#superhusands

Rhodey limped in, hiding the physical pain well enough that other people wouldn’t have noticed it. Tony noticed, though. Rhodey had been doing better - getting stronger every day - and somehow (god, how?) he had retained his level, realistic outlook on life. Tony would have been jealous of Rhodey’s resilience, if it weren’t for the overwhelming feeling of gratitude he felt for having him there.

Now, though, Rhodey looked grave, and not because of the pain.

“Tones, there’s something you need to see,”

Rhodey handed over his tablet, which was playing a grainy video. Tony glanced down and sucked in a harsh breath.

Ste- Rogers was there, his face almost unrecognizable beneath a thick beard which was matted with blood. Trickles of red ran down his face from a slash above his eyebrow, and the eye socket beneath was bruised an ugly shade of purple. But it wasn’t the sight of the injuries which made Tony’s breath stop in his throat. It was his eyes: flat, blank, and vacant. There was something wrong, something very wrong, and blood rushed through Tony’s veins as the tendrils of panic began to creep into his mind.

Tony felt Rhodey’s hand on his shoulder, and he groped blindly to grasp his fingers as nausea welled inside him.

“That is an unfortunate situation for our Captain,” he heard himself saying, “But I don’t see how it’s my problem.” Jesus. When had he become so cold?

(When his friend had left to freeze to death in a bunker, a bitter inner voice helpfully reminded him.)

“Tony…” Rhodey’s tone was pained, and it made Tony look again. Then he spotted what was causing Rhodey such unease - there, around the Captain’s ankles, were a familiar set of chunky restraints. His restraints. His design. His work. Someone must have retrieved the broken restraints from Siberia and reverse engineered them.

Tony swallowed down the urge to vomit as he took in the visual of Rogers, immobilized and helpless, surely being tortured, experimented on, or worse, thanks to his technology. Stark Tech, killing and maiming once again.

“Where did you find this?” he asked Rhodey, very quietly.

“The dark web,” Rhodey informed him. “Some torture porn site. Most of the videos there turn out to be faked, but this one…” he trailed off, squeezing Tony’s shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s too much specific detail to be a fake,” he said, surprised by how level he sounded. “Send this to my personal tablet, will you, Rhodey?”

“Already done,” Rhodes said, still clinging on to Tony like he was concerned that Tony would fall down without him there. Perhaps he was right.

He watched the video over and over and over again. This was necessary, it was important - it was the only way he’d find out what was happening to Rogers and where he was being held. Rhodey was investigating the site which had uploaded the footage, but was pessimistic that his search would turn up anything useful.

So Tony watched the video, and every time it looped round again he scoured it for more details. For anything which could help identify a location.

The video started again.

Rogers, sat on a metal chair bolted to the concrete floor. Tony’s Stark Tech restraints round his ankles and his wrists. Darkness surrounded him, but dim outlines of walls suggested a small room. Lack of light suggested that it might be underground.

A voice from off-camera, taunting and jeering at him. No demands made or ransom requested, just a causal verbal humiliation. A faint trace of an accent. Irish? Scottish, maybe?

Rogers’ face was slack and expressionless. Drugged perhaps, though it would have to be something strong to sedate a supersoldier. Rogers didn’t wriggle, didn’t strain against his restraints, didn’t even seem to be aware that there was a camera pointed at him. It was as if he had checked out entirely, as if had no more fight left in him.

Tony grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka which he had hidden from Rhodey under his desk and took a long pull.

Rogers’ eyes looked straight through the camera, vacant and terrifying.

The next day, Natasha stopped by his office. That in itself was not unusual - although she wasn’t living in the compound, she still came by frequently. Tony had tried to bury his lingering feelings of resentment over her side-switching regarding the Accords, and to take her frequent presence as the olive branch that it was. But he continued to keep her at a distance.

He shouldn’t have been surprised by her, shall we say, moral flexibility. He’d seen it before. She was a spy, it was in her DNA to present every person she met with the version of herself that she wanted them to see. But Tony couldn’t shake the idea that she had been playing him - that she had never had any intention of signing the Accords, that her getting close to him was purely a strategy to suck information from him, before returning to Rogers, to whom her loyalties had always been stronger.

He knew that he was teetering on the verge of paranoia, but he still couldn’t quite bring himself to look her in the eye.

“Romanoff,” he greeted her curtly.

“Tony,” she said, using his first name as if that was something that they still did. “I need your help.”

At least she was upfront about her motives. No more manipulation or persuasion. Perhaps she sensed how close to the edge he was, and decided to go with forthrightness. He could appreciate that.

“And what can I do for the world’s foremost superspy?” he asked, almost fond, almost playful. Almost.

“It’s about Steve,” she said, and Tony’s stomach rolled when he heard the name. “He’s in trouble.”

Natasha filled in the details that Tony had been missing. Rogers had been out on a recon mission, investigating rumors of a possible decommissioned Hydra base. Rogers’ team had thought that an abandoned base might have offered them valuable intel at best, or at worst, could have contained dangerous materials which would pose a danger to the public.

(Now they care about public danger? Tony had thought bitterly. It hadn’t seem like a big concern when they ripped apart an airport in Germany or blew up a building in Lagos.)

Rogers had taken off to question a suspected ex-Hydra scientist about the base, assuring his team he could handle it alone. Just a quick bit of questioning. But then he had missed his first check-in. And his second.

