[AU] these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul

[from_the_outside]

They've all entered a kind of tense détente after the ill-advised dinner party. Tony throws himself into work, Sharon and Pepper mostly avoid each other, and Steve, Vision, and Nat continue with oversight duties.

And the thing is... Tony's working it out. 

Not a removal, exactly, but he's getting close, he'd told them, to at least blocking the commands. It's not perfect and it's not a permanent solution, but it's a step in the right direction. It's also a step in the direction of Tony needing to test the words on Bucky himself, and so Sharon and Steve are on extra high alert, keeping an eye out for any indication that Bucky's retreating into himself again. Sharon's mostly moved into the room they share in Steve's apartment for that very reason, though she still isn't wholly comfortable with being in Steve's space all the time.

He's away today, working with Sam and Rhodey on a veteran's outreach program, so it's Sharon who walks with Bucky through the halls of the compound towards Tony's rooms. "It's you and Vision with Tony today," she tells him, and glances across the distance they're careful to maintain when not alone behind closed doors.

"How are you feeling about everything?"

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not bad," he replies. "You?"

His glance flicks to Tony, just for an instant, then back to Vision, although he remains aware of the other man's presence and location in the room at all times.

[marvel_npc]

"Very well," Vision tells him. "Thank you for inquiring. Tony," he says, turning around. "Sergeant Barnes has arrived."

"Yeah," Tony says, flapping a hand at them without breaking his focus on the dataset he's studying. "Saw him. Got it. Good morning, Sergeant. Have some coffee if you want, just made some."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Good morning."

He might as well; coffee will give him something to do while Tony finishes focusing on whatever he's looking at, which he knows by now can be anywhere from seconds to minutes to hours. Bucky nods to Vision, then drifts over to the setup off to the side and pours himself a mug, black.

"Where do you want me?"

[marvel_npc]

"Uh... "

Tony blinks out of his intense focus and glances at him, then waves his hand and explodes the data he's viewing into a three-dimensional hologram that they can all stand around. "Anywhere you can see. Where the hell did I put those... "

Vision points to a desk, and Tony retrieves his plastic container of fresh raspberries, popping one in his mouth before he unconsciously offers them to Barnes, pointing with his other hand at the image of light. "Right. So, the block. Here's how it works."

[nerves_of_ice]

He blinks at Tony, but takes a couple of berries - and then blinks again at what he says, and ruthlessly quashes any flicker of hope.

"Okay," Bucky says. "I'm listening."

He pays close attention as Tony launches into a detailed explanation, describing everything with a series of wild gestures that occasionally threaten to overset the basket of raspberries until Vision gently takes it away from him and sets it back on the table. Tony calls up screen after screen of theoretical data, circuit and neuron mapping, and simulated events and results. Bucky absorbs as much of it as he can, which isn't anywhere near all of it. He's not a scientist. Vision, on the other hand, occasionally puts in questions or adds to the explanation being given for Tony to confirm or deny.

Eventually Tony winds down and looks at him, half expectant and half fearful. Bucky considers everything he's been told and realizes what the other man isn't asking.

"So the next step is to apply it," he murmurs. "Right? To change my brain."

[marvel_npc]

Tony shoots him a faintly hunted glance and reaches for the berries, only to realize he's only grabbing air. "Yeah," he says. "That's the – I mean, yeah. That's where we're at."

Which means they're at the point where Barnes would be well within his rights to stalk the hell out of here and never let Tony near his head ever again. "And we'd need to test it. I'm sorry," he adds, like a reflex, like a doctor whacked his knee and it just popped out of him.

"If you want to think about it for a while... you know, go ahead."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Here," Vision murmurs, and passes the fruit container back to Tony, but his attention's on Bucky. There's an air of concern about him. "He means it," Vision tells him. "You should feel free to take the time to consider. We know that you weren't expecting this today."

Bucky shakes his head. "I was expecting it sometime," he says, quietly. "I knew you were getting close."

He draws a slow, careful breath. "What if it doesn't work? Putting it in place, I mean, not the block itself. Will it damage anything? In my mind?"

[marvel_npc]

"I've run every scenario I can think of."

Tony pulls up his datasets again, then runs a video of his multiple attempts on the proxy mind, folding his arms as he watches himself work. "And whichever ones Vision here could think of."

"I have reviewed the research and experiments and the science is sound," Vision tells Barnes. "By my calculations, the risk to your mind from the block itself, whether it succeeds or not, is vanishingly small. But there is always some risk."

[nerves_of_ice]

He draws in another slow breath, and lets it out in a shuddering sigh. If this doesn't work, Steve - and Sharon - will never forgive him, or themselves, or Tony, probably. But he doesn't know what else to do. Waiting solves nothing.

"Okay," he says, simply. "Go ahead."

[marvel_npc]

Tony's pretty sure his resting heart rate has been solidly in the red for about a week straight now, but it still kicks up another notch at Barnes's agreement. He nods, more curt than he means to, strained and worried. "Vision," he says, and Vision courteously shows Bucky to the chair and station where they'd worked on scans of his mind before.

"I will place the diodes, Bucky," Vision tells him, and shows him the small round pieces of metal. Tony had tried to make sure they were as unlike the crown he'd described as possible, but he still needs something that's touching the man's skull.

"Okay," he says, and pulls up his schematics. "FRIDAY, start running the counter-program and begin recording. I want real-time updates accurate to the picosecond."

"You got it, boss," the AI answers, and an image of Barnes's mind unspools into the air before him.

