Chapter 1
Steve Rogers blinked once. Twice.
Without making a sound, he reached a grimy hand into one of the multitude pockets his uniform him and withdrew a crisply folded ten dollar bill unmarred despite the smoke damage his outfit was stained by. It was one of the things that gave him a bizarre pleasure these days – paying for things by cash rather than all these ‘credit cards’ everyone else seemed so enamoured by. Those small plastic cards just didn’t feel like real money and he had initially found it far too easy to overspend and ignore the true value of things. When SHIELD had first presented him with one, he’d been far too free with using it. It was only at the end of the month when he was counting up his finances that he realised quite how much he had spent. Since then? He much preferred dealing with cash.
Well, for that reason and the fact that it annoyed Tony who seemed determined to drag him kicking and screaming into the new century. But that was just an added benefit. Really.
Still. Trolling the man like that really was immensely satisfying.
Without looking, he reached out behind him, note in hand, and determinedly did not grimace at the feeling of Nick Fury removing the money. Nor did he turn to see the fleeting grin that he just knew had spread across the other’s usually stony features.
Smug bastard (and yes, he was perfectly capable of ‘language’ in his own head!)
Equally, he absolutely refused to utter the ‘you win again,’ or something of that ilk that he knew Fury was just aching to hear him say. Just plain refused.
Instead? His gaze remained fixated on the white hospital bed before him. Lying in said bed lay a tiny creature. A boy, really. A tiny scrap of thing who couldn’t possibly be the eight years old that the SHIELD medics had promised he was. He had scruffy dark hair that was spread wildly out on the stark (hah!) white pillow.
He really was tiny. All elbows and skinny knees and looking so, so young and vulnerable against the pale hospital sheets. Even more so with his face lax in sleep (unconsciousness, his traitorous subconscious reminded him, vastly different to sleep). His dark eyelashes fluttered against the ashen cheeks as air puffed through them causing them to inflate and deflate in a soothingly rhythmic fashion. It was surprising how reassuring those two movements were. The constant beeps and low hum of machinery provided a slightly reassuring backdrop that the child on the bed before him was alive. But those movements? Those were a much greater reassurance. Visible proof that he was alive. Steve didn’t know why it was more reassuring, but it was.
The old adage about someone looking tiny in a hospital bed? That was proving to be depressingly accurate. Particularly with this … child.
Steve would never have thought of Tony Stark as being small, vulnerable. No labels like that. It was true that the other man was short, but the way he could just saunter into a room and command all its’ occupants attention? That was almost a physical denial of his lack of size.
It was so hard to compute that this tiny child before him was Tony Stark.
They’d been in battle, surprisingly enough (it would have either been that or in some truly twisted lab experiment gone wrong), against some Asgardian witch who had been determined to get revenge on Thor for some perceived slight or other. Thor had blushed and changed the conversation quite rapidly when quizzed on this. Her companion, a creature who bore disturbing similarities to the ogres and orcs as described by Tolkein, yet armed with a lethal looking axe, had took on the Avengers in battle whilst the witch (Amoral?) had read from a scrap of ancient looking parchment. Stark had taken great pleasure in wondering out loud which was older, Steve or this paper.
Yet, not too long after that, smoke had begun streaming out of the paper whilst pink rays of light had darted from it heading directly towards Thor. Tony had rapidly interjected himself between the rays and their intended target before anyone else could even react.
The stupid man.
He always arrogantly assumed that his armour would be able to take whatever was thrown at it. (Steve knew that it wasn’t really arrogance, he knew that, it was a twisted combination of the man’s pathological desire to protect the world and remain in control. It was just easier to think ‘arrogance’ when he was annoyed. Worried)
The second the rays hit Tony turned into one of those odd moments in battle when everything seemed to slow down. A moment of peace. Thor, Steve and the Asgardian were watching with (almost comedic) similar looks of horror. Natasha, Clint and Hulk had been busy occupying the axe-wielding orc, but even their battle had taken a second to rest as they each assessed their opponents.
Silence.
Steve was about to relax; maybe Tony’s armour had somehow managed to block the pink rays.
Then the noises began.
At first Steve wasn’t even able to recognise them as noises from Tony, thought for just a moment that the com might have been malfunctioning for some reason. (Something else he could use to wind up Tony with).
Then he realised they were sounds of Tony making breathless sounds of discomfort.
“Stark?”
‘Discomfort’ didn’t cover it. These sounded like he was trying his hardest to both scream, and not scream at the same time. As though he didn’t have the strength left to make the sound.
“What did you do, Amora?!” Thor roared as he sprang forward to catch the frozen suit.
“Failed, clearly!” the Asgardian witch snapped back, moving her hands in complicated movements that Steve couldn’t follow. “Skurge, let’s return!” Seconds later, faster than Steve could even think about moving, the pair disappeared with a flash of more pink light (why did magic so often involve pink?)