By then Natasha had realized that something was wrong. She had asked T’Challa for help, and they’d flown to Rogers’ last known position. There was no sight of him, and no obvious evidence of a kidnapping. He was gone.

It had taken two days before they had received the video, sent anonymously over encrypted channels, and a further two days before they had contacted Tony.

Four days. Four days of confinement, of torture, of god knows what else. And they told Tony now.

Tony couldn’t say if he was more affronted that they had the gall to ask for his help, or furious that it had taken them until now to do so.

Tony spent more hours than he cared to count pouring over every frame of the video, searching for information that might give a clue to Rogers’ location. He memorized every detail: every wince, every shouted insult, every cold, dripping inch of the walls.

Rogers was definitely being drugged, that much was clear. Tony thought back to the restraints he’d designed, and the drug delivery system that he’d put in them. The deployment mechanism had never worked properly, and Tony hadn’t had time to fix it before the battle in Leipzig. But the “mood regulation system”, as he’d euphemistically termed it, was built into the restraints. Someone had found the time to make the system work, apparently.

Tony wondered how the captors had even known enough about Rogers’ physiology to design a drug that could incapacitate him. The details of the super soldier serum had always been top secret. Then he remembered the SHIELD data dump: the gigs of files which had been uploaded to the open internet when Rogers and Romanoff had taken down SHIELD and Hydra in one fell swoop.

This was a problem. Tony had designed the restraints to take Rogers down, hard. They were intended to be a temporary immobilization technique, used for a few minutes at a time to incapacitate someone whose metabolism burned through most drugs within minutes. He had honestly not for a moment considered what would happen if the restraints were used on Rogers for an extended period of time, but he knew it was nothing good.

This was on him. Whatever Rogers’ past sins might have been, he was now helpless and endangered because of Tony’s lazy rush job when designing those restraints. Tony’s fingers drummed against the hole in his chest where the arc reactor had been, tapping out a staccato of anxiety.

“Hey, Mr. Stark!” A voice pulled him out of his guilt spiral. Peter was loitering on the threshold of Tony’s workshop, bouncing on the balls of his feet but not intruding into the space until invited.

“Hey, kid,” Tony said with a smile. It felt like it was the first time he’d smiled and meant it in a long while. “What’s up?”

“Here’s the thing,” Peter started, bounding over to Tony, “I heard that you were looking for Cap.” Tony opened his mouth to protest, but Peter held up a hand and barreled onwards. “Don’t try to deny it, Rhodey told me about the video. Whatever is going on between you and your old teammates, I know that you care about them all. Now shush and let me help you for once.”

Tony smiled again. For an awkward and inexperienced kid, Peter sure had his number.

“I saw this other video a while back, and I think it could be connected to this case. I thought it was just some terrorist wannabes looking for clicks at first, but maybe…. Here, look.” Peter pulled up a video on his phone and showed it to Tony.

“We are the New AIM!” a figure in a yellow hazmat suit announced hysterically to the camera. “We are an organization of the finest scientific minds on the planet, and you will learn to respect us and fear us.”

The figure blabbed on about world domination and the new order arising; the usual delusional self-important villain shtick. But the final moments of the video caught Tony’s eye: the few seconds in which the camera pulled back to show the same dark walls and dim lighting as the video of Steve. “We will achieve great things,” the figure said pompously, as the video faded out to black. “We will bring the world’s strongest men to our cause, and then you will all see our truth.”

This was it. It had to be. It was AIM that had Rogers captive, and god only knew what they planned to do with him.

That night, Tony dreamed again of an empty road, a car careening into a tree. His footsteps felt heavy as he paced around the car to see his father, bloodied and defiant. Tony saw his fist slamming into Howard’s face, feeling bones and cartilage snapping under the blows. Howard’s eyes fluttered into blankness as he fell unconscious, and Tony felt nothing at all.

Tony’s feet lead him around to the other side of the car, feet hitting the ground in firm, efficient strides. He saw his mother, terrified and sobbing, and he reached out and wrapped his hand around her neck. The silver of his arm glinted in the lamplight as he squeezed…

And then the dream changed. It was Rogers beneath him, Rogers’ throat into which his fingers were digging. He could feel the power of his metal arm as its fingers tightened against soft flesh, causing ugly bruises to appear on Rogers’ pale skin. Tony tried to stop, tried to pull away, but his body was beyond his control. He tried to scream, but couldn’t open his mouth.

Rogers looked up at him, clinging to the last of his life as he was choked. Summoning his remaining strength, he coughed out, “Finish it.”

Tony awoke in panic, sitting bolt upright in bed. He ran to the bathroom and threw up, then curled into a ball on the tiled floor, shivering in the cold.

He went back to obsessively analyzing the video, but over the next days the dream keep surfacing in his mind. The feeling of his body beyond his control, of having his strings pulled by an invisible and malevolent force, haunted him.

His anger at Barnes had burned fast and bright, and he’d studiously avoided reading any of the files on Barnes which his teammates had compiled. He wasn’t ready to face them then. Over the months since Siberia, however, the anger had faded, to be replaced with pity. When Tony finally braced himself and cracked the files, a picture emerged of a man mentally violated, his sense of self stripped away, forced against his will to commit acts which were abhorrent to him.

