Marvel 616 Fic: Undo | Chapter 5
Sep. 8th, 2013 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vail_kagamiIt happens like this: One moment Tony is standing in his office, in the warm light of the evening sun falling in through the window and a shell of numb nothingness, the next he’s on his knees struggling to breathe because Steve is dead. He’s dead without ever knowing how Tony feels—about everything, about him, and Tony can’t tell him now, and even if he could Steve wouldn’t care. He’s dead and it’s Tony’s fault. He’s dead.
Gone.
Tony has lost before. He doesn’t have trouble grasping the concept.
He curls up on his side and drifts through an ocean of grief. For a while, there is nothing else and in a way that’s comforting, that’s easy. There is nothing to worry about because all is already lost.
He shouldn’t let himself go like this; he has things to do, an organization to run. People who depend on him to make decisions for them, but he can’t, can’t…
Extremis is silent. There is only an empty ache where it should be and that is disconcerting, but more than that, it’s wrong.
Tony can’t deal with it. He climbs to his feet anyway, sways when an unexpected wave of dizziness washes over him. In the window he sees the reflection of the RT in his chest, the edge of it peeking over the collar of the oversized t-shirt he’s wearing. The same device he used to save Pepper. (But Pepper’s fine!) The same device. The one Steve keeps staring at as if it were a time bomb.
The sight is so familiar and Tony doesn’t know why, except he does.
Sometimes Steve would trail his hand down Tony’s chest and over the RT and it always feels odd, the sensation of those large, warm fingers on his skin and then nothing, and then it’s back again further down, like there is a hole in his chest, or scar tissue thick like metal. Such tenderness, and in between, just the ever present aching pressure of that foreign object resting where there should be bone and muscle, and Steve would always rest his hands on Tony’s hips afterwards where there is only skin underneath his palms and bend his head when Tony leans in to kiss him but that doesn’t make sense, that never happened because Steve died before Tony could ever make a move and he wouldn’t have wanted it and Tony feels himself going crazy because he remembers the taste of Steve Rogers’ lips.
He remembers and it can’t be, it’s impossible, it never happened, but it did, and his fingers are clawing at the skin of his forearm, not digging deep enough to get the crazy out or hurt enough for something to be real.
He sways again, catches himself on the desk and half-accidentally, half-purposefully knocks the monitor down. It doesn’t break. The glass shade of the desk lamp does.
Tony grabs the biggest shard with his good hand and slams it into his arm, gasping when the pain hits him, sharp and real. He repeats the action when he feels the crazy crawling back and again when he is convinced that a glass or a bottle of bourbon would help him figure this thing out or, alternatively, not care.
He doesn’t know how many times he’s done it by the time someone grasps his shoulders and slams him into the wall.
-
“Tony! Oh shit, oh fuck you!” Jim doesn’t even try to stem the flow of curses spilling from his mouth. It really helps him not to panic, or possibly twist Tony’s scrawny neck. “I’m going to murder you,” he promises. “I’m going to murder Samson and that damn nurse and everyone in this building!”
The relief he felt when he entered the tower to find Tony amazingly non-abducted died a quick and painful death when he had to spend what felt like ten thousand minutes wrestling a sharp-edged piece of glass from of his friend’s hand which he has previously used to cut his arm to shreds. Jim doesn’t appreciate that.
He’s going to have words with whoever was in charge of watching over Tony. Who thought it would be a good idea to leave him alone in his current state?
Apart from him, that is.
“God, Tony, I’m sorry,” he mutters even as he pulls the struggling man to his feet and drags him to the bathroom. “Here, sit down, let me look at that.”
“Leave me alone,” Tony says, his voice completely calm.
“Yeah, not happening. Give me your arm.”
Tony pulls his arm to his chest and claws at the cuts with his blunt nails.
“Geez, Chief, don’t be like that.” Jim tries to keep his voice light but inside, he’s freaking out. He didn’t sign up for this.
Who is he kidding? He signed up for this the moment he became Tony’s friend.
