Breaking Iron Will

~Steve

Steve’s day had started like every other since the Avengers dismantling, uneventful and honestly boring. He sat at his desk looking out the window that showcased the beautiful landscape of Wakanda.  No matter how many times he looked out the window the view always managed to take him by surprise with its beauty.  Steve sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Beautiful or not he was seriously starting to miss New York.  It wasn’t so much the scenery he missed, but the people there and the life that he had. It’s not that he regretted his decision in fact he would do it all again to save Bucky.  What he regretted was how he handled the situation.  After all the chaos had died down, he could see clearly now how he had let Tony down, he should have never lied to him and for that he would always be sorry.

Steve was jolted out of his thoughts by a shrill ring.  It couldn’t be…. Digging in his desk drawer, Steve pulled out the small flip phone.  He sucked in a rough breath as Tony’s name flashed a crossed the screen. It must be dire if Tony Stark needed to speak with him.  Steve answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Steve Rogers?” A small voice questioned.

“Yeah, who is this?”

“My name is Peter Parker and I need your help.”

Steve sat back in his chair.  Was this some kind of prank? “Look kid, I don’t know who you are or how you got this phone, but this phone was given to Iron man for emergencies only.”

“This is an emergency!” Peter cut him off.  “Someone took him!”

“Took him? Iron man?”  Steve questioned, a rock forming in his gut.

“Yes, and I need your help.” The boy paused. “I have no one else that can help me. And after everything you owe him.”

Steve felt those last words like a punch to the face.  He could tell by the boy’s tone that there was more to that statement than what he was letting on.  “Where are you, kid?”

“The old Avengers tower.”

Steve stood up moving to his closet, grabbing a travel bag, he began to throw clothes inside.  “All right, Peter I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“Thank you, please hurry!” Steve could hear the tremble in the boy’s voice.  It was obvious that he was very scared. But there was something nagging at the back of his mind.

“Hey, kid, how do you know Tony Stark.” Steve asked as he zipped the bag and hefted it over his shoulder.

There was a long pause at the other end of the phone. “Tony Stark, is my father.”

Steve halted, confusion washing over him. “Tony never said he had a son!”

A bitter laugh came from the other side of the phone.  “Yeah, it seems there is a lot that the two of you didn’t share.”

Steve could feel the bitterness radiating through the phone. “Look, Peter,” He started.

“It doesn’t matter right now, all I want is to find my dad.” The boy hastily cut Steve off.  “Call me when you get here.” With that the line went dead. 

Steve pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Tony Stark had a secret son, a twinge of sadness flashed through him.  Tony clearly hadn’t trusted the team enough to tell them, then again considering how it all turned out Steve couldn’t blame him.  Recalling the bitterness in the boy’s voice Steve could only assume that Peter hated him, something more had happened since Siberia of that he was certain.  Even so, the boy was right, it didn’t matter that Steve and Tony didn’t agree on the Accords, Steve would find his old friend. Sighing, Steve tucked the phone into his back pocket as he exited his room. After everything that they had been through he owed Tony that much. He was going to bring Tony Stark home.

~Peter

Peter sat on the cold hard floor in the middle of his father’s workshop, his knees pulled tight to his chest and his knuckles throbbing. It had been two hours since he had hung up on Steve Rogers, with nothing to do other than wait, Peter felt like he was spiraling.  Where was his dad? Was he hurt? Why was he taken?  All these thoughts consumed him, constricting his chest and making it hard to breathe.

Peter sucked in a harsh breath trying to calm himself. Rogers promised that he would be here, Peter had to keep his head until then.  After his phone call with Captain America, Peter hadn’t known what to do.  What does a son do when their father had been brutally kidnapped from his own home?  Peter had paced the living room a short while before finding his way to his dad’s workshop.  Even without the Captain here he could at least search for clues.  As he had searched the lab all he found was a piece of paper that read “The 117 remembers!”. He had spent the last few hours trying to figure out what that meant to no avail. Feeling absolutely useless, Peter had thrown his Stark tablet to the floor and punched the wall, effectively splitting his knuckles wide open. 

Peter looked at his knuckles, the blood was beginning to clot, and the tissue had discolored to a nasty shade of red.  It was odd, logically he knew the wound hurt but yet he couldn’t emotionally register the pain.  If his dad were here, he would have lectured Peter about being reckless.  Not only had he put a fairly big hole in the wall, but he injured himself in the process.  Peter could picture the Tony Stark rant now.

