“It’s not too late to join me, you know,” Tony said with amusement, his voice echoing weirdly through the darkened hallways of the Avengers compound, sounding like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere. “I’m not the villain here.”
“You’re not? You put a virus in SHIELD that shut down everything,” Steve said, turning in a circle to try to pinpoint Tony’s location. “People died.”
“Is that what Fury told you?” Tony sounded more curious than anything, which was…unsettling. He sounded like it was just another day at the office while Steve was creeping through the eerily silent compound hunting him. “Fact is, SHIELD tech all belongs to me. There’s a line in the contract between Stark Industries and SHIELD that if I found out that they are misusing my tech, I can take it back. So I did.”
“You killed people, Tony,” Steve reminded him, trying to keep him talking.
“SHIELD kills people, Steve,” Tony said, mimicking him.
“Ok, I’ll bite,” Steve said. The echoes sounded stronger down the corridor to the right, so he slipped down it as quietly as he could. “What are you talking about? Is this about the last mission?” They’d found a vampire nest that had been preying on the local community for decades and it had been a grueling fight to clear the caves. Afterwards, Tony had been unusually quiet and withdrawn; Steve had chalked it up to bad memories of Afghanistan and being in a cave, and had given him space. But apparently it had been more than that.
“Don’t you think it’s unfair how SHIELD gets to decide who to save and who to kill?” Tony said. Now the echo had moved again, like Tony was shadowing him somehow. “What’s a monster and what’s not?”
“We can certainly discuss moral relativism if you want to, Tony, but how about we do it after you unlock SHIELD’s computer network, give back control of the helicarriers, and lift the lockdown on the compound?" Steve tried. “Then you can tell me what happened on the last mission to make you this upset.”
"Or I could show you, and then I think you’ll agree that joining me is an eminently reasonable proposal,” Tony said, his voice suddenly very loud and coming from – above him? Steve started to look up but a sudden weight hit him, driving him to the floor. The shield was wrenched out of his hands and tossed away, clattering against the floor, and then there was a sudden, fierce pain in his neck.