Tony’s fingers gingerly reach up to examine the source of his pain. There is a lump the size of a small acorn on the crown of his skull, and he winces when pain explodes, even though he barely brushed against it. His vision blurs as the pain passes, and he has to close his eyes to stave off the dizziness.
“Ah, crap.”
Tony’s body twists as he takes in his surroundings. The air is thick with smoke, though in the distance he can just about make out the vague shape of a doorway, glowing white through the otherwise grey room. Tony’s nose wrinkles as the smell of burning envelops him, and then he promptly leaves his partially digested meal on the floor next to where he had fallen. He wishes it had made him feel slightly better, but it did very little to off-set the sickness that courses through him.
Tony’s legs are weak beneath him, and his knees hit the ground more times than he’s able to count. His palms sting from where the dirt has embedded itself beneath the skin and everything is fuzzy, like watching the TV with bad signal.
“Tony? Tony, are you there?”
“Jarvis, thank god. I’m… I think I’m concussed and—”
“Did he just call you ‘Jarvis’?” Rhodey asks through the comms. “Tony, where are you right now?”
“I’m in a room,” he chokes. “It’s on fire.”
“Ah, shit.”
“I will get him,” Jarvis promises.
Tony continues to urge his uncoordinated body to the door, and though the fire is now licking the walls at the edge of the room, Tony genuinely isn’t sure where the sweat that coats his skin is coming from; the exertion or the heat.
“I can see Anthony. I will bring him in.”
Tony doesn’t understand the words, but he definitely doesn’t scream when hands grab his shoulders and turn him around. Between the pounding of his heart and the smoke, Tony finds himself choking and he vomits again, only this time, the android before him is unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end, rather than the floor.
“What’re you, and why did you steal Jarvis’ voice?”
The being's eyes widen, but its mouth stays set in a thin line. Tony sways, the ground coming up to meet him, but before he has the chance to slam against the floor and likely give himself another bump on the head, an arm snakes around his waist and hauls him back upright.
“He is in bad shape,” not-Jarvis says. “I cannot see the suit anywhere. The fire is strong.”
“Bring him to the jet. We can have a doctor look at him when we get back.”
“No doctor. Just Bruce.”
“Christ, Tony, how hard did you hit your head?”
Tony squints as they exit the room. He takes in a lungful of fresh air, and his body takes that as permission to completely lose its ability to hold himself up. His knees give out, but the body holding him remains strong.
“Where is everyone?” Tony rasps.
Rhodey steps out of the quinjet, the top half of the suit gone, but the bottom half still in place.
“Cute trousers, honey-bear,” Tony jokes weakly.
Rhodey’s face screws up, and he steps aside with a whir-click from the suit. Tony is lowered onto a seat and takes in all the empty seats.
“Where’s the team?”
“We should head back,” not-Jarvis advises. “This seems very bad.”
“Agreed. I’ll call Happy, have him have an ambulance meet us at the landing strip.”
“I am not going to the hospital,” Tony slurs, pushing himself back up, only to fall back down weakly.
“You’re hurt, Tony. And your head seems a little messed up.”
“Rude.”
Rhodey directs the android to the front of the jet and the doors of the jet whirr as they close.
“No team today? What were we doing here? Who’s the ‘bot that stole J’s voice?”
Rhodey sits awkwardly, the lower half of the suit looking deeply uncomfortable. The bottom of Tony’s stomach shifts and his ears strain as they move up into the atmosphere and then begin speeding back towards America.
“Tony, what is the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t know. I guess… we were in Europe. Going for Loki’s sceptre.”
“Tony, what year do you think it is?”
“That’s not a good question to be asking, Platypus.”
“Answer the questions and we can figure out just how bad this is.”
Tony’s looks Rhodey up and down, taking in the unusual paleness of his skin, the way the bottom half of the suit doesn’t look like the bottom half anymore, and the lines of age deep where they weren’t before.
“It’s not 2015 is it.”
“Oh shit.”
Tony’s stomach sinks as he realizes that he’s about to embark on a troubling period of his life.
“This is not going to be fun. I’m either going to sleep or throw up. We’ll continue this riveting conversation in the morning. Get Bruce in to check me out.”
Tony shuts the room out and falls asleep as Rhodey promises to wake him up every few hours until they reach the states. He briefly hears snippets of the conversation Rhodes has with the android, but he doesn’t hear enough for any of it to make any sense.
