The Dead

[starkingenuity]

It might seem counterintuitive for the most connected person on the planet to be the last to know something is happening, but when Tony Stark is working, Hell could swallow the world up and he would make an off handed, disinterested remark that he would have to check the AC. Up in his hi-tech Tower, where he had meant to spend the week finishing up boxing the more precious pieces of unfinished projects, Tony had gotten himself caught procrastinating the only way a man like him is capable of procrastinating: by rebuilding hardware to help him finish a gadget rather than packing that gadget away.

FRIDAY had already been installed in the compound Upstate, though she never left his back pocket really. Tony didn’t hear her alerting him, therefore, when people started dying. How could he with the sound of heavy metal playing and the grinder in his hands?

Tony had stayed in his mostly disassembled, partly reassembled lab for thirty-two hours before deciding he was hungry enough to stop making do with granola bars and dried fruit and call in some pizza.

The alerts on his phone are terrifying when he finally sees them. The number of missed calls leave his mouth dry.

Despite everything, Tony’s first thought is to call Steve Rogers of all people, even before he puts the armor back on. He has no idea that Captain America fell with the rest of the country he loved hours ago.

Comments

[endof_theline]

Bucky doesn't even realize he says it- we- and he's not great with the whole team up thing either. Worse by a long shot than Tony, he imagines. But here they are, and there's no one else. Maybe eventually there will be, and god he hopes so, but it's looking pretty bleak.

"Neither am I," he mutters, figuring Tony won't listen anyway- he has no reason to- and that he'll just fly off and leave him here. It'll be fine. He'll come up with his own plan. He'll grab as many people as he can and find a place for them to hide.

It's hard to even know where to begin.

But Tony doesn't leave. Bucky doesn't want the other man to take him down either though.

"I'll meet you down there." They still need a plan, regardless. If they're not smart about this, they'll end up dead.

[starkingenuity]

“No.” Why are so many old men from Brooklyn so unreasonable? Tony gives Barnes a withering look. “You won’t make it on the ground. There aren’t enough roof tops to jump.” He gets why someone wouldn’t want to cling to the outside of a suit of flying armor though. Big brown eyes roll all the way around in their sockets. “And until we know what happened— I’m not going to give you cover, got it? I’m not killing people.”

The group that tried to catch him didn’t look like corpses…. Well, they did because they looked like they all had injuries you just don’t get up and walk away from. But they didn’t look like they were decaying either.

Tony finds himself clenching his jaw again.

“Listen. I don’t got a lot of ways to compromise here. The flight is quick and I’ll put you down on a roof closer to the scene.”

[endof_theline]

The scene, Tony says, as if the whole city isn't a scene. Tony just came up on this twenty minutes ago, but Bucky's been fighting through this for a couple hours now. He doesn't know how to argue any of that, though.

He doesn't know what to say to make him realize the truth and gravity of what's going on here.

"I made it from here to midtown and back on my own. I've been out there for hours. Those dead down there are killing people." He gets it. Tony doesn't want to kill them. Bucky doesn't want to either, he feels sick with the thought of it, but these undead- dead- zombies- whatever the hell they are, they're not leaving them much choice.

"There is no scene, Stark. The whole thing is one big scene." He shakes his head, heading back to the entrance of the roof so he can go back down. "I'm gonna find a van and look for survivors and get them off the streets. You do... whatever it is you wanna do Midtown."

He could use an overhead lookout to track people down and direct him to the best locations, but he isn't going to ask for that.

[starkingenuity]

Asshole. Asshole!

Frustrated, Tony strides after the other. “You just said we needed a plan and for some reason, that actually makes sense.” No one is answering. There is one person here who is breathing. Steve Rogers is ripping people apart in Midtown.

If, of course, there is anyone left to rip apart.

“Before you turn into a suicidal Good Samaritan, could you at least let me catch my damn breath? I just found out the New York is fucked twenty minutes ago.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky is descending the stairs- hoping Tony will follow him. He really is, because as much as he prefers to go at this alone... he doesn't really want to, deep down. This is a mess. It's devastating. If they're all that's left, then....

Tony follows and Bucky slows down, glancing back at him.

"Letting you catch your breath isn't flying into a part of the city that fell two hours ago." Because Tony only found out about this twenty minutes ago. "I was there. Believe me. There's nothing left.... no one left."

The most populated part of the city is gone, and now their best bet is to work the outskirts, like this downtown area, if they can. "Wasn't there a wizard? He's got protection spells, right?"

Does he want to hide away from the world, put up a thousand walls and not deal? Yeah. But he can't right now, so he won't. Steve would be so disappointed in him.

