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maukree · 21 days ago

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Masterpost with all parts Welcome back to this increasingly unhinged 616 winteriron timeline that was supposed to be a quick primer for my fic and has somehow turned into a full-blown, too-many-bad-jokes-per-paragraph alternative wiki. If you’re still reading this, you’ve either developed an unhealthy attachment to my mediocre sense of humor, or you’re just curious to see how many things I’ll get wrong, which is fine by me either way.

When we last left off in Part 4:

Tony deleted his entire brain like it was a corrupted zip file because Norman Osborn stole his job as Director of the no longer existing S.H.I.E.L.D. by shooting a dying alien queen on national television.

Bucky, now wearing the stars and stripes (and somehow making it hot—sorry, Steve), is moonlighting as “guy Tony secretly trusts with literally his entire mind.”

Steve is still dead. (But also: comic books. So, not for long.)

Peter is emotionally ping-ponging between every dad figure he’s ever had, while Nat, Sharon, and every other female is there to remind everyone that sometimes our boys do have girlfriends, which is canonically inconvenient, but somewhat relevant.

Everyone is mad at Tony, who is in a coma and technically brain-dead.

Jarvis was a Skrull. Still not over that.

A quick note from your exhausted, ship-crazed tour guide:

This recap series has become so much larger than intended, and I am, frankly, sick of narrating Marvel events designed specifically to injure our already injured blorbos while trying to get to the fucking point. So going forward, we are skipping content unless it is:

Directly relevant to potential winteriron tension/interaction

Supremely shippy for other ships

Too sexy, sad, or stupid not to mention

So. Let’s see how far we can get in this part—from Tony's brain-melted coma to his eventual reboot, to Tony and Bucky finally working together, Steve doing his signature “surprise bitch, I’m back,” and all roads leading to Fear Itself, because Marvel can never just let anyone heal in peace, and at least I’m here for it.

New Avengers (2004–2010) #48–#60 (ish)

While Tony is getting ready for his Sleeping Beauty arc, Bucky gathers the New Avengers crew in Steve’s old place and tries very hard to turn it into his own MCU-style Avengers compound where they all live, train, and pine for each other.

Now, since we’re aggressively cutting content unless it’s relevant to ships or breakdowns, the important thing that happens here is this: Bucky and Peter are finally in the same room. That’s it. That’s the post.

Okay, fine, a little more: those five seconds of on-screen interaction that birthed an entire winterspider ship get canon support here. Peter’s there. Bucky’s there. They talk. There are panels. They breathe the same air. I blacked out slightly from excitement, but trust—it happened.

Plot-wise, Luke and Jessica are off having the worst parenting arc imaginable, because Skrulls kidnapped their baby and everyone (and I do mean everyone) is running around 616 trying to beat intel out of any remaining lizard still in hiding. The power of friendship prevails, the baby is found (yay), and in the process we learn Bucky has allegedly never been close to a baby before (?), and Peter announces—with a lot of surprise—that babies don’t actually smell bad, which honestly makes it sound like he’s never met one either. Boys, please.

Bucky’s base officially gets named Avengers Hideout, Bronx, plot is plotting toward Siege (ugh, another Event), but the key takeaways are:

Peter keeps calling him “Bucky Cap” like it’s a cute nickname. Bucky hates it and keeps asking him to quit it.

Peter unmasks in record time—doesn’t learn from his mistakes, obviously—because he wants Bucky to see how pretty he is.

Jessica straight-up admits (in front of her husband, no less) that she was totally in love with Peter in high school on the account of him being so pretty just to point it out to Bucky, and I just… yeah.

Everyone keeps sitting down for family dinners while still wearing their uniforms, and this has so many found-family vibes it needs shit written about this group specifically yesterday. I would, but… nobody would read it.

Oh—and Issue #55 puts Peter on top of Bucky on the cover. Physically. As in: on him. And that’s the moment I briefly forgot this was a winteriron timeline and started vibrating at frequencies only my dog could hear.

But circling back: two seconds after unmasking, Peter has a small meltdown about it (relatable), doesn’t trust anyone, and wants to crawl back into the safety of full-body spandex. That said, he’s still on the team (Bucky’s real pretty too), they act as illegal Avengers, do some adventuring with Dr. Strange, fight Osborn’s evil version of Avengers, nearly die a bunch of times during cathartic superhero shit, Bucky gets to yell “Avengers Assemble,” and Peter pouts because he never gets to say it.

The whole stretch of this is basically winterspider fanservice in disguise, and I, for one, am not complaining. But I should probably stop thinking or talking about it before I completely defect from winteriron and write 80k of Peter stammering while Bucky Cap cleans his gun.

Captain America: Reborn (2009) #1–6

Essentially the mini-run where Steve returns to Sharon through the power of eye contact with Bucky.

After all this build-up and me repeating “Steve is dead” about a hundred times, he was not so much dead as he was... time-stuck? Yeah. Marvel got tired of resurrection by cloning, so we get a super special time gun that launched Steve into his own greatest hits playlist. As the run goes on and other things are happening, Steve is bouncing around his own past like a patriotic screensaver, reliving key moments of his life on an endless loop. (It’s philosophical for like five pages and then becomes deeply boring, very fast.)