~
“Wake up, Tones.”
Groaning, Tony pushes himself upright on the bench. Pain streaks across his skull when he opens his eyes and accepts help from the android as he’s loaded into a wheelchair. Normally he wouldn’t be so pliant, but as he’s in so much pain he can’t even see properly. He doesn’t complain except beyond the compulsory groaning he’s known for.
“What seems to be the problem?” an unfamiliar voice to his left asks.
“He hit his head really hard, I think. He thinks it’s 2015.”
“Oh.”
“That sounds worse than ‘what year is it’,” Tony points out.
The woman finds his joke funny enough to laugh at least, but Rhodey is still wearing his pinched up, pained expression, as though the world is about to end. The android stays back after some careful words from Rhodey, which just brings forward thousands of reasons to panic and stress about possible.
“What’s going on?”
“Tony, it’s 2017.”
The walls blur as they spin, and Tony upchucks again, babbling incoherently about bad jokes, but even with the brain failing to sit still, he knows that it’s true. He knows that he’s lost time, or memories, or something.
“Tony, it’s OK. The doctor said that it’s likely temporary.”
“I want to go home,” Tony tells him miserably.
“Not quite yet, I’m afraid, Mr Stark. We need to do some scans first.”
“Please. Jarvis can do them at home and send them over.”
The woman looks to Rhodey, and even though Tony tries to protest, Rhodey assumes the position of Tony’s caregiver. Whatever they say is done quietly enough that Tony can’t hear it, but he doesn’t get the chance to complain because, within a minute of the doctor leaving the room, the android is coming back in with a wheelchair.
“Home?”
“Home.”
Tony’s body sags into the chair, and even though he can’t find it in himself to smile, he’s still bubbling with anticipation, and his mind whirs with thoughts of seeing the team. Sure, Cap will give him crap for getting hurt and ducking out of the hospital, and Clint will make Tony the subject of all his jokes for the next few weeks, but he’s sure he can deal with that. He bets that even though Bruce will be upset that they didn’t go to him first, despite his ‘I’m not that kind of doctor’ spiel, he’ll make sure Tony gets better sooner rather than later. Hell, Natasha might even show those rare moments of kindness where she sneaks him treats and maybe a tablet if he’s lucky.
“Pepper is waiting for us at the tower.”
“Bet she’s pissed. She hates the suit as it is, I can’t imagine how she’ll feel now that I’ve gone and lost a few years of memory.”
Tony quickly glances down at his hand and then sighs in disappointment.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just assumed we’d have been married by now.”
Rhodey’s smile stiffens and the lines around his eyes tighten.
“What?”
“Let’s wait until we get there before I fill you in.”
When they get into the car, Rhodey and the android stand outside to talk to Rhodey. With his first few moments of being alone, Tony does the mature thing and decides to let Rogers know that he’s still alive and kicking since no one seems to be filling the team in. The number next to Steve’s name is different, but Tony figures it’s the first of many things.
“Stark?”
Steve’s eyes are wide and he’s looking to his left, but his eyes meet the camera again a second later.
“Hey, Steve. I don’t know if Rhodey’s filled you in on anything yet, but I’m on my way back from the hospital already. Tell Bruce to go light on the doctor stuff though. I’m still a little out of it.”
Steve doesn’t move, but his frown deepens and his eyes narrow in concern.
“Hospital?”
“They didn’t even tell you that? Look, it’s no big deal, but I may have hit my head, and I may have a touch of amnesia, but they reckon it’ll clear up soon.”
“Who’re you talking to?”
Rhodey’s face is next to his a second later, and Tony jumps in surprise.
“Just Steve. I’m only—hey! What the hell!”
Rhodey snatches the phone from Tony’s hand and hangs up. Tony’s mouth is open wide in shock, and then he snaps it closed with a frown.
“What has gotten into you?” Tony admonishes, stretching his arm to try and get the phone back. “Gimme.”
“Tony, you’re not talking to Steve anymore.”
“Only cause you hung up.”
“Tony, no. You guys… you’re not friends. Not now.”
Tony’s heart stutters, and his breath leaves his body like he’s been punched in the stomach. He’s known Rhodey long enough to know that he’s not joking. Tony and Steve really aren’t on speaking terms any more.
“Why?”
“I’ll explain, but can we please wait until we’re home?”
Ordinarily, Tony would argue until he was blue in the face, but now he feels like it’s for the best. He needs a few moments to process what he’s hearing. Needs time to overcome the fact that he’s not friends with Steve any more.