[starkingenuity]

“A wizard. Maybe.” There are a lot of characters floating around. Most of them seem to be turned into zombies. How is that even a sentence?

Tony touches the reactor in the heart of the armor and the nanotechnology retracts from around him, minus his helmet. He’d made the conscious choice to keep that whole. He needs it for the projector.

“There are probably hundreds of thousands of people locked in their apartments. But first? FRIDAY has a database of videos. Got a blank wall I can use?” Maybe Bucky can walk him through the visuals.

[endof_theline]

Tony seems to calm down and take a breath- assess the situation for what it really is. Bucky nods, continuing down the stairs.

He leads them back into the safehouse he and Steve have been staying in. locking the door behind them and setting the security back up. Tony can take a little more time to catch his breath while they're here, and then they can head back out.

"Blank wall. Right there." He points to the wall of the room- but they're all blank. There are some of Steve's things in the corner. While Tony sets up the projected videos, Bucky stuffs those things in his bag.

[starkingenuity]

He needs to see the loss of the Avengers for himself. This is only a delaying tactic. Tony is about ready to turn around and change his mind again when he sees the little apartment but going back out there without an understanding of what it is he’s going to find would be foolish.

Tony says nothing as he drops the helmet on an end table and drags it to the center of the room. He’d caught Bucky packing things away, and he can make an educated guess as to what those things are. Still wearing the chest harness with the reactor core, Tony crouches to get the projector from the right eye socket on the helmet to be even on the wall.

He clears his throat.

“FRIDAY, sort by chronological listing. I want the earliest social media posts first.” The helmet hums and a video from a phone camera paints the wall. “Get the lights,” Tony orders Barnes, and then sits back on one heel to watch the succession of thirty to sixty second clips of people standing up and attacking the camera man. It’s not helpful.

[endof_theline]

This is the very last thing Bucky wants to see, but Tony needs to see it.

It would be amazing to him, the way Tony is about to pull video from anywhere to project it, but he hardly cares about the technology of it all right now. He flicks the lights off at Tony's demand, then stands at the back of the apartment, arms crossed, solemn look on his face.

The attacks are so fast that it's hard to get a grip on what's going on. It's easy to see how regular citizens are changing though. The red eyes, the way their skin changes so to something sickly and diseased looking. It's like they're decaying in front of their eyes, all life drained from them as they drag themselves along to attack.

Bucky has to look away.

These are civilians. Gone. He's sure professional news reporters didn't fair any better. Broadcasts went off the air at an alarming rate.

His attention is drawn back to the screen when he hears a familiar voice. It's Steve. His heart stops as he watches. It's hard to see how it all goes down - but Steve swats at something on his neck, and then he starts changing, letting out a horrible sound before his eyes go red.

"Oh god," Bucky chokes out, watching as the rest of the Avengers with him suffer the same fate.

[starkingenuity]

It’s not ought of cruelty that Tony has FRIDAY find other angles of the video. He is far too tapped in, something that Congress had tried to curtain long before now. Is there even a Congress left? Surely, with how quickly this is spreading, there can’t be too many casualties off the island of Manhattan. How could anyone infected get very far when they turn in minutes?

Tony sits fully on the floor. He sets his hands on his knees and he watches Steve turn in a loop of three different angles. That hit to his neck—

He wasn’t scratched like the others. Not that Tony can see at least. And the video quality won’t let him zoom in either to any real effect. The engineer frowns. “I need to get you some armor if we’re going to go back out there.”

omg are notifs finally back?! xD

[endof_theline]

Bucky takes a few steps back to press himself against the wall, looking away from the moving images. It's like a horror movie, almost worse than what he had been put through for decades. He's not sure there's any coming back from this one.

He doesn't need to ask Tony if he believes him now. Bucky knows he does.

He looks over at the other man when he speaks again, then down at his metal arm. At least he's got one less limb for the zombies to gnaw on. "Armor- yeah."

He could use... maybe a shield. His expression crumbles at the thought.

I didn’t get one. I just started checking. ><

[starkingenuity]

“I can’t see what it is,” Tony continues. He’s feeling detached, vaguely curious, but also mostly just trying to keep his focus so he doesn’t really think about what he’s seeing.

What’s the last thing he said to Cap? Laying in the freezing cold, bloody, reactor crushed, he’d looked up into Steve’s face, still panicked, still sure the other man would break his jaw.

It had been so petty. So stupid. ‘You don’t deserve the shield.’ Something like that. He’d spat it at Cap’s back as he was helping Barnes up.

