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The first thing Tony registers is the sound of heavy boots trudging through snow, that familiar, barely audible crunch Tony had long since paired with memories of twirling snowflakes in crisp winter air on long walks around the mansion grounds with Jarvis. Of hot cocoa and cold fingers, cookies and his mom’s pestering over the holiday spirit.
Light hearted memories.
Good memories.
The trudging of heavy boots brings comfort for a fraction of a second as Tony rouses, before the other senses come back to him, one at a time, the other sounds come back to him one at a time. There’s a flickering. Heat. It dances behind his closed lids in hues of red, orange and gold and it takes a shit ton of time for Tony to process that. It’s fire, smoke heavy in the air, polluting that clear winter wind he was expecting, and any lingering comfort fades then.
It’s then that Tony feels only fear.
Dimly, he can hear dad mutter his name, a hand reaching back to shake him, and when Tony briefly manages to crack open dazed eyes, there’s a look of knowing, of fear in his dad’s eyes. Why, he doesn’t know. No idea, but Tony can tell at a glance that he doesn’t like it. The twisted, mangled car wreck is catching, flames rising from the front of the car, his mom is crying and Tony wants to reach out, wants to soothe her, but it’s too difficult to move without pain sparking up his spine, settling in his gut with a leaden heaviness, like that time Tony had dropped the bike engine on his foot when he was six-
Tony’s pulled back from bumbling, twisted thoughts by the sound of breaking bones and dad coming back into the car. His thoughts move like a river of molasses, slow, difficult, time-consuming, and Tony frowns, forces his brain to fucking process what he was seeing- and by some small mercy, he manages, just enough to begin to slot together the puzzle pieces that make up the hot mess they’re in right now. No. No, Howard’s not coming back in- he’s pushed back in. Set back in by a man all in black, with a gleaming metal arm and hair that obscures his features. Tony barely manages a sound when the flesh hand pushes into the car, and his mom goes silent.
Fear’s a funny thing. It’s single-minded. It’s colder than the biting winter, it’s a tight feeling that grasps at him, pushes and huddles close like a friend, and then smothers him, suffocates him, tightens until Tony can’t breathe as that door opens- and the first thing Tony thinks to do is to lash out while he grapples for the other door, pushing it open, sliding out, and breaking into a run that grinds broken bones together.
Yeah, no, fuck this, Tony would like a refund thank you, 110% would not prefer to die today, die like mom and dad who were dead back in that car-
He makes it five metres before he’s struck down. A low murmur of Russian, of something indecipherable and flickering shadows…and Tony falls off the precipice and into the darkness of unconsciousness.
-----------------------------
This time when he wakes up, things are more cohesive. Cohesive enough that there’s no denying that Tony is in deep trouble right from the get-go, let on easily to that fact given it smelt like sweat and blood in all the very bad, would rather never experience kind of ways. You would think that realising he was alive would have brought a little more joy, but given he was in some musky fucking basement or whatever? Yeah, being glad he was alive was definitely off the menu. Even if he had been in a good place when he woke up… there was no way to shake the flickering memories that danced behind his eyes every single time they fluttered shut, but that was for later. Later, when he knew where he was, and whether he should be terrified right now or not.
“You’re awake,” intones a voice from the side, and Tony blinks, steering his gaze to the stranger all in black.
“Captain Obvious has come to do his job. Great. Does that mean you’re going to be obvious enough to start a monologue on what the flying fuck is going on, or is that a little too much for someone strapped down to a gurney like a B grade bad eighties porno to ask for?”
A twisted smile is all he gets for his efforts. Well. A twisted smile and fingers carding through his hair that he instinctively flinches away from, anyhow.
“Scratch that- this is amateur home movie style. Zero out of ten, would not recommend- “
“You’ve got quite the mouth on you. I’m beginning to think that such things are an inherited Stark trait. Regardless… I’d personally recommend shutting up quickly, senses of humour never last long here unless they’re of the particularly dark calibre.”
“No can do on that one.”
“Mm, thought you might say that. No matter, it’ll be rectified soon enough.”
Well that wasn’t the slightest bit foreboding. He swallowed as the man peered over him then, intense light blue eyes locking with his own in a way that had a shudder rolling down his spine. He felt like a mouse under the scalpel of the mad scientist- which said everything considering Tony was a mad scientist himself at times, cackling all too evilly over explosions like those glitter bomb mines he’d planted under the college football pitch that’d been going off whenever a poor unfortunate soul stepped on one. If this guy outranked him in mad scientist vibes, then that usually meant they were batshit crazy.