When they pull up in the underground garage, the sun hidden and the sky closed off, Tony is helped back into the wheelchair. He tries, albeit weakly, to protest his treatment, but it’s ignored. Besides, along with the concussion, the news is not doing his body any favours.
“Tony, there’s a lot that has happened since the last thing you remember,” Rhodes starts once they’re sat in the unusually empty communal area.
“J, can you give me a replay?”
Silence.
“Jarvis?”
“Sorry, boss. Jarvis isn’t around anymore.”
Tony chokes on a noise, head twisting wildly as he tries to locate the foreign voice before it dawns on him like a nightmare come true.
“F.R.I.D.A.Y?”
“That’s me, Boss.”
He’d built F.R.I.D.A.Y. with J.A.R.V.I.S at his side. He never expected to use her as a replacement, but rather as a supplement when J was too busy elsewhere.
“Oh shit.”
Tony listens in rapt horror as Rhodey goes on to explain what had transpired, from the discovery of the Maximoff twins to the civil war. Tony’s stomach sinks further with each story, and he is having a hard time believing any of it.
“We fought? And I brought a child with me?”
“Peters not a child. He’s just… on the young side.”
Tony groans, rubbing his hand over his tired eyes. His hair is standing on end, and he is anxiously waiting for Pepper to come. She was supposed to be here already, but Tony is yet to see her.
“Man, I messed up hard. I can’t believe what I’ve done.”
“It’s not your fault, Mr Stark.”
His hand flies up to his chest, twisting in his seat to find the Android. When his heart calms down and he can breathe without struggling, he talks again.
“You’re Jarvis.”
“No. I am a concoction of many things, but I am not wholly Jarvis, nor am I Ultron. Part of me is Thor, also.”
“Right. Yeah. Rhodey mentioned that part. Damn.”
Tony’s body sags into the pillows, his head still pounding, his stomach still twisting. The tower feels empty, all of a sudden. He drove everyone out, but even though, to him, he hasn’t done it yet, he still believes in the accords that Rhodey had explained. He just doesn’t understand why Steve didn’t either.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Rhodey asks gently.
“Why didn’t Steve like the accords? He was always for accountability, and we’ve always been under the jurisdiction of the World Council, and S.H.I.E.L.D. I can’t understand why he’d be suddenly against that now?”
“Because of Bucky.”
Rhodey tries his best to explain, but it falls on deaf ears. Tony is only able to take in snippets of information before his mind shuts down to process it. Bucky had been alive this entire time, and Steve was searching for him, using Tony’s resources, which is fine. Bucky and Steve took down Hydra, though neither really understood that they were helping each other, which is a weird rom-com moment, but also fine.
“The Winter Soldier killed your parents.”
His eyes close at this, shutting out the room around him. His own shaking hands come up to his chest, where he feels a burst of unexplainable pain.
“Steve knew.”
Tony lets his body fall forward, his hands coming up to his face, and his utter disbelief makes him feel so much sicker. Steve let him believe that his parents had died in an accident, rather than telling him the truth?
“After you found out, Vision discovered you unconscious in Siberia. Steve’s shield was there, but he and Bucky had disappeared. You were in a coma for two weeks after that.”
“How?”
Rhodey doesn’t reply, but the hand that squeezes his shoulder tells him all he needs to know.
“I want to go to bed.”
Rhodey doesn’t press any further, and Vision helps Tony to stand up and guides him towards his bed. Tony feels no relief as he’s lowered onto the sheets and helped into pyjamas. He just feels more disappointment. In himself, in Steve, in the team as a whole. How could they have let this tear them apart?
The questions keep running through his head, fighting off the possibility of sleep. Even when the room is left empty but for himself, and the lights are lowered, Tony doesn’t feel any closer to sleep. He lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
“Friday?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Call Rogers. Don’t tell Rhodey.”
Instead of a verbal response, the room brightens and a holoscreen pops up at the end of his bed. In an attempt to not be hit with another wave of nausea, Tony pushes himself upright slowly. By the time the walls have stopped moving at an ungodly speed, Steve is peering into the camera with concern.
“Tony?”
“Hey, Steve.”
“You look sick.”
“Concussion and amnesia remember?”
“Honestly? I was hoping you were joking.” Steve swallows, looking to his left, and then his eyes meet Tony’s. “What… when did you think it was?”
