like everything magical might just be engineering and string pulling, but then again - Wanda. She curls her fingers and moves buildings, and that's pretty god damn close to magical.

"Hence the 'run some tests' plan. Accelerated healing isn't something that just happens. Between that and the peaches there's got to be a rational, grounded explanation." Still, the bunker- he can't really bring himself to head back there. Two years isn't quite long enough, especially considering how he woke up in the first place. Face full of water and Barnes and blood.

F-, do not recommend. Worst wake up call ever.

"Because cloning is a fundamentally scientific procedure, though I'd be thrilled to figure out if they've downloaded us from back home or if everything we think we know and think we've lived is just some overly complicated fabrication to give us unique senses of self and purpose to better enhance the overall experiment." He downs the rest of his scotch at that, grimacing as he pours himself another two fingers. He's him, he thinks. Or at least as close to a version of him that matters, it means something. It has to.

Unless it's all just a load of bullshit and in that case: Why is his fake past so full of trauma, can he exchange it for something a little less full of complication and murder?

"If this is an experiment in the first place. Wanda said something about a simulation in a box canyon?"

He arches an eyebrow, because- well, accelerated healing is something that just happens to people like him and Steve. Or at least it did before something stripped that away from them. He thinks absently about the possibility of some kind of variant on the serum in the water like a nutrient boost or something, they could use it to water the peach groves, that'd explain that. He doesn't mention it because it's purely an absent thought, a stupid theory that he doesn't know nearly enough science to back up.

But he's read some science fiction dime novels in his time. It sounds like some of that off the wall crap they'd do in one of those.

So does cloning.

Stark comes in with the deep questions, ones he contemplates hard enough to put a gentle frown on is face and a furrow to his brow. He keeps his thoughts on that mess to himself too, but the truth is he can't see a point to creating elaborate backstories for fictional clones to test in an environment like this. There's no point in it, it wouldn't accomplish anything strategically to give them lives and favorite colors, to give them shared background relationships like Shuri, who they all know but who doesn't directly influence their motivations or their personalities.

It just doesn't make sense.

He doesn't have the emotional energy to bother speculating on hypotheticals. He downs his glass, and reaches to pour a second.

"Heard about that too," he agrees with a little nod, mouth still hissing around a slug of whiskey, a little suck to his teeth. "Little bit before my time, but apparently the environment completely changed like it was nothing. Which- if they can bring in people from all over the place, different... times, different universes, I guess a little heavy duty landscaping is nothing."

"Simulation implies something generated with code- it's less landscaping and more just booting another program." But that was where they were, not where they are and if he sits and mulls over the reality of consciousness and whether or not any of this actually means anything-

He's going to need more scotch.

Steady fingers reach for the bottle at the same time as Barnes, earning him a faint huff as he snags the bottle first- pours himself another glass, and then James. Barnes? Bucky. Fuck- "What do you generally consider yourself? Because just thinking 'Bucky' makes me think of the damn stuffed bear Dum-Dum gave me when I was five."

It's so fucking weird to meet your childhood heroes, find out they're assholes that you can relate to as an adult, and still recall easily what it was like to thought they walked on water because your father generally held that opinion and made it known all the damn time. Ugh. Baggage. "Another thing- when is Rogers from? Because he seems-"

Particularly uptight? Frustratingly distant? "Young. Ish."

His lips press into a line as he considers simulations, the concept that they might all be lines of code, but- he's pretty sure technology hasn't advanced this far. He's pretty sure they'd spot something that would give that away, some little bug or glitch, something in the way people bleed or the animals behave. So far there's been nothing mechanical about the behavior of anyone or anything around them, but who could possibly say for sure? He opts to compartmentalize instead of dwell.

To his credit, as soon as he's done topping off his own glass he fills Tony's as well, something a fair bit over two fingers worth because he's not so sure who they're kidding anymore with these portions. They're a set of germs and just a hair too civilized to be drinking from the bottle and giving up pretext entirely.

The question gets his eyebrows hitching.

"You named your bear after me?" He asks incredulously, because the whole stuffed animal bucky bear craze was well beyond him. He'll circle back to that Steve question just as soon as he gets a little clarification on it.