A hand cupped his jawline then, and Tony thrashed, only to still with a bitten back sound of pain at the very heavy reminder of the fact he’d been in a car crash recently.
“Such fight in you…yes. I think you’ll do nicely. You’ve so much potential….and we’ve been needing a replacement for our most brilliant mind. Zola was the driver behind our scientific division and without him, we’ve begun to stagnate.”
Zola. That name was vaguely familiar- and not in a way Tony liked.
“Yeah, no, not happening, fuck you.”
“You think you have a choice, Stark? I’m afraid not. HYDRA does not tolerate rebellion.”
HYDRA? Tony felt sick then.
Fuck.
-----------------------------
Tony wasn’t sure how long he laid there before a team of people in white coats came, but however long it took didn’t matter- all he knew was that it felt like an eternity, each second ticking by slowly, painfully, dragging out as Tony scoped out the room and ran through his options…and tried to process everything.
HYDRA wasn’t defunct and non-existent anymore. Everything Captain America had done was for nil, because HYDRA lingered on like the sorry sons of bitches they were. HYDRA was alive and thriving, hidden out of view, and HYDRA were the ones responsible for the crash. For his dad and his mom…Tony couldn’t get it out of his head. No matter how out of it he’d been when it happened, there was something that threw it all into clarity, something that made it even more painful. He could still hear his dad’s voice faintly in his ears, his mom’s final breaths, sleek and bright silver and boots on snow… Stop. Stop thinking on it, stop it. Someone will come. Someone will see he’s missing, right? Missing, he’d go down as missing…but fuck knows where he was right now so maybe no one was coming.
Maybe there was no way out.
No, Tony wouldn’t take that lying down, not if he had a choice, and he wasn’t planning on sticking around to see how HYDRA got him to play nice with the other children. Something told him they were very persuasive. Very persuasive, but Tony really didn’t plan on finding out.
Right. Room, simple four by four, single gurney, centralised and away from walls. Single door, Tony’s feet pointed toward it, the gurney he was on being locked into place considering wiggling didn’t do anything, and the leather wound around his ankles, wrists and his middle section made it difficult to wiggle any more than he’d attempted to- not that he could do much about that anyway given moving? Hurt. A broken leg at the least, ribs were bruised, probably not broken though considering breathing didn’t hurt that much- which meant Tony was planning on wiggling his way to freedom anyway. The vent system looked like a wonderful place to start.
And… that was about as far as Tony had gotten before they’d come along and begun wheeling him down hallways, each as dark and dreary as the last, if not more so.
Note to self: find out why villains had lairs that were always so dark and derelict because apparently, that wasn’t just a movie thing.
They came to a halt in a large open room where chairs were lined up, four people sat in a neat row and strapped down, people putting IVs in. Every single one of them stared at him without blinking, and Tony narrowed his eyes right back, a false act of confidence and bravery when really, he could hear nothing past the racing beat of his heart thudding in his ears as they pushed him to an open spot beside the rest, next to a free IV stand that held a rather oddly bright shade of blue liquid inside. “Whoa. Whoa, whoa, no. No, I’m not a human guinea pig. No plugging me up with suspiciously coloured IV drips.”
“It’s safe, I can assure you of that,” one chimed in. “This is your father’s serum. Quite easy to obtain. Now we’ll see how easily it works for us, though from our test trial of the composition leads us to believe it’ll be effective.”
Dad’s? “Sorry, serum?”
The woman levelled her eyes at him, needle poised over a vein she’d located in Tony’s arm. “Yes. The entire purpose of stopping the car was for this cargo. You were merely a lucky acquisition, Anthony Stark.”
And with that, the needle slipped under his skin.
-----------------------------
It hurt. It was fire, liquid, icy fire burning through his veins, through his cells, through every atom that made him who he was. It invaded and changed and pressed on, and there was no outrunning it. It was like a virus, bleeding into everything, inescapable and devastating.
Tony didn’t know how many times he cried out as the serum worked slowly through him.
Tony didn’t know how much he struggled as they stuck him under radiation waves and expected him to endure. (What a cheap rip off of the safer, more stable and effective Vita-Ray, Tony managed to think at one point during the high of the pain, when it felt like his bones were burning to fucking ash.)