Tony remembered the feeling of Wanda’s magic slithering through his mind, warping his view of himself and his world, pushing him towards the creation of Ultron. The lingering horror of having his mind manipulated stayed with him. When he thought about the same thing being done to Barnes, over and over again, he couldn’t hold on to his grudge. There were experiences Tony had been through which he would quite literally not wish on his worst enemy.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the dream though. Looking down at his hand, he remembered how it had appeared covered in shiny silver metal, the way it flexed not like armor but like his body itself was artificial. Tony pictured shiny metal all the way down to his bones, inhuman and cold.

And then an idea came to him, as his best ideas often did: with a quiet flash of inspiration.

He knew what he needed to do. He knew how to save Rogers.

The workshop at the compound was adequate and functional, but it lacked the warm familiarity of his workshop back in the tower. There, he had felt driven by the joy of creation and the wonder of discovery, here, his motivation was pure desperate need. If he was going to help Rogers, then he didn’t have the luxury of time for prototyping and adjustments - he needed the tech to work, right now.

The hours blurred into days as he tinkered, frustrated by the slowness of his progress. The video was never far from his mind, Rogers’ vacant eyes playing constantly behind his eyes. After god knows how many hours without sleep, he was reaching breaking point.

“May I enter, Mr Stark?” A polite voice floated through the room.

Tony sat up, wiping a hand down his face. “Vis? Is that you? Yes, you can come in.”

Vision floated serenely through a wall into the shop. He was evidently still having some issues with the concept of doors.

“I wanted to see how you were doing,” Vision said calmly. “May I be of assistance to you in some way?”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Uhh. This work is kind of complicated, and I don’t think engineering is really your field of specialty. But if I need someone to look at the electronics up close, I’ll let you know.”

Vision angled his head to one side. “That is not what I meant. I meant, can I help you personally? Would you like me to prepare you some food? Or to run you a bath?”

The thought of Vision’s earnest attempts at cooking made Tony smile despite himself. “Thanks, but no. I do appreciate the offer though.”

Vision inclined his head again.

“Where’s this coming from, Vis? You’re not bored, are you?”

“When I was made,” Vision said thoughtfully, “There were… fragments. Pieces of code from the system you knew as Jarvis. These fragments remain a part of my base code - a part of me. I was... concerned for your wellbeing.”

Tony’s throat felt tight. “Oh.”

“If you need me,” Vision said with a small smile, “You only have to ask. Good night, sir.”

Tony blinked back tears that were forming at the corners of his eyes as Vision floated out through the wall of the workshop.

Finally, finally, the new tech was ready. Tony considered telling Natasha about his plan, but decided on balance that she would probably just try to stop him. He hid a file with instructions for Rhodey in case he didn’t make it back within a week, and slipped out of the compound without drawing any attention.

It felt strange, to be heading out on a mission without his armor. Before, it had felt like the ultimate protection - a little too tempting at times, actually, as if he could shield himself from his the onslaught of an ugly world inside the suit. But since Siberia, since seeing the red and blue metal of a shield come smashing down into his chest, the armor no longer felt like any kind of security.

Even the Iron Man failed him eventually, Tony thought sourly. But take it all away, pull apart his friends and his home and his security, rip through his armor, and there was still something left. There was still Tony Stark, and there was still someone that needed saving.

As he made his way to the garage at the edge of the compound, Tony plucked at the hem of the sharply tailored suit he wore - a different kind of armor for a different kind of mission.

Getting himself kidnapped by AIM had been simple enough. He had been avoiding public appearances, not ready to deal with the angry, desperate, judgmental nature of crowds. So all he had to do was accept an invitation to give a keynote speech at some tech conference, and his name and location were splashed across Twitter and the tech press within minutes. He’d “accidentally” left his bodyguards behind in the hotel, and a team of eight armed thugs had grabbed him off the street on the short walk from his hotel to the conference. They’d thrown him into a van, knocked him out, and taken him to god knows where.

He came too and found himself tied to a chair, in a dark room that had the smell of damp. Probably underground. Possibly the same location in which the video had been made. A good start.

The hand which slapped him squarely across the face hard enough to snap his head back woke him fully. He opened his eyes, not wincing at the stinging pain across his cheek, to see a figure in what looked like a yellow hazmat suit.

“You’re awake,” the figure commented, sounding smug. “How privileged we are to have the great Tony Stark among us.”

Figures in the background sniggered, but all Tony could make out of them through the darkness were blobs of yellow.

“The BARF technology. You will show us how to weaponize it. You will help us to convert the minds of our enemies. If you do this to our satisfaction, we will allow you to live.”

Tony almost yawned. Kidnapped and forced to build weapons? Again? Couldn’t villains come up with something more original? (Like, say, manipulating two teammates into nearly beating each other to death, his mind added helpfully. Honestly, fuck Zemo, and fuck his vindictive machinations, but at least there was ambition to his plan. His current captors seemed distinctly pedestrian by comparison.)

It quickly became clear that the leader of the group, taller than the others and with a trace of a Scottish accent, had an axe to grind with Tony and a vindictive streak which he was enjoying exploring. He didn’t seem particularly interesting in instilling fear and compliance in Tony (just as well, because that would have been a fool’s game). He seemed to simply take pleasure in inflicting physical pain.

Tony could have given the man some pointers on his information extraction technique, but he was more interested in punching Tony in the face. Tony blinked dazedly another another blow made his head spin. He could feel blood trickling down his chin from where his lip was split open, and his right eye kept drooping closed as the skin around it swole.

