“#Stark’sMissingSon is trending on Twitter.”
Sunday, November 4
Twenty-four hours.
It had been twenty-four hours since Tony’s son had went missing.
And how one man and one teenage boy went missing in a country that was being torn apart by the Avengers, every cop on every damned police force, and even the National Guard with interstate checkpoints set up, Tony had no idea.
Barnes was a genius, a trained professional, and he had Harry.
“He’s dead…” Tony mumbled to himself as he paced the floor of his office, trying to think clearly. “That’s the only way they couldn’t have found him by now… Barnes killed him and my son is in a ditch somewhere, probably in little tiny pieces…”
“Tony, stop.” Rhodey stepped in Tony’s path, halting his pacing, and grabbed his shoulders tightly. Tony blinked and focused on Rhodey’s solemn face, the bags under his eyes nearly as heavy as the ones under Tony’s eyes.
Nobody had stopped to sleep, nobody stopped to eat, nobody stopped period.
Sirius and Spider-kid were apparating across the country, turning in information on Harry and Barnes to all police precincts and trying to find any hint of Harry.
Pietro and Steve had went to Montana to stake out the house Barnes had previously been using.
Pepper and Bruce were manning the phones, fielding calls and trying to filter out any real leads.
Nat and Clint were traveling from car lot to car lot, trying to get ahead of Barnes as he kept swapping out cars on what was the most nonsensical path to Montana that Tony had ever seen.
Rhodey was guiding the Guard on their stops, moving them around when new reports of stolen cars came in, and Tony?
Tony’s one grand contribution to the cause had been calling Peter’s aunt and asking her if Peter could stay and help him contact Harry’s friends and go places he might visit, getting parental approval for Spider-kid to join the search.
After that, Tony had lost his ability to think clearly somewhere around hour nineteen when he began thinking worst case scenario.
Worst case scenario was that Barnes killed Harry and then himself and Tony lost the chance to save his kid and destroy Barnes with his bare hands.
“He’s dead,” Tony told Rhodey bleakly. “Rhodey, what if he’s dead?”
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Rhodey said firmly. “Why would Barnes have taken a new car in Dallas if he killed Harry?”
“BECAUSE HE IS INSANE!” Tony yelled, his voice breaking. “He is crazy and he has my son, Rhodey. My boy, my only child.”
Barnes had Tony’s entire world and he wasn’t even making hostage demands. And this was one of those times that Tony would give anything - money, legal pardons, his jet… hell, Barnes could have his suit if he wanted it - to get Harry back.
“We’ll get him back,” Rhodey said, a promise he couldn’t keep and they both knew it. “This isn’t—”
“TONY! HURRY!”
Tony wrenched himself from Rhodey’s grip and ran as quick as he could to the living room. They’d transformed it to a call taking and tracking center somewhere around hour twelve with the furniture all pushed away and tables covered in tablets, laptops, and phones to take all tips and scour every street camera for Harry or Barnes.
Bruce had something pulled up on a screen floating above the table and waited until Tony entered the room, Rhodey on his heels, to start the video.
“This was from four am,” Bruce told Tony. “We just found it with facial recognition software. They were in Tennessee. Watch.”
Tony held his breath and watched what looked like security footage from some twenty-four hour truck stop. There was nothing aside from a pimply guy with greasy blonde hair working the counter and then—
“Harry.”
“Oh, God.” Pepper groaned in her seat and Tony absently moved to stand behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders and squeezing when they saw Harry enter the station.
Harry looked rough, he looked so damn rough. His face was bruised, scraped up on one side, all the more obvious by the paleness of his skin. Worse though was his left leg… his leg was wrapped in some sort of white bandage soaked in blood and Harry looked like it was a struggle to even move it.
“What happened to his leg?” Pepper asked tearfully.
Bruce paused the video and zoomed in, easily clearing away the pixels with a few clicks of a button.
“Fuck,” Rhodey breathed.
Fuck was about right.
Harry’s left leg was swollen, seeping bright red blood, and even Tony could see that there was something wrong with the lower part of his leg. Harry was dragging it and it didn’t seem as if the knee bent at all.
Tony didn’t know if he wanted to cry or scream.