In the actual present-day plot everyone suddenly remembers that Steve was hot, important, symbolically useful, and very marketable. So, naturally, Osborn wants him, would love to slap a fresh coat of fascism on the shield, and trot him out like a rebranded action figure next to his other evil Avengers. To make this happen, Osborn teams up with Crossbones and Sin, and they start executing their weekend-at-Bernie’s plan to put Red Skull into Steve’s body.

Bucky, meanwhile, just wants his other man back. For normal, definitely not gay reasons.

What Tony is doing exactly during this specific run is a bit… unclear? Captain America: Reborn #1 dropped in July 2009, which lines up with Tony’s World’s Most Wanted, so he’s either just starting his “on the run with a dying processor” arc or already napping through it all, too medically unconscious to be helpful. If you know what happens first, congrats. I don’t care. Steve’s back by the time Tony wakes up, so let’s not split hairs.

Anyway, the bad guys get to Steve first and yank him out of the time vortex. They plug Red Skull into him like a USB drive of evil, Steve wakes up a bit wrong, throws Bucky around a little, but fear not: Stucky prevails.

That thing happens. You know the thing. The thing where Steve sees Bucky’s pretty face and immediately has an emotional aneurysm. The Red Skull is yeeted out, Sin takes a near-fatal injury to her face (which we’re calling a literal and metaphorical facelift), and is carted off to be annoying—but now also creepy-looking and a lot less hot—in some later arc.

I am sure it will not surprise anyone to find out that Steve spends the final pages of this run brooding on the roof instead of celebrating because he’s allergic to joy and addicted to foreshadowing.

Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) Stark: Disassembled #20–24

(Tony commits medical fraud on himself while his boyfriends squabble over his coma body)

So, post-World’s Most Wanted—triggered by Secret Invasion, public disgrace, and Bucky deciding “hey, maybe I’ll just walk away from you with everyone else for dramatic effect”—we kick things off with Tony being officially, clinically, but not quite spiritually bricked. The issue opens with him lying in a bed like a hot paperweight while Bucky, Nat, Maria, Pepper, and Thor stand around—Bucky specifically looking way too emotionally engaged for someone who hasn’t been banging Tony in secret all along.

“We bring him back. We have to.”

And may I gently remind the class that, even if we set aside my unrelenting ship brain for five whole seconds, so far in the canon continuity we have:

Tony giving Bucky the shield and making him Captain America within an hour after Bucky tries to murder-kill him

Tony designing him a suit (collab-style, no less) and protecting him from the government

No joint panels for X amount of time until battle with Skrull

Tony sending the digital ghost of himself to Bucky, labeled “do not open unless you miss me”

And yet Marvel’s official stance is: nah they barely interacted, so you don't get those panels.

Excuse me?

Then why the everloving fuck is Bucky, presumably a nearly-stranger, in this arc at all and acting like he shares Tony’s pillow every night? It’s like they want you to fill in the blanks here with shippy shit just so you keep paying for their comic books in the hopes of seeing some established heroes finally come out.

Anyway. While Tony did nuke his entire brain to protect Peter (and, like, some other heroes, presumably—but mostly Peter, even though he has no clue how pretty he is at this point), Tony, being Tony, obviously left behind a reboot plan. And that plan includes a totally chill, completely medically sound procedure that requires:

Extracting Pepper’s arc reactor, which she has for reasons

Putting it in Tony’s chest (for the first time ever in 616, so this is his MCU origin finally catching up)

Zapping him with Thor’s lightning, because we’re just skipping every actual defibrillator in the hospital

Using Steve’s shield because of symbolism

Totally normal ER behavior. Ten out of ten doctors recommend rooftop resurrection. But we won’t question comic book logic, because if we did that, well, why the fuck are we here?

The plan is solid, let’s go with that, but there is a minor hiccup with Pepper. She’s understandably cranky—her husband Happy is very dead, and Tony had to pull the plug on him during Civil War, which sucks. Still, the moment she hits us with “why does he get to be saved?” I have to step in and say: girl. He gave you this arc reactor to save your life, your own flying suit, and your CEO badge, not to mention an orgasm the last time you’ve interacted, unless you faked it, but that's on you. At least let the man be electrocuted into consciousness without sounding a bit ungrateful.

Which Pepper does, of course, but only after Steve comes back from being freshly de-time-looped and convinces her to help. One guy already sporting a suit of Captain America by Tony’s deathbed wasn’t enough, clearly, but Tony was always an overachiever.

They take Tony to the roof of the hospital (because that’s where all high-stakes neurological procedures happen), and Thor tries to zap him back to life, but this unfortunately doesn’t work immediately. Bucky is there, by the way, hovering next to his head like a sad war widow after helping carry Tony out, and is essentially drawn just about not looking down at his face like he’s memorizing it. Again I ask: why can’t winteriron be canon? Like… gimme a What If, Marvel. What If for popular fanfiction ships would slap.

