the tables have turned | steve/bucky

chapter twenty seven

Three months later...

"Exactly how sure are you that this is gonna work, Tony?"

"Do you want the honest answer?"

That was already an answer in itself. But still, I responded with a firm, "Yes."

Tony leaned up against his contraption. "Mmm... I'm about 12% sure that it'll succeed. But hey, trying won't hurt, right?"

In all honesty, I wasn't sure about that. What if this only made things worse? I've read somewhere on the Internet that failed experiments like this could potentially be the foundation of a global crisis. And Tony had quite the reputation for inappropriately dealing with problems that he caused. The more I thought about the outcome of this, the more I wanted to back out.

"Hey," Tony gave my shoulder an assuring squeeze. His warm eyes were genuine. "We've done this much, right? Might as well go through with it."

"Yeah, you're right..." I glanced down at his machine. This was the thing that could potentially change my life... if it worked. I knew that Tony had been working on it since... well, things started getting crazy. He stated once that it's been in the works for decades, but truthfully, it only came to life in recent months.

"This will be the cure for cancer; this will make the blind man see; this will make the paralyzed man walk!" Tony's words just kept replaying in my head. Sure, the device was only a prototype now, but he seemed awfully confident it what it was going to be.

"Okay." I exhaled sharply. "Let's do it."

Tony rounded the device. He pecked a few mid-air buttons, did some fancy hand movements to the magical screen, and then made it all disappear with a poke. His contraption then breathed to life.

When the tomb-like machine began to light up, I raced over to the small, glass window on its front side. What lay within the machine was wintry—still had blue skin and patterns of ice on it. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never allow this to happen ever happen to him again, but cryofreeze was the only way we could preserve Bucky's body.

The electronic pod started to hum. I backtracked to Tony.

"Is it working?" I asked him.

"It's only been five seconds, Steve!"

"Maybe we should turn it off. What if it's hurting him? I mean, I know he's dead, but..."

"Steve—" Tony suddenly interjected. He cracked across the lab, dragging me behind him. Standing on either side of the machine, Tony and I peered into the window.

We gasped at the same time. "Oh my god," Tony muttered. "Fury's going to be so pissed."

And Tony was right, but I was too stunned with the sudden sensation in my chest to even care what the consequences of this would be. Oh. You're probably wondering why Fury was going to rip us a new asshole. Well...............