Light Up The Night

Everything came back too slowly. The kind of slowly that made him wonder who had slipped what into his drink because he didn’t recall ever feeling this way after a heavy night of partying, even those nights where he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened and the memory remained fragmented and incomplete when it came back at all. He kept his eyes closed, his breathing slow, as he took in his surroundings. You didn’t grow up with a father like Howard Stark and not learn basic self-defense and what to do in the event of a kidnapping.

The chair he was in was metal, likely bolted onto the floor, although he didn’t test that. Still, no one built something this durable without ensuring that it wouldn’t move. The arms were wide and thick, double the size of his own arms, which were being held down – as were his legs – with what felt like equally enforced metal.

Great, whoever this was meant business.

He focused on sound and boy oh boy was that disconcerting. He could hear something dripping, maddeningly slow, but consistent. That was maybe on the other side of the room or another room over, and that was when he became aware of a sound that turned his blood to ice. Someone breathing, not more than a few feet away from him. His own breath caught in his throat.

“Mr. Stark,” A German accented voice broke the silence. “Glad to see you are no longer feigning unconsciousness.”

Reluctantly, Tony cracked his eyes open, revealing a low-lit room with walls made of cement and heavily soundproofed. The man who sat in front of him had silver hair that didn’t quite fit with his apparent age, unless he was one of those men who went grey early on. He wore a monocle over one eye and while that should have made him look ridiculous, the cold blue eye that shown through just made him look all the more threatening.

Tony swallowed, trying to limit the dryness in his throat before attempting to speak. He needed to look as unphased by this as possible. That was a bit difficult once he noticed an IV in his left arm, pumping what he hoped was just saline and at worst something to help counteract whatever he’d been drugged with.

“For the record, it’s Dr. Stark,” he said, his voice barely shaking. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know who I am but you haven’t told me who you are.”

The man rose to his feet. Tony fought not to flinch as he moved towards him, each step purposeful, tension drawn in every line of his body. Thankfully, the blow Tony anticipated never came. The man simply paced over to him, then paced a few feet away, his body turned enough that Tony could see his hands clenched behind his back. Seeing that was almost worse than a blow would have been. The tension in his hands and forearms spoke of a man who could barely hold his violence in check. That was far too reminiscent of what Tony had seen from his own father.

“You can call me the Baron,” the man said, finally breaking the silence.

Tony’s breath caught in his throat. The Baron. That name again. The same one Wanda had referenced. The figure she was clearly frightened of. Just like the monocle, this tile should have sounded ridiculous but Tony had never heard anything less funny. Especially not when he’d been spending the past several weeks grabbing intel on this man after Wanda’s mention of the name or, more, trying to find that intel. As far as he could tell, the man didn’t exist, or at the least his name had never come up in any connection to Jonathan Talbot’s name. As far as Tony could figure, he was a ghost.

Tony bit his tongue, knowing himself well enough to recognize that if he spoke, he’d say something stupid, just as he’d always done to provoke his father. Unlike his father though, Tony couldn’t calculate how much violence this man might be capable of. That made him nervous. If Wanda was this afraid of him after the hell she and her brother had been through with Talbot, then this was a man to be feared.

When Tony didn’t speak, the man – the Baron – allowed silence for a few moments before saying, “Now, Mr. – oh, I am quite sorry, Dr. Stark - we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Any preference?”

“Jesus Christ, could you be any more stereotypical?” Tony blurted out before he could stop himself. “What do you want here? Money? Information? Weaponry? New tech?”

Say any of those. Just don’t say the twins, please don’t say the twins, he chanted to himself as he awaited the response.

The Baron turned back to him. “I want to know where the twins are.”

Stupid, Tony, you’re so stupid, the inner monologue shifted. He’d assumed that Talbot wouldn’t be impulsive enough to target someone as high status as Tony Stark and he’d bet wrong on that.

For some reason, maybe hysteria, Tony found himself suddenly laughing and unable to stop, even when the Baron shot him a glare and inquired, “What exactly is so funny, Dr. Stark?”