Tony didn’t know.
All he knew was that he was thankful when it stopped.
It didn’t stop for long.
Hysterically, Tony wished it hadn’t stopped, because the serum was one thing, but this was something else. It wasn’t right, to have flesh heal back that fast. It wasn’t right to burn and be unscarred within hours. It wasn’t right to be prodded and cut with knives and not bleed out. Was this what it was like? To be able to rebuild almost as quickly as he was broken down? Was this what dad was after? To figure out the grand problem of the serum, bring it back and make more super soldiers? Was this what it was like to be one? Because if so, Tony wanted no part of it. He just wanted it to stop, permanently, forever, just fuck, please, please, please, please.
It kept going.
And going.
And going.
And going.
Stop. Please. Please stop, his mind chanted. (Fuck you, Tony said aloud.) Tony wished he’d died out there with his parents. Tony wished he’d never gone with them at all. Tony wished. Tony wished and regretted and hoped and crumbled.
He prevailed, tried to hold strong. Like Aunt Peggy taught him, plant your feet, Tony. Plant them, don’t move, just breathe through it. For Jarvis. For Ana. Mom and Dad. Rhodey. Rhodey would be worried sick. Meet their eyes and fight back, Stark. Stark men are made of iron, Tony.
Fuck iron. Tony would be titanium. Let them try to break him, they wouldn’t succeed. Tony would keep on fighting.
Jarvis.
Ana.
Rhodey.
Aunt Peggy.
-----------------------------
“He’s not breaking,” Miranda stated, slumped over the workbench, mouth twisted into a scowl of grudgingly impressed annoyance. “You said he was strong, but you never said he’d be stubborn enough to tell me to fuck off in the middle of it all.”
The clink of a coffee mug hitting the table sounded, the blonde man sighing deeply, a more obvious smile tugging at his own lips as he let eerily blue orbs lock with the woman’s. “It’s all part of the fun, no? At the end of it, it’ll be worth it. Break him down, complete stage three, and then we can move onto stage four and then the training stages, and we’ll have another fist. He’s the most stable out of the five, isn’t he? I think I made a rather excellent choice in removing Dimitri from the program in place of Anthony.”
“Sure- but the kid’s a fucking nuisance. You stick a knife into him and he’ll spit blood back at you and start dissecting what your sex life is like just for distraction’s sake.”
“Dissect your sex life?”
“Said I clearly got some because the hem of my shirt was all fucked up and I had a hickey on my hip.”
“He’s observant. Imagine when we twist that to our needs. He shows potential. Vast amounts of it, it’s a curious thing, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, yeah, keep patting yourself on the back, Richard for your great catch. Should’a left the kid to bleed out on the road or something, but no, you intercepted and now you think he’s going to be as good as the Asset. Pat on the back for you, Madame HYDRA is going to love you.”
“It’s not for Madame- it’s for the entirety of the organisation to benefit from as a whole.”
Richard slid his chair back then, the sound of it dragging against the old linoleum producing a sharp, drawn-out squeak, before he picked up his mug and turned neatly on his heel, disappearing off the way he had come before he’d decided to stop for coffee. It wouldn’t take long now. He could see Stark crumbling. Once he was reduced to little…then he’d erase the rest. The parts he didn’t need would be cauterized out, and from there…well. That was where the experimentation came in, didn’t it?
Miranda just stared at his departing figure, before her eyes drifted back to the still panting figure on the table. Fuck it. She could see where Richard was coming from- he showed promise. “доброе утро, помощник,” Miranda began, watching in idle satisfaction as the figure on the table twitched. “Let’s start again, shall we?”
-----------------------------
For the first time, there was no pain. Blank eyes fixed on the ceiling, savouring the distinct lack of pain. It’d been a while since they let him completely heal. It’d been a while since he’d been whole again, and not marred with marks and scars that were trying to fade with every second that ticked by. Tony could still feel them though, like they were carved into his very bones. He felt hollow, ancient, like he’d been pulled apart to the basest of levels and had been left like that, unfinished, fractured, broken. The woman stared down at him again, and this time, the familiar man who often visited joined her.
“Well done. Seems like his stubbornness could only last so long.”
“It’s longer than the Asset ever lasted during the first run, Rich. That’s gotta say everything, really.”
“Yes, yes, but it’s worked. Помощник. Assistant. I think it fits well as a callsign.”