Tony shakes out his fingers. "Sergeant, you're going to feel a little tingly – that's okay. If you start getting a headache, that's not. Just tell me if your head starts feeling tight or painful and we'll shut it off. Okay? Vision, okay?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He leans back against the headrest and shuts his eyes. "You might as well call me Bucky," he says, quietly, with a flicker of grim humor. "Since we're close enough now for you to be inside my head and all."

He focuses on his breathing, trying to keep it even, trying not to let his hands or his voice shake. He's careful not to grip the edge of the chair's armrest too tightly with his left hand, and shifts a little just to remind himself that he can.

"Do I need a mouthpiece?"

[marvel_npc]

He tries not to flinch at the joke, thinks he mostly succeeds. And Barnes's eyes are closed, anyway.

At his quiet question, Tony looks up, frowning. "A – no," he says, realizing belatedly why he's asking. "No. You don't."

This procedure isn't going to be lacing his body with electricity; there's no need to make sure he doesn't bite off his own tongue. He glances at the vitals FRIDAY is tracking: elevated cortisol levels, that seems right. "If everything goes the way it should, you won't even feel it, and I want you to be able to talk. And move around. And – no. No mouthpiece."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Got it." He opens his hands, closes them, and makes himself relax as much as he can.

"Tingling expected, any kind of headache's a problem. I'll let you know if I feel one," he says. "Ready when you are."

[marvel_npc]

"Okay." He glances at Vision, who nods. "FRIDAY, run program 'Patrick Roy.'"

"Running 'Patrick Roy,'" FRIDAY replies, and Tony keeps his eyes on the digital version of Barnes's – Bucky's – mind, watching as the program highlights the areas they've identified as the touchpoints for the command words.

He makes minute adjustments as the program runs, as it isolates the touchpoints and sets up its blockade. The touchpoints themselves are too finicky to dismantle just yet – he's not sure he can do it without accidentally wrecking everything they're attached to, and in that case the cure might be worse than the disease.

But he can shunt messages to them aside, keep the connections that need to be made from running smoothly. "At about thirty percent," he calls. "How we doing, S – uh, over there?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Feels weird," he reports, without opening his eyes. "Tickles, kind of, only inside my head. Like something's prickling under my skull. No headache, though."

[marvel_npc]

"Weird's okay," Tony says. "We like weird. Okay, FRIDAY, keep it up. Ba – uh, Bucky, how about a little mental math? Multiplication tables. Start with, uh... four. Four times one – "

It'll keep Barnes's brain distracted, and let him keep an eye on normal functions as they go.

"Forty percent," reports FRIDAY.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Don't people have to memorize those in school any more?" he asks, frowning a little. "Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two--"

It doesn't appear he has to even think much about it.

[marvel_npc]

"Smart guy, huh?"

Tony's eyes are locked on the digital projection as he makes quick adjustments. "Okay. Know any songs? Poems? Give us a recital."

Another touchpoint glows green, and a small chime sounds. "Fifty percent," FRIDAY reports, perfectly calm.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not really. It's just pattern recognition," he observes, eyes still closed.

"You remind me of Mrs. Perkins. English teacher. She was big on the classics. 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan,'" he recites. "'A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.' That kind of thing. Wasn't until later I ran across Wilfred Owen."

[marvel_npc]

"Xanadu," Tony muses. "Isn't that a musical? Pleasure-dome, though. That sounds pretty good."

Everything's looking good, but he's not going to celebrate yet, not when there's still just shy of halfway to go. "Wilfred Owen, huh? Who's that?"

"Sixty percent," FRIDAY says, pleasant.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Supposedly Coleridge wrote it while high on opium, so sure, why not," he drawls. "Owen was a soldier. First World War. He died the year after I was born."

[marvel_npc]

"Opium, huh?" His tone is conversational, but his eyes are locked on the program's progress. "Tried it. Wasn't my thing."

He'd hated the dull, disconnectedness of it. If he's going to kill himself with a drug, it's going to be alcohol. "And he was a poet? And a soldier?"

"Seventy percent," Friday tells them.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Uh-huh," Bucky murmurs. He's frowning now, more than before, brow furrowed and voice growing absent, a little distant.

"Both. He was both, until the war took him. It does that. Never to come home again, or not as you were. 'What candles may be held to speed them all? / Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes / Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes--'"

His back arches, sharp and sudden, and his head slams back against the rest as images flare sudden and sharp in his mind. You're my friend, Steve tells him. I'm with you till the end of the line. Seeing Sharon's worried face in Siberia. Steve's face, the feel of his friend's hand. The smell of cool mountain air and green trees.

He groans aloud, the sound of a man who's just taken a blow to the gut, but doesn't move.

[marvel_npc]

"Barnes!" Tony says, sharply, his fingers hovering over the kill switch. Vision stays on alert, but doesn't move to remove the diodes.

The problem with the touchpoints – the reason they work at all – is that they aren't just connected to words, but to memories. Emotions. It's all tied together into a horrible net that he can't even begin to unpick yet.

"Eighty percent, boss," FRIDAY murmurs. "Holding steady."

"Hang on," he tells her, and raises his voice. "Barnes, you good? Talk to me. Tell me what's happening."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm okay. I think," he says, carefully. "I'm not - I'm not going to lose them, am I? I'm not--"

He tries focusing on the images that have flashed, and others. An apartment in Brooklyn. One in Paris. One in Berlin that he's never seen inside. A mountain house. Shared laughter, shared experiences, shared--

"I can still remember them," he says, after a moment. "It was just. A flood, there, for a second."