“Kid, what have I told you about letting your emotions get the better of you? Take it from a seasoned professional, too much emotion can get you killed!  Besides look at my wall, what do you think that I’m made from money!”

Peter grinned as he wiped tears from his eyes.  His dad was always making lame jokes like that to defuse the tension.  But Tony wasn’t here this time to remind him to keep his calm, this time Peter was on his own.  Taking a deep breathe through his nose Peter prepared himself to start his search again.  A vibration in his pocket drew his attention.  Taking the phone from his pocket Peter saw Steve’s name flash across the screen.

“Are you here?” Peter questioned, avoiding pleasantries.

“Yeah, you going to let me in?”

Peter got to his feet and moved to his father’s keyboard, typing out a few quick codes.  “There, the doors should be unlocked. I’m in dad’s lab, I assume you remember how to get here.”

“Got it, see you in a few.”

Peter clicked the phone shut, he only had to wait a few minutes before the one and only Captain America came striding into his father’s lab.  Peter swallowed thickly as many emotions flooded his system at once.  This was the first time he had seen Steve since the airport in Germany.  Since he had put a shield through his father’s chest.

 Anger was the first emotion that Peter distinguished from the mass surrounding him.  He wanted to give into it and go up to the man that had left his dad broken for over a month and punch him square in his face. He wanted to scream and rage at Steve, to make him hurt like they had hurt.  The only thing that held him back was the second emotion, relief.  Relief that Steve was here, that he still cared enough to come.  Maybe ‘care’ wasn’t the right term, it could be guilt or a sense of duty, either way the man was here.

The first thing Steve noticed when he had entered the room was the broken glass strewn around the floor.  In the center of the room was a puddle of dried blood.  Tony’s blood.  The second thing he noticed was the young teen sitting at the mechanics desk, staring the super soldier down.  Steve watched as anger flashed across the boy’s face and he tensed himself for the kids attack.  He wouldn’t have blamed the kid, but he had hoped to postpone this part.  Just as soon as Steve thought Peter was going to have a go at him the boy seemed to deflate right in front of him.  All traces of anger melted from his face to reveal a scared and exhausted boy.

“Peter,” Steve said, stepping forward to approach the boy.  “Tell me what happened.”

Peter looked tiredly at the man in front of him.  “I came home from school and dad wasn’t upstairs waiting for me like he normally is. I came downstairs to find all this.” The boy gestured to the mess surrounding them.  “Friday is offline, and dad is just gone.”

Peter let out a short sob as he finished.  Steve reached out to touch the kid but then thought better of it.  He knew that the last thing Peter wanted right now was to be comforted by the man that betrayed his father. “Peter, did the people that took Tony, leave anything behind?”

Peter nodded and handed the captain the paper.  Steve read the words a ghost of a memory itching at the back of his mind. The 117, it sounded vaguely familiar but not in a good way.  Folding the note, he faced the teen. “The 117, does that mean anything to you?”

Peter shook his head.  “I have never heard of any group by that name.  And if dad did, he would have kept that from me.  After everything that happened with the Avengers dismantling, he kept his work tightlipped.”  Peter rubbed the tense muscles at the back of his neck.  “Dad said that the politicians were out for blood and under no circumstances was I to go near that situation.”

Steve felt a pang of guilt.  Clearly Tony had been afraid of something, but the problem was figuring out what that was.  If there was one thing that Tony Stark was good at it was keeping a secret.  Steve internally cringed at the question he needed to ask the boy.  “Peter, what happened after Siberia?”

Hatred flashed over Peter’s brown eyes. “Why the hell are you asking that?”

Steve flinched back from the venom in the young man’s voice.  “I need to try and figure out what your dad was up too.  I’m just trying to find him.” He said, running a hand awkwardly through his hair.

Peter let out a slight crazed laugh.  “Well let’s see, the first week was spent in the hospital, three of those seven days he was in a coma. Something to do with a vibranium shield piercing his chest cavity.” Steve took a stumbling step back as Peter’s words ran him over. If Peter noticed he gave him no mercy.  “When he finally woke up, he wouldn’t talk, eat, or sleep.  It took me breaking down in his arms begging him not to die on me.  He made me a promise, ya know, that he wouldn’t die on me.” 