So they try, but Tony, in true diva form, is like, no thanks, not waking up today, which is valid, because emotional hurt/comfort was not invented by fanfiction.

It takes a lot of fuckery and a few comic book issues to eventually get him to wake up, and Bucky is, sadly, not there when it finally happens, but neither is Steve (suspiciously). I am going to have to assume here that they both stepped away to get a quick break before returning to his side, and possibly shared a shower to conserve some water.

The day is saved by Dr. Strange, who rolls into town with “Trust me, I am a doctor” dialogue, which never gets old.

Boom, Tony wakes up, the arc is over, but what follows is just… devastating. The arc ends with us realizing that he doesn’t remember Civil War, doesn’t remember fighting Steve or losing him, doesn’t remember being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Secret Invasion. And, obviously, after all of that… doesn’t remember Bucky anymore.

Bucky, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. But listen: I believe in you. If there’s one constant in the fandom, it’s that Tony Stark will fall in love, given literally any opportunity and no matter the roadblocks. And, yay, you didn’t actually snap his mom’s neck in this one, so you’ve totally got this. Go, ruin him a second time. For love. Come on, honey, time to move in together.

Which they do. They do move in together. I mean, okay, technically they are both using Avengers Tower as Avengers after this (or about to), and I’m not actually clear on if they both live in it, but we’re gonna assume they do. Yes? I honestly haven’t checked, as it’s been a while, but this is your golden era of heroes (fact), we have an Avengers team in the Tower again, so let’s not dig too much into whether Bucky is ‘crashing’ with Steve for old time’s sake or not. Cool? Cool. So, it’s been established—possibly in canon, and definitely in this house—that Bucky moved in, either into his own suite in the Tower or into Tony’s.

BUT before we get to the domestic vibes and unresolved sexual tension, we have to speedrun through one more crossover Event (I know, I’m exhausted too). Don’t worry, I promised lore restraint, and for once, I’m keeping that promise. Because Siege (2009) #1–4 is blessedly short and dumb in a fun way.

So here’s what happens just after Tony wakes up without Extremis, with an arc reactor and no memories of Bucky:

Asgard is hovering over some random Oklahoma field.

Loki and Osborn go full bitch collab and convince the government that Asgard is a threat.

Steve, Bucky, Peter, and some other warm bodies show up to unfuck the situation before it becomes World War Norse.

Ares and Sentry have a deeply unchill throwdown, and Sentry tears him into ribbons. It’s gross. Ares is super dead.

Tony gets invited to the fight while still running on maybe 3% battery and a single juice box. They hand him a wrench and his old suit and say, “get in, loser, we’re going to war.”

Asgard is blown to smithereens because Tony is taking his time, but we’re not going to blame it on him, for once.

Peter gets to punch Osborn for harassing him across the last six events and ignoring the restraining order.

When Tony does show up, he turns a helicarrier into a bullet to take down Sentry, who gets a bit upset that he went all murdery again (Yes, there is a panel. Yes, it’s as stupid-cool as it sounds. Shut up and let it happen.)

Sentry, over his own edgy nonsense, begs to die, and Thor respectfully flies him into the sun for a nap before he gets resurrected in some other event.

And then—most importantly—Steve gives up the shield. The basic tone of this is: “Nah, Bucky, honey, you’ve got this. I’m busy being promoted by the U.S. government to superhero dad-in-chief now that both S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.A.M.M.E.R. are gone, so keep the shield and, while you’re at it, keep Tony. I’m over brunettes and going to shack up with Sharon for a bit.” (Which we are totally cool with, since—I cannot state this enough—we love Sharon, and this is a winteriron timeline.)

So, the end of this event kicks off: Steve being in charge of them all, metaphorically blessing their union, which leads to Tony and Bucky being officially on the same team. Working together. In close proximity. In the Tower. With shared living spaces, presumably.

Before they fully move in together to set the scene for perfect pining, we also get a pit stop in Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) #25, where we find out for sure that the backup Tony left was pre-Extremis. So, factory reset, for which the man is pretty much called lazy, because if there’s one thing you’d think you’d keep backups of, it’s your brain, but alas.

It takes only two of Marvel’s allegedly smartest men—Reed “I ditch my family for Tony during Civil War” Richards and Tony “I fucked up my brain for love” Stark—to build the Bleeding Edge suit, which now lives inside Tony, and honestly, I can’t believe Reed/Tony isn’t more of a thing as far as shippy shit goes, because they’ve got that bisexual genius mutual-respect-disaster dynamic, and it is right there. But I digress.

The rest of Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) is... not really my fave. Tony tries to fix his reputation, build Stark Resilient from the rubble of his company (idk, maybe Pepper not wanting him to wake up was because she drove SI into the ground, down to one helicopter and the logo), and revolutionize clean energy. But unless it’s relevant to Fear Itself or involves Bucky being lovingly exasperated while Tony does something reckless, I’m not covering the rest of this run. We’ve got enough emotional ruin on the itinerary already. Onward.