Barnes was a dead man.
“He’s been beaten to hell,” Tony said, cataloguing every bruise, every blood drop, every mark on his son’s body.
Every single mark was going to be drawn out of Barnes in his own blood.
“Press play,” Pepper ordered Bruce, sounding as choked up as Tony felt. She reached up and clenched one of Tony’s hands tightly and Tony just knew she felt as horrified and helpless as he did while they watched their kid drag himself inside a gas station.
Harry practically collapsed on the front counter, his breath coming in heavy and uneven waves.
“Can I use your phone?” Harry asked the young man. Harry’s left leg was shaking hard and Tony couldn’t imagine it was going to hold him up much longer.
“It’s- it’s against policy… Are you- are you okay?”
“DOES HE LOOK LIKE HE’S OKAY?!” Pepper shrieked. “MY KID WAS RIGHT THERE AND HE DIDNT LET HIM USE A PHONE BECAUSE OF POLICY?!”
Tony nodded mutely, filled with fury and concern, too overwhelmed to even make the obligatory stepmom joke.
Harry’s face looked almost as pissed off as Tony was.
“DO I FUCKING LOOK LIKE I’M OKAY, MATE?! I HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY A MANIAC WHO STABBED MY FRIEND AND ROBBED A BLOODY AMBULANCE AND MY LEG IS BROKEN AND I NEED TO CALL MY DAD!”
Oh God.
Harry had been right there, trying to call him.
And some god damned twerp with greasy hair and a twangy voice had stopped him.
It felt like watching the worst horror film of Tony’s life.
The cashier seemed terrified of Harry as he backed away quickly, bumping in the rows of cigarettes behind him and knocking a few off the shelf.
“Sir, you need to calm down. I’m going to need you to leave the store or I’ll call the police.”
“CALL THEM!” Tony and Pepper both screamed.
“Excellent,” Harry sneered right at the cashier. “Call them, please. GO! Tell them to call Tony fucking—”
“Howard! There you are!”
Tony’s hands tightened so hard on Pepper’s shoulder that it had to hurt when Barnes jogged in the truck stop with an easy smile on his face and called Harry ‘Howard’.
Howard…
“Why would he call your son by your dad’s name?” Rhodey asked, echoing the same question they all had.
“He was close to Steve back in the day, right?” Bruce said. “Harry looks a bit like the photos of Howard I’ve seen…”
Harry did and it was a logical train of thought to have, but…
“But that means Barnes thinks Harry is Howard,” Pepper said slowly.
“Which means he’s completely deranged,” Tony said tightly. Deranged meant dangerous. Dangerous meant that anything could happen to Harry… as seen by the kid’s busted leg.
Barnes didn’t sound like a psycho when he chatted with the cashier while he tried to pick Harry up from where he’d slid on the floor.
“Sorry, man. My brother and I wrecked our car, I think he hit his head a little too hard. He must have taken off while I was getting a rental.”
“He needs a freaking hospital and a straight jacket.”
“Oh I want his fucking name and home address,” Tony snarled under his breath. Yeah, Harry looked pretty damn wild with the blood and the screams, but Harry was the child.
Harry was the child screaming about being kidnapped and that cashier did nothing.
“I’ll deal with him,” Pepper said harshly, patting Tony’s hand reassuringly while they watched the scene unfold.
“Good,” Tony said, dropping a chaste and fond kiss to the top of Pepper’s head without taking his eyes off the video of his son.
Harry snapped off at Barnes and grabbed a coffee mug off the tourist crap shelf and swung it hard at Barnes’ head.
“Good boy,” Rhodey said approvingly. “Shame Barnes seems to have a head made of metal.”
Tony made a sound of agreement, proud of Harry for trying and disappointed in the lack of results.
The four of them listened while Barnes asked about directions to a hospital - Bruce already began typing away and shook his head when Tony looked toward him - and Harry screamed for someone to call the police.
Barnes carried Harry out in his arms, like the concerned sibling he was pretending to be, and the video ended.
“Switch to the parking lot footage,” Rhodey ordered Bruce, as the only person in the room able to think clearly.