There was something right about this, Tony reflected as the leader yanked his head forwards in order to line up another punch. This was no more than he deserved.

It was only when his captor raised his leg and kicked Tony hard in the chest that he felt the beginning of panic spiking in him. Though his chest appeared unscathed on casual inspection, there was only a thin layer of artificial skin covering the ruined mass of scars and implants where the reactor had been. If it was hit too hard, or in the wrong place, it could easily fail, his heart would stop, he would die here.

Tony curled up as much as he could while tied to the chair and tried to move his arms to protect his chest. His left arm was going numb again, tingles likes pins and needles running out from his chest, escalating into sharp spikes of pain which faded into terrifying absence of sensation. This, he knew, was not a good sign about the health of his heart.

“Hah,” the leader indicated Tony contemptuously to the others. “This one is about ready to crack already. Didn’t I say it would be easy?”

The leader grabbed Tony’s hair and forced his face upwards, towards him. “We knew it would be simple to get you into our power. Helmut Zemo might have been a grandiose fool with a death wish, but he was right about one thing: Iron Man and Captain America. You’re each other’s greatest weakness.” He smiled down at Tony as if he were impressed with his own insight. “When we captured him and leaked that video, we hoped that your guilt would be overwhelming and you would make a stupid mistake. And here you are.”

Tony wondered if he was really that predictable, then conceded that his room full of Captain America memorabilia might have given him away. He let his face go slack and his eyes unfocused, head lolling to the side to suggest impending unconsciousness, hoping that this tedious D-list villain would wrap up his monologuing soon.

“Captain America will make a fine addition to our group. Once you have converted the BARF technology, we will use it to show him our ways, and he will become our soldier, not yours. He will follow our lead, and help us usher in our vision. This is inevitable.”

Tony tried not to roll his eyes, because seriously, what kind of idiot thought that technology for revisiting trauma and processing distressing emotions could be used as a brainwashing device, but decided there was little to be gained by explaining the finer points of cognitive neurocalibration to his captors. After all, if they knew what they were asking of him was utterly impossible, they’d kill him without hesitation.

“If you’re imaging that your dear Captain America will rescue you, then you can give up on that fantasy. We have found the restraints that you designed to be quite the effective sedative on him, when used repeatedly. He’s as docile as a lamb now.” The leader smiled again, white teeth visible through the dark mask of the boiler suit.

“But you will see that for yourself soon enough,” he said to Tony grandiosely. He turned to two of the lackeys at the back of the room. “Take him away,” he ordered, “And put him in the cell with the Captain. They can reminisce about better times before we end them.”

Better times? thought Tony wearily. He wasn’t sure he remembered having many of those with Rogers.

The guards dragged Tony to a small cell with a tiny window providing the only source of light, and thick steel bars across the door.

Rogers was kneeling on the floor, filthy and bedraggled but whole, and alive. Tony let out a harsh breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

“Tony, you’re here,” Rogers said woozily, his face breaking into a broad smile for a moment. But when Tony was shoved into the cell and Rogers caught sight of him, his expression changed. “What… oh Tony, did they capture you too? What did they do to you?” he asked as he reached out to touch Tony, then seemed to think better of it and pulled his hand back.

Tony could feel the swelling of his cheek and the blood dripping from his lip, and conceded that he probably did look a bit of a mess right now. “It looks worse than it is,” he assured Rogers. Now was not the time for worrying about the state of his face.

“But…” Rogers’ speech was slow and confused, he was obviously still recovering from the sedative drugs that their captors were administering to him. “They hurt you,” he said, sounding genuinely pained.

Not as much as you did, Tony thought before quickly shoving the thought aside. Bitterness would not be helpful now.

“I’ll live,” he said, not letting any emotion show in his voice. “But we need to get you out of here. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got a plan.”

“You came to rescue me?” Rogers’ face lit up for a second. “But why would you do that? You hate me.” His face closed, the corners of his mouth turned down.

Tony had been prepared for Rogers to be injured, or incapacitated. What he hadn’t expected was for him to be so damn emotionally open. It was as if the drugs had stripped away his defensiveness and his self control along with his motivation for action - like everything he felt was splayed across his face for the world to see. Tony found it uncomfortably, horrifyingly intimate.

“Uhh. We can talk about that later,” Tony said, adding or preferably never to himself. “Right now I need some information from you. Our captors, they keep you somewhere else during the day, right? And bring you to this cell in the evening?”

Rogers seemed uncertain, but he nodded.

“What time do they take you out in the morning?” Tony prompted.

Rogers’ brow crinkled in concentration. “Long after dawn,” he said eventually. “They don’t have to turn the lights on. The sun is up for a few hours before they arrive.”

Okay, Rogers still had some of his mental capacity intact. Good. They were going to need it.

Some careful questioning established that Rogers was taken each day to another room in the compound, where he was held using the Stark Tech restraints. He must have been exposed to hours and hours worth of the sedative that Tony had designed, the one he had meant to only be used for a few minutes at most.

Rogers had been confused, at first, as to how Tony knew so much about the technology which was keeping him captive, though he had mumbled something about the restraints looking familiar. When Tony had explained that he knew how the technology worked because he had designed it, Rogers’ look of honest shock and sadness was a punch to the gut which had hurt more deeply than anything their captors had done to him.

Tony shoved his guilt and his regret deep down inside and focused on the plan.