“Why are you doing that?” he tries a different angle. There’s far too much blood all over Tony’s clothes, it’s fucking dripping off him, he needs to do something about that.
“Nothing makes sense,” Tony tells him.
“Yeah, I get that. Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back. Don’t… don’t do anything.” Jim hurries out, to his room, opens his drawer and gets the syringe he had hoped he wouldn’t have to use. Fortunately, Tony doesn’t resist at all when he injects the sedative into his arm. It’s a strong dose; less than two minutes later, Tony lists to the side, but even those two minutes feel like far too long.
“That’s pretty strong stuff,” Tony mumbles like he doesn’t really care.
“Well, you’re not exactly making it easy for me.” Jim guides his friend so he’s leaning against the wall and won’t fall off his seat before he goes down to cleaning and bandaging the cuts. The disinfectant has to hurt, but Tony probably welcomes that. The fucker. He’s just living to make Jim’s life Hell.
His hand is cut as well, from the shard he was holding. Fuck. Jim bandages it as best he can but a lot of those cuts need stitches and he’s not going to do that. That’s what they have a doctor in the building for.
Jim is going to call him in a minute, after he removed Tony from this blood-soiled bathroom. He hoists the rapidly fading man into his arms and carries him down the corridor.
“I really hate you, you know,” he declares as he places him on the bed.
“That’s only because you love me so much.” Tony is almost gone and completely unashamed and Jim closes his eyes and wishes it weren’t true.
-
While the doctor takes care of Tony’s wounds, Jim calls Steve, currently hurrying back to New York, to tell him there is no need to worry, Tony is still safe. He doesn’t mention his most recent spell of self-harm or that it was Steve’s fault, though it is tempting, so tempting.
Then he tries to call Samson, but the doctor is still out of range. It pisses Jim off and also worries him a little, because the psychologist has to know just how bad a time this is to fall off the map, so something has to be going on.
It’s the downside of dealing with superheroes and their associates all the time. There’s always something else going on that distracts important people from the problem Jim’s dealing with at the given moment.
After all is said and done, he goes back to waiting, to monitoring the area and, for the first time in forever, to watching TV. Tony is out, he’s completely drugged and under and also exhausted and sick. He won’t suddenly walk into the room to find Rogers on TV, or Jan, or hear a reporter talk about his and Steve’s relationship.
Still, Jim is using the TV in his own room and locks the door, after telling the nurse currently with Tony to let him know when she’s leaving so he can start having an eye on Tony. For now, he only has an eye on Rogers, who appears on the screen as an archive photo in the background of a moderator telling the audience that Captain America has “finally given the long awaited interview in which he cleared up some misconceptions and gave an assessment of the future of America’s most discussed coupel.”
Jim sits up straighter. That can only be good.
-
“Captain America,” a woman’s voice is heard to the picture of Steve Rogers in jeans and a leather jacket moving into view. “You’re a hard man to catch these days.”
“I’m just Steve Rogers right now.”
“So I take it you take the separation between your civilian identity and your superhero persona very seriously?”
“Well, I try to keep it separate as much as that’s possible. I understand that Captain America is a public figure but I do what I can to keep my private life as private as that of anyone else.”
“And yet it cannot be denied that Tony Stark has always lived every part of his private life in the spotlight of the media. It can be said that his private life was always more public than anything business related he did. Yet there has been no sign of him for weeks. We all expected Stark himself or the Avengers to give a press conference long ago.”
“We didn’t give an official statement because we didn’t think the matter deserved any official statements. We will not hide it, but we didn’t see why we should act like our relationship was in any way of interest to other people.”
The moderator is seen again. “On the direct question whether or not he and Stark were sexually involved, Rogers replied—” and Steve’s voice is heard over his image: “I’d describe it as romantically involved before anything else. Tony and I are together, yes. We are not joined at the hip.”
While he speaks, the image switches to the camera footage again and the woman asks, “But we never saw you and Stark out together in any way that could be interpreted as particularly romantic. Or is that a recent development?”