“Last thing I remember is going into the castle in Sokovia. We were going to get Loki’s sceptre, remember?”
Steve lets out a long breath and his eyes widen with sympathy.
“Jesus, Tony, that’s a lot of time to be missing out on.”
Tony licks his lips, his mouth going impossibly dry.
“Rhodey filled me in.”
“He did?”
“On everything.”
Steve shifts in his seat, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck.
“I don’t know if you calling me was such a good idea,” Steve says, but then rears backwards. “Don’t look at me like that Tony.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve just kicked a puppy.”
“I’m not—”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, because without your memories, even if you understand what happened, you’re still… and don’t bite my head off, but you’re kind of in a vulnerable position right now.”
“Hey!”
“I said don’t bite my head off. Tony, a lot of stuff happened between us. Things that I’d love to resolve, but I know that it’s not that easy. We definitely shouldn’t try when you don’t remember what happened.”
“Maybe this is the perfect time for it!” Tony argues. “I mean, without my emotional baggage or whatever, we’re in probably the best place to recover from this.”
“Who’re you talking to?”
Natasha comes into view on Steve’s right, and as Tony’s mouth pulls into a smile, confused as it may be, Natasha’s mouth falls into a deep frown. Her eyes roam over Tony, and then she turns to Steve and talks in a clipped language that Tony doesn’t know.
“You’ve got amnesia?” Natasha asks, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.
Tony shrugs, unconsciously leaning away from the screen. Natasha looks calculating, and he doesn’t enjoy being at the end of that look.
“Goddammit, Tony.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No. But… damn. 2015? That’s… so much has happened.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Are you talking to Stark?”
Now it’s Clint’s turn to show up, this time on Steve’s left. Natasha talks to him in that language again, and the clenched jaw and red cheeks soften into whiteness and laxness. He eyes Tony with sympathy and then sits down heavily.
“Damn.”
“I’ve heard that I fucked up,” Tony says, trying to lighten the mood but making everyone flinch.
“Yeah. A little,” Clint agrees. “But maybe you weren’t the only one.”
“Rhodey is going to kill me if he finds out I was talking to you.”
Silence settles over them, and when Tony closes his eyes to collect himself, his body takes it as permission to shut down.
“Go to sleep, man. You look wrecked.”
“Not,” is all Tony can muster up.
Clint’s laughter reaches his ears, bringing a small smile to his face as he drifts asleep. He doesn’t hear or see Rhodey coming in, but he vaguely registers that his body is being manipulated until his head is on the pillows again, and the duvet is pulled up to his chin. The bed beside him dips, and low murmurs of familiar voices lull him back into a deep sleep.
~
The night passes in a series of waking moments, forced onto him when an incessant tapping on his forehead brings him to just enough to bat the hand away. Once Tony has woken up enough to complain, Rhodes’ hands are in his hair, pulling him back to sleep for another few hours.
All in all, Tony feels pretty good by the time morning shows up, though he makes sure Rhodey knows he’s unimpressed.
“Dude, I had to. It was the doctor's orders.”
The rich smell of coffee drifts on the air and Tony climbs from his bed. He hastily drags on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then rushes into the kitchen.
“Pepper!”
In a flash of red hair, Pepper turns around to give him a big smile.
“What’s wrong?” Tony asks immediately.
The smile drops as though it was never there, and Pepper pats the seat beside her. Tony joins her and startles when she takes his hand into hers.
“Tony, what is the last thing you remember about us?”
“Uh, I dunno. I was planning on asking you to marry me?”
Pepper gasps and leans away from him, snatching her hand away to hold it against her mouth.
“You were?”
“That was the wrong thing to say. Don’t be angry. It’s the concussion, I swear.”
“Oh, Tony, I never knew.”
Tony’s lips part as his stomach sinks.
“We broke up?”
Tears spill onto her cheeks, though her trembling hand tries to remove them as quickly as they arrive. Tony can’t be there to comfort her though. Whoever he has been these past few years has destroyed everything, and Tony can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to lose Pepper of all people.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he backs away.
The elevator doors close, blocking her from view and he slumps against the wall as it descends through the building.
“Lobby, please.”
When Tony steps out of the building, he wraps his arms around himself and thinks longingly of his jacket. He considers going into his garage to take a car, but he shrugs the idea off. Maybe the fresh air will do him some good.