“I’ve designed an inhibitor,” Tony informed Rogers, trying to stick to discussion of the facts and far away from discussion of feelings. “It should boost your immunity to the drugs, and make them affect you less.”

“Oh good,” Rogers said, sounding bafflingly cheerful and looking at Tony with complete trust. Now Steve trusted him? Not before, when if he’d only damn well talked to Tony and explained about Bucky, they could have worked something out? Not at any time in the last two years, when he could have told Tony the truth about his parents? But now. Now they were stuck in an ugly, cold, damp cell together and they hadn’t seen each other for months. Now Steve trusted him.

Tony grit his teeth and swallowed down a sick feeling. “I can inject you now,” Tony said, keeping his voice carefully even. “But it’ll take a few hours for the inhibitor to affect you. By tomorrow morning you should be feeling better.”

“Okay, Tony,” Rogers said, his face showing nothing other than open trust. “But how are you going to get the drugs here?”

When he’d been taken, the first thing Tony’s captors had done was to strip him of his jacket and his shoes, and empty his pockets. Fortunately, this was one problem which Tony had foreseen, and for which he had prepared. Being a futurist had to be good for some situations, right?

“Not a problem,” Tony told him confidently. “But, uhh, you might want to look away.”

Tony turned his left wrist to face himself, and tried not to wince as he used the jagged nail of his right thumb to slice open the delicate skin of his forearm. He felt a little queasy as he used his teeth to rip apart the skin to get at the tiny vial of inhibitor which he had stored subcutaneously, but this was far from the worst that his body had been through.

Eventually, with fingers slippery with blood, he grasped the needle-shaped vial under his skin and pulled it out with a triumphant smile. Steve stared at him, eyes wide.

“Don’t worry, Cap,” he said as he lined up the sharp tip of the vial with a vein in Rogers’ neck. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

Creating an inhibitor for the sedative drugs and designing a way of smuggling it into captivity had, unfortunately, been the easy part of Tony’s plan. Getting Cap back on his feet and somewhat in his right mind was a necessity for the more complicated part of the plan: actually getting them out.

Tony hadn’t been able to test the inhibitor, obviously, so he was unsure how effective it would be. This would be easier to execute if Cap was back to his usual tactical-minded self. It might be a bit easier on Tony, too, if he didn’t have to deal with seeing every emotion that Steve was feeling written all over his face. He quietly hoped for the inhibitor to kick in, hard, and soon.

“Tony?” Steve’s voice was wavering and unsure, not a hint of his usual commanding tone.

Tony sighed. “Yeah, Cap?”

“It’s cold.”

That it was. The cell was barren and freezing, the stone of the floor beneath them seeming to suck the warmth right out of his body where he was curled up on the ground. “Yeah, Cap. It’s cold,” he agreed.

There was the sound of shuffling from behind him, and Tony felt a solid mass of warmth pressed against his back while Steve slung an arm across his chest. Tony’s heart raced, panic and misery and longing all rolling into one desperate thrum as Steve wrapped himself around him.

As if sensing his discomfort, Steve rubbed gentle circles across Tony’s chest, his hand over the dead skin where the arc reactor had been. Tony steadied himself, tried to breathe, to remember that he was here to help Steve. And it was undeniably warmer with the two of them curled up together.

“I’m glad you’re here, Tony,” Steve said quietly. “Thank you for coming for me.”

Tony felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and told himself to pull his shit together. This was just a rescue mission, it was what he would do for any team mate, or hell, for any person who needed it. There was no need for him to make it weird.

He grasped for a response, but Steve was already dozing off, the captivity and the drugs clearly wearing on him. To his surprise, Tony felt a kind of calm descend on him as he lay on the cold ground and listened to Steve’s steady breathing.

“Tony, wake up,” a voice hissed.

Tony sat up, blinking slowly. Steve was crouched over him, posture solid, eyes sharp.

“We don’t have much time before I’m taken out of the cell for the day. I need to know the details of your plan.”

Cap was back into grim, professional mode, his face schooled into a look of intense concentration. The inhibitor must have kicked in, dulling the effect of the drugs. Tony would never have imagined he’d be so happy to see that expressionless mask back in place.

“I counted at least ten guards on the way in,” Tony told him. “Plus the leader. If they manage to put the base on lockdown before we overpower them, we’re in trouble.We need to take them down one by one, quickly and quietly.”

Steve gave a tight, determined nod.

“How many guards come to fetch you each morning?”

“Three.”

Three armed guards against the two of them, unarmed. Not ideal, but workable.

“Right,” he said, looking Steve in the eye to make sure he was still with him. “When they arrive to take you out, we’re going to incapacitate all three before any of them has the chance to push a panic button.”

“I’m nearly back to my usual strength, but I can’t take three guys at once. How are you proposing that you take down an armed man?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Tony said quickly. He could hear approaching footsteps outside their cell. “Just follow my lead.”

The guards threw open the door and entered the cell, faces grim. “You,” one of them snapped at Steve. “Hands behind your back.”

Steve flopped to his knees and clasped his wrists behind him docilely. His eyes were vacant and his jaw was slack, doing a convincing impression of someone under heavy sedation. Tony was reminded just how good this man was at hiding the truth.

Two guards went over to restrain Steve, while the third pointed his gun at Tony and leered. “Don’t worry, rich boy, we’ll be back to take you out for some fun later.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Tony said. He planted his feet, took a breath, and raised his hand, palm facing out like how he would aim a repulsor in the suit.