And another voice is head:
“Does that mean you and Stark tearing the city apart was just an elaborate lover’s spat? Was that really for political reasons or did you catch him cheating on you with the Hulk?”
“We started our relationship about eight months ago.”
The image switches back to the moderator. He says, “Not an entirely clear answer. And since both Rogers and Stark have avoided public appearances for the past weeks, naturally the question has to be asked if they are ashamed of their relationship, to which Captain America naturally replied that they are not.”
“We are not,” Steve-on-screen says.
“You say that, and yet you do it alone,” the female voice is heard. “Your lover hasn’t been seen since all this started. Does Tony Stark not share your opinion?”
“As you know, Tony Stark is a very busy man and it’s not at all unusual for his obligations or issues Iron Man has to deal with to take him away for weeks at a time. In fact, I doubt he even knows yet that our relationship has become public knowledge.”
A male voice joins the interview. “Are we really supposed to believe that Tony Stark, master of electronic communication and data theft, doesn’t know what’s been on the news for the last weeks?”
“Yes. I know this is not the story you were hoping for, but it’s literally all there is to it. And now, if you’ll excuse me…”
The moderator is seen again. “An amazingly vague explanation, as you will agree. Does it really satisfactory explain why Stark, who is usually seen on the news as either the businessman or the Avenger at least once a week, has been invisible since the picture of him and Rogers in an intimate moment came out?” The picture in question is shown again, the quality only suffering a little from the zoom on Steve’s lips on Tony’s hand that cuts out the ambulance they are sitting in, the doctor on Tony’s other side and the oxygen mask over his face. “And yet the days in which Stark was constantly shocking the public with partying and sexual adventures and misadventures seem to be over. So the speculation is inevitable that he set this up deliberately to get back in the public view with another personal scandal and used his friend Steve Rogers to obtain this goal.”
The interview again. “There are voices saying this is a publicity stunt,” the woman says, as if to confirm the moderator’s words. “Mr. Rogers, you have never been known to show an interest in men. You’ll have to admit that this comes a little suddenly.”
“Not at all. As I mentioned before, I make a point of trying to not live my life in the public eye, so unless someone was spying on me in my home, I’d like to know how those voices you cited would know who I have or haven’t shown an interest in.”
“There are voices that think he corrupted you.”
“Would they ask the same question if it were a woman with a reputation I hooked up with?”
The moderator comments on this with, “It’s obvious that Captain America isn’t comfortable discussing this topic, no matter how much he claims otherwise. One can’t help but notice how he never used the word “gay” to describe his and Stark’s relationship and keeps things general and impersonal when confronted directly with the issue of homosexuality.”
The male voice is heard again, accompanied by Steve’s darkening face. “I think the issue many people have is with how unnatural a romance between two men is and how, if a national icon like Captain America participates in it, it gives the wrong message to the public.”
“What message?” Steve asks back. “The message that it’s okay for everyone to be happy? If that is considered wrong for this country then I should change my name.”
“Strong words,” the moderator admits, “but it sounds more like a political statement than a description of his love life. And the question remains: Where is Stark and why does he, who is usually so keen on being seen by the media, not have anything to say on this matter? Some people speculate that he is, in fact, not comfortable with the ramifications of this relationship or with the political statement it makes that puts a weight on everything they do. And perhaps he also fears for his reputation as a womanizer. So did he break it up with his old friend over this? Rogers, tellingly enough, was not willing to confirm or deny any rumors in this regard.”
“So you are unwilling to comment on the rumor that Stark ended your relationship in the wake of its reveal to protect his reputation and avoid the inconvenience this causes,” the male voice in the interview states, and Steve is seen looking annoyed and replying, “Tony will give you his own answers as soon as he’s able to.”
The clip ends with a shot of Steve jogging down the street and the moderator saying, “After this, Captain America fled from our reporter, obviously uncomfortable with the questions they were asking him. We are very keen on finally getting Stark’s statement, but only heaven knows when the man will find the time—or the courage—to give us the truth about his feelings and his motivations.”