We make another quick stop at Captain America (2004–2011) #600–605—but first, a PSA: after issue #50, Marvel smashed the legacy renumber button. Who the fuck knows why, honestly. Timeline-wise: this specific arc happens before Bucky joins the Avengers. So, while Tony is doing his thing, re-downloading trauma into his shiny new Bleeding Edge brain, Bucky yeets himself back into solo plotlines for just a second. The plotlines happening in #600 and #601–605 are those that are too stupid not to mention.

Captain America (2004–2011) #600 is essentially Vampire Bullshit (yes, really).

This issue is a flashback inside a flashback and is set during the time when Bucky was secretly working with Fury during Civil War. Bucky sees surveillance footage of Tony and Steve’s friendship break-up, immediately decides Tony is too sexy to be such a fucking idiot, and has a sadboi spiral about a vampire mission from the good ol’ days with Steve for no reason. Because, oh yeah, in 616 we have full-ass Dracula lore, and nobody warned me about it before I got invested. I am only mentioning this because people are into vampires, and the art is fire.

Captain America (2004–2011) #601–605 is more of a filler too, but it has a ton of SamBucky vibes, and there’s some wild shit buried in the nonsense.

The plot of the arc is that Steve’s wackass clone—the one who’s been running around pretending to be the original—is back and has decided he is absolutely the real Captain America. And, logically, if you’re the Real Cap, you need two things:

Your own Bucky

Some sort of epic standoff at a historical place (in this case, Hoover Dam, which Evil Clone wants to blow up)

I’ve seen fanfic with less cracky premises, but let’s not get into that. When actual Bucky and Sam show up to put an end to the clone, they immediately get kidnapped, because of course. Clone Steve forces Bucky to dress up in his old Bucky suit (not the sexy kind of forced dress-up, tragically), and there’s a moment of “haha, look at the symbolism” before Bucky’s like “absolutely fucking not,” and some fighting happens. Sam gets his hero moment, Bucky ends things messily, and the clone gets his brains ventilated.

SamBucky shippers, you’ve got a lot of material here, so go read this. Do I personally care? Not unless they’re both thinking about Tony while it’s happening.

Now, important footnote that has absolutely no business making me feel things but does anyway: Nick Fury tinkers with Bucky’s metal arm and changes it to look and feel human. Because Natasha complained it was too cold. That’s right—this man is getting tune-ups because his girlfriend wants him to be warmer during post-mission snuggles. To which I say: boo.

I mean, sure, thoughtful gestures are fine, but the arm is iconic, and Tony would never complain about it. Tony would absolutely be into the cold-metal aesthetic. He’d imply or straight-up admit that he wants to do indecent things to it. He’d design a docking port, if needed. He’d name it. The whole “warm and flesh-colored” moment doesn’t even last too many issues, because readers (and the artists, probably) were like, “bring back the chrome daddy murder limb, thanks.”

In all seriousness, Bucky doesn’t actually spend a lot of time as an Avenger, because, let’s face it, he’s infinitely sexier as the Winter Soldier, but he does officially join the team alongside Tony, Peter, Thor, Clint, Wolverine and Spider-Woman, and dutifully, suspiciously consistently hovers around Tony in Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6. Does he do much during these issues? Debatable. Is he 100% looming like a broody protector from a soulmate AU? Absolutely.

But as it stands now, Tony and Bucky officially kick off Avengers Vol. 4 together, which means all those “Bucky is an Avenger” fanfics are comic book canon, babes. Whether those fanfic authors knew it or just manifested it through pure gay desperation, they were right. And while winteriron overlap here only lasts one arc, and it’s very sad that it is only one arc, that just means there’s more unsupervised shippy headcanon space between the panels for us to thrive in. Bless.

Plot-wise the arch is a bit… meh. Let’s speedrun it too.

Steve, now promoted to Grand Poobah of All Capes, pulls a bunch of new teams together and sticks my favorite disaster OT3—Tony, Bucky, and Peter (plus Clint, but we’re not calling it an OT4 yet, calm down)—onto one team. Then he has the nerve to tell Tony he believes in him, totally trusts him, but, like, also he’s not leading the team. That honor goes to... Maria Hill. Which. Okay. Sure. Let’s put the only non-super hero in charge here just so Tony doesn’t feel forgiven yet.

Before Tony can spiral about it, Kang busts in from the future like a knockoff Doctor Who villain he is and starts ranting about how the team's future kids are ruining everything. Whose kids, do you ask? Great question. Tony and Bucky’s? Peter’s and literally anyone’s? No idea. But the plot is essentially a “spin the bottle of disaster lineage” situation, and Kang’s solution is to blackmail them into saving the timeline or something by using a doomsday device Tony once thought of but never built. So, pretty standard.

The arc itself includes time-travel shenanigans that I won’t pretend to understand. Something something paradox. The team splits, paradoxes paradox, battles happen, and eventually they punch the right number of problems to save the future. Yay, teamwork. Whatever.

But the shippy content is shippy as shit, for real. There is touching. There is Tony telling Peter he could kiss him while simultaneously Tony doing his “I’m the smartest bitch alive” routine while clearly trying to impress someone while showing off too much skin.