Bruce did it quickly, swapping just in time for them to see Barnes carrying Harry to a dark blue minivan and talking to him quietly.
“Look, I know you’re freaking out, but you’re hurt and you’re not thinking straight. I swear, as soon as it’s safe, I’ll take you back, okay?”
“Does he think he’s protecting Harry?” Pepper asked.
“Who knows? The guy’s a fucking whack job,” Rhodey said.
“I hate you,” Harry moaned.
God, Tony’s chest was aching with how terrible Harry sounded. The kid had to be miserable- in pain, scared, alone…
“I’m sorry,” Tony said hoarsely. He should have done more, tagged more of Harry’s belongings, done something more to keep his kid safe.
“Missions aren’t always easy,” Barnes told Harry before he slid the van door shut and Tony lost sight of his son.
Tony had never needed a drink so badly in his life, but he couldn’t drink while his son was missing.
Tony couldn’t do anything until his kid was home.
“He’s alive,” Bruce said when everyone was silent with similarly grave expressions. “If Barnes thinks he’s saving Harry, then he’s safe for now.”
“Tell that to Harry’s fucking leg,” Tony snapped. He spun around, unable to be around anyone that wasn’t his son, and stormed to his office. As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Tony lost his composure and began throwing anything he could grab.
Barnes had Harry and Harry was hurt and Harry tried to call Tony and some god damned moron kept him from doing so and Tony needed his son home.
Tony never wanted kids, never. And then he had one anyway; a witty, sarcastic, funny, bright, perfect kid.
And Tony only had five months with his son… five too short months and now Barnes had him and Tony didn’t know if he’d ever see him again.
By the time Tony’s office was destroyed, Tony hit his knees in the middle of the floor and cried for the first time in years.
Harry’s damned dog came crawling out from beneath Tony’s desk with its tail tucked between its legs to wrap around Tony and lick his cheek despondently.
“I want him back too,” Tony said brokenly. He pulled the dog closer and hugged it as tightly as he wished he could his son. “I want him back too.”
The dog whined in tangent with Tony’s cries; two miserable beings wondering when the center of their world would return… if it would.
*****
Peter had always wanted to travel, he’d always dreamt of seeing more than just New York.
He just hadn’t wanted to do it on a search and rescue mission for Harry.
Peter groaned quietly when Sirius magically teleported them to a new city- this one in south Texas, skirting around the border.
Originally, they’d thought that Bucky would take Harry to Montana, but then Peter realized that Steve - Mister Red, White, and Blue himself - was either a complete idiot or was trying to help his old friend escape.
The path that Bucky had taken, the path they could definitely track since the guy kept stopping to jack new cars every hundred miles, looked more like he was headed to Mexico than he was Montana, so that was where Peter and Sirius were searching.
But then again the dude was a freaking psychopath so Peter didn’t feel real good about his intentions one way or another.
Peter told Harry that Bucky was dangerous, he freaking told Harry to stay away from him. But did Harry listen? No. Because Harry seemed to like danger.
Damned secret keeping, brave, dumbass.
A secret keeping, brave, kidnapped dumbass that Peter was kind of pathetically in love with.
“Wait out here,” Sirius told Peter when they walked from the small wooded area they’d teleported to over to the huge police department. “You seem sick, maybe sit for a minute,” Sirius added with a grimace.
Peter was sure he looked sick, he had to be green in the face, because teleporting (Sirius called it ‘apparating’) was about the most nauseating experience of Peter’s life and they’d done it probably fifty times in the last twenty-six hours.
“Good call,” Peter said weakly. He dropped on a bench outside the precinct and didn’t even think before he ripped off his mask to try and get some air.
It wasn’t like his identity was some big secret anymore, not now that he’d been added to the freaking Avengers as an honorary member for Team Find Harry.
God, Peter was such an idiot. He should have known Bucky was going to come back. He did know that Bucky was dangerous and he just laid on the floor while Bucky knocked Harry out and dragged him away.
Nobody seemed to blame Peter, but Peter didn’t feel real great about it. He’d wasted time to get Harry the hell out of there with flirting.
“Idiot,” Peter groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Selfish, stupid, idiot.”