Tony wanted to grunt out a reply at that. He was human, he had a name, he wasn’t something that could be relabelled just like that. As much as he wanted to, there was no will left in him to do so, let alone the fact that his voice might not even be up to the task.
“I agree. So. Shall we move on to the next stage?”
Tony’s stomach dropped at the smile the man offered, staring down at Tony with something akin to affection, but something of a much darker vein.
“Yes. Take him to the chair.”
He didn’t know what to think of that, but the moment his eyes landed on the very thing they were steering him to (when had they started moving in the first place? Tony didn’t know, his memory was getting gappy with the lack of sleep he was getting) dread curled lowly in him. Restraints snapped into place the moment he was forced down into it, and his eyes flickered up then, to a figure standing by in the corner. Dark hair, wavy, slightly left in disarray, black tac gear, and gleaming silver. The Asset met his eyes, and for a second, Tony thought he could see some kind of apology in those eyes he could barely see in the cover of the darkened alcove the soldier hid away in. The whir of machinery started up as Miranda shoved a guard between his teeth, and realisation, sick and heady, clicked into place as the machine whirred one more time, and slotted into place around his head.
If Tony hadn’t thought his voice could work- he was proven wrong the moment the electricity sparked through him and seared away everything but the sensation. (Tony knew why the soldier looked apologetic then, before that memory was burned away.)
-----------------------------
Tony was wrong. What he felt before hadn’t been torture. This was torture.
Jarvis.
Ana.
Aunt Peggy.
Rhodey.
Mom and Dad.
They went again, lit every nerve ending alight, light dancing in his head and darkness behind his lids, sensation too sharp that all other senses failed to work, brain so preoccupied with the pain that it lost everything else. There was nothing else.
Voices again, the same words, the same greeting, the same programming read out again and again. The electricity was back.
Death, he thinks, would have been kinder.
Jarvis.
Ana.
Aunt Peggy.
Rhodey.
Mom and Dad.
Who was he?
‘Tonio. Tonio, il mio bambino. You are you. You don’t need to be anyone else for anyone else, darling. Just be you.’
Tonio. Tony. Anthony. He was Anthony. They were trying to take that from him, trying to take everything from him. Trying to take memories of hushed voices as he stole about the corridors with the cookie jar. Tried to take what remaining memories he had of Ana before she passed, of her vibrancy, her smile, how she snuck Tony treats when no one was looking when he was down, even when Tony was too old to have treats snuck to him like he was still four years old.
They were trying to take those fleeting moments from him where his dad actually looked proud of him. Trying to take the warmth of his smile as Tony kickstarted the bike he’d built from the ground up when he was six, the way his eyes danced with something Tony still couldn’t identify, but something that warmed him to the core, a memory he cherished because it was so rare.
They were trying to take the memories of Aunt Peggy smooshing his face into the carpet when he was nine, laughing all the while as Tony thrashed and kicked and stated that he’d be able to knock her down one day when he managed to get the moves she taught him down right.
They were trying to take memories of him and Rhodey sprawled out across the dorm lounge, Rhodey sniffling over bad soap operas and then pretending he wasn’t crying over shitty TV shows, no, definitely not, that wasn’t what he was doing at all.
They were trying to take away Jarvis, of the way he smoothed his hand through his hair whenever Tony was struggling, whenever he was down and felt like giving up. He was there to give Tony advice. There to offer Tony whatever he needed.
The memories distorted at the edges with every wipe. One by one, they faded, faded no matter how Tony tried to grasp onto them, hold them tight like the precious things they were, slipping through his fingers like air- ungraspable, floating free the moment there was even the smallest of gaps.
Mom and dad.
Rhodey.
Jarvis….
Tony screamed, ten words weaving into his consciousness again and again, thrashing, flailing, struggling- he could picture carpet against his skin, burning, laughter, before that was taken away again, drowned out by the bleakness.
Mom and dad.
Rhodey.
Words on his lips, faint and quiet, but he didn’t know if they were the names he was trying to see in his head again or not. Brown eyes, the last thing he had was brown eyes. Whose were they? (The brown eyes stared on with worry, a stifling emotion in them that had Tony’s gut twisting guiltily.)
‘Hold out, To…. we’re coming for you.’
Electricity raced through his body like an old friend, rewriting, remaking. Where he had been broken before, the electricity reknitted his broken fragments together again, slow, painful, until he was made anew. It was the price to be paid, to be broken down to nothing, rebuilt from the ground up and rewritten.
