Chapter Text
As Toni had suspected, the town was only a few hours away from where they had stopped for the night. They pulled up onto a rise overlooking the town shortly before noon the next day. Bucky couldn’t help the part of him that wished that it had been further away. Everything was still messed up between them. He had apologised, but he hadn’t been given the chance to earn her forgiveness and it didn’t look like she was going to let him.
It left him feeling hollow in his chest. The one good thing to come out of his deployment and he had fucked it up so badly that he didn’t even know how to begin to fix it. He was under no illusions that she wasn’t rushing back to town to finish her project. And then she was going to be gone from his life. Just like she’d promised from the beginning. Just like he’d been too stubborn to accept since the first time she’d told him that they had no future.
She dismounted from her snowmobile and sorted through her bag before tying the bag to his machine. It was clear that she was planning on separating from him here and he wasn’t sure how to take it. Of course he knew that she wasn’t going to return to base with him. Phillips would have her locked up within a minute. But he’d thought . . . oh hell, he needed more time.
“Toni.” He said, his voice more reverent than he had actually intended as he dismounted from his machine and stepped up to her.
She glanced at him warily, but stood her ground. At least she was going to let him speak. He just prayed that he could get through this without putting his foot in his mouth again. He swallowed thickly, forcing back the impending sense of loss that he was already feeling when she was still right in front of him.
“I know I messed up with you. I know I didn’t respect you the way that I shoulda. And I didn’t trust you. You saved my life and I didn’t even thank you. Thank you. I wouldn’t be here without you.” He said quietly. “And I know you probably don’t want to ever see me again, let alone think of me, but I’m going to be thinking about you for the rest of my life. Because you are one of a kind, doll, and I have never loved anyone as brightly and strongly as I love you.”
She sniffled, but he couldn’t quite tell if she was tearing up or it is was an effect of slogging through snow banks for days. “Bucky -” She started, but he cut her off.
“Just . . . just let me finish.” He said quickly, worried about being derailed before he could make his request. He pulled his tags off over his head and held them out to her. “I know you probably don’t want to see me again, but just . . . will you think of me sometimes? Will you remember me?”
It would have to be enough. Maybe someday he would find someone who could compare to her, though he fucking doubted it. Then again, there was no guarantee that he would come out of the other end of this war alive, so there was that.
She was silent for a moment and her expression looked sad before she reached out and took his tags, slipping them over her head to hang around her neck. They settled over her heart and he couldn’t think of a better place for them to be. Then she stepped up to him, standing on her tiptoes as she planted a soft, slow kiss on him that seeped warmth into his veins like a shot of brandy.
“Live well, Bucky.” She said, with a sad smile. “Don’t waste your life.”
He nodded and returned her smile, “You too.”
“I’m trying.” She said as she stepped back from him. Her armour seeped out of her skin to cover her from head to toe. It was the first time he had seen it in its impressive entirety since she had caught him with it in the ravine. It was incredible, like something out of a sci-fi novel.
The masked helmet gave him one last nod, before the whole armour shimmered and disappeared from sight. He heard the muted whine of the flying mechanisms, felt a soft gust of warm air, and then knew he was alone. He closed his eyes and felt a tidal wave of regret and heartbreak wash over him before he forced himself back onto his snowmobile to make his way to the base.
When he got there, Steve was trying to drown himself in liquor that no longer worked on him. They stared at each other for a long moment, Steve looking halfway between looking like he’d seen a ghost and looking like he was about to drop to his knees and pray.
“Bucky?” Steve breathed incredulously.
“Hey, punk.” He said, nonchalantly stuffing his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe, as if returning from certain death was no big deal. He was still pissed about Steve stealing from Toni, but, in the end, Steve would always be his brother.
“H-h-how?” Steve asked, his voice going a little hysterical at the end.
He shrugged. “Got lucky.”
There was a moment of pregnant silence before Steve was storming across the bar and dragging him into a hug that was way on the far side of too tight. He clapped Steve on his back, trying to tap out, but if anything Steve’s hug just got tighter.
“I thought you were dead. I should have sent a team to look for you. I should have gone looking for you.” Steve lamented.
“Hey, Stevie, it’s fine. It all worked out. Now let me go. I begged out of debriefing with the colonel to come find you.” He protested.