Peter jumped on the bench when Queen started singing about friendship out of nowhere. It took him an embarrassing amount of time to realize that it was Harry’s phone in his suit pocket ringing. Peter pulled the phone out, idly curious about who Harry assigned the song to, and saw a photo of his friend with the bushy hair and dark skin grinning on the screen.
Peter hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should answer or not, and then finally clicked the screen to answer the video call.
“You’re not Harry,” Hermione Granger said immediately. “Where is he?”
Peter wasn’t exactly sure how to tell one of Harry’s best friends that he was missing, but it seemed like he didn’t need to.
“Did you know #Stark’sMissingSon is trending on Twitter?” Hermione demanded hotly. She was glaring harshly at Peter, like she somehow knew it was his fault that Harry was missing.
“Harry doesn’t use Twitter,” Peter said, sounding just as stupid and evasive as he knew it would sound.
Hermione’s brown eyes narrowed and Peter actually felt the urge to cringe.
“That’s because Harry grew up in a closet and has been dealing with nonstop trauma for fifteen years, WHERE THE HELL IS MY BEST FRIEND?!”
“DO YOU THINK I’VE GOT HIM HIDDEN IN MY FREAKING POCKET?!” Peter screamed back, taking his frustration out on the wrong person. “I WISH I KNEW WHERE HE WAS, BUT I DON’T! I’M SORRY!” Peter’s voice broke, “I’m so freaking sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Peter…” Hermione sighed and her look of fury melted to one of concern that Peter didn’t deserve at all.
“Peter?” a rough male voice said. “Give me the phone.”
Peter ducked his head and swiped his face off with his sleeve when Hermione had her phone hijacked by Harry’s other friend, the red headed guy, Ron.
“What the hell did you do to Harry? He wouldn’t just run off for no bloody reason!” Ron snapped furiously. His ears and cheeks were as red as his hair which only made his blue eyes shine more brightly in his anger.
“He didn’t run off, Ronald, the news said he was kidnapped,” Hermione said, fighting Ron to take the phone back.
Peter looked up while they struggled and saw Sirius bolting from the precinct, waving a disc around.
“I swear to god that I will call you as soon as I know anything,” Peter told Harry’s friends. “I have to go.”
“I hate you!” Ron yelled.
“Oh, shut it,” Hermione said. “B—”
Peter hung up on her and jumped up, eager to see what Sirius had.
“They were here!” Sirius said, waving the disc victoriously. “C’mon, let’s get back to Tony’s place so we can see. They found the footage at a rest stop!”
“What are you waiting for?” Peter grabbed Sirius’ shoulder tightly, preparing himself for the sickening trip back to New York. “Let’s go!”
Sirius turned on the spot and Peter was transported through a tube clear from Laredo back to New York City.
*****
“Tony!” Sirius was yelling the instant his feet touched the ground. He had what felt like the first break in finding Harry they’d had in over twenty-seven bloody hours in his hands and he held it up eagerly.
A shiny silver disk that Sirius was certain contained some sort of clip of Harry if his crummy Spanish was right.
The officer seemed to recognize the photograph of Harry and James anyway, seemed as if they’d made some sort of fuss that got caught on security tapes.
The sitting room of Tony’s flat had been transformed completely. The sofas and little tables had all been cleared away, making room for two long tables covered in more electronics than Sirius had ever seen in his life.
It wasn’t really saying much, since Sirius just got his first phone over the summer, but—
“Put the disc in,” Peter was saying, shoving Sirius toward a small telly screen on the table.
Sirius blinked and stumbled when Peter pushed him.
“Right, sorry,” Sirius said, sounding slurred. His brain, his body, his magic had all been taxed in the last twenty-seven hours and Sirius was going to have to grab another Pepper-Up to get him through until he found his godson.
And Sirius had to find his godson.
Sirius couldn’t even bloody breathe until he found his godson.
Tony came tearing in the room, looking just as wrecked as Sirius felt, and his head whipped wildly back and forth between Sirius and Peter.
“You found something?” Tony asked. Tony’s hair was standing on end, there were bags heavy enough to hold the entire damn building under his eyes, and it seemed like everyone was going to politely pretend not to see that he’d been crying his heart out recently.