"Right, Hydra probably wasn't big on capitalism and fads and shit, huh? SI took over a lot of PR after you and Rogers were killed in action or whatever. Teddy Bears dressed as you were a thing. Top seller. Bucky Bear is alliterative and shit, had your jacket and everything." He had a Captain America bear too, almost every kid his age did, but talking about that is going to take a few more fingers of whiskey. Which he has. Because Bucky- Barnes- what the fuck ever is a pal.

A real stand up guy.

A real- well fuck now he's mentally quoting his father and that is both A) Fucked up and B) a sign for more scotch. Not that he hates Howard for being right but it's a little. Complicated.

On five or six levels.

Tony props his elbows on the bar, sipping his whiskey, head angled in Grumpy-Cat's direction. "Seriously. I cannot look at you and with a straight face call you 'Bucky'. Can't do it. Won't do it. So gimme something or forever live with the first most ridiculous thing I think of."

Jesus Christ. He fell off a train into the god damn ether for Uncle Sam to churn out plushes wearing his coat? Talk about the futility of war. It almost makes his skin crawl to think about, and god, let him never see a single one of those in his lifetime please.

Eyebrows stay hitched plenty high at the follow-up request and damn if this isn't one of the most interesting, confusing conversations he's had since he's gotten here.

"I'll answer to your highness or lord commander, might even take a grand poobah on a good day," he says flatly, raising the glass to his lips, more than a little amused. Seriously, though: "Only got so many names, and you're not the only one with first name problems."

James is what his father called him. Sargeant Barnes was murmured to him in accented whispers in a floating nightmare. Nobody goes by Buchanan. He shrugs a shoulder. "It's just Bucky."

"Get me a twenty five year and I'll think about it." Grand poobah, seriously. Without any kind of other option except 'Bucky?' Time to consider the ridiculous. "But until then you're- wait I can't call you Grumpy-cat, that's your sexy bedroom name."

At least according to Liv and far be it from him to steal a sensual endearment from the lips of the woman that helped save his sorry ass. So. Not Grumpy-Cat. Two Buck Chuck is too many syllables. GummiBear belonged to Bruce, Red Hot to Nat, Angry Bird to Clint, SourPatch was Rhodey's always and forever, cross his mechanical heart, so. "Jimmie B? Nah."

Another slow sip, another fluid shrug as he rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling, considering his options.

"Buckaroo isn't ridiculous enough. From Russia with Murder? Hunt for Red October? De Frostie the snow soldier? Manchurian Candidate? Socket- That one kind of fits." He nods to himself, satisfied. "Till then, you're 'Socket.'"

"Thanks, I hate it," he announces cheerfully, raising his glass in a toast. He doesn't even for a second bother trying to talk Tony out of the name - knows better, first of all, because he's known Stark for longer than two and a half minutes (which is all it would take to hazard that guess). Second, because he doesn't yet feel like he's on stable enough ground to argue for himself just yet, and may not for a while.

Third and most importantly, though, he doesn't actually care all that much. He's easy-going. Sue him. As long as he can drink and coexist the rest is just details.

This next one is the one that's gonna get him, he can tell. A few slugs of vodka with Steve earlier, now his second glass of whiskey, the trappings of a pleasant buzz settle in and manifest in a barely visible flush. He's always been a little swarthy, a little tan, the shifts in color aren't nearly so visible on him as they are on Steve. Speaking of which, circling back to the question from earlier...

"Steve's from right after everything happened. Right after the fight. They threw me in a freezer in Wakanda, and five minutes later he wakes up here at the bottom of a well."

"You're welcome." It is what it is and it's ridiculous and will only last until he can banish the memory of that damn bear from the back of his mind- or come up with something better/worse. Most likely worse. That's usually how it goes with his offhand appointments- anything approaching real respect tends to mean a distinct lack of it.

Don't ask him to explain his brain, he couldn't.

Moonshine and Whiskey and not a kid that looks up to him in sight- or any sign of a nurse or doctor type. He really shouldn't be indulging but- fuck that? He's had enough time to sit, contemplate, resolve to repress his emotions and hold to that. Drowning what he feels and all the agonizing guilt is just step two in the healing process.

"Guess that explains why he approached. Maybe. I don't know." He can say, easily, he was in worse shape after Thanos than he'd been post Siberia. Immediate threat of death was a greater concern. Sure he had to have a whole new sternum implanted for the second time, but- it didn't kill him. Just pissed him off. "So giving him shit for everything going wrong. Not worth the effort. Right? Won't even be satisfying if he doesn't know how badly we fucked up."

