WinterIron one shots

Falling again

Word count: 1427

Summery: where it's Bucky on the rig (from Ironman 3)

AN: so I got this idea while I was watching Ironman 3 for the 100th time, and .... enjoy!

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Sparks shower around him like a veil of fireworks: streaming through the crisp air, disturbed by the explosions wracking the vessel and swirling in a morbidly beautiful storm. Tony momentarily thinks of the beauty they hold as he tears down the platforms, feet pounding against the metal and the sound vibrating through the structure. His lungs were on fire, his muscles aches and his heart ponder within his chest.

He scrambles for a suit but it appears that the universe wants his doom to be quick and painful - as it reminds him each time a suit is blown from the sky right before the metal fits itself around his body or whenever a piece of armour just fails to answer both his desperate pleas and the magnetic pulses within his forearms.

'Get to Bucky,' he thinks despite his misfortune, and his feet stumble the second time he collapses onto a shipping container. The vibrations wrack his body and the metal clangs with his weight. He takes a second to catch his breath but he surges on, through the hot air that ebbs off the fire burning beneath him.

Them- his mind reminds as he lays first sight on the body sprawled over what remains of what could be assumed to be a room. Bucky's arm is hooked around a canary yellow balustrade and the metal is struggling as much as he is to hold on, but it lacks one simple thing: the fear in his eyes. It burns as brightly as the chaos around them, and it very nearly stops Tony in his tracks as irises focus on his own approaching form.

"Tony -" he whimpers, in anguish.

"Barnes, hold on," Tony calls. He leaps onto the closest platform, which is just a little bit too far and a little bit too distant. He curses and his arms shake as he stands atop the balustrade, feet pressing awkwardly into the poles, but he steadies and uses the leverage to reach his arm out.

Bucky is panicking.

It's an abrupt contrast from his typical stony expression, but he's beginning to hyperventilate; his cheeks are flushed and he grapples at every item that threatens to be within a metal arm's reach. Those items are systematically thrown into the fire burning beneath the brunette , accompanied with a frustrated cry each time it becomes more apparent that there was no easy way out.

Much to the Stark's horrible realisation, he knows that Bucky, a man admired for his indifference and bravery in the face of terror, is absolutely petrified.

"I've got you, Bucky. Take a breath. Bucky -," he exhales, pushes himself up a bit more and tries to reach up even more. He can't quite get to him. It's just a few inches but it feels like a mile, as if Tony is nothing but a Tiny speck attempting to extend over the entire of Pacific Ocean.

"James Barnes, look at me!" Tony begged as he saw the other man looking down warily.

And then he does.

It's as if the entire world stops for the soldier.

His eyes focus on Tony, wide and shining with a wetness that Stark recognises from too many nights of waking to the sound of his own shuddering breaths- and his heaving chest suddenly stops. Everything but the quiver in Bucky's jaw stills, his hair whips around his face, and in that moment, he becomes a tragedy. He becomes something beautiful, something yet to plummet into the abyss that was pain and suffering - and something caught in the beauty of a thousand burning, orange sparks of fire. The sparks manage to pause the second for just a little bit longer, Tony realises: just long enough for him to see flaming red reflected in grey orbs.

The moment is shattered with a gentle murmur of "Breathe," from Tony, which entices a gasp from the soldier like a man filling his lungs after having a hand locked around his throat.

Despite his inevitable reality yet to be forced upon them by the workings of the universes, that he was yet to fall - and when he fell- there was no standing up and walking off. There was no coming back this time, no saving graces- no more chances.

Bucky speaks, and his voice is small. It lurches in Tony's chest, coils around the arc reactor that still struggles to prevent shrapnel from pressing into his heart and sending him down into his own Mariana's trench, and knocks air from his lungs. The words pain him like nothing ever had.

"Don't let me fall again. Please, Tony – please."

Tears were present in both of their eyes from pure terror. The realisation of the seriousness of the situation hit them like a tone of bricks, knocking the air out of their lungs. Bucky's body shook from the absolute panic consuming him- and he was forced to shut his eyes ahis breathing became more rapid and uneven.

"You're not going to fall," Tony announces, as if he has any part in making that decision. The tears glistened in his eyes as he continued to reach out. " I've got you,"

He rasps in a breath and leans forward, but he has to recline when his balance dangerously teeters and he locks his fingers down and around the railing he stood on. The structure jolts downward and Bucky cries out again, further anchors his right arm around the metal only seconds away from collapsing. "But I can't reach any further and you can't stay there. You've gotta let go." Tony shifts his grip and manages to reach forward just a bit more. His fingers are so close, just short of curling around the prosthesis just as desperately reaching out towards him.

"You've gotta let go. I've got you. I'm gonna catch you." He tries again, furrows his brows and feels the sweat running down the skin of his spine. He begged for the universe to listen to his cry's- " please ... please let him live!"

For a second, Tony isn't sure of what he was seeing, but the moment passes slowly, and that confirms that his eyes aren't conjuring images that aren't really there.

Bucky's eyes show so much pure emotional terror, it makes Tony's chest tighten, and his heart clench. Even his own reassuring words failed to rid his demoralisation.

At the words, Bucky's face melts into one of calm, deep-felt serenity, and his lips curl up in the faintest of smiles. His eyes watered a little more, staring at tony- his gaze never leaving the brown orbs- hanging on to them like a lifeline.

The crane jolts again but he doesn't cry out- but this time: he just gasps in a shivering breath and keeps his eyes on Tony, chapped lips mouthing out words that were too soft to be heard over the roaring blood in the Stark's ears and the crashes of explosions around them.

"Thank you."

The rig gives way.

Just before Tony can throw himself forward and lock his dirty fingers around Bucky's extended wrist, a crash explodes its sound from above them and sends the fragile platform lurching. The brunettes grip, slicked by sweat and unstable at its very best,- also betrays him, and he's thrown from the platform. His fingers barely manage to brush over Tony's own fingers, the softest touch of skin against metal- just as gravity pulls him down towards the fire beneath them.

and as he falls, his scream bounces off the collapsing metal. Tony's own accompanies it. He wishes ... prays, that the slow motion he's seeing it in is real, and he can still extend his hand down and pull his friend up- but he's gone- as if he wasn't there to begin with. Tony can only stare after him, feel the heat pulsing onto his hot cheeks and shakily breathe in the oxygen working through his lungs.

His chest rose and shrunk as the panic consumed him. The tears slipped down his blood soaked cheeks as he refused to remove his focus from the place he last saw Bucky's form before it was engulfed by the flames.

He was falling apart. He had lost him - he had lost someone else. He had failed his friend.

And For the second time, James Barnes falls, and instead of ice, his abyss is one of fire.

And Tony may have well fell with him.