Not that Tony was alone in that, but Sirius was more emotional than Tony was; nobody seemed surprised to see Sirius crying nonstop since Harry had been kidnapped by a bloody lunatic.
“Yeah, maybe.” Peter ripped the disc from Sirius’ hands and stuffed it in some little slot for it, pulling up a video on the feed for all of them to watch.
Peter, who wasn’t as bad of a bloke as Harry recently made him sound, pushed Sirius in a chair and fetched him a mug of hot coffee that smelled like heaven.
“You too, Tony,” Rhodey, a good mate of Tony’s, said, pushing Tony in the chair next to Sirius.
It was good that Sirius had Tony - the only person who loved Harry as much as Sirius did - sitting beside him because Sirius thought he was going to break when Bruce turned the video on.
At first, all Sirius saw was a giant truck with a long white bed on the back sitting outside a little rest stop building.
Then everyone leaned forward intently when a silver van pulled in and screeched to a stop right next to the semi.
James climbed from the drivers seat and dashed over to the drivers side of the semi and climbed up, opening the door, and dragged the driver right out by his black shirt collar.
Sirius wasn’t the only one who gasped when James began wailing on the man with his silver arm flashing in the dusk.
“Merlin,” Sirius breathed. “No wonder they had the video for us.”
Once the truck driver’s face was mashed to something that looked more like ground beef than a human, James just tossed him to the side and went back to his van.
Sirius reached out blindly, desperate to find someone to grasp on to and wound up clenching Tony’s arm tightly, when James pulled Harry from the van. Peter made a broken sound and Sirius reached out with his left hand to find the kid’s shoulder, holding him just as tightly as he did Tony.
“Almost there, kid,” James told Harry’s unconscious, bruised, bloody, and broken body. Harry was limp in James’ arms and Sirius bit down on his tongue to keep from sobbing.
Harry looked half-dead.
Sirius had seen him after he came back from being tortured, being forced to duel Voldemort, from seeing a classmate die, talking to his dead parents- and Harry looked more alive then than he did in that video.
Sirius’ heart was breaking and he was so bloody useless.
“He’s got to be withdrawing by now,” Bruce said quietly. “Adderall and Lexapro have short half-lives…”
Sirius didn’t know what that meant, but he knew Harry had to be miserable.
“What is he doing?” Pepper asked on Tony’s other side. They watched James carry Harry around to the back of the truck and toss open the hatch before carrying him in.
“Mother fucker,” Tony said. He flicked a finger and paused the video and spun around to point at Rhodey accusingly. “He’s smuggling my son out of the country, Rhodes!”
“In a potato truck?” Peter asked, seeming just as confused as Sirius was by the quick way Tony and Rhodey were both pulling their phones out and making calls.
“Potato’s?” Sirius asked blankly. Peter pointed at the screen and used his fingers in a pinching motion to zoom in on the side of the semi on the logo.
“R & G Potatoes,” Peter said.
“And that’s proof that James is taking Harry out of the country?” Sirius asked, feeling like the dumbest person in the room.
“Why else would he be hiding the kid’s body in a produce truck twenty miles from the border?” Tony muttered quietly, typing away on his phone. “God, FUCK YOU, STEVE!”
Sirius was quiet when they watched Tony throw his phone at the wall, shattering it.
“You’re a moron,” Sirius said hoarsely. “What if Harry calls?”
Sirius had to believe that Harry would call, Harry would come back to them.
Sirius had to believe that his last conversation with his godson hadn’t just been about flying and sushi.
Sirius had stepped back so much, leaving space for Harry to bond with his dad, and now Harry was gone and Sirius didn’t know if he was coming back.
“You’re a moron if you think Harry’s calling,” Tony said flatly, his voice as lifeless as Harry looked in that video. “He’s probably gone in shock, septic from the- the injury… withdrawals are going to be making him sick… and now he’s BURIED IN A GOD DAMNED SEMI WITH POTATOES BEING SMUGGLED FROM THE COUNTRY!”
Sirius inhaled sharply, prepared to scream right back at Tony, and then Sirius just crumpled. Sirius crumpled forward and Tony caught him and then they were two grown men sitting at a table with a room full of people watching them sob their broken hearts out.