“доброе утро, помощник.”
Brown eyes fluttered open, and the Assistant stared, slowly coming back to himself.
“я готов отвечать.”
-----------------------------
Training is second nature to the Assistant right from the very beginning. It impresses his handlers easily, which is only a good thing because it means there is no punishment for him. There are still moments that he malfunctions, moments in which he stumbles, and they do not tolerate it. It usually results in the Assistant being escorted to the chair to undergo another wipe, not one of great magnitude, but it’s more than enough to keep him compliant. The other soldiers are not as compliant as him. They act it, but they are quick to lash out should no orders be given. The Assistant is patient. The Assistant listens and waits.
He learns new things, new skills, and some that he already knows are modified to better suit demands. He has an affinity for technology of any sort. Anything they give to him, he can do a multitude of things with. Disarm, disable, hack, provide maintenance, build an effective weapon on the go with scrap metal and wiring. Whatever is asked, the Assistant can do. He learns to incorporate it into his technique, use it to his advantage, learn how to better adapt and think on the fly with things. It’s one of the main things that they praise him for, as rare as such praise is.
He does not have the strength of the other soldiers, but he’s quicker. Lithe, more agile, able to use his knowledge and experience to his advantage to better conduct himself, to better disable an opponent. Lethally, or non-lethally. Orders dictate his method of attack. Detainment, they say, is always a possible mission in the future for the procuring of payloads.
The first time he fights against one of the others, he walks away with more injuries than they themselves do. The Assistant tries again. And again. And again. He learns to adapt and modify his technique to beat down the other soldiers raw strength, though he is quite aware his strength, while not greater than the other soldiers, it is greater than his handlers and unenhanced individuals. He knows this is an advantage he can put into play elsewhere, but here, the only things he has in his favour is his quick thinking, agility, and flexibility to counter the harsher, swift fighting style the others favour.
The Assistant trains.
The Assistant learns.
The Assistant excels.
The Winter Soldier, the Asset, is one of his trainers. They are often paired together, and the Assistant notes immediately that this soldier is by far more proficient, speedier, not as deadly with his force. It’s his accuracy that is to be watched out for. The first spar leaves the Assistant sprawled out on his back with a blade at his throat, eyes not straying from the steely blue-grey orbs of the soldier perched above him, ready to make the kill strike.
The handler merely disengages the combat, and the Assistant stares at the Winter Soldier for the entirety of the rest of the training duration.
The Soldier stares back.
When the others return to their quarters, the Assistant is lead to the labs. Sometimes it’s for maintenance and testing, other times, it’s to help expand, improve and create a variety of new things for the organisation to utilise. Initially they start off slow, with weaponry and bombs and other varieties of tactical gear and the like. The Assistant works without pause and without question. They specify what they would like, and he moves on to writing up plans and drawing up schematics.
Other times though, the soldier is brought in, hair in a wild tangle, clothing often dirtied with debris or blood, never usually the Asset’s own. Their eyes meet every time without fail.
“Mission parameters. Provide maintenance for the prosthesis arm. Repair or upgrade whatever is viably upgradeable within the time limit provided, Assistant. Do you understand?”
“Understood. Repair and maintenance required, complete within desired time.”
The handler leaves, and the Assistant gathers his things, fingers deftly sliding over silver plating and carefully slotting open the arm. He’s gentle, as he usually is, and sometimes, the Asset gives him a perplexed look that the Assistant meets levelly, a quiet inquiry in his eyes, but no words spoken. There doesn’t need to be. He knows what the Asset is asking. The Asset knows that the Assistant is aware of what the Asset is asking. Speaking seems… unimportant. Dismissible.
The Assistant lets his fingers drag over the arm as he reaches for his tools, moving to the power supply and disabling it without a word, but the answer is there, it’s lingering unspoken.
I won’t hurt you because I don’t want to.
The Asset stares, but says nothing, and the Assistant returns to his job every time without fail. He removes old fraying wires. He replaces motors and cooling units with better fans and ventilation technology. He removes metal working parts that are essential to movement and replaces them when his eyes can see the obvious signs of metal fatigue. One time, he goes as far as to remove the internal workings of the arm completely to redesign the structural support when the handlers give him an extended time limit for maintenance. The inside frame of the arm is lighter but stronger then.