Don't worry, Bucky isn't in the habit of trying to understand brain things on any level whatsoever. It's a can of worms and hypocritical besides, when he can't even parse through his own foggy memories on some bad days. Just specific memories, though, just an area he calls the Gray Period that begins about two months after his capture when they started trying to break him in earnest and ends about the time they started unthawing him for missions.

But he doesn't talk about that.

He huffs a little, shakes his head. Yeah, about that.

"No. Not a great idea. Steve's..." How to even explain Steve Rogers in real, human words? Especially with a head buzzing and things starting to look a little too bright and vivid. The struggle. It's real. "Unyielding head-on, brittle at the sides."

Edited 2018-09-16 23:53 (UTC)

"Incapable of compromise? Shortsighted? Hypocritical as fuck?" Maybe he's been lying to himself and he would rather have some shit out- but what good is a yelling match going to do anyone in the village? Dragging their drama here doesn't do any good but it's hard to ignore if he has to stare at Rogers' bullshit sanctimonious holier than thou scowl.

Alright maybe he's not over it at all. Fuck. So much for being past shit.

Tony grumbles under his breath in Italian, nonsense frustration as he knocks back the rest of his scotch. "Bought into his own press. As someone that's done that, let me tell you, it's a shit idea."

Except for the part where he scooped up more than half of their mutual...friends? Had they been friends? He hadn't sat down to think about it beyond 'they're gone, fuck them' in over a year.

Despite his buzz, despite his attempts at building a foundation of solidarity between them, Barnes still has his loyalties. His lips press into a line somewhere around shortsighted, and yes, although it's technically accurate, it's treading a little too much on Steve for him to feel entirely comfortable about it.

He speaks Italian. He picks up things. He licks his lips.

"One thing I can tell you for sure, " he says haltingly, raspily, but firmly. "He's not bought into anything."

Certainly not the picture image of Captain America the media wants to make him out to be. He's reasonably confident Steve doesn't give a singular fuck about the traits they assign him or the expectations they hold for him. He rounds the glass on the bartop in an absent gesture, body language calm - intentionally calm, to counterbalance what he says next.

"I know we're trying to get past some stuff right now, but if you keep badmouthing my best pal I'm obligated to sock you. I really don't want to, so we're clear, but I will."

Just as a fair warning. At least he's open about it. It's an honor thing, not a machismo thing. Not an alpha-male thing. Frankly, he sounds as apologetic as he does earnest.

"The best hands are still our own." He quotes by route, shaking his head, staying in Italian out of habit. "How well did that play out for him?"

Of course it clicks that Barnes also slipped into his mother's tongue and that-

Feels wrong for so many reasons.

His face and his human hand, sure, but not him. No choice in the matter, he'd been brainfucked, rationalizing shit that way, reading through what he knew of the book, that helped. Making sure it never found its way into Ross's hands- that helped. But much like coping with Rogers in the relative area, having Barnes slung out drunk and lazy right next to him shakes a few of his formerly assumed comfortable convictions to not hold this shit against him.

Out of some petty, perverse knee jerk contrarianism- Barnes doesn't get to keep speaking to him in Italian, let's poke some other triggers- Tony slips into Russian. It's probably some kind of cruel. It's definitely uncalled for. Sober him would never-

But sober him isn't here. Just as idle, just as flippant as anything, wrapped in a sickly sweet grin, he replies. "Hit me and you're not getting that weird sex glove or rosary, Socket."

Fortunately for them both, Barnes isn't offended by Russian. First and foremost his sensibilities aren't so delicate, though if Tony drops a few keywords like longing or furnace they might start to develop some problems. He swears in Russian sometimes. He talks shit about people to Natasha in Russian sometimes. He may slightly suspect Tony's only sliding into it to fuck with him, but he isn't shaken enough to rise to it.

"Думаю, я выживу," He answers flatly, a little slurred which - honestly, considering the language, only serves to make him sound all the more fluent. Are you really even speaking Russian if you're not a little drunk?

And- circling back to that first thought- "My best hand isn't mine."

Holds up the metal fingers. Gives them a wiggle. Emotionlessly tilts back an entire finger of whiskey in one go. Such is life.