The guard laughed at him. “Is that supposed to be threatening?” He waved to his two friends. “Look at this, boys. We’ve got ourselves a fighter. Pity you haven’t got your fancy toys to protect you here.”

The other guards looked at Tony, joined in the jeering. But Tony’s eyes were fixed on Steve’s, and when he gave a tiny nod, they sprang into simultaneous action.

Steve lashed out with his right hand, and Tony heard the sickening snapping of bone as he hit one guy in the leg. As that one guard was collapsing, Steve kept his weight low and rolled into the other, toppling him over and knocking the radio which he had grabbed out of his hand.

The guy who was facing Tony pulled his weapon up, and aimed…

Tony concentrated, felt a switch flip in his mind, and tried not to scream as pain burst through his right hand. He felt a vicious crunching as the bones in his hand shifted and twisted, then a sick rending as the muscles were ripped and pushed apart. Thousands of red hot needles danced across his skin as liquid metal poured out of his hand.

And then, in a second, the pain cleared and a shiny red repulsor glove appeared, fully formed, encasing his hand. While the guard in front of him was still gawping in astonishment, Tony aimed a single repulsor blast at him and knocked him off his feet.

Steve made short work of the other two, and they quickly grabbed up their radios and weapons and locked the three of them in the cell.

Steve’s eyes stared at Tony’s hand, encased in its gauntlet. “Tony,” he asked, “What did you do to yourself?”

“This is Extremis Mark II. I realized, see, that I made a mistake with the Mark I, trying to use nanotechnology to rewrite DNA. It was too invasive, too prone to trouble. The Mark II doesn’t interface with my body, it just lives there. The armor is stored in a highly compressed format in my bones.” Tony smiled slightly to himself and flexed his fingers. “Now the suit and I really are one. Or at least will will be once I finish manufacturing the complete armor. For now I’ve just got the one glove.” He waved his hand helpfully.

“It’s stored in your bones? But then… deploying that… It looked like that hurt,” Steve said, face blank once again.

“Uhh, yeah. It did. But I didn’t have time for niceties like testing or making it user-friendly. There were time constraints in the design.”

“Time constraints?” Steve suddenly exploded. “What the hell does that mean? What could be more important than testing experimental technology before putting it inside your body?”

“Rescuing you, you fucking idiot,” Tony yelled back. “I designed the Mark II this week. It was the only way I could get a weapon here to you.”

“Oh,” Steve said quietly.

“Come on,” Tony said with a long-suffering sigh, “Let’s get out of here.”

On their way out, Tony took particular pleasure in repulsor beaming the leader of the group, knocking him face first into the concrete wall of the corridor they were barreling down.

It was… he hesitated to say fun, exactly, but it was at least satisfying to be fighting side by side with Cap again as they cleared the base. The two of them fell into the easy patterns of familiarity at which they had always excelled on the battlefield, but never managed to achieve in their down time.

Steve rolled into the main command room, dropping one guy with an uppercut and pivoting to throw a second guy directly into Tony’s line of fire as he entered behind him. Tony fired off a shot and wheeled to take out a third guy as he leapt over a console.

Suddenly, a whoosh of metal spun through the air by the head. Steve had picked up the nearest implement - a tea tray, rather improbably - and sent it arcing through the air, knocking down a fourth man behind Tony who he had missed and who had been lining up a shot on him. Tony gave Steve a quick nod of thanks and threw himself onwards.

By the time had taken down what turned out to be a total of 12 guards and kicked down the door to exit the base, they were both sweaty, bloodied, and grinning wildly.

Wandering out of the underground base and towards the lights and noise of a large city, they saw a few road signs and Tony realized with a start that they were in Madripoor.

Madripoor, the island nation off the coast of Singapore which was famed for its lack of extradition treaties and its lax approach to law enforcement. Of course, Tony thought, where better to set up your base of evil operations?

Fortunately, or perhaps sadly, Tony had done some business here in the shadier parts of his past and still had accounts in the city which he could access. People living in this legal gray zone of a city weren’t big fans of him these days, but Stark money was good everywhere.

The first thing he did was get a credit card, the second was to message Rhodey letting him know they were both safe, the third was to book a nearby hotel. Nothing fancy, just a place to camp for a moment and achieve goal number four: take a much-needed shower.

On arrival at the lobby of the hotel, the attractive woman staffing the front desk apologetically informed him that they only had one twin room left, and would that suffice? He waved off her apologies, happy to have somewhere to decamp and not planning to stay long. Steve had been unusual silent since the escaped the base, and he was swaying slightly. The man clearly needed to sit quietly for a bit.

When they got to their room, he felt a ridiculous prickle of concern as he left Steve sitting on the bed and gazing at the wall while he went to take a shower. Steve would be fine, he didn’t have to keep him in his sights at every moment. Tony was getting too clingy, too needy, too controlling, like he always did when he was uncertain.

He shook his head and stood under the shower, letting the water wash away the worst of the grime covering his body. He had avoided inspecting any of his injuries too closely over the last few days, but now he couldn’t ignore the thumping in his head and the oozing cuts on his face, the tender, aching soreness down his whole right arm and concentrated in his hand, and a sharp pain in his chest which he suspected was several broken ribs.

He watched the water circle the drain, tinged brown with dirt and pink with blood. It was fine. His body would heal.