“Our kid,” Tony sobbed, grasping desperately on Sirius’ back.
“Our Harry,” Sirius cried right back, clutching the only person who understood the way that his heart was apparently in a potato truck being moved to Mexico.
It was a kindness and a curse when the two of them cried themselves out and their bodies shut down right at the table after over thirty hours of no sleep and non-stop work and anguish.
*****
Stephen stood in the lobby of Stark Tower, irritated once again by Stark’s tardiness.
The man acted as if he hadn’t been the one to schedule his son’s unimaginably important lessons every single Monday afternoon at four.
“Excuse me.” Stephen stepped up to the receptionists desk and gave a polite enough smile to the woman working there. “I’m supposed to be meeting Harry Stark. Should I—”
“Oh.” The woman sighed and looked around furtively before leaning toward Stephen and lowering her voice. “Didn’t you hear?”
There was no way the kid was dead, Stephen would have seen it before then. But the woman sounded stricken.
“Hear what?” Stephen asked her, punctuating his words with a bite of impatience.
“Harry was kidnapped,” she whispered. “It’s all over the news! I heard they think he was taken to Mexico and sold for parts.”
Stephen stared at the woman and decided that Stark must have hired her for her breast size instead of her brains.
“Harry Potter-Stark was kidnapped, taken to Mexico, and you think he was sold for parts?” Stephen repeated. He gave her what he hoped was an absolutely disdainful look. “What public school did you drop out of?”
The woman reared back, her red glossy lips opening in an insulted little ‘o’.
“Excuse me, maybe you should watch the news,” she said snappily. “Harry’s been missing since Saturday afternoon.”
Stephen took a very deep breath, working to remain perfectly calm and serene. Surely, surely, Tony Stark was at least half as smart as he bragged about and would have called Stephen if Harry Potter-Stark went missing.
Had Stephen not explicitly stated that he didn’t take on students and had made a single exception for the one person who was destined to become the greatest sorcerer to walk the earth?
“Thank you,” Stephen told the receptionist. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Stephen flicked his fingers around, opening a portal up, and stepped through to shortcut his time taking the elevator up to Stark’s flat.
“Is Harry missing?” Stephen demanded, skipping pleasantries, when he exited directly in Stark’s living room.
The room told him that Harry was actually missing and apparently Stephen allowed himself to be employed by an absolute oaf. It had been a bad weekend to spend teaching Wong the fine skill needed to dominate beer pong while they discussed the new research from Cameroon about the existence of the fabled Soul Stone.
Stephen needed that Soul Stone, but he needed Harry Stark and Stark had lost the future greatest sorcerer to live.
The woman who ran Stark’s company, Pepper Potts, sat at a table, talking rapid Spanish to someone.
“Harry Stark,” Miss Potts was saying, “niño desaparecido. James Bucky Barnes, secuestrador. No! No, hermano!”
Stephen looked toward the other occupant of the room, Bruce Banner, the brilliant scientist who managed to accidentally turn himself into a giant green gamma monster.
“Tony’s there now, blasting holes in every semi he finds, you’ve got to find something before he makes Iron Man a national menace,” Banner was saying to someone on the phone rather quickly. “Pietro, I don’t care if you drag Steve by the hair, get your asses to Mexico.”
For the love of…
“Miss Potts, pleasure.” Stephen pressed a button, hanging up Miss Potts’ call, and offered her a wide smile and his hand. “Where, precisely, can I find your employer?”
“Torreón,” Banner said, moving the mouth of his phone away to tell Stephen while Miss Potts just gawked at him in a disturbing and sleep-deprived way.
“Excellent, thank you,” Stephen said cordially before opening a new portal and stepping directly out in the harsh heat of Torreón.
Stephen had believed that Stark was a brilliant man and devoted father, and yet he managed to neglect to so much as text him when his child was snatched and hidden away.
Just because he had some second rate wizard on his team and Stark thought that Stephen Strange wouldn’t be a quick fix to finding his son?
Idiot.
It was shocking that Harry seemed to have a modicum of intelligence, clearly he got it from his mother.