I’m going to call out specific panels next because they’re so choice, but just know this: Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6 is short but shippy.

Okay, okay, the ones above are related to what I’ve described already in regards to Steve. A tasteful sampler for Stony shippers and to confirm the plot. And I’m not gonna post every single panel of Bucky lurking in Tony’s personal space (mostly because there’s an image limit and I do respect the platform… a little). BUT. I am gonna drop the best bits below. The hovering. The loitering. The tragic staring.

Fine, it’s not that direct, as if, but yes, the following selection should be considered evidence_for_court_dot_png. Screenshots for the soul. Brought to you by someone who has stared at these pages long enough to astral project into the Tower HVAC system where Bucky is 1000% hiding between missions, watching Tony solder wires and trying not to feel things.

Exhibit A: They finish each other’s sentences. Yeah. I know. It’s crumbs. It’s microscopic. It’s blink-and-miss-it-tier. But when Marvel gives you nothing to work with but mutual trauma of losing Steve and two panels of syncopated dialogue, it’s not nothing. That’s foreplay. We are starving in this house, okay? Let me romanticize it in peace.

Or like—okay, maybe we’re not totally starving on the Starker front here (don’t yell at me, I contain multitudes), because at one point Tony’s suit just gives up on life, he starts free-falling like a hot brick, and someone—either Bucky or Clint, the art’s unclear but my delulu ass knows it’s Bucky—screams “TONY!” out of a hole in the wall instead of, y’know, fighting the actual villains. Priorities.

Peter, a hero that he is, immediately goes full-action scramble to save Tony mid-air while Tony, mid-plummet, casually calls him “kid” (identity porn alert), and then says, “I could kiss you.”

Sir.

Peter, to his credit, declines on the grounds of delicate skin, which: fair, but also, babe… Tony would definitely shave for you. Probably exfoliate too. I promise he could make it work.

I mean, maybe Peter refuses because deep down he knows he can’t come between one true love. He sees Bucky, sticking out from a wall hole in all that glorious anxiety, and he understands the assignment. Either that or he’s just playing hard to get. I respect the drama either way, can’t help it. I am so close to shipping all four of my boys, Clint included, in any combinations. Think about it. Winteriron (duh), Starker (must), Winterhawk (practically canon), Ironhawk (I am so tempted) and, of course, Winterspider (love). I digress again, sorry.

This one’s more of a filler panel compilation, yeah, but it still delivers. Our boys are in sync, working together like they’ve definitely coordinated some covert tactical positions before (interpret that however you want). Bucky, once again, is framed so delicately on purpose, making sure Tony tells them what he needs from him and Peter. It’s the casual “I’ve got your back” energy from a semi-stranger, y’know. As soon as this mission’s done, they should all just—you know. Fuck.

Wait—no, sorry, wrong tab. I meant: Bucky and Tony should fuck. Peter can watch. Or, like, sit in another room and wait to be invited. Whatever works for the perverts reading this, I’m not judging and only reporting the vibes.

Obviously, I’m closing out the Avengers Vol. 4 evidence folder with this gem, because yes—it has touching. As in, Tony just got a little shaken and fucked-up (as one does), and who’s right there leaning in all concerned? That’s right: Bucky “I’ll die for him” Barnes, hand on Tony’s bicep like it’s muscle memory. He’s saying “Here,” which—okay, on paper? Innocent. But in context? It’s soft. It’s intimate. It’s “Sweetheart, you okay?” levels of tender.

Let’s assume for a minute that I’m not a full-blown ship obsessed crazy person here foaming at the mouth and reading into every panel like it’s a biblical text, but even then—what the actual fuck goes through a writer or artist’s mind when they’re like, “yeah let’s frame this with Bucky gently bicep-gripping Tony like he’s checking if the love of his life is still breathing”? Huh?

Tell me with your chest that isn’t deliberate. I dare you. I’m not going to insist it’s a declaration of love disguised as casual concern, but I am saying this is basically the comics equivalent of Bucky whispering “I’ve got you” in a fanfic and then carrying Tony bridal-style out of frame. So jot that down.

Vibration intensifies.

Alright, now that we’ve lovingly and obsessively established that Tony and Bucky were officially on the same Avengers team (canonically sharing air, a fridge full of Red Bull, and Peter), and that this blessed overlap gave us just enough panel crumbs to construct an entire alternate reality fueled by ship vibes and bicep touches, let’s look at what happens after.

While Tony remains on the team after that sweet little team-up moment in Avengers (2010–2012) #1–6, Bucky straight-up ghosts. Poof. No warning. One minute he’s leaning into Tony like a man who wants to be electrocuted back to life with him, and the next, he’s vanished.

Now, I don’t know exactly why his run as Bucky Cap-slash-Avenger was cut shorter than my will to live during Civil War and Secret Invasion re-reads. Maybe it’s because Steve not being Cap wasn't working out for the marketing team. Maybe it’s—yes—because the Winter Soldier aesthetic is just too hot to retire permanently (fair). Or maybe Marvel realized Bucky can only pretend to be emotionally stable for like six issues before the PTSD starts leaking out of the boots, and if he keeps sharing a frame with Tony, the bicep touches will get out of hand.

