WinterIron one shots

Somethings wrong with Bucky

Word count:1655

Summery: with Tony and Bucky in a relationship, Bucky goes to get the other rouges with the help of mantis- but steve is convinced something is wrong with Bucky.

————

There was something wrong with Bucky.

For one, he'd been re-named the White Wolf, and though Steve would never fall for something so shallow, something wasn't quite right about him. He may have had Bucky's face and his smirk and his voice, but Steve knew Bucky. They'd been all each other had for years after Tally, Bucky's older sister, had joined the frontlines as a military nurse, and after Rebecca moved away with her husband after Sarah Rogers passed away.

Steve knew Bucky like he knew his left hand, and something-something wasn't right.

During the year apart wherein T'Challa had traded Bucky in for the good graces of the UN council and placed the Avengers on lockdown; Steve had worried and fretted and schemed to get to him, tried every trump card and plea in his repertoire, but the title of Captain America didn't mean much when it was synonymous with vigilante justice and a blatant disregard for the people he'd aimed to save.

No doubt the result of Tony's endless campaign to discredit them. He had a whole team of smartly dressed lawyers and billions to burn, and Steve should've known he'd get T'Challa to turn on them too. A bunch of rich assholes would band together to kick down the little guy, it was so typical.

Forget the fact that Tony and T'Challa had gotten them pardoned and returned to the United States. That didn't matter at all, not when the Avengers weren't fugitives to begin with; they'd done nothing wrong.

Though, Steve could admit that with hindsight, his actions weren't exactly the smartest, but the Accords – the Accords were still wrong. "The safest hands," he repeated often, and to whoever was still willing to listen to reason, "are our own."

Except when those hands were Tony's. It wasn't like he was wrong for saying it, history proved it time and again. Tony couldn't be trusted. Tony wasn't...good.

SHIELD knew it. Howard knew it. Tony had made Ultron, after all.

What was the UN thinking placing Bucky under Tony's care?

Care, Steve internally scoffed, as if Tony knew how to care. He'd successfully pushed everyone away his whole life, wasn't that why all he'd ever been surrounded with were robots? He'd put Wanda, a poor kid who was just trying to do better, under house arrest! And then he'd thrown the rest of the Avengers into the Raft! Clint had a family! None of them deserved to be in there! And Bucky-Bucky hadn't deserved getting stuck with Tony for a whole year.

Look what happened! Bucky was so relieved to be away from Tony that he looked almost happy to be back in Wakanda!

At least, Steve comforted himself, Bucky looked good.

He hadn't shaved recently, but he was groomed, and his hair was cropped short like it had been back when he'd first enlisted. He was dressed in a pair of dark brown pants and an all-black double-breasted jacket and matching boots, and Steve thought for almost a second that the Bucky before him was like the Bucky that was always in his corner in the war. Except there was an obvious metal shine to his fingers, and as he drew closer, the stitching of the word STARK is easy to spot over his heart.

What makes it worse? Bucky doesn't even glance his way.

Instead, he approaches the assembled royalty as well as the Dora and paused to exchange the Wakandan salute like he wasn't the American hero he was. Then, bafflingly, Bucky is motioned forward by the Queen for a kiss on the cheek, jokingly punched in the gut by the Princess before even T'Challa opens his arms to greet Bucky personally in a brotherly embrace.