"Mine's been fucked for two years." He holds up his left, and it's only being a few glasses of moonshine and whiskey in that he can address the fact that it tremors. His right holds steady but there's something in his shoulder, a nerve, some sort of glitch in his brain that's not keeping the current steady. After everything with Helen and Ultron he's been reluctant to ask for favors. It's only when stress kicks up that it gets bad- or when he's relaxed enough to not hold his arm rigid.

Not as much fine tuning that needs to be done here, not yet- but it's a frustrated shame. Signs of the machine that is his fleshy corpse breaking down. Shit he can't fix.

"Thanks for that." Unfair? Probably. It was mostly Wanda- maybe? He's not sure which hit in that clusterfuck was the one to fuck everything over. Doesn't keep him from topping off their glasses.

What can he say? Realistically, what can he say? Whiskey knocks at his doors, the tenseness of the air around them whips away the cordiality and the ease of their rapport and returns it to razorblades and sharp edges. He raises his hands a little, a soft gesture of defeat, a shrug, a what do you want me to tell you?

Sorry?

What a small and insignificant word. What a tiny, insulting fucking word. What a pebble in the face of a mountain. He doesn't say it because he knows saying sorry is like trying to carry water in a pasta strainer. It's full of holes and it's fucking useless, all you accomplish is a wet floor and a rise in anger.

When he drops them back down onto the bar top it's with a little too much enthusiasm, or maybe with just too little grace. They thump loudly on the wood, a jarring sort of noise that shakes the glass on the table.

Darkly, he mutters: "Add it to the list of shit I can't undo to you."

"Technically-" Back to English by way of France, his thoughts weaving and bobbing all over the place, dipping from language to language, memory to memory as he tries to cut away a little of that miasma. Self Loathing is something he knows pretty well. Barnes isn't guilty of much other than trying to survive and shitty taste in friends.

"This? Is on Maximoff and Rogers." Having a floor of cars dropped on him fucked up the shoulder. Being kicked back against a concrete structure and nearly getting his neck broken did the rest. "You didn't get a say in any of it."

Reasons he finds Rogers hypocritical, finds him frustrating. Making calls without informing anyone- that's his trick. No one else is allowed to pull it. Tony lets his hand fall back to his lap, nails of the right tapping against his glass. There are words, here, that are...probably neater. Kinder. And it's the kind of thing you should say while looking a man in the eye but he's drunk enough to not want to see Barnes' face. He can't unsee that cracked open expression when the video started to play.

"You were trying to keep your head down. Everything you did, you did to get away without causing trouble. It's not your fault Zemo had a justified grudge against us. It's not even your fault he was able to use you to break us." He had no say in any of it.

It skirts the line, but as quick as Bucky is to defend Steve he also knows better than to grant him absolution he doesn't deserve, or that isn't his to give. Facts are facts, as long as they don't come with a stream of insults to Steve's honor. It's a precarious line, he's doing his best to navigate it without tipping the scales too far in either direction.

He wants to make this work. He does. He wants some fucking peace, god damn it.

A metal fist curls around his empty glass a little too tightly.

Yes, he was trying to keep his head down. Yes, he was trying to slip through the cracks without causing a fight, he spent two years almost on the run trying to keep away from all of it even at the expense of staying away from Steve. Yes, Zemo had a grudge the size of Texas, but Bucky actively avoids the thought that he'd been played like a card, wielded like a tool to break something again even without his mind being scrambled in the process. Tony illustrates the point well, though, that he'd been leveraged like a hammer to shatter the Avengers into pieces, and if he thought his list couldn't get any longer...

"Stop it," He snaps, reaching out for the bottle again just to have something to keep himself occupied with. Closest thing to a nervous fidget he can manage. Evidently Russian doesn't bother him but excuses do. Roundabout forgiveness does. "Just shut your damn mouth."

"It's not your fault." Accountability. Personal, public, to society, to other people. This? Wasn't on Barnes. None of the accords bullshit was on Barnes anymore than it was entirely on Rogers. It was...a mess of opinions and international law and casualties, in judgement calls and trust given that might not have been earned, not enough trust given where it ought to have been, miscommunications and conflicted interests. No one walked away clean but Barnes? Got used all over again. In the worst sort of way.