A line of text appears at the bottom of the screen, referring to the website of the show for those who want to see the whole interview. Steve blinks at it even as the moderator starts talking about the drug habit of some teen star Steve has never heard of. The urge to throw the remote through the screen is almost painful.
Sure enough, his phone rings ten seconds later. He picks it up still reeling, hoping it’s not Rhodes.
“I saw you on TV,” Jan’s voice rings from the receiver. It’s Jan. Steve can deal with Jan.
“So did I,” Steve tells her through gritted teeth.
“Tell me that was edited!”
“You know it was,” Steve snaps angrily.
“Good. Because I would hate having to tell you that you suck at giving interviews.”
“I do suck at that.”
She sighs. “Then why did you give it?”
“Because everyone was telling me to do it.”
“Good point. But you should have talked to me first. I could have given you a few tips. And set up an official meeting, with pre-screened questions and a reporter who would not edit the interview to his or her convenience.”
“Never got the time to plan this, they just ambushed me as I was walking down the street in Seattle. There were three of them. I don’t even think they were working together. No idea whose boss is responsible for this, but I don’t think it was the woman.”
“We’ll see. If it wasn’t, people are going to get sued, and it would be funny if it wasn’t about you and Tony. How is he, anyway? No one tells us anything. We worry, you know.”
“So do I. I’m not really in a position to check on him every day. I don’t actually know much more than you do.” It pains him having to say that and more that it’s true. “Last thing I heard he’s making progress. I want someone nearby at all times, though. War Machine and I think the people responsible for this mess might come back for him.”
“Yes, I heard from Logan. Why did I hear that from Logan, Steve?” He opens his mouth to explain that he only just got back in time to see this interview and was planning to call her once he was done seething in silence, but she doesn’t let him. “If all this is getting too much for you, you need to tell us.”
“It’s not. I’m fine. I’ll keep you better updated, I promise.” She’s right, he has a job to do, and sometimes this job includes including his teammates in the things that go on. And remembering that Tony has friends who worry about him and would like to hear how he’s doing every now and again.
He’ll have to pass that on to Rhodes and make him hand out flyers. Yes, that is a brilliant idea.
Rhodes is only the fifth person to call, which surprises Steve a little. Carol is next after Jan, then Sam, then Peter, who just can’t seem to stop being helpful. During all that, Steve only snaps once, and he doesn’t quite remember at whom afterwards. Probably Peter.
“I watched your interview,” Rhodes says in greeting.
“I thought you had.”
“And then I watched the full, unedited thing on their website. You’re lucky I did, or else I would have come over and blasted your building to smithereens.”
“I was taken by surprise. What’s up? Tony didn’t see that, did he?” Steve really hopes he didn’t. He knows they have disconnected all the TVs and computers in Tony’s and his home except the one in Rhodes’ room, but Tony could have walked in while Rhodes was watching TV like he did when Pepper called. While Steve is thrilled that Tony is slowly getting better, it will get increasingly hard to keep him mostly inactive.
That he hasn’t tried anything yet tells Steve how much he’s suffering from the state those bastards left his mind in.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Good. If he had, we would have needed to have words.”
“Tony’s good. Completely oblivious to the shit storm you kicked loose. I can barely wait for him to come back to his senses and learn about it.” Rhodes sounds like he’s anything but excited.
Steve sighs. “Neither can I.” At least there is something they agree on.
-
Things take another week to take a turn for the worse. This time it’s not Steve’s fault, or maybe it is because he didn’t pay attention, he didn’t work hard enough and he didn’t acknowledge enough possibilities. Not enough. That’s what it comes down to.
Steve avoided going out too much after his disastrous interview and maybe that contributed to it. There was a call from Samson in the middle of the week. He’s in trouble, won’t be able to come back for a week or two. Apparently Rhodes yelled at him and Steve could empathize.