Peter swiped angrily at the tears threatening to spill over.  “It got a little better after that.  He left the hospital and was following his PT as instructed.  But he kept getting these weird dizzy spells and chest pains.  It took him passing out at a meeting for the doctors to find out that vibranium shield had caused additional trauma to his already weakened heart.”

Steve swallowed against the tightening in his throat.  “Peter, I’m so sorry.  I never meant,”

“You never meant for what? To almost kill my dad?  To leave him to bleed out and freeze to death?” Peter starred at the super soldier, in that moment he seemed so small.  But Peter felt no sympathy for the man in front of him. In that moment Peter wanted nothing more than for the super soldier to leave.  He wanted to curl up with his dad on the sofa and watch Star Wars for the hundredth time.  

Steve let out a broken sigh, rubbing at the moisture collecting in his own eyes. “The Winter Soldier, Bucky, had no control over his actions.  He was tortured and brainwashed.  I couldn’t let him be taken in, he is my friend and all I wanted to do is help him.” Steve clasped his hands in front of him in an almost pleading gesture.  “I’m not asking you to forgive me I’m just asking you to try and understand.”

Peter cocked his head, absorbing what the captain said.  He tried to picture if that had been Ned and what he would have done.  It would suck to know that his friend was put in that kind of situation but that still didn’t explain why Steve had attacked his dad that way.  Maybe he hadn’t lived enough years or maybe it was the generational difference, perhaps he was missing a big part of the story.  Regardless he wasn’t about to let Rogers off the hook. 

“What I understand is that you were unwilling to live without your friend.  You were willing to do whatever it took to get him out alive.  Damn the consequences.” Peter stood from his chair and crossed the room.  Stopping at the door he faced the super soldier.  “But did you ever stop and consider the people that can’t live without Tony Stark?” With that he left.

Closing his eyes Steve lifted his face towards the ceiling, emotions raged within him, regret, sorrow, and anger.  He had been so focused on saving Bucky, that he hadn’t once considered the damage he would leave behind.  Steve had counted on Tony to piece the wreckage back together.  Stark had always been the best one to handle the government officials and business men.  Steve had always seen Tony as a man made of iron never as just a man and there laid his mistake.

Running a hand across his face, Steve moved to Tony’s desk.  Tossing the note to the side Steve began rummaging through the contents of the drawer.  After a few moments of finding nothing of importance Steve slammed the door closed and sank onto the chair in defeat. Drumming his fingers against his thigh Steve studied the desk it seemed like a normal desk for Tony.  Papers strewn about, tools and wires also scattered the surface. Steve also noted a row of books lined against the wall.  Normally he wouldn’t have found that weird but the more he starred the more he found it out of character for the mechanic.  In all his years of knowing Stark, Steve had never seen him read a book.  Everything was on a tablet or the man was busy building something.  Leaning forward Steve studied the books, most of them were about engineering or chemistry but the last one was titled ‘Atlas of the Human Heart’.

Scowling Steve grabbed the book, it was heavier than he had expected and seemed oddly disproportioned.  As he inspected the book in his hands Steve noticed most of the pages were lose and folded in on themselves.  When Steve opened the book, its pages fell out onto the desk in a heap. The captain froze when he realized what the pages contained. This wasn’t a book on information on the human heart it was a file on the rogue avengers.  The file detailed their locations and activities.  Had Tony been planning on turning this over to Ross?  Steve shook that thought from his mind, of course he wouldn’t have.  Looking closer Steve could see he had been tracking them for weeks, shuffling through the papers Steve noticed that there were entries of false locations and leads.  

Steve sat back in the chair letting the papers fall from his hands as the pieces to the puzzle fell into place.  Tony Stark had been protecting them over the past month.  He kept Ross of their scent, giving them a head start and keeping them out of jail.  Anger coursed through Steve as he picked up a packet of papers titled “Why the Accords are Shit.  How 117 countries got it wrong!”  Tony had been working on an appeal for the Accords before he went missing.  He was trying to bring everyone home.

Slamming the packet down on the desk Steve shot to his feet.  He knew who had Tony and it was time to make Thaddeus Ross pay.  Even if he had to take down 117 countries to do it.