"Not the airport, not Romania, not Sibera-" that had been him. Him losing his shit at what he'd found out in the worst way, at the worst time. Hearing the start up and watching instead of shutting off the damn television. He couldn't go back and change any of it. He couldn't say that he would've reacted differently if he knew ahead of time but he knew- with the conviction that came from retrospection, a lot of time, distance, and whiskey, that it "Not that dirt road in 1991."

Yeah, they're talking about it. Tony keeps his voice steady by sheer force of will, keeps himself loose and relaxed because he's only practiced how he'd say this for about a year. Maybe a year and a half. He brings his eyes up and over, dark and worn and aching with every night he'd spent going over that video. With going over Barnes' voice cracked raw- I remember-

The man without a past- and he remembered that. "You didn't have a say in any of it."

He starts shaking his head the second the world fault leaves Tony's lips, a steady back and forth, a constant stream of denial that doesn't waver for a second even as his fingers tighten precariously on an empty glass. Romania. Siberia. They're one thing, but the god damn dirt road hits so hard that a little chnk sounds from the glass, a hairline fracture where it's starting to give beneath his grip that spreads like spiderwebs around the crystal.

"Shut up," He mutters again, just before 1991 comes out. The crashing of a car full-speed into a tree, he can hear it - it's a perfect audio recreation in his mind, the screeching of brakes and the crumpling of metal, and his ears ring with tinnitus. Help my wife, please- Sargeant Barnes? Howard-

It's the whiskey.

"Shut up- !" He doesn't register throwing the glass, doesn't register standing or whirling or hurling it with any great force, but does plainly register the way that it slams into a shelf of other glasses, and the way they all shatter their way to the floor.

A silent beat.

And then he's back, back under rigid control, ducking his eyes and turning his head and taking a breath. Passing a hand over his mouth, because the onslaught of shame comes startlingly quick. Probably the second it left his hand. Shit. He's got a lot of messes to clean up, and he's not sure which one to address first. Executive dysfunction, a rigidness in his spine, a faltering gaze, until finally he can lift his eyes enough to level Tony with a head-on look and murmur a frigid, cracked, sincere, "I'm sorry."

Which- there's that word he swore five minutes ago he was never going to say. Broken glass, broken promises. Funny how he says it after he's already been given the pass.

It's an explosion of movement- sharp and sudden like a car crash. Metal flashing, glass shattering, all chaos and startling white noise that fades into static under the ragged command he's not about to listen to. Sober or drunk, supersoldiers don't get to tell him what to do off the clock. This is something he's needed to say for awhile, something Barnes needs to hear and this isn't the time or place. Glass all over the floor on the other side of the bar, tension snapped and crackling around them, raw edged and real. Layers of emotion and tons of baggage that's strained the scale to the point of snapping- there's never been a right time or place for absolution that isn't his to give, that Barnes shouldn't need.

And yet Tony's the only one that can give it, he couldn't hand it out sober, doesn't think he can articulate himself well enough to cover everything- but he can cover this. Will.

He didn't move an inch during Barnes' outburst, still leaning with his elbows on the bar, eyes on Bucky's. That same agony he remembers from the bunker. That same weight of emotion that'd been entirely fucking absent from Rogers. But that's not the issue here, that's never been the issue between him and Barnes. Completely different animal still wandering the wild. Cold and distant and irrelevant, nothing compared to this bloody, broken thing between them. Regret and frustration and-

"I forgive you." He shouldn't have to. He'd argue Barnes didn't need to hear it, didn't need to have it- but Tony knows better than most the drowning weight of guilt. The sharply sweet dagger of self loathing that's familiar, if you're going to get disemboweled there's no one that'll be able to do the job half as well as you. He reaches across the bar to grab a glass from a shelf that hadn't been shattered and pours Bucky another finger of whiskey. "For my parents. I forgive you."

For Howard who never should've been driving that damn stuff in the back of a civilian car, for Maria that only wanted to support her husband and spend more time with them. It falls to Barnes' handlers. To Hydra. To Obadiah who doubtlessly offered over the route Howard was planning on that night. Tony nudges the glass in Bucky's direction, waiting for him to settle.

"Now sit down and help me toast your friend Howard." Maria wasn't ever anyone, anything to Barnes, no one but a target. Collateral damage. She wasn't anyone, honestly, to anybody but Tony. And he's alright holding that shard of history to himself.

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