“This entire situation,” Tony said breathlessly. “You. Talbot. All of this. Why the fuck does he want them back so badly? Just because they defied him by running away? Because they went public with their abuse because he wouldn’t stop sending assholes like you after them to hunt them? I mean, Christ, how is any of this worth it? What is this to you? Are you just some professional Nazi? I mean, I know he’s sent the Irish and Russians after ‘em. Aren’t the German mobs just called Nazis?”

“No,” the Baron said, his voice deadly quiet. “I have no mob affiliations. I was the twins’ tutor and I was… I am… fond… of them.”

The pause before and after the word “fond” as well as the intonation made Tony’s skin crawl.

“Alright, so you still haven’t denied the Nazi association and you’re also telling me that you’re just as fucked up as Talbot.” He took a deep breath. “Well, kidnapping me was a mistake. Especially because after tonight – is it even still tonight? Never mind, who fucking cares – this is going to fuck Talbot over. He’s going to be the number one suspect and, besides, I’m not selling out the twins to you or Talbot. I don’t care what you do to me.”

The Baron sighed dramatically and the smirk on his face made Tony think it was all for show. He wasn’t disappointed, he was eager to cause some pain.

“A shame for you, Dr. Stark. You know, I’ve heard those words many times before. No one has ever maintained that stance for long.”

He carefully strode across the room and stopped at a small tray that looked like it belonged in a surgical room, although aside from the scalpel and pliers, nothing else looked particularly like it belonged in medical treatment. As far as Tony was aware, there were few medical procedures that would require something like a drill or hammer. He kept his breathing as even as he could manage, despite the fact that he could feel his heart pounding out of his chest.

The Baron trailed his fingers against each individual item on the tray before turning back to Tony. “Let’s get started.”

-~-

“We need to be calm and rational about this.”

Natasha’s voice held an edge but remained collected. Incidentally, she also seemed to be the only one of them capable of remaining still. Sam and Steve immediately shot up, alternating their pattern of pacing back and forth across the room. Bucky went for his phone, then put it down, then picked it up again, only to put it down once more with a rather truly impressive string of curses.

Clint, for his part, managed to hold himself back from leaping off of the sofa and joining Sam and Steve in their wearing of a hole through the living room floor – or, hell, just booking it out of the townhouse and heading for the streets. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. There would just be a search party for him, too.

Clint tried to consider his options: he could go out and try to get information on his own, he could try to get information from or through his brother, or he could do nothing at all. The last one of those options would be pointless while the first one would probably just get him killed. Again, not particularly helpful. Which just left the middle option.

He stood and Natasha immediately fixed him with a stern look. He quickly explained. “I’m just calling Barn. That’s all. I promise.”

Before she could argue, he headed upstairs and dialed the now familiar number.

“Hey, Clint,” Barney greeted him. “What’s up?”

“Barn, I’m asking you for any and all of that help I’ve asked from you in the past. Tony Stark’s missing. Any word on the street for what might’ve happened to him?”

Barney whistled, long and low. “Tony Stark? You serious, Clint? I didn’t think anyone was stupid enough to make a move on him.”

“Well, it appears someone was. Have you heard anything, Barney, yes or no?”

“I haven’t had my ear to the ground over the past few hours but I hadn’t heard anything in the past couple of days. Obviously, no one’s particularly happy with the fact that he helped the twins go public, making their lives a whole lot harder. But everything I’ve heard made it pretty clear that everyone knew better than to target him directly.”

“And who in particular were you hearing those things from? The Irish? The Russians? The Italians?”

“All of the above and more. Anyone who had a stake in the outcome has been bitching and complaining. I heard Talbot increased the money for the twins but most everything I heard indicated that no one thought the danger was worth it, even with the added perks Talbot was offering. Still…” and there Barney hesitated.

“What, Barn?” Clint questioned.

“There has been talk of different groups trying to sabotage one another. Kind of a, ‘If we can’t take in this haul, no one can.’ Not that any of that helps to explain who might’ve grabbed Stark. I can put my ear to the ground again. See what I can gather, if there are any rumors over who might have him.”

“Thank you,” Clint said gratefully. “I’ll have my phone on me. Just call back when/if you have anything.”

“Will do. I’ll come through in any way I can, Clint.”