Meanwhile, Rhodes continued to help Tony deal and Tony continued to improve. As far as Steve understands it the therapy they had for Tony was made mostly of having him tell them about his experiences, thus forcing him to get them in order. That’s how Rhodes knew about that moment during their final battle. It was something they needed to talk about when Tony was well again, Steve thought. Now he thinks about other things. Like the fact that they may never get the chance.
-
Tony reached the end of his story on a Wednesday and Jim was there with him because nobody else was. He was holding Tony’s hand and stroking his hair while Tony told him, with a halting voice, how he knew he had to destroy the registration database and all the other data he had stored in his head. How he tricked Maria Hill into activating the program that would destroy his mind. How it felt to lose everything.
How scared he’s been.
Afterwards he fell asleep. Right there on the couch, as if just thinking about that (God, he’d forgotten how to read!) had been so exhausting that his body and mind simply could not make it another minute. Jim pulled a blanket over him, and when Tony hadn’t woken up an hour later, he carried him to bed. This time it was his own bedroom he placed him in; the bed was big enough and Jim didn’t want him to wake up alone.
He also didn’t want him to wake up in the bed he used to share with Steve and find someone beside him who wasn’t Steve. (After everything, Jim didn’t want to confuse him, and he never wanted Tony to be disappointed that he wasn’t someone else.) He made him comfortable, and when he got tired himself, he lay with his arms around his friends to offer comfort and to keep him safe.
He couldn’t keep him safe.
It happens on Friday. Thursday, Tony stayed in bed, awake but shaky and disoriented and too drained to do anything. Like a raw nerve. Jim worried when he wouldn’t talk for hours and barely acknowledged his presence. This whole trip down memory lane was supposed to make it better, but what if it broke him?
What if it was too much? Tony had been able to take it the last time he went through this, but then, last time he didn’t have to bear it all at once.
Not quite.
When Jim came in Thursday night, he found Tony staring out of the window with tears running down his cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice them. In the night, he curled up and Jim curled around him, feeling him shake. Twice he was woken up by harsh sobs or a screaming nightmare. After the latter he didn’t go back to sleep.
The next morning he manages to get Tony out of bed, make him shower and shave and dress properly, make him take in some food. Tony remains numb and unresponsive through most of it. Around noon, he curls up where he is sitting on the couch and starts clawing at the sutured wounds in his arm.
Eventually, Jim finds out that even though the chaos of his newly recovered memories, Tony remembered Rogers and being with Rogers, after he came back. But he still didn’t know that Steve had come back so he couldn’t connect the memories to anything he knew.
His emotions are still too raw, the newly discovered memories taking up too much of his mind for him to deal with anything else. He is still a little broken (a little more than usual) but Jim starts to think that maybe it is time to call in Steve Rogers and have him prove himself to be alive. Maybe, at this point, it might help.
Samson would probably have been able to tell. The one who knocks on the door instead, Friday evening when the sun has just begun to set, is a shadow.
It knocks on the window, to be exact. It knocks on the window of Tony’s bedroom with enough force to blow it straight into the room, and the window is not supposed to do that, it has been very specifically designed not to do that. It does it anyway. Had Tony been in that room he would have been injured by the glass but he isn’t so there is a small mercy, Jim thinks as he’s suiting up and moving to fight the intruder.
He’d have fought them with his bare hands if that would have gotten him anywhere. As it is, he can’t even see them with his naked eye, not really. When they move, they are like water, distorting the world behind them. When they are still, they are invisible.
They aren’t still a lot. They go straight for Tony, who Jim pushes and drags over to the elevator as soon as he hears the sound of the windows breaking. He pushes his protesting friend inside and then stands in front of the closing doors and has his suit fit itself around him—it’s fast, but not fast enough to protect him from a blast that knocks him backwards and pierces something in his side that hurts like a bitch and makes him gasp for air until the suit is done and automatically doses him with painkillers that could knock out an elephant if they so wished. Tony’s idea. For Tony, having painkillers and stimulants that can keep him going way past his breaking point ready in his suit is a useful installment. Jim tries not to follow his example too often, but right now he appreciates the precaution.