There is that emotional, wet, sad eyes on the older man again as he hits the helmet to shut the feed off. “It’s not airborne. Those things were trying to scratch me. To tug me down. But they’re not killing people. Just infecting them.” He’s rambling. They both know it. Tony stands. “FRIDAY, maybe recall the Legion for now. Standby with them. But we need one of the old suits for Barnes. Good thing you’re about my size.”

Mine are slowly trickling back in. Very slowly lol

[endof_theline]

Bucky can't see what it is either. He doesn't want to. "Maybe it's the Ant-Man," he says anyway, because it makes sense. Something scratched or bit Steve's neck and then he was gone. Dead.

It doesn't matter if it's an infection or not- they're the walking dead.

Bucky knows he should peel himself away from the wall, but he can't seem to do so. Here he is, hunkered down with Tony Stark. He wonders what Steve would think- the two of them working together now. Is that what they're doing?

It has to be.

"It's bloodborne. They're scratching, biting- basically killing the people they attack. I've watched... limbs getting ripped off and eyes being gouged out. It's bloody out there," he says in a monotone voice, detached in the way that Tony feels.

His brows draw together. "One of your Iron Man suits?" Yeah, ok. That's wild.

[starkingenuity]

“Unless one of them figures out how to bite through gold titanium alloy, you should be good,” Tony remarks. He’s always been better at problem solving than focusing too much on his losses. There have been so many of those.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, rubbing a hand over facial hair that is in desperate need of some trimming. He looks down at all of the notifications. The missed calls. The texts.

With a shaking thumb, he finally opens up the list of calls. Pepper. Happy. Peter over a dozen times. Steve. Three missed calls from Steve Rogers.

Tony’s mouth runs dry and his eyebrows furrow. “You know,” he says, jaw clenching again, eyes never leaving the phone even as he gestures with it. “I was cleaning out the Tower. Old projects, half started. I uh… I had this motorcycle engine I was cleaning and retrofitting before everything with the Accords happened. Project got shelved. We moved operations to the compound. Totally forgot about it until yesterday. Day before maybe. I don’t know why I even bothered— I wasn’t going to give it to him, you know. Bastard was dead to me.”

Tony’s lip trembles and he turns, tapping the voice mail from Steve Rogers.

“Tony—“ And then he immediately turns the sound down. He can’t bring himself to listen to it after all.

“He called and I was rebuilding a fucking engine, Barnes.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky doesn't know what to think. Doesn't know what to feel either- or how to feel it- but it's quickly dawning on him, and right now he's struggling not to get dragged down by it. He really didn't need to see what happened to Steve from three different angles.

"I managed fine without a suit." He's being stubborn now, and he knows it. It just feels strange- him of all people in an Iron Man suit. But then- it must feel even more strange for Tony. Probably terrible. "Yeah, fine, ok. I'll wear a suit."

Tony looks at his phone, and Bucky figures he's doing some more techy stuff while he explains to Bucky where he was all this time, and why he didnt' join the Avengers earlier today. And then he hears Steve's voice coming from Tony's phone, and he swallows hard, feeling a deep, horrible ache in his chest that he knows he can't afford to feel right now.

Tony is losing it too. He can tell. The trembling lip, the devastated look on his face- the anger. Maybe they're both going through the five stages of grief here, only they need to do it quickly so they can help people.

"You didn't know. I didn't know either, I should've gone with him." Tony feels guilty. So does Bucky.

[starkingenuity]

“Guess we both fucked it up with the only God damned person on this planet that would have forgiven us,” Tony says, hands shoving into his pockets so he doesn’t have to think about a message he isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to listen to. He blinks rapidly to try and clear his eyes from tears before he heads to the tiny kitchen and pulls open the refrigerator.

Of course there isn’t alcohol. Neither of these two can get drunk readily so why bother? He could really go for something to calm his nerves, though.

At least he doesn’t have to fight with Barnes about the armor. Maybe they both just realized that they don’t have anyone else. Not yet.

Cursing, Tony slams the door shut and runs both of his hands through his already pleasantly messy hair. “Who’s missing from the footage? FRIDAY, who’s accounted for in the footage?”

The AI speaks from Tony’s pocket, muffled. “Captain Rogers. Natasha Romanoff. Sam Wilson. James Rhodes. Clint Barton. Doctor Stephan Strange. Doctor Hank Pym. Scott Lang. King T’Challa.”

“Got it. Everyone,” Tony says before he arches an eyebrow. “Parker?”

“I’m sorry, Boss. Peter Parker is not visible on any of the collected footage.”

[endof_theline]

They both fucked it up. Tony's right. They should've been there.

