Chapter Text
Tony isn’t really surprised that Barnes wants to announce who he is after he officially joins the Avengers. He keeps saying ominous shit like “the people should know who’s really defending them” and he knows this whole thing ties into his guilty conscience crap.
But he organizes a press conference anyway. As much as he doesn’t want to feed into Barnes’s self-deprecating delusions of guilt and despair, Barnes is a grown ass man who can make his own grown ass decisions.
Press conferences are a weird and hairy beast. Sometimes they’re the worst things that have ever happened including when he was dying. They definitely were all the time before the Avengers. Now that there’s more people there, sometimes it’s more fun. Like when reporters ask stupid questions and they all just riff off it. Or when they ask really stupid questions, like the time a reporter dared to ask Clint what Natasha was like in the sack and she reduced said reporter to tears. That was great.
This one, he senses, is not going to be one of those times.
And, like in most cases, he’s right.
The reporters are asking all kinds of questions about Barnes’s kill record. Barnes is hunched over his microphone, staring straight down at the table. Wilson has a tight hand on Barnes’s shoulder which Tony’s confident is to keep Barnes from running away. Steve looks like he’s about to kill anybody who gets close to him. Natasha and Clint are lounging casually but with their murder faces on. Bruce looks like he might be trying to meditate through this and Tony’s pretty sure Thor is seconds away from summoning lightning to smite everybody.
They’re all under very specific orders from Steve. It’s going to be rough, sit tight, hang in there, answer the questions politely, don’t cause an incident, let’s just get through this. And while Tony is extremely confident that one of them is going to snap and just start cutting a path through the reporters to the door, Cap’s in charge and he’ll admit (grudgingly) that he usually knows best, so Tony’s willing to ride it out and trust that it’ll all go smoothly.
Then one of the reporters questions Barnes’s loyalty and Tony thinks yeah, no, fuck that.
“You’re all assholes,” he comments, and just like that they’re all focused on him. He sees Steve’s head drop into his hands out of the corner of his eye. “I mean it. Real, unbelievable dickweeds. Honestly, I’m kind of impressed. I’ve met a lot of schmucks in my time, but you guys are something else.”
“Mr. Stark, Mr. Barnes-“
“Sergeant Barnes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sergeant Barnes. Of the 107th.” Tony will not admit to a god damn soul how obsessed he used to be with the Howling Commandoes but he thinks he can pass this one off as common history knowledge. “Address him by his rank.”
Out of the other corner of his eye, he sees Natasha slowly straighten and lean over to pay attention to him. Good. One of them is smart enough to know what’s coming.
“Sergeant Barnes worked for the Russians for over half a century. How can we be sure that his loyalties truly lie with America?”
“I want you to imagine something for me.” Tony knows what he’s talking about. He carefully read over the schematics for the technology used on Barnes. He’s never been more grateful for doing his homework ever. “Imagine you give your life for this country, and then when you think maybe you can get some god damn peace after fighting in a fucking war for a year, a psychotic HYDRA mad scientist drags you- armless, mind you, which probably hurts like a bitch- to his own little Frankenstein’s laboratory and starts fucking with your brain. And it hurts, let me tell you. You know how they do it? Cause I do. They drag gigantic magnets to your head and fire them full of electricity, and they wipe your brain activity. And they do it again and again and again, until all your memories get either wiped for good, or stored in a tiny corner of your brain. Agonizing process, by the way. Most painful thing you’d ever have happen to you in your life.”
Everyone is sitting straight up now, staring at him.
“Sergeant Barnes is not a menace to society, or a double agent. He was a god damn prisoner of war. Everything he did, he was forced to do by his captors. I really don’t think we can give a war hero POW a full plate of shit for that, can we?”
Barnes is slowly straightening from his hunched position, staring at him like he’s never seen him before.
“Mr. Stark,” another reporter starts. “Regardless of Sergeant Barnes’s supposed status as a prisoner of war-“
In the breath the reporter takes before he continues his question, Tony knows several things.
1: This guy is the assholiest asshole here
2: Tony’s gonna have to bring up some shit to shut him down
3: Tony is going to destroy this man’s career
“The fact remains that the man has killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. How are we supposed to-“
“I’ve killed millions.”
One could hear a pin drop, he notes with some satisfaction.
“Mr. Stark-“
“I have. I have built weapons that have killed millions of people. Their blood is on my hands and I can never ever wash it off.” Tony leans back in his chair and props his feet up on the table. “I’m working through all the guilt that comes with that, you know, seeing a shrink, talking it out, whatever. Point is, I knowingly created weapons that killed millions of people. All my own decision, all my own choice. But you don’t give me shit. It’s all ‘ooh, save me, Iron Man! You’re so hot, Iron Man!’”
“I feel like you might be exaggerating that part,” Bruce murmurs, a soft smile on his face. Rogers is watching Tony with that genuine sunshiny happiness that kind of makes Tony want to throw up, be a better person, or punch him on a regular basis.
“Fuck you, Banner, ladies love me. Point is, you don’t give a fuck about my allegiances or kill count. So why do you care about Barnes’s?”
“Mr. Stark-“
Tony is suddenly, abruptly tired. “It doesn’t make a difference to us,” he says wearily. “And it shouldn’t to you.” He kicks off the table and into a standing position and picks up his mic. “Come on guys, I feel like tacos.” He drops the microphone on the table. “Avengers out, bitches.”
Tony strides out of the conference room, ignoring the flashes of cameras and shouted questions, and into the side room that they prepared for the conference in. Maria is standing there, arms folded, looking unimpressed.
“Nicely done,” she says dryly. “That shouldn’t have the press on our backs.”
“I can honestly say that I don’t give even half a fuck.”
“Somehow I am not surprised.”
The other Avengers burst into the room. Steve and Bucky sidle in quietly a moment later.
“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Wilson informs Tony. “And I once saw Clint smack face first into a wall after yelling ‘parkour’ so I know what I’m talking about.”
“Hey, fuck you, Wilson.”
“Tony-“ Steve starts, eyes shining.
“Save it, Spangles. I just didn’t want to stay in the press conference for any longer than I had to and that seemed like a good way to end it.”
Steve’s still grinning like he’s heard good news for the first time. Tony wonders what it says about him as a person that every time Captain America looks at him like he hung the god damn son he wants to sock him. “Thank you, Tony.”
“Cram it, Rogers.” Tony whips out his sunglasses and adjusts them on his face. “You’re buying all of us tacos.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
“Good, I wasn’t asking.”
The Avengers all meander out of the room except for Barnes, who is watching him with an unreadable expression that Tony can only describe as “emotional”. Why do supersoldiers keep staring at him with feelings they’re old men shouldn’t they treat feelings like something to shy away from oh Christ what if Barnes starts to cry Tony is not equipped to deal with crying sort-of-Russian-but-not-really super assassins he wants that in all his interviews from now on he wants it tattooed on his god damn forehead-
“We need to work on your people skills,” Barnes says. Tony blinks.
“My people skills?”
“Yeah. Sorely lacking, as far as I can tell.”
Tony scowls at him to hide his relief. “Listen, asshole, I was doing press junkets when you were still locked in a crate in Russia. I know what I’m doing.”
“Sure you do.”
“Hey, you know what, fuck you; you can buy me a taco too.”