#am i allowed to call long-dead scientists bestie

[skelkankaos]

A  linguist  that  insists  on  talking  about  the Latin  type  of  morphology  as  though  it  were  necessarily  the  high water  mark  of  linguistic  development  is  like  the  zoologist  that sees  in  the  organic  world  a  huge  conspiracy  to  evolve  the  race-horse  or  the  Jersey  cow

Edward Sapir

[superspifferrific]

Marvel AU: You and I remember Germany VERY differently

Marvel AU Concept: A Winter Soldier that wasn’t quite as well brain-washed as Hydra would’ve liked . . .

So this time when Hydra sends their little Winter Soldier to off Howard Stark, Stark takes one look and goes, “Bucky Barnes? What the actual fuck dude.” (Because Howard hung out around Steve Rogers, and probably spent at least some time around/hearing about the other Commandos, so why address his friend Steve’s bestie by his rank?) And the Winter Soldier gets as far as, “Who the hell is -” before, bam! Years of brain blending are now down the tubes as the simple act of hearing/thinking his name again has banished the Winter Soldier and brought back Bucky Barnes. (Because that stubborn shit somehow managed to subconsciously hang onto his nickname being a trigger to bring himself back, both because he IS that stubborn and because it’s convenient for my plot. ANYWAY.) Bucky, last he remembers, was plummeting to his death in the mountains but now finds himself standing in the middle of the friggin’ woods in front of a random old couple with no god damn clue what the hell is going on. He is somewhat cranky about this.

Howard and Bucky stand around talking for a bit and staying very confused, because wtf Barnes you’ve been dead for like 50 years but you’re standing here looking like a freaking goth male model and wtf Stark is like a 30-something-year-old mad scientist man-whore not an old married dude tf are you?? Eventually Howard, while still hella confused, is at least convinced it’s Barnes so he sighs and tells Bucky to get in loser, I’ll deliver my latest batch of science-I-REALLY-shouldn’t-have-tampered-with breakthrough to Carter to be pissed at me for later. (After all, resurrected dead friends is a level of bullshit even Peggy is likely to give him a pass for dealing with first - as long as he’s not the one responsible for having caused it, anyway.) So Bucky, while still not sure what to believe, still finds himself lost in the middle of the damn woods and not even knowing which damn woods so he decides to at least agree to bum a ride for now but stay on guard.

Howard heads back home to sort things out and upon walking into the house probably finds Tony, a teenage boy left unsupervised, doing literally everything and everyone he isn’t supposed to, and most likely in the middle of the freaking living room or something no less. “Well, you’re home early.” Howard looks ready to blow his stack and Maria looks mortified, but everyone freezes as Bucky just cracks. the fuck. UP. “I’m still not convinced you’re actually Howard, but if you were that kid would definitely be yours.” Howard buries his face in his hands while Tony promptly smirks and decides he likes whoever the hell this guy is.

. . . Until a little while later, when he finds out the random dude his parents brought home with them is supposed to be the second-in-command of the legendary Howling Commandos, the larger-than-life hero of World War II and best friend of the man Tony Stark loathes most in the world, Captain Perfect. Barnes just stands there in supreme confusion as Tony rants on and on about how his dad never shuts up about how freaking wonderful Captain America was, how goddamn perfect the Man with a Plan was; how he always knew what to do, how he always did the right thing, how he had his priorities and his shit SO sorted and on lock and ‘Tony why can’t you be like that’ and just UGH. Bucky is wondering amusedly if maybe Tony’s somehow confused Stevie with the character he played during the USO tour when his thoughts suddenly whirl to a full stop after finally catching on the word Tony kept using: ‘was.’ Tony stops mid-rant when Barnes suddenly just drops.

After finally pulling himself together somewhat (to Tony’s immense relief, god, please don’t let me accidentally break my dad’s 2nd-favorite war hero like immediately) Bucky manages to croak out, “How long?” Seeing the blank look on Stark jr.’s face, he explains that he wants to know long it took after he supposedly died before Steve decided to join him. Tony replies by reciting the epic saga of Captain America’s Last Great Noble Sacrifice, which Howard has told him so many times he probably knows it better than his own name by this point. By the end of it Barnes looks ready to kill someone and Tony is hella confused because, “Shouldn’t you be proud of your friend? Isn’t that just SO Captain America? Like why are you even surprised??” And Bucky, SUPER pissed, is just like, “Yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t be, should I? I left that moron alone for ten minutes so he took all the stupid and ran with it; goddamn it Stevie! UGH.” This is followed by a multi-hour-long rant/bitchfest of how many ways Steve could’ve done things differently and exactly how big of an idiot he was and some highlights of the Stupid Shit he pulled during missions as Captain America and during their childhood running loose trying to pick a fight with half of Brooklyn. ”’Perfect Man Who Always Knew What He Was Doing’ my ass.”

After he’s finished explaining what Steve was really like to the skeptical teen, Bucky promptly heads off to find Howard and call him out on his bullshit. “He picked a fight with Nazi Germany because I was missing because of it and because it was a good excuse to fight a bullying country, Howard. Wtf kind of bullshit have you been feeding your brat about us? You’re giving him anxiety already, knock it off.”

Eventually Bucky decides to go after Steve, because end of the line means end of the fucking line and I am bringing my moron home goddamnit. This should have been a pretty hopeless task, but between an enthusiastic Peggy putting all of SHIELD’s resources at their disposal, Stark Sr.’s rekindled obsession and addition of all of Stark Industries’ resources, Stark Jr.’s willingness to lend a hand because it’s the only thing he’s allowed to do while grounded-until-he’s-30, and Bucky Barnes’ unfailing Steve’s-in-trouble-must-locate-my-idiot senses, it was an astonishingly short period of time before Steve Rogers was found and then defrosted. (Bucky sat with Steve’s body while they thawed him out, ostensibly for his funeral, so you can imagine the freak-out that occurred when his best friend’s ‘corpse’ suddenly rolled over and started mumbling the words to ‘Star-Spangled Man With a Plan’ in his sleep).

Steve and Bucky, reunited at last, have a very messy, somewhat violent, utterly heartbreaking and incredibly tear- and swear-filled reunion before being loosed upon ‘the future.’ They then take it upon themselves to spend time with what’s left of their old friends, whip Howard into being at least no less of a decent human being than he was when they met him, and revamping the Captain America legacy to make it less of a legend of a perfect human being (Steve was literally crying laughing when he heard what people thought he was like) and more the story of a bunch of brave idiots trying to do what they could to help.

SHIELD has fits over them giving their versions of how some of the stories went either because “That’s classified!!” or  “You’re destroying a legacy!” or, their favorite, “That’s not even remotely how that could have possibly gone. No. NO. You did NOT punch a robot Adolf Hitler hundreds of times before melting the Red Skull into a puddle of goo like the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz using a magic light box, no less. NO. Just, please, please stop talking.” Peggy and the remaining Commandos find the whole thing amazing and hilarious and thus refuse to refute anything those two say, and Steve and Bucky help raise Tony Stark to be a much more put together adult, help out with the odd SHIELD mission when they feel the need to punch something or Hydra’s being irritating, and just generally have a good time. That is, they do until the events of the Avengers rolls around, at which point they then proceed to have a great time fighting with a team of ridiculous, well-intentioned, violent thrill-seekers again and decide to make it a regular thing. “This is gonna be GREAT Buck, you’ll see.” “That’s what you said about World War II Steve.”