“Damnit!” Black Widow cursed as she dashed over to where Thor was cradling Tony’s form on the ground as he did nothing other than formulate those continual pathetic-sounding whimpers of agony. “Stark? Stark, can you hear me?”
No response.
“Iron Man?” called Thor as he pressed the catches to remove the face mask obscuring Stark’s expression from his teammates. “Jarvis, can you hear us?”
“Affirmative, Master Odin.” came the cool robotic tones of Jarvis simultaneously into all their com units. “Dr. Stark is most unwell. It appears that his bone structure is both re-formulating and shrinking.”
“Re-formulating…shrinking?” Clint echoed as he joined the bevy of heroes surrounding their fallen team-mate. “…As in breaking?”
It was at that moment that Thor fully removed the helmet, and the audible cracking and snapping sounds, the sound augmented by echoing throughout the metallic suit, answered Clint’s question all too clearly.
Tony’s face was a picture of agony, stark white with sweat pouring from his brow as though some fool had upended a bucket of water over him. His mouth was set into a rictus of pain, lips clenched together with a dribble of blood already tricking down his jaw clearly showing he’d bitten clear through his lip in effort to keep any sounds to himself.
Saying that, Steve doubted that Tony was even thinking about keeping quiet, it was more likely that he’d clenched his jaw shut automatically and now beyond releasing the bones.
“…”
Steve didn’t know what to say. What could he do? What in hell was happening?
“Med-evac. Now.” he snapped into the comm, barely remembering to change it over to the frequency that SHIELD was listening in on. “Stark is suffering from multiple bones breaking-” he swallowed as another audible snap echoed from deep within the suit causing a further sound to force its way through Stark’s tightly clenched jaw.
“Hold on, Tony.” Natasha murmured, switching from dangerous assassin to soothing team-mate in an instant. “Help’s on its way, just keep focusing on breathing.” She reached out with one hand and softly stroked the man’s drenched hair in effort to soothe him, “Clint.” She snapped, her voice sharp once again, “Get something for him to bite on so he doesn’t bite through his tongue.”
With a nod Clint pushed himself to his feet and hurtled his way into one of the nearby shops, clearly eager to be away from the magic that was causing one of his friends to have each of their bones systematically break.
“What’s…happening?” Steve asked, directing the question at Thor who had the most experience with this type of thing.
The demi-God shrugged his broad shoulders, a ripple of motion that countered the rock-steadiness that was present in the rest of his frame as he supported Iron Man, an unreadable expression spread across his features; guilt, horror, shame…“I know not. I have never heard of a spell that would do such as this. Nor do I believe that Amora hates me enough to wish to cause such damage. She is angry because she bears great affection for me that I do not return… But I don’t believe that she would do this. I can only assume that it was meant to affect one of Asgardian descent in a vastly different fashion.”
“Sirs.” Jarvis interjected, tone growing in urgency. “I repeat my statement that Dr.Stark is shrinking. It is important to remove him from the suit in case it causes him further damage.”
Thor, Natasha and Steve all shared a quick glance with each other before rapidly beginning to remove the armour under Jarvis’ snippy guidance. The more of the armour was removed, the more evident it became how true the AI’s words were.
Tony wasn’t only ‘shrinking’, as in literally getting smaller before their eyes with each snap of a bone, but he appeared to be getting younger. The contours of his face were softening, and as Natasha removed the chest plate it immediately became obvious that the arc reactor had been steadily pushed into his body as the armour held it in place despite the body’s attempts to reject it.
Steve froze for a moment at the site of the blood gushing from the area of someone who was so beginning to resemble a child. His face paled as his frame rocked back for a second causing Natasha to snap at him “Focus, Steve.”
Not trusting his mouth, nor his churning gut, Steve grabbed Thor’s cloak, the nearest piece of fabric he could see, and immediately held it to the leaking wound of the now (thankfully!) unconscious man-child, his throat bobbing as he attempted to swallow down the acidic taste that was trying to rise up from his gorge.
Natasha shot him a tight smile as she knelt backwards, allowing Thor to remove the last of the armour from the man-child as she got back on the comms with SHIELD informing them that they had better ‘hurry the fuck up’. Mere moments later an ambulance pulled up, driven by familiar agents who, without even pausing to gawk, shoved through the worried team (now re-joined by both Bruce and Clint) and immediately began doing…things… to the unconscious (not dead) man (child). Who was not dead. He was not dead. He was breathing. It was laboured, and he was letting out unconscious (high-pitched. Far too high-pitched for an adult male) whimpers. But he was alive.
Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Not deadnotdeadnotdeadnotdead
“Steve!”
A small hand cracked across his face, breaking the thoughts which held him captive.
“Focus, Steve!” snapped Natasha, her own eyes wide enough to betray her own sense of horror and shock. “Let’s get to the base, they’ll find out what’s happening there. Come on.”
Without speaking, the remainder of the team trouped into a second van and were driven to the hospital SHIELD base where they were promptly left cooling their heels for seven hours before Steve alone, as team captain, was escorted in to see the unconscious (not dead) Tony…