Whatever the reason, we pivot into something incredibly juicy.

Bucky’s got some personal shit to handle. And by “personal shit” I don’t mean repressing the urge to steal Sharon’s man in Captain America (2004–2011), but being put on trial for war crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier while brainwashed by evil communists. Not gonna lie, it’s one of my favorite arcs. Fuck, the angst is unbearable and hurts so good.

Okay, so Captain America (2004–2011) #606–610 is not a filler arc, and I know I’ve cried wolf on that like ten times already, but for real—this one actually slaps. It’s got plot, it’s got emotional devastation, and it’s got Zemo crawling out of whatever ratty purple monologue hole he’s been lurking in just to make Bucky’s life worse.

Now, Zemo’s beef with Bucky is big. Like, giant man-child grudge levels. And this beef ends with Zemo outing Bucky as the Winter Soldier. Globally. Just absolutely fucking blows his cover sky-high. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows. And it quickly becomes a problem for many people—Tony included—who now has to defend the decision he doesn’t remember making to offer Bucky the shield.

Captain America (2004–2011) #611–615, or The Trial of Captain America should’ve been called ‘Let’s Emotionally Eviscerate Bucky Barnes for Five Issues Straight While Tony Has a Slow-Burn Breakdown in the Background’.

I’m gonna be real with you, this arc is fucking devastating. Like, genuinely painful. Not "oh no the plot is bad", but the "I'm gonna lie face down on the floor for 20 minutes after reading this and think about metal arms and unspoken love". Bucky gets thrown in prison, Tony nerfs his arm down to “just a guy” strength levels so they don’t take it from him entirely, and everything spirals from there like we knew it would.

This arc is so good, Marvel actually dropped a whole omnibus just for it. Character deep dives. Legal drama. Violence and introspection in tasteful grayscale. The court of public opinion don’t give a single flying fuck, and as far as the media is concerned, Bucky’s guilty before he even sets foot in the courtroom, because who cares about being a weaponized trauma victim when there’s a sexy scandal headline to run.

Tony is out here defending Bucky at Avengers meetings, going toe-to-toe with Clint like “Hey maybe don’t be a bitch about my sad ex-Winter Soldier boyfriend, thanks.” And you know Clint’s only mad because he sees it too. He’s like “wow, Tony’s very emotionally involved in this, should I be jealous?” (Answer: yes, always.)

Jokes aside, while Bucky is trying very hard to rot in a jail cell with dignity, Sin is out here popping up out of the woodwork again. She picks up a new himbo sidekick, goes full daddy-issues-core and decides she’s going to be the next Red Skull. She now also looks the part and there are too many panels of her making out with no face on. Ugh. She kidnaps Nat and Sam since they are Bucky’s support humans, and lures him into escaping custody for a rescue mission.

Bucky, of course, breaks out, saves the people he loves, and then walks his pretty ass right back to jail. Voluntarily. Because he wants to face the consequences. Because he wants to take responsibility. Because he’s like “yeah I was brainwashed and had zero free will but I still feel like I deserve to be punished for it” and if you’re not sobbing yet, you’re stronger than me.

Oh, and just when the trial actually goes his way—somehow—after he literally pleads guilty, and they sentence him to 20 years with time served (read: “you can go now, sweetie”), he gets deported to Russia. Because they already ran their own shady little trial in secret and decided they want their war weapon back. So the arc ends with our boy being sent to a fucking gulag just as he finds the will to want to be free, like he hasn’t suffered enough.

Captain America (2004–2011) #616–619 is where Bucky goes to an awful-awful Russian place, mentally dies a bit, and Tony is mentioned twice so I had to read it twice.

So, America yeets Bucky back to Russia like he’s a slightly defective product, and now he’s stuck in a gulag, getting punched for sport while slowly dissociating into the cold steel of his trauma. Fun? Hell no. It is bleak. Bucky’s not doing great. There’s blood. There’s pain. There’s soul-crushing monotony and flashbacks to violence, in addition to real-time violence. And just to twist the knife, there are not one but two separate mentions that “Iron Man” might visit—as in, “Hey, maybe your hot billionaire will come get you out?” (almost). And then... crickets. Tony, come pick up your future husband from the Russian fight club before I scream.

Tony, for reasons unknown, doesn’t visit. But Sharon and Nat, being badass motherfuckers, hop on a plane to go figure out what the fuck is happening in Russia, because someone has to. Steve, for his part, is doing his own thing in the U.S., but I’m going to go ahead and headcanon that he’s spending this time babysitting Tony, making him tea, and deleting Russian headlines from the Stark servers.

Anyway, our boy Bucky is spending most of his days getting his ass handed to him in pit fights while wearing the same sad grey hoodie of despair. He’s isolated, miserable, and yet still hot enough to make the snow in that Siberian awfulness melt. He’s also being reminded that oh yeah—he trained a handful of elite sleeper agents to infiltrate the U.S., and they’re still out there, frozen like evil murder popsicles. And if he doesn’t help stop them, someone else is gonna wake them up and let the body count begin, which he eventually will do in his Winter Soldier comic book run (which I am also not covering here, but I might do a from Winter Soldier to Revolution timeline, just for fun, because you all need to know how he gets Alpine, at some point in the future.)