He walks away, down the street and into central park. He aimlessly wanders through the tree-lined pathways, grateful to have thought to grab his wallet. He buys a pair of sunglasses and feels better dressed for it. He still walks past whispered exclamations, still ignores the pointed fingers, but he feels far less exposed nevertheless.
The streets rumble with noise, the trees rustle restlessly, and the hum of constant unintelligible conversation keeps everything in his head from straying too far.
He breathes in the pine and magnolia and breathes out the unrelenting stress that is doing its best to drown him. He can’t think about it. Can’t consider how, in the last few years, he’s managed to ruin everything good he had going for him.
His mother used to say ‘all good things come to an end’, and he hates just how true that has become. He can’t think about how he drove his friends out, he can’t think about how he lost Pepper, and simply knowing that his parents didn’t die in some freak accident is enough to set his blood boiling.
He imagines Bucky stalking towards the crashed car, and Tony’s fists clench at his side. He envisions his mother crying out in fear, and he clenches his jaw. When he sees, as though he were stood watch over the event, Bucky’s gun pointed against his parents heads, he stops moving, breathing heavily, though it causes his chest to constrict painfully.
How could Steve not tell me?
Tony has been betrayed by the people he cares for too often. Is it the world offering Karma? Is this recompense for the lives lost to his weapons? Does he deserve this?
Probably, a voice in his head whispers gleefully. Perhaps these are reparations.
Tony falls into a bench, exhausted from his emotions. His tucks his shaking hands into his pockets and stares out across the lake. The ripples that catch the glare of the sun twinkle, and Tony’s mouth tugs into an unfeeling smile.
Outside of his own little world, everything goes on. Things haven’t just halted to a standstill because he messed up.
Tony shifts to his left, feeling around for his phone.
Damn.
He didn’t bring it.
Maybe he shouldn’t have left so hastily.
He jumps up from the bench and stretches out. He heads out into the streets again. From the way the sun is hiding behind the tall sky-rises on his left, he knows he’s been gone a few hours. Pepper and Rhodey will be pissed at him for ducking out without a phone.
“You’re Tony Stark!” a kid shouts.
Impulsively, Tony kneels down to the kids' height and smiles.
“I am.”
“Ironman is my favourite,” the boy admits, blushing.
“Mine too.”
The kid giggles, but his mother lifts him into her arms and gives Tony a disgusted look. Tony’s smile melts as she walks away, and he ducks into an alleyway. He doesn’t want to be stopped again, so he continues his way home in the least populated streets.
That, he learns five minutes later, was a terrible idea.
“Get in the van.”
~
His skull throbs in a familiar way. Not familiar like faces he’s happy to see, though. No. It’s like dreaming of a building that your nightmares frequent.
“What do you want?” he asks before his eyes are even open.
“Nothing.”
That startles Tony enough that he immediately fails in his attempt to stoically make his way through the kidnapping.
“What?”
“You heard. You don’t have to do anything. Just wait.”
The man does not look like your typical bad guy, Tony notes with dissatisfaction. He’s got blond hair that appears fluffy, and he’s not a wall of muscle either. He looks positively merry in comparison so some people Tony has met in his long history of being taken against his will.
“Wait for what?”
The air vibrates with the sound of slamming against metal. The man smiles.
“That.”
In through the door to the left, Steve, Clint, Natasha and Sam burst in. They have their weapons pointed directly at the man.
“I surrender,” the man shouts, loud enough that Tony winces.
The man gets onto his knees and holds his hands high above his head.
“Get out of here!”
“Tony, what—”
“GET ON THE GROUND.”
A thunderous stomping of footsteps, loud shouting and weapons being loaded and aimed to follow the orders, and Tony’s head hits his chest as the truth hits him. He was used as bait, and they bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
“Tony, did you set this up?”
Tony’s head shoots up so quick that everything is blurry for a second. He meets the wounded eyes of Steve and lets his mouth fall open from the accusation.
Is that really something that Steve thinks he would do?
“No, he didn’t,” Nat says, as she looks Tony up and down.
Steve nods as his hands go up and he lowers himself to his knees. Clint, Nat and Sam copy and Tony struggles against the coarse rope digging into his wrists as handcuffs are slapped on all of his team.
“Ah, Anthony, I see that despite your worries, your team still care enough to try and save you.”
A tall man with salt and pepper hair walks in. Steve scowls at him, but the man just smiles back, as though Steve weren’t a super soldier but rather a disobedient puppy.
“Who the hell are you?”