Bucky feels like he's stuck in this spot, his gaze following Tony around the apartment. The fridge it stocked with foods that Steve has been trying to get Bucky to eat. Bucky's been terrible about it. Now.... god, he wishes he wouldn't have given Steve such a hard time. He wishes he could have pulled himself together faster.

He's having to pull it together real fast now, isn't he.

Bucky hears the voice- mechanical yet real- is it Tony's phone? He doesn't quite get it. He does hear the names being said out loud, though. Everyone's they've lost. Probably more. Everyone.

And yet- not everyone, not yet. Not as far as Tony's computer can see, anyway. "Who are you talking to?" Maybe not the most important thing right now, but Bucky needs something to ground him.

[starkingenuity]

The blatant question pulls Tony out of his head just enough to make the man blink owlishly at the other. He’s confused. It’s so rare to make him feel that way.

Back in his pocket his hand goes and he pulls the phone from it. “Barnes. This is FRIDAY. Part of her. The rest was transferred to the compound. There’s a piece of her in the armor too. Will be in the one she’s flying over to us.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Barnes.” Her brogue is lovely and she seems friendly enough.

“She’s an AI assistant, if you’re curious.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky's eyebrows furrow as he looks at the device. The cellphone- only this one seems to be more than the one Steve had. This one talks, and.... has a name. Not only a name, but addresses him- speaks to him.

Bucky looks at it suspiciously, as if it was an actual person. Maybe that's already progress. "How does it... how does she know my name?" Paranoia. Can anyone blame him?

"What is an AI assistant?" Is this distracting them enough from their grief? Maybe it'll be enough to get their heads back in the game.

[starkingenuity]

Somehow, Barnes is worse than Steve had ever been. Most of the time, the blond played off what he didn’t understand. Tony had found the boyish, sheepish looks in Steve’s eyes endearing. It’s why he picked on him so much before their solitary natures pushed them back to being occasional colleagues. Little more, really, though Tony clung to a friendship that wasn’t actually ever there.

He glances at the phone in his hand. “I made her. Programmed her. She’s artificial.”

“But still happy to help,” FRIDAY chimes in. “I know a lot about you, Sergeant Barnes. Public record, private—“

“Thanks, FRIDAY,” Tony hushes her and puts his phone back in his pocket.

[endof_theline]

The difference is probably that Steve had tried hard to integrate. Bucky had tried even harder to stay off the grid. He doesn't want to join the modern age, as much as he knows he has to. As much as Steve had tried to get him to.

He should have tried harder.

That thought is the only reason why he tries now, eying the phone, but not pulling back from it completely. "That's... interesting. She sounds smart." FRIDAY knowing about his public and private records, though? Well....most people do these days.

"It's ok," he says quietly. "I get it...or. I think I do." Steve would have wanted him to.

[starkingenuity]

That is a surprising compliment and Tony takes it whole heartedly as one. There is even a touch of a smile to his lips. “She did that herself,” he says, giving the disembodied voice personhood. “Right now, it’s just us and her. Until we find more people.”

“Three minutes for the armor to touchdown, Boss,” FRIDAY confirms. “Roof all right?”

“Roof is good.” He glances Barnes’ way and picks up his helmet. “She’ll help you pilot. What were you saying about getting a van and helping people? Those streets are a mess. We might want to secure a place to stay first.”

[endof_theline]

"Right. Us and her, until we find more people." Bucky breathes out, thinking about that, about the two of them- three of them? It's a moment of respite, and it's enough to get his head back in the game.

He pushes off the wall, giving Tony a nod. "Rooftops seem like the safest place right now. I'm sure there are more secure spots along the way though."

Does Tony have a better one? He's all high tech... "We can secure people back here, unless you've got a better, bigger place."

Not towering into the sky, though.

[starkingenuity]

The Tower would not work. It’s hard to defend. He knows that very, very well. But this building? That might be doable.

“Have you gone door to door asking for a cup of sugar yet?” There might be survivors here. Or the place might be crawling with the dead. Being in the middle of New York isn’t exactly ideal but it’s a good place to start.

[endof_theline]

Bucky thinks that if they have at least one good stronghold, they can defend it. Maybe something more underground would help, but for now a safe house is- well- the safest place. This apartment only has one small window, and it's already boarded up. Bucky worked quickly once he got back here.

"I did. Most people were out. There is a man, a woman, couple upstairs, I told them to lock all their doors and board up the windows if they could. Everyone else was out as far as I could tell." No one had attacked him, so that was a plus.

Now that they're formulating some kind of plan, Bucky has that to focus on. The grief can wait till later.

"Should we bring them in here? Have them stay together?" Or maybe they're just safer where they are for the time being. He isn't sure.