In present, however, Nat’s like “fuck this, I’m done waiting for my bestie” (and I’m using his words here, because Bucky keeps calling her his best friend every ten minutes), so she punches some bad guys, wrecks some shit, and assists Bucky in breaking himself out. The whole arc is God-tier content, cross my heart. I am here for the quiet devastation in Bucky’s eyes, the offhand Tony mentions, and the subtle, soul-shattering reminder that no matter how far he runs, the Winter Soldier still owns his nightmares.

Anyway, this arc ends with the jailbreak, and, just for drama, let's say that the real prison is the guilt Bucky carries. And the other real prison is me, in hell, because Marvel refuses to just let him be held by a certain genius. But we’ll get there. If not in comic books, then in fanfiction.

So… Fear Itself. The end of the road for this entire recap. The tragic gay crescendo. The dramatic mic drop that Marvel fucked at our collective heads just when things were getting soft.

If you’ve been here since the beginning (blink twice if you need help), you now know this whole cursed journey from Extremis/The Man Out of Time to this point is essentially two parallel, occasionally intersecting trauma arcs.

Fear Itself is the moment everything unravels again, beautifully and horrifically. It’s not just about Bucky dying (kinda) or about the ship angst that comes with that (although, hi, yes, that’s here and I’m sobbing into my keyboard). It’s about him stepping out from under Steve’s red-white-and-blue shadow, finally—not to replace him, not to cosplay patriotism—but to carry his own name and start working on his own legacy to eventually ditch being Winter Soldier and become Revolution waaaay later. It’s also about Tony breaking his sobriety for… reasons.

To me this Marvel event doesn’t just close out a plotline, but very much closes a loop. Fear Itself is where my fic (last plug) taps out, too—because yes, obviously, I take some creative liberties and give these blorbos a happy ending.

Gather ‘round, kids. It’s lore time. Once upon a clusterfuck, Odin locked away a spooky little number under the ocean. And then, slightly less once upon a time, Red Skull decided to help Hitler win the war the old-fashioned way, flexed a casual genocide of a thousand of Namor’s people to summon some eldritch hammer of power, which immediately crashed down to Earth in a very normal "Hi, I’m here to ruin everything" fashion.

Unfortunately for Red Skull at the time, he couldn’t lift it, so this evil hammer just sat there in Antarctica until Red Skull’s deeply unwell daughter Sin shows up, picks it up, gets a makeover that does nothing to fix her very unsettling face, becomes Skadi, the herald and unlocks the real boss of the game: The Serpent. Also known as Odin’s creepy brother, also known as the OG All-Father, also known as Evil Sea Dad. And in Fear Itself #1 Odin takes one look at this cosmic horror comeback, goes “SHIT,” slaps Thor so hard he needs therapy, packs his sparkly god bags, and hauls Asgard’s ass off the planet, leaving the rubble behind like, “Good luck, Midgard, I’m out, don’t @ me,” dipping the second things got spicy just as Tony was going to use Stark Resilient to build them a new home instead of the one destroyed in the Siege and create some jobs for hard-working Americans in the process.

In Fear Itself #2, the Serpent chucks a bunch more evil hammers at Earth, and these babies are pure apocalyptic energy designed to possess anyone who can pick them up with unresolved rage issues. Juggernaut is like “yoink, this is mine now,” Hulk gets one too and turns into the green embodiment of a nuclear anxiety attack. Titania, bless her scary wife soul, grabs one and says “I’m built for this,” and points her hubby in the direction of his. Others follow, but you get the idea. Serpent goes full Oprah, giving out divine rage steroids: You get a hammer! You get a hammer! Fuck you, everything’s on fire! Earth is then immediately on fire, and humanity’s general response is: “Uhhh hey Avengers? Y’all up?”

Fear Itself #3 is the issue that neither I nor Tony are ready to fucking process. Like, if you’ve got coping mechanisms, good for you, but I personally had to go and hug my doggo after reading it for the recap, and I will be purging my phone of those screenshots as soon as I post this.

Here’s the quick and dirty: Odin, in peak absentee space-dad form, locks Thor off-world because he disagrees with his grand plan—to burn Earth to stop the Serpent—and I’m not even going to get into that because my blood pressure is already high. On Earth, the Thing picks up one of those evil rage-hammers, but this issue is really all about Bucky.

Bucky, fresh off his Siberian trauma vacation, is back in the field, back in the stars and stripes, trying his best to pretend he's fine and definitely not still bleeding guilt from every pore or missing Tony. He rolls up as Captain America to fight Sin, who, and I say this with my whole chest, is the worst. She goes on a rant about how it's her destiny to kill him (whatever you say, twat), and then that rotting cheeto of a fascist feral child rips off Bucky’s metal arm, guts him, and beats him to death with her hammer.