The man cocks his head, his mouth thinning.
“Pardon?”
“Who the hell are you?”
The man looks at the kidnapper, who shrugs.
“I’m Thaddeus Ross. We’ve met.”
Tony’s mouth snaps shut. He looks away from the piercing gaze, but the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
“You don’t remember me,” the man muses, his voice getting closer.
Tony meets Natasha’s eyes and she moves her head side to side, ever so slightly. She doesn’t have to do anything else for Tony to know what she’s saying.
“Do you?” the man asks, grabbing Tony’s chin and forcing Tony to look at him. “Oh, look at that, the famous Tony Stark, refusing to speak.”
He barks an order over his shoulder for the team to be packed up and taken to ‘the raft’ which sounds ominous enough that Tony almost demands to know what it is.
“Now, what to do with the boy wonder. Maybe we should let you go home? Or…”
Ross smiles.
“Take this one, too.”
Tony is roughly hauled to his feet and dragged across the room. He’s thrown onto the floor of a van, and the doors close, filling the van with darkness.
“Tony?”
“Oh, hey, Nat. Fancy seeing you here.”
A boot kicks his ribs, too light to have meant damage. The floor rumbles and Tony struggles upright. He leans against the side, only to find a pair of legs in the way.
“Crap, sorry—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Clint jokes, as one of his legs moves over Tony’s shoulder. “I’ll be your own personal seat-belt.”
Tony chuckles.
“Who was that guy, then? Ross?”
“You really don’t remember, do you?” Sam says.
“Not a damn clue. I’m guessing he’s the government? What’s the raft?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Steve says calmly. “Though, I doubt we’ll be there long to offer a tour.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Steve offers.
Though Tony can’t see anyone in the van, he can hear the smile Steve is offering. Confident, even if Tony thinks that this isn’t the time to be blindly sure of oneself. They’re in trouble with the government in a way that Tony is sure won’t see a trial. You’re not arrested after a staged kidnapping and still remain hopeful enough to see a trial.
The ride is bumpy and had it not been for Clints let holding him in place, Tony is sure he’d have cracked his head on the doors by now. He snorts at the idea of getting double-amnesia. What else could he end up forgetting?
“Rise and shine,” cries Ross as the doors are thrown open and the team squint against the bright street lamps that glow on the empty dock.
“Wow, when you said RAFT, you literally meant on the water, huh?”
“Someone shut him up.”
From the darkness, a man appears and he wraps a cloth around Tony’s mouth. The glare he offers both Ross and the giver of the gag would melt ice.
“You were far more interesting after Steve left you to die in Siberia.”
Tony’s eyes widen and he turns to face Steve. That wasn’t in the debriefing Rhodey gave him. Steve looks equally as shocked.
“I didn’t leave him for dead,” he argues.
“Oh? You destroyed the power source for a suit that weighs two-hundred pounds. You expected him to be able to lift that, after how badly you beat him?”
Steve pales considerably, looking desperately over to Tony and then back to Ross.
“No. No, because… he was talking when I left. You were talking,” he adds, looking at Tony.
“He wasn’t conscious much longer after you left him. How long was your coma? Oh. That’s right. You don’t remember. Your android found you, in the end. Almost lost your hands to frostbite, you know.”
Tony swallows, hard, looking down at the floor. Steve is protesting, but Tony remembers Rhodey mentioning a fight, and a coma, but somehow he hadn’t even considered that Steve was to blame for that. Why, he doesn’t know. It’s startlingly obvious.
“Tony, please.”
Tony doesn’t look up, even as he’s dragged onto a helicopter by two henchmen. They fly out over the ocean. It looks serene, even in the darkness. It’s so at odds with the warring of emotions and thoughts that he laughs through the gag, only to be slapped on the back of his head and told to ‘shut up’.
He does.
If that isn’t a testament to how little he’s able to process in the face of the news, he’s not sure what is. Many people have expressed the suspicion that he could talk for days without faltering if someone gave him the chance to.
Not now. He continues to be stunned by his own stupidity for not putting the pieces together in the first place; for that is the first failure that has led him into this vulnerability. He can’t shut the thoughts out, and because of that, he’s letting his team down again.
But, for the first time, Tony wonders if it really is all his fault. Steve lied to him. And worse, he beat Tony within an inch of his life.
Simply thinking about it leaves his body aching in places he didn’t even know it could hurt. The place where the reactor once sat, which to him is a fairly new development, hurts terribly, as though hit with an anvil.