Tony left the bathroom to let Steve have his turn in the shower. But Steve had fallen asleep, passed out on the top of the bed while still fully clothed. His face was drawn into a frown and he was shaking.

Tony took one look at him and abandoned plans to leave Madripoor that evening. Steve was clearly still struggling physically and mentally with the effects of his captivity. Tony could sympathize with that. They would stay here tonight, and the journey back to home with all its pressures and demands could wait until tomorrow.

“You know what, I’d say we’ve earned an evening off. Let’s stay here for the night,” Tony called over to Steve’s sleeping form. “I’ll call down to reception and see if I can get another room.”

“Wait,” Steve said suddenly, apparently not that asleep after all. He rolled over and looked at Tony. “You could stay here. There’s two beds and plenty of space.”

Tony raised an eyebrow and was about to say something flippant about thrifty 40s habits until he noticed the tight knots of misery in Steve’s eyes. He looked lost, a ghost of the vacant glassy stare that Tony had seen while Steve was sedated flitting across his face. “Please,” he said, quietly.

Tony acquiesced, of course.

Steve stepped out of the shower looking like a new man, face freshly shaved and his bruises already fading. But his movements were still a little disjointed, lacking their usual fluidity. The drugs had not quite flushed out of his system yet.

“We ought to find a doctor to check you over,” Tony said carefully.

Steve shook his head. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“But you’ve been through a trauma-”

“You don’t have to treat me like a child, Stark,” Steve snapped.

“I’m just trying to help,” Tony said, defensively.

“I don’t need you to fix me, okay?” Steve’s voice was harsh and he stepped forward into Tony’s personal space, his fists bunched up in anger. “I don’t need you telling me what to do.”

Suddenly all Tony could think about was those fits pounding into his face, the dull, heavy thud of shield impacting armor, and the screeching of rending metal as the reactor powering his suit blinked out. He remember looking up at Steve’s blank face, and knowing that he was about to die.

Steve reached out for him, but Tony recoiled and the room spun wildly for a moment. He heaved in shallow, tortured breaths, trying to push away the panic and the urge to run, run, run.

When he composed himself enough to look at Steve, he saw that his face was ashen. Steve ripped his hand away and stepped backwards, giving Tony space.

“Jesus, Tony,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Tony couldn’t keep the harsh tone out of his voice. “For standing near me? This is my problem, not yours. Forget it.”

“I’m sorry for making you feel unsafe around me.”

Tony didn’t know how to respond to that  - to the truth stated so plainly. His eyes flicked around the room, identifying exists, an old habit of nervousness that he’d never managed to break.

“And I’m sorry for Siberia too,” Steve said softly. “I thought I knew what the right thing to do was. But lately, I realized… anything that set us this at odds couldn’t have been the right way to go. Is it too late for us to work out some kind of compromise?”

Tony had imagined Steve coming to him with these words so many times, daydreaming about how they might patch things up, how they might move on together. Now it was laid in front of him, it seemed unreal.

“I…,” Tony took a deep breath. Whatever his personal issues with the man were, Steve was here, and he was trying. Tony could meet him halfway. “I’m sorry too, Steve. I’m sorry I attacked Barnes. I wish you’d explained his situation to me. I could have helped.”

Steve looked pained at the mention of Barnes’ name, guilt and worry written all over his face.

“I could still help,” Tony offered, looking at the floor. Despite whatever acrimony existed between him and Steve, he couldn’t blame Barnes for having had his mind manipulated. Tony had been there, had suffered that loss of dignity and of self. He had the opportunity to help another person who was suffering, and sometimes he had to be the bigger person.

“I’ve been working on a therapy technology that could help Barnes,” he continued. “That’s actually why the new AIM kidnapped me. They wanted me to use the technology to brainwash you. That’s not how it works, but it might help Barnes process what he’s been through. I could arrange treatment for him.”

“You’d do that for me?” Steve asked, looking suddenly hopeful.

“No,” Tony said coldly, enjoying the vindictiveness. “But I’d do it for him.”

Steve nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and looked so pathetically grateful that Tony felt a rush of guilt. Why did it always have to be this way between them? Why always with the recriminations and the judgments and the snarky comebacks? He wondered if they had missed their chance to be more than that, to be teammates, or even friends. Whether they could ever achieve stability after all they’d been through.

“You’re a good man, Tony,” Steve said, without a hint of irony or sarcasm. “Howard would have been proud.”

And Tony could see his good intentions, could tell that Steve was trying to heal the rift between them, to reach across the divide they’d created with shared memories. This was further than he’d ever imagined that they would get. But man oh man, did he pick the wrong thing to say.

Of all the old wounds to pick at, the subject of Howard was still an ugly scab across Tony’s psyche, the baggage of guilt and resentment and hostility still weighing heavily upon him. Steve, just like Howard, another man that Tony would never live up to, never be as strong as or as forthright as, Tony was trapped forever beneath the mammoth weight of expectations piled on him by those who should have protected him.

“It’s late,” Tony said, voice absolutely flat. He couldn’t stand to look at Steve’s face for another moment. “We should get some sleep.”

Tony stared at the ceiling, examining the ugly stucco, eyes drawn to the way each peak and trough was illuminated by the soft glow of neon signs from outside the window. He couldn’t work out why he felt so restless, so jumpy. The mission had been a success. He and Cap were both safe. Tomorrow they could go their separate ways and get back to their lives.