Steve did eventually let him go and followed him to the command tent to listen to his debrief, where Bucky promptly lied through his teeth. He wasn’t going to betray Toni’s trust again, not after everything she had done for him. Not after she had suffered in screaming agony for half a day because she had decided to save his life.
No, the story he told had him luckily sinking into a snowbank and causing a minor avalanche that brought him down to the bottom of the valley in one piece once he’d managed to luckily dig himself out. The fight with the Hydra goons still happened, but he managed to take them all out with his sniper skills using the cover of darkness, hence the high tech snow machine he’d rolled in on.
Of course, he lost his tags somewhere in the avalanche and would need to have some new ones made.
***
Toni used her retroreflectors until she was inside of her warehouse and had stealthily checked it for intruders using every sensor in her arsenal. When they all came back negative, she let herself back up onto the roof to check for her time machine. Thankfully, it was still there, just as she’d left it except for the dusting of snow sitting over the lid of the crate.
Jack-fucking-pot.
She snatched it up and disappeared back into the warehouse, where her tools still thankfully were laying around and she promptly let the suit slide away and got to work. She needed to get the fuck back to her own time before she fucked up the timeline any further. Part of her mind was still berating herself for being so stupid, but the majority of her focus was upon the task at hand.
She managed to finished fabricating the last of the pieces she needed by midnight, and immediately set to work on bringing all the components together and running diagnostics on the interface. It was past the dinner hour of the next day by the time that she had finally done all that she could do without the last piece that had been stolen.
She leaned back from her creation and stretched, feeling her spine crackle and pop the whole way down as she stared at the last item in the crate. Bucky’s ring gleamed innocently at her in the low light. What was she supposed to do with it? Leave it here? Give it back to him? Take it with her? Bucky probably still wanted her to have it, if that heartfelt speech was anything to go by. She licked her lips and sighed before picking it up and sliding it onto the chain to rest next to his tags. If nothing else, they would serve as proof that someone was capable of loving Toni Stark with no fame or fortune taken into account.
She fought back a yawn and stretched again. She was getting tired, but she didn’t have the luxury of time to rest. She needed to get the fuck out of the past before Bucky told someone that she was back in town. But before she could do that, she needed to retrieve the component that Rogers had stolen. While it wasn’t diagnostic to the function of the time machine, it was vital, as it was the component that would channel the power of her arc reactors into the time machine in order to provide enough energy to rip a hole in the fabric of reality and take her home.
She settled for stuffing her face with whatever food she could find squirrelled away in the warehouse, before she once again let the Iron Queen armour envelope her and let her retroreflectors protect her from sight. The flight to the army base wasn’t long and she circled it twice while her sensors scanned the place, searching for what might be Howard’s workshop.
It was surprisingly easy to find, though sneaking past the guards was a bit less easy. It took patience, which was not her forte, but she eventually managed to sneak through their patrols like she was running around a fucking video game. Rhodey would never believe her that all those times playing stealth builds in every video game ever would come in handy.
She had anticipated having to subdue Howard and his assistants, but was pleasantly surprised when the lab was empty and the lights were off. Her suit had night vision capabilities, so searching through the lab in the dark was no issue and she found what she’d come for easily enough, slipping it into a temporary compartment in her armour to protect it on the flight back.
She snuck back out of the tent, pulling some Metal Gear Solid bullshit as she lingered invisibly within half a foot of one soldier who had stopped literally right in front of her to re-tie his boot. Once he had moved on, she gratefully took to the air and returned to her warehouse, slipping in through the door unseen.
She should have known that was too easy. When had she ever been lucky enough for something to go to plan?
Howard Stark was in her warehouse, nose mere inches away from her time machine as he examined it. She clenched her fingers into fists as the memory of every science project she had ever created suddenly popped into her mind. They had never been good enough for Howard Stark, and she was just waiting for the fucker to make some kind of disparaging comment again.
A moment later, she realised he wasn’t talking because she was still invisible. She warred silently with herself as to what she should do. Maybe he would get bored and leave. Though that was unlikely. More likely was that he would get bored and disassemble her time machine. Which would just be . . . not good.