“Tony, please.”
Tony realises suddenly that they’re moving again, and he can see Steve being pushed forward on his left. The rest of the team are on his right, and when they’re not carefully noting where they’re being pushed, they’re sending anxious looks over to Tony and Steve.
Tony turns to face the front. Looking at Steve hurts more.
“It’s not what it sounds like.”
Ross laughs, a booming noise that echoes from the walls.
“Oh please, Mr Rogers. You beat him to near-death and left him to freeze. He had to be rescued. For the first time in his life, Tony Stark couldn’t save himself. And that’s because you beat him down so far he couldn’t get back up on his own.”
Ross, for his part, seems to take immeasurable pleasure at this announcement. Tony is thrown into a cell, hands still bound, mouth still gagged, and he slides down the glass wall, completed depleted. He has no energy to listen to the angered shouts of Steve’s team.
One by one, the voices are cut off, and when Tony looks up, it’s to find that the glass has been turned dusty white, not unlike his workshop in the Malibu mansion and tower. Silence greets him, and he stays sat in the corner, thinking about what he’s learnt.
Tony is startled awake by the smashing of glass.
He sits up, back aching, and stares at the suit in the frame of broken glass.
“Boss.”
“Fri,” he breathes, shocked.
The suit takes a clanking step forward, glass crunching underfoot, and it opens up. It’s the easy option to just tell her to leave. To let him suffer here, with the team he let down and the man that almost killed him. But he can’t do that. He uses the small cot to push himself upwards, and he stumbles inside the suit, which closes around him comfortably.
“Let’s get the team out, I guess.”
“Way ahead of you, Boss. The team are ready and waiting to go. There is a quinjet ready to take you home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, boss, home.”
Tony steps out into the circular room and finds that all the other glass cells have been broken. The team are assembled in the middle, looking just as confused as Tony feels.
“Friday has a jet ready for us.”
Steve steps forward, arm outstretched, but Tony turns away and starts to march away, following the map that Friday is projecting onto his HUD. It doesn’t take long to get out, but it’s highly suspicious that they don’t come across anyone else who had been working there.
“Where are the people at?” Clint asks.
“Temporarily displaced,” Friday replies.
“Oh. Cool.”
“Indeed.”
They board the jet, and the door closes with a click and the jet sets off, auto-pilot taking them home.
“Tony!” Pepper cries, stepping into the cold wind on the rooftop.
Tony spills out of the suit and into her arms. He can feel her glaring at the team behind him, but she doesn’t relent her grip for a long time, and he’s free to breathe in her strawberry scented shampoo that he’s always loved.
“Let’s get inside before you catch a cold,” she says delicately, taking his hand and pulling him inside. “You should probably come in too,” she adds, coldly.
Tony hears the team shuffling in behind them, and they all converge on the penthouse floor, in the living room. Rhodey had been pacing, and he stills when he watches Tony, Pepper and the team enter.
“Tones, you idiot. Did you honestly get kidnapped again?” Rhodey asks fondly as he rubs knuckles across Tony’s scalp.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Tony grumbles pushing him away.
“So, what’s the plan now?” Steve asks, stepping forward. “The government will know where you are.”
“The government aren’t a problem anymore,” Rhodey tells him coolly. “Pepper ensured that. You’re no longer fugitives, and if anyone ever tries to lay hands on Tony again, I’ll cut those hands-off. That includes you, Captain,” Rhodey manages to spit the word like a curse, “and your little team.”
“Your rooms are where they were before,” Tony smiles, looking exasperated. “Oh, or, are they?”
Pepper nods sadly.
“You never let us move them.”
“That’s pathetic, thanks for announcing it.”
Clint, Sam, and Natasha leave, but Steve stays.
“I think we should talk. Not now, but at some point. In the meantime, I’d like to try and make amends. What do you say, Tony?”
Peppers warm hand encases Tony’s, and the pressure from Rhodey’s hand is grounding.
“Sure, Rogers. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Steve shakes Tony’s hand and then leaves, the elevator doors closing and leaving Tony alone with his closest friends.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Pepper tells him.
“I know. But hatred is corrosive. It wouldn’t do us any favours to hold that between us.”
“You’re a better man than you let on,” Rhodey says.
“This is getting too touchy-feely for my health. Pizza and beer?”
“Sure, Tones. Just promise you won’t go wandering again.”