It hit him that perhaps this was the problem - he didn’t want to go back to the cold silence and the half an ocean between them. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Steve, but he knew that it wasn’t a return to how things had been before.

He didn’t want to be resentful any more, he realized. He was done being heartbroken. It was time to move on, and he knew that closure was a gift you give to yourself.

He heard shuffling from the other bed, then soft footsteps approaching. “Tony?” Steve asked softly. “You awake?”

Tony considered feigning sleep, rebuffing Steve, leaving this tangled mass of emotions to be dealt with at another time. But that felt like admitting defeat.

He rolled over. Steve looked worn, lacking his usual confident movements, his posture slumping. He nibbled nervously at a nail, and for a moment Tony imagined him as the little skinny kid he’d seen in photos from before the serum, the one who grew up in poverty and deprivation, the one who had just wanted to do his part to protect the innocent. “Can I join you?” Steve asked, not quite looking him in the eye.

As if Tony could ever refuse him. Steve had always been his weakness, his adoration splayed across his heart so clearly that even the villains could see it. “Okay,” he said, pushing aside the bed covers, leaving him shivering in the cool night air. “Get in.”

Steve climbed in, wrapping himself around Tony in a way which was already becoming disconcertingly familiar. Almost like home, Tony thought for a second before chiding himself for his sentimentality. Steve rolled to face him, the sharp lines of his face softened in the ambient glow of the room.

“Can I…” Steve’s voice trailed off, uncharacteristically uncertain. Or perhaps it was merely an elaborate ruse to play on Tony’s emotions - who could tell? Tony always had been a lousy judge of character. “Can I come home?”

Tony blinked. “I can’t stop you from entering the US. You’d be as safe or unsafe there as you would be back in Wakanda.”

“No, I mean… I miss our team. I want to come home.”

Our team? Our team? The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine, Tony thought but didn’t say.

But then he looked at Steve, really looked at him. Saw the worry lines around his eyes, etched deep with pain, the way his lips were pinched like he was bracing himself for rejection. If it was an act, it was a damn convincing one.

“Yeah, Cap,” Tony said warily. “You can come home.”

Steve held on to Tony tight, fingers clinging on to him as if he might disappear at any moment. Together, they drifted off into sleep.

In the week after their return to New York, Tony had been trying to set an at least somewhat reasonable sleep schedule, to eat, to keep moving. What he wanted to do - what he always wanted to do, but especially now - was to bury himself under a thick layer of schematics or booze or bed covers and not have to look anyone in the eye for a few days.

But he had responsibilities: a team that required him, people who were depending on him, and Steve who needed… something from him that he wasn’t quite ready to give yet. Forgiveness. Understanding. Validation. So, he got up each day, and negotiated.

Getting Steve into the Avengers compound had been a first step. The guarantee of his immunity from prosecution was something Tony was able to offer once Steve had agreed to signing a modified version of the Accords. That guarantee had cost Tony more political capital that he would ever have admitted, and after he had promised himself that he was done spending himself for Steve.

Tony reached for the bitterness that had become like a well-worn coat to him when he thought of Steve, a motivation to stay vigilant and to protect himself. But in the last days Tony had searched for anger and vindictiveness towards Steve, and found only pity. They had barely seen each other since their escape, Steve as busy as he was: finding a US facility which could help Barnes, making arrangements for the rest of his team to come home, running messages to them through Natasha.

Tony felt like he had run out of hate, that the fiery intensity of his fury at Steve’s betrayal and lies had been burned away, leaving only the glowing embers of sadness and regret. Now he just felt empty.

He rolled over and stared at the clock beside his bed, blinking out the time in vivid red. Sleep seemed like a lost cause. It was late - too late for anyone else to be awake, and too late for him to be reasonably working. But the idea of lying in a pit of his regrets was too tedious for Tony to face any more.

He was tired, so tired. Tired of the responsibility and the pressure, tired of his own impossibly high standards for himself, tired of trying to form the world into a safe place which it clearly would never be. But mostly, he was tired of fighting people who were once his friends.

He wondered if Steve was awake. He didn’t sleep much, seemed to always be in the gym late at night. Maybe he was still awake, and they could distract themselves with talk. About sports, or how Peter’s training was progressing, or god, anything.

Tony hadn’t quite realized that he had made a decision until he had rolled out of bed and was heading for the door.

He opened his bedroom door and stopped short. Steve was pacing up and down in the corridor outside, looking jittery. How long had he been out there? He turned to face Tony, and even with the regenerative powers of the serum, there were bags under his eyes and a downward turn to his mouth. He looked pale and exhausted.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Tony asked.

Steve nodded but said nothing.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Tony sighed, opened the door and waved for him to come in. Tony had wanted to speak with Steve, thought he could assess the situation between them, to run the numbers on the chances of repairing their relationship. But more than any of that, right now, he wanted to sleep. And it seemed like Steve did too.

Tony got into bed and threw back the covers to make space for Steve, who slid in next to him. Feeling Steve’s arms wrap around him and smelling his familiar scent of soap and leather, Tony felt himself relax. There would be time for hashing out the messy practicalities of their lives in the morning.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve mumbled into his hair. He’d said that before. Perhaps he even meant it.

Tony felt a lump in his throat, tried to process his conflicting emotions, failed. “I’m glad we’re here,” he replied, his voice hoarse and rough.