Pain can be so distracting when there is no other option than to fight.
The moment the targeting system comes online, Jim fires. He can’t really pay attention to property damage right now, but he knows Tony will forgive him. He doesn’t hit the bookshelf anyway but the guy in front of it, seen as a vaguely shapeless but still perfectly visible outline in the middle of the room through his suit’s filters.
“Your tech is crap,” Jim tells him as he’s flung back into the wall and—well, there goes the shelf after all. “No wonder you want Tony. But we got him first. It’s called dibs!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he notes that the elevator is moving, and he hopes, hopes he made the right decision sending Tony down. Down means away from these guys who broke into the penthouse so easily, but it also means away from Jim who can’t protect him when he’s in the basement. And the elevator is pretty damn safe, but he still imagines them breaking it open, somehow, and dragging Tony kicking and screaming away with them while Jim is stuck fighting their buddies up here.
The guy he hit gets back up again. The other one comes at Jim from the left and Jim repulsors him in the chest from three inches away. He sails through the air for quite an impressive distance and while he does get up, it takes him a moment.
“Cute,” Jim comments. “You sure you want to do this? Because so far I really can’t see how you are going to be a threat to me.” He blasts the first one backwards for good measure and he crashes into the window. Which holds, because they really aren’t supposed to break.
Neither of them seems to be interested in talking to him, which is a pity. Throwing insults at enemies is never as much fun when they don’t get outraged over it, and beside that they tend to give away important facts while yelling at him. These fight in silence. They just keep getting up, even though Jim is hitting them pretty hard, and while he can tell that their defenses are rather advanced—some kind of energy shield, it seems—their weapons could be better. They broke the windows, but they can’t break the armor. Maybe Jim should just have stuffed Tony into the suit.
He hopes he can break their equipment, if nothing else. Would be nice to finally take a look at them when their camouflage is failing.
The call to the Avengers went out automatically the moment the glass broke. Jim’s communicator comes to live and Hawkeye confirms that they are on their way. Jim hopes they will hurry up. This fight isn’t taking a lot out of him and that make him nervous. The enemy has to have known he’s here and his suit as well. This feels like a distraction.
They couldn’t have known he’d send Tony down to the basement, could they?
The elevator made it down without any problems in any case, and the basement of this tower is the safest place in the city. It was designed to withstand a lot. It’s where Tony’s workshop is.
They both come at Jim at the same time. He punches left and right and his armored firsts go straight through their shielding and hit something that gives in. Not really well protected against physical force, it seems.
One of them says, “Ouch.”
“You can talk! That’s nice. Talk to me guys! Let’s become friends, get to know each other. You can start by telling me why you’re after my friend, because I tell you, he’s really not worth the trouble. No, really, he’ll drive you crazy within five minutes, So maybe I should just let you take him and then sit back and watch you get what’s coming for you.” He stops for a moment while the two outlines on his interface move back. “Okay, or I could just kick your ass.”
They hesitate before they come at him again, and by now Jim has figured out that they didn’t expect him to be able to make them out so well. Maybe he’s very lucky and this isn’t a trap after all but simply bad preparation.
He barely has time to react when he sees another camouflaged shape come up behind the window and aim at him. Just like the windows in the bedroom, it busts, and the force that gets through is enough to knock him into the elevator doors and dent them.
Much as he loves this suit, it isn’t the most agile thing in the word once it’s stuck in a wall of twisted metal. And whatever this weapon is, it could damage him. Especially if used by three people at once. Jim’s shoulder cannon is stuck; he tries to get his arm up and blast the flying guy out of the sky, but he can’t move enough to aim right.
Then there is a flash of light and the flying guy is blasted out of the sky and replaced by the red and gold metal of the Iron Man suit.
The other two are distracted for a second, and that’s all Jim needs to pull free and hit the left one with a repulsor blast hard enough to carry him out of the broken window. “Hey man, awesome to see you,” he greets his friend, because it is. He wasn’t sure how Tony was taking all this, but if he can pilot the suit and not attack the wrong people with it, he’s doing better than Jim dared to hope.