With a sigh, she let the retroreflectors and the suit slide away, nimbly catching her liberated component before it could hit the floor. “I didn’t realise I’d invited company over.” She said sharply, causing Howard to jump in surprise and face her.
“Who are you?” He asked with a furrowed brow.
She arched her eyebrow, unimpressed. Leave it to Howard to break into a place and not even know who it belonged to.
“Who are you really, Antonia Carbonell?” He asked again, before gesturing at the time machine. “I know what this is.”
Of course he fucking did. Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She grit her teeth, then stepped forward and snatched up a pair of needle nose pliers and her soldering gun. She didn’t have time to deal with twenty questions from her father.
“Hmm.” Howard said speculatively. “You know me. I didn’t have to introduce myself and you aren’t attacking me. And this . . . well this is familiar.” He said, gesturing to where a bundle of different coloured wires were twisted and soldered to the circuit board.
She stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before she realised what he’d noticed. She’d built her first circuit board at four years old; she’d learned how to do it from watching her father whenever he wasn’t too drunk and allowed her presence in his workshop. And Howard, being the arrogant, narcissistic son of a bitch that he was, always soldered the wires down into place with the hint of an ‘S’ shape as a type of signature. And she’d been doing the same her whole life without even thinking about it.
“So . . . you work for me in the future?” He hazarded a guess. “Never thought a woman would be interested in engineering, but I guess women are getting into all kinds of male jobs these days.”
“You’re a piece of shit, Howard.” She said as she flicked on the soldering iron and connected the last component into place. It was a quick three connections to get it into place. She wasn’t sure if she did it to spite him or not, but she kept on including the Stark ‘S’ into her welds.
“Your going to talk to your boss that way? You know I’m going to remember you.” Howard goaded. “Maybe I won’t take a chance on giving a dame a man’s job.”
She chuckled as she set the soldering iron aside, replacing it with a screwdriver to screw the component onto the time machine and keep it from moving. “You know, I never did figure out why me having a vagina somehow made me less good at engineering in your eyes, especially because I’m better at it than you. But you’re wrong. I never worked for you.” She said, before standing up straight and looking him in the eyes. “You were the world’s shittiest father though.”
She had the pleasure of watching the realisation sink in, and grinned showing all of her teeth. “Now, I’m about to go back where I belong. And when I do, I’m going to blow this place to hell. So, you may want to leave, Dad .” She spat the last word out like the vilest of insults.
“That’s not -” He cut himself off and stared at her speculatively for a moment before taking a step away from her, backing up until he was at the door. He looked like he was considering saying something, but changed his mind and continued to turn away.
“Oh, and Howard, maybe don’t invite snakes into your garden this time. I’m tired of inheriting your fucking problems.” She called after him, not certain if she was talking about Hydra in SHIELD or Stane in SI, or maybe even Vanko and the arc reactor plans.
She stared after him for a moment, her brows furrowed in confusion at his easy compliance, but then again maybe the thought of having a kid had really freaked him out. She glanced down at her hands, wondering if she would fade out of existence all Back to the Future style if he decided not to marry her mother, but so far so good and she was still solid.
Maybe she’d use the time machine and just wouldn’t exist after that if he decided not to have kids or marry someone else. What a clusterfuck. All for the satisfaction of telling Howard to fucking suck it. Jesus Christ, she was an idiot.
Oh well, she wouldn’t know if she didn’t try, and there was no way she was going to linger around in the forties any longer. So she drew up the schematic for a badass bomb in her mind, calculating the size of the warehouse and the distance between it and other nearby buildings when determining its destructive force, then created it out of her nanobots, placing it right next to the time machine. She would have to replenish her nanobots when she got back to the 21st century, but that was a problem for Future Toni.
For right now, she just needed to focus on being able to become Future Toni. She flexed her fingers first, then placed her hands into the charging cradle of the time machine. Then she focussed on drawing power from the arc reactor network nestled in her joints and directed the power down her arms, into her fingertips and into the time machine.
For a second, nothing happened. Then suddenly everything whirred to life and there was a blinding flash of light that seared her retinas so badly she felt Extremis working on trying to repair the damage. She felt the ground shift below her, a vibration rattling through her and a searing heat and realised that the bomb had gone off a few seconds too early.