I can’t even be funny about it. I mean, I will, but just know I am heartbroken, even though the dying doesn’t stick, obviously. Tony’s not on the page when it happens, but he feels it in his soul, okay? Somewhere, wherever he is at that moment, something slips from his hand and he looks off into the middle distance, because he just knows he’s lost the one person who never asked him to be anyone but himself.

That’s where we’re at. Bucky gets murdered by a Nazi in a shitty bondage outfit. Fuck you, Sin, and fuck you, Marvel, for making me go through this.

As a side note, the evil hammer powers amplify the supers who picked them up, so there’s death, carnage and all-in-all shit all over the world, with people going crazy, dying by buckets, riots, looters, etc, the Serpent feeding on fear. But who cares, Bucky’s dead.

Okay so, Fear Itself #4 is where I throw my hands in the air, say “fuck it,” and recap it alongside Invincible Iron Man (2008–2012) #503–509—because even though Bucky is dead for now, the ship goggles are still on and I refuse to take them off. Half the ship might be six feet under as far as the reader is concerned at this point, but sorry MCU, your impact was weak, and that never stopped us before.

Now, in the main event issue, we find Tony standing over Bucky’s very dead, very ruined body, and he’s got the helmet on. Which is… interesting. Because in basically every other important conversation Tony has, that helmet is off. The consensus here should be that if he takes it off, we’ll all see the tears and collapse. So yeah. He’s got it on. He’s grieving. And yes, we noticed.

Nat is openly crying over Bucky’s body too, our girl has range, Steve picks up the shield, and Thor, fresh off being grounded by his shitty space dad, shows up to help punch things. But the real butterfly effect of Bucky getting bludgeoned to death is this: Tony relapses straight after. Total coincidence. He sacrifices his sobriety as soon as he leaves the room Bucky’s in, pours a drink in the middle of a ruined world, and prays to Odin since, according to him, he’s giving him the only valuable thing he’s got left.

Eventually, Odin (who is, in fact, also the worst) transports Tony off-world to a magical forge because sure, let the sad tin man cry into the bottle surrounded by dwarves while he tries to make some weapons to help the Avengers beat the Serpent, and maybe he’ll feel better. He doesn’t. He angsts the whole time, but he does build new weapons for the Avengers, and at the end of this arc he shows up back on Earth in a new, shiny, spiky Iron Man suit, still under the impression Bucky is dead.

Next slide, please. Let’s, for the moment, stop being heartbroken because of Bucky and get heartbroken for other reasons.

Fear Itself #5–7 is three issues of watching the Avengers get their collective asses handed to them while everything explodes and hope gets dropkicked into the sun. Like, things are bad. So bad that even Peter—sweet sunshine boy, human serotonin dispenser, the kid who once tried to high-five a symbiote—starts having a crisis because he thinks they’re actually gonna lose. And when Peter loses hope, that’s when you know we’re absolutely fucked.

For a bit, Steve and Thor are out here trying to hold the line, but Steve’s shield gets smashed, and Thor takes on like five rage-hammered kaiju at once and barely crawls away with internal organs still attached. There’s a whole lotta death in these issues, and when Tony shows up, decked out in a magic-ass suit made of grief, dragging along weapons for the rest of the team, and Odin gives Thor his Ragnarok sword and armor before the final fight, Thor uses it to end the Serpent—only to go down himself like the noble himbo he is.

Technically a victory, though Sin is alive to cause trouble in some other arcs, but it’s giving zero joy. No joy to be had at the end of this event. Unless, y’know, you count Fear Itself #7.1 that—phew—confirms that Bucky is alive.

No way a babe as hot as this gets to die. Not on Nat and Fury’s watch. In a flashback, we learn that just before Tony walks into the room with his “My God… it’s true” entrance, Nat and Fury injected Bucky with a serum. In fairness, it wasn’t guaranteed to work, and they needed Steve back in the game and figured traumatizing him into reclaiming the shield was a solid strategy. Normal friend stuff.

So yeah. Bucky technically flatlined, but got better. Was it sketchy? Extremely. Did they tell Steve right away? Absolutely not. When Fury eventually spills, Steve punches him. Repeatedly. They say their goodbyes, Bucky gives Steve the spotlight back, and slinks off to his own solo title, while Tony doesn’t find out Bucky’s alive for so long. Unfair, if you ask me. Perfect shippy blind spot for fanfics, if you also ask me.

I’m not here for canon. You’re not here for canon. We’re here for the sweet, unhinged dopamine injection of winteriron endgame fix-it fanfic based on MCU anyway, okay? That’s the content we deserve. That’s the timeline we manifest. Or something. Idk, I’ve been losing the plot for the past 20k of this recap, and can’t think of anything else to say that doesn’t end up being a massive rant about how Tony and Bucky are soulmates, damn everything.

And that, folks, brings us to the end, since we are skipping that rant. I wish I could give you a chirpy little bowtie ending, but this is comics. It always gets worse before it gets rebooted. No final thoughts. Get out of here knowing that winteriron prevails either way, and in any canon/headcanon. Unless it’s some other ship, since every ship is valid.

Masterpost with all parts

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