Then again, Tony has always been good at soldiering on for as long as he needs to, and as much as that can be a source of concern for his friends, right now, Jim doesn’t have it in him to complain.
“You okay?” Tony’s voice sounds a little strained, but strong enough. Jim answers in the affirmative, so blissfully pain free that he only remembers after a second that that’s not actually true. He doesn’t tell Tony about the wound in his side, though. The suit already took care of the blood flow and estimates there will be roughly another ten minutes before it will impair his performance, fifteen until he passes out if he keeps fighting like this.
He hopes it won’t take that long to get rid of their attackers.
And then it hits him that this is it, and they finally got some of the guys they’ve been looking for and if they got three, they are going to get the rest of them soon enough. For a moment he feels almost giddy, probably aided by the medication.
Of course it means they will not only have to fight these guys off, which shouldn’t be that hard, but also keep them from getting away. The Avengers would really help with that if they finally showed up, but then, the fight has been going on for not even five minutes, although it does feel longer than that.
And their attackers don’t seem to be interested in flight. Even the one Jim threw out of the window is back as a wobbly shape to Iron Man’s right. Tony does something that registers on Jim’s sensors as a flash of white and then the wobbly shape starts an even more wobbly descent. Apparently it takes that one all he has not to fall like a stone. Once they are done with the other ones, this one is going to be a sitting duck; they’ll just have to pick him up off the street when the fight is over.
This is getting better by the minute, Jim thinks, preparing to tackle the one still inside the tower and bring him down with the plain physical force they seem to be so vulnerable to, when Iron Man’s opponent in the air shoots something at Tony that appears to electrocute his suit. For a long moment, Jim’s sensors are only reading electricity, but there has to have been something else in that as well because Iron Man can handle electricity just fine. This, whatever it was, seems to have short circuited he suit; Tony begins to fall—slowly at first, because the repulsors are still firing, then speeding up when there is no input that directs the blasts so that they will keep him in the air.
It’s a long way down and Jim’s suit isn’t badly damaged. He catches his friend by the fortieth floor and carries him upwards, away from the people on the street. Tony hangs limply, maybe unconscious, maybe trapped inside a silent suit of metal. He doesn’t respond to Jim’s calls.
When Jim sets him on the roof of a neighboring building, Tony crouches unmoving, his head hanging, his palms flat to the ground. Jim stands before him, ready to fend of their attackers, but they don’t come. They hover near the top of the tower and seem to be waiting for something.
Jim doesn’t like this at all. He calls the Avengers again, learns that Captain Marvel, who can fly and doesn’t depend on transportation to get here, is about sixty seconds out.
“Tony?” he says. “You with me?”
Maybe Tony is answering, somewhere inside that armor where no one can hear him. Jim readies his weapons, prepared to blast those guys from a distance. He is better armed, better shielded. From this distance, they can’t surprise him with the weapon that took out Tony; he’d have enough time to move out of the way. Captain Marvel is on her way. He just has to make it another forty seconds.
Iron Man sways and Jim crouches beside him to keep him from falling over. He doesn’t take his eyes off the enemy, though, and so he never sees the attack coming.
Beside him, Tony lifts his right hand, the one Jim isn’t touching. Jim sees it out of the corner of his eye and far too late realizes that the weapon emerging from a hidden compartment in the armor is pointing towards him. And War Machine is a fantastic thing; in some points it’s better than the Iron Man because Jim uses it in a different way and these things are custom made, but Tony is the guy who makes them. He knows every weak point, and where there are none he can create them. So when the blast hits Jim, he really doesn’t stand a chance to keep it from impacting him in the worst possible way.
There’s also the point where he didn’t expect his friend to turn on him.