And then she was gone, either dead or heading to the future. She didn’t know.
***
The explosion shook the entire damn town. Being so close to the front, they were almost certain that the Germans had broken through and were retaking the town. Bucky and the rest of the Commandos were among the first to rush to the scene, weapons ready to take down any Nazis that dared to cross their paths.
That wasn’t what they found.
He didn’t miss the concerned looks from his comrades when it became apparent that it was Toni’s workshop that had exploded. Or when they ran into a singed Howard Stark, who claimed to have blown Toni Carbonell up.
He froze, staring into the inferno that was raging in the warehouse, trying to make out any figures that might be her. Surely a little fire wouldn’t be enough to take her out. Not after what he’d seen her bounce back from. Right? She couldn’t be.
He glanced at Stark, at the perturbed expression on the man’s face as he watched the building burn and felt an inkling of suspicion curdle in his gut. Something wasn’t right here. Why had Stark even been here? Why would he have blown the building up instead of calling for reinforcements? They were supposed to secure Toni’s tech and Howard had been practically salivating over it. It made no sense for him to have destroyed it all.
The engineer met his gaze after a few minutes in a way that he could only describe as being judged and found wanting. But he and Howard had gotten along fine prior to this, so what did that mean?
Had Stark captured Tony? Was he helping her? He couldn’t tell and he couldn’t ask without drawing suspicion to himself. It was already going to look a little too convenient that Toni showed back up just a day after he returned to base.
“She’s gone.” Howard said grimly.
Not dead. Gone. So maybe she had escaped and Howard was covering for her. Though why Howard would do that, he had no idea. From the conversation they’d had in the ravine, she wasn’t exactly a Howard Stark fan.
He startled slightly as Steve clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing tightly. “You okay?” Steve asked quietly, with probably all of the sympathy he could manage to scrape together for a woman that he was probably grateful was dead.
“I’m fine.” He grumbled.
He wasn’t going to grieve. Toni wasn’t in the building; they wouldn’t find her body. Howard was in on it somehow, but he wasn’t going to ask because he didn’t want to risk the brass trying to hunt her down again. And besides . . . they had already said their goodbyes.
Steve gave him a strange, probing look, but Bucky just smiled sadly in response.
It was only a matter of days after that when intel got back to them about the location of Schmidt. And it was only hours after that, that he found himself on a plane ladened with bombs destined for America, with two super soldiers and some kind of glowing cube.
And then there was only one super soldier and no glowing cube, but still a ton of bombs and no way to redirect the plane or land safely. He looked to Steve, hoping that he had a better idea than the one that had popped into Bucky’s head. But from the look on Steve’s face, there was no such luck.
Don’t waste your life.
That was Toni’s only wish for him and he couldn’t even make it a week. But then again, it wasn’t really a waste, was it? Not if he and Steve saved all of those people that the bombs were going to kill. Not if he made sure that Toni still had a home to go back to.
He nodded slowly to Steve. Neither of them needed to say it. They both knew what was at stake and what needed to be done.
Steve reached for the coms to inform command of their situation and, Jesus fuck, that was Agent Carter. Why the hell was she on the coms? This was going to wreck them both. She shouldn’t have to listen to Steve die.
He panicked and thought about taking over the coms, at least to spare her of that trauma, but Steve was resolute and calm as he set the plane into a nosedive. Bucky gripped the chair in front of him tightly to keep himself from being splayed across the console.
He had only a handful of moments left to live, and he spent them thinking about his mom and Becca. And most especially about Toni, the woman who had stolen his heart. He thought about the night they first met, about the confident set of her shoulders and tilt of her chin and those blood red lips that he hadn’t been able to drag his eyes away from. He thought about the warmth in her amber eyes when she’d gifted him with her vulnerability. He thought about the smooth way she moved in a fight and the scarlet gleam of her armour and the way that she never backed down from a challenge.
There was a violent impact that slammed him against the front console, blooming white, hot agony in every inch of his body. And then it was cold. Everything was so cold. It crept into him, seeping through his veins and slowing everything to a shivering crawl. His last thought was a memory of something Toni had said.
Trust me, freezing to death isn’t a great way to go.
Well, he agreed with that.