Clint hung up. He took a few, deep breaths, trying to sort through the rest of his options. First, he sifted through his phone, finding – as he’d expected – that all of the calls he’d received from the twins had been through blocked numbers. All of Tony’s security on the two of them appeared to be backfiring now when they needed to inform them, to warn them, and they had no way to do that.

But maybe, hopefully, that was jumping too far ahead. Just because Tony was missing didn’t mean anything. Hell, he’d been missing before. Usually because he’d gotten drunk and made some poor life decisions. Even if it were for more concerning reasons, Tony had plenty of other enemies. Enemies who might have just decided that the recent conflict with Talbot was an excellent time for them to act, when all eyes and evidence would point towards someone else as the potential perpetrator.

Maybe.

But the timing seemed far too coincidental for that to be the case.

-~-

Tony tasted blood in his mouth and the back of his throat. Trailing his tongue along the inside of his mouth revealed no missing or broken teeth. The taste was easier to focus on than the needles beneath the fingernails of his left hand or the broken and twisted fingers on his right. He kept reminding himself that nothing had been done to him that he couldn’t fix. That sticking something beneath the fingernails was the world’s oldest torture method because it left minimal long-term evidence. There were many ways to set broken fingers – hell, Steve’s hands had healed just fine, hadn’t they? That didn’t mean he’d have long-term problems.

Facts helped. That took him out of the room. When his mind insisted on bringing him back, he reminded himself that he hadn’t broken yet. He hadn’t broken when the Baron covered his covered his face with a cloth and poured water over it, despite the terror that he would die, even as he carefully recited the facts he knew about waterboarding to himself. He hadn’t broken when the needles first went under his fingernails or when his fingers were broken. He’d kept his mouth shut even when the Baron added some sort of cocktail to the IV in his arm that left him unfocused –holding onto something as solid as the facts proved to be difficult – while also being sharply aware of each and every injury being done to him.

Then something larger than the scalpel appeared in the Baron’s hand, something more akin to a meat cleaver.

“You have been a pleasant surprise, Dr. Stark,” the Baron said. “I had expected you to break a long time ago. You didn’t seem the type to be able to withstand pain. Yet you haven’t told me a single thing yet. I’m almost impressed.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Tony managed to rasp, and was rewarded by a backhand to the face.

“You would do to learn some respect,” the Baron continued. “I’m not quite certain where to go from here. I could take one of your fingers or all of your fingers. Though would that be enough of an incentive for you? Perhaps a hand would raise the stakes an adequate amount. I would hate for you to go into shock, perhaps bleed out. I’m not in the business of killing, after all, but your vitals have been rather erratic.”

Tony tried not to let his mind follow those words too far. His body had already been through a lot. Could it already have been too much or nearly to that point? If the Baron removed his hand, would the blood loss take him over the edge? He tried to go through the information he knew regarding anatomy and the veins and arteries that attached at the wrist and exactly what would happen if all of those were severed at once. But his thoughts refused to cooperate. That was enough for his heart to shudder frantically and skip several beats.

The blade lifted. Before he could stop himself, he choked out, “Please.”

The blade dropped but stopped several inches above his wrist. The Baron looked at him expectantly. Tony’s resolution faltered, despite his best attempts to remind himself why he’d sworn to keep his mouth shut. He couldn’t do this to the twins. He tried to hold onto that but he could only remember how it felt to drown, of the pain in his fingers, of the arteries that would be severed if he didn’t give in, and how quickly he would bleed out if that happened.

Before he could stop himself, the address spilled from his lips, once, twice, and then came the security codes – Jesus, what kind of a monster was he? He could have lied. He should have given all of the wrong information that would trap the Baron, or whichever team the Baron sent in, and keep them secure until the police arrived. He could have kept the kids safe if he’d just fucking lied but he couldn’t take his eyes away from the blade and how close it was to his skin. He tried to slow his thoughts, his words, anything that would let him think. Lying shouldn’t be hard. He’d had plenty of practice with it over the years, but now none of those talents were at play. He’d started with a simple disclosure, thinking that he could stop after he provided the address, but fear wasn’t letting him censor himself.

His stomach turned over at the weight of what he’d done. The room swam in and out of focus in a way that made him dangerously concerned that his body had already been taxed too far.

The Baron smiled and slowly lifted the blade up from Tony’s arm. “Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Stark.”

Then the blade came down.