The force of the impact hurls him backwards and he sprawls on the roof, half propped up on the ridiculously small wall that’s between him and a long fall, at just the right angle to see Iron Man get up and stare at him, as if to determine if he’s finished off or not. Jim tries to get up but finds he cannot move. Not at all. The suit is completely dead. He speaks but nothing gets out. The interface flickers, running on emergency power. It’s diverting all of that to the life support unit that keeps him from suffocating while the armor is sealed from the outside. For all intents and purposes, Jim is in a coffin.
And Tony seems to be satisfied with that since he looks over to his new friends Jim can no longer make out and takes off. A second later he’s descending and then he shows up again, carrying some guy wearing a helmet and a breathing mask and light body armor. The guy whose equipment Tony disabled earlier, the one he stranded in the street. He carries him up to where the others are still waiting and then up into the sky and north. Jim’s heart is beating up a staccato in his chest, but it’s the only part of him moving as he watches them fly out of view to who knows where.
-
Carol Danvers lands beside Jim not thirty seconds after Tony disappeared from view. She yells at him to answer her and he guesses he does look dead from the outside, just an unmoving shell lying around here. Jim replies, but it’s not like she hears him. Then she’s gone from his field of vision and for a second he panics, thinks he’s been left for dead, until suddenly his faceplate is torn off and she stares down at him, eyes wide and full of shock and questions.
“Where’s Tony?” is the first thing she asks.
“Gone,” Jim tells her. He’s covered in sweat and possibly shaking. He suddenly remembers that he’s injured and thinks he can feel it now, like a weight pressing on his lungs.
“They took him? Where did they go?”
“No,” Jim says. “No. He went with them. Attacked me. That way.” He can’t lift his hand, but looks in the right direction. “Be careful. Hurry.”
She flies off, but not without triggering the manual lock for his armor. Jim is able to peel out of it, lying beside it in a heap when he finds he can’t get up. The Quinjet hovers above him later—seconds or minutes—and that’s the last thing he knows for a while.
-
It’s half a day before Rhodes regains consciousness and before he does they can only speculate on what happened. He wakes up Saturday morning and the first thing he says is “Where’s Tony?”
“We didn’t find him,” Steve has to tell him. “Carol followed him but there was no trace of anyone. They disappeared.” There’s bitterness in his words; naturally there is. And pain.
They could be doing God-knows-what to Tony right now.
“You’re not trying hard enough.” Rhodes looks at him like he’s personally responsible and maybe he is. Steve doesn’t try to defend himself, but he does push the other man back down when he tries to rise from the hospital bed.
“Don’t move. The doctors fixed you up but you lost a lot of blood and your muscles are going to need time to heal. Just tell us what happened.”
Rhodes glares at him. “Would you stay in bed while they have Tony?” he asks and Steve lets him go. He’s right.
He doesn’t offer help while the other man pulls the IV out of his arm. If he falls over, Steve will put him back to bed, but he knows he won’t fall.
“They did something to him,” Rhodes explains while getting dressed with slow, painful movements. His injuries weren’t life-threatening as such, but he moved around too much and made them worse than they had to be. He shouldn’t move now, but it won’t kill him even if there will be a price to pay. Rhodes knows that.
If it was Steve, he wouldn’t stay down if they nailed him to the bed.
“Don’t know if they controlled him or just the armor,” Rhodes continues between shaky breaths. “No, it must have been him. They couldn’t know that would work so well unless they got all the secret specs to both his armor and mine. He suddenly attacked me, then took off. But I have no idea how they did that. One of them electrocuted him before, or at least that’s what it looked like, but these guys don’t exactly come across as psychic.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Steve says absentmindedly and hands the man a shirt. “He’s in the armor, though. Can you follow him?”
“Not if he doesn’t want to be followed. Our best chance is that somebody saw them.”
Not a good chance. Steve rubs his face. “I can’t believe this,” he mumbles tiredly, overcome, if only for a second, by worry, regret and hopelessness.
The hand on his shoulder comes as a surprise; completely unexpected where he expected angry words or a punch to the face.
“We’ll find him,” Rhodes says grimly in a promise to both of them, and it’s the first moment of real camaraderie they share since James Rhodes first wore the Iron Man armor, an eternity ago.