The Asset walks with less of a weighted slump on his left side every day onward. The Assistant decides he likes the feeling that unfurls in his chest at being able to assist. More so, he thinks secretly…he likes the feeling that unfurls in his chest when the Soldier looks pleased.
The lack of blankness is always rewarding.
(He does not inform his handlers of that particular malfunction. Every time after a wipe, it is that that comes back first.)
-----------------------------
It’s at such a training session, where a Handler is teaching him how to better conduct himself with knives, that one of the other soldiers snaps. There’s an audible crack before one handler crumples to the floor, and chaos breaks loose. His handler barely spares a glance and merely issues his commands.
“Assistant. Mission parameters. Protect and transport handler to safety, now. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Knives are weighted and easily manipulated in his fingers as he presses back, the handler stepping outside of the caged area into safety, but only just, as the woman soldier makes a grasp for the man. The Assistant reacts as he should, knife cutting cleanly through the air and ripping a gash along the woman’s front despite how she tries to twist out of the way, and four sets of eyes turn toward him at once.
Four advance- and the Asset steps in at his side, level grounded, casting a look that speaks all the Assistant needs to hear. They do not hesitate to strike, lashing out but remaining close together, refusing to stray, covering each other’s every blind spot. Where the Asset falters, the Assistant fills the gaps. Where the Assistant stumbles, the Asset is there to pick the pace back up again, two against four, a dangerous, deadly dance that never seems to linger in anyone’s favour for too long. There’s a naturalness to the way the Asset and the Assistant fall into step though, a fluidity in the way they weave around one another.
Broken, shattered as they are, riddled with cracks and imperfections, they compliment one another, the weaknesses of one is the strengths of the other. The Asset strikes one back with brutal efficiency, and the Assistant is quick to follow through with a strike hard enough to the head that one crumbles. The Assistant gets his legs around another’s throat, thighs tightening, wanting to snap the neck between them, but he doesn’t, he holds fast, no matter how hard the soldier tries to pull him down, before throwing all of his weight backward, hands tucked over his head, palms first to meet the ground as he steadies himself and the soldier slams down. The Asset weaves forward, and crunches a boot down on his face, knife lodged in another’s chest as the fourth sinks to the ground with tell-tale darts sticking from his body.
The Assistant and the Asset meet gazes again, confused and wondering.
It wasn’t in their programming to operate as a team, after all.
-----------------------------
“Did you fucking see that? Holy fucking shit. That was…terrifying and brilliant and astounding. I take back everything I said- this last year with Stark has definitely been worth all the pain and suffering if that’s the result. The Asset and the Assistant are deadly together. Note, do not fuck with either of them in case the other gets touchy,” Miranda huffs, stalking through the corridors with Richard ambling along beside her, and Alex bringing up the rear.
“I did tell you,” Richard merely states.
“Yeah, you did, I feel bad I didn’t believe you. That was- fuck, how many times have they fought with each other? That was something I’d be more inclined to see out of the Red Room. That was a chaotic dance that was deadly.”
“Do you usually get this poetic after witnessing what could have potentially been a deadly massacre that would have resulted in the loss of a multitude of high importance experimental individuals?” Alex asks from his spot, grumbling all the while as he kicked at the bars of a cell door as he went by.
“Fuck you too, Al. Fuck you too.”
“Yes please?”
“Please don’t. Not around me. I don’t need that kind of mental scarring- “
“Says the fucked-up psychologist to the interrogation and torture division chief and the biological advancement division’s lead scientist,” Miranda chimes in idly. “And Alex? Any time, sweetie.”
“You’re both utterly hopeless. Can we get back onto topic?”
“What was the topic again?”
“Like I said. Absolutely hopeless. I was saying that we should mobilise the plan to put forth potential collaborative missions with both the Assistant and the Asset. Their efficiency could prove useful.”
“Or very disastrous,” Alex mutters.
“For the opposition? Yes, I imagine it would be. For us though…I doubt things could go wrong.”
-----------------------------
The Assistant sits in silence, eyeing the landscape below as the sun sets to their left, peering out of a shattered window on the thirteenth floor of a dilapidated, abandoned building. The Asset sits to his right, sniper rifle slotted together and perched up on the sill of the window, just out of sight from any straying eyes that decide to scan the windows of the building they’re in. He isn’t sure why he’s here- he has his objectives, the handlers are waiting at the collection point for them once they finish their assigned mission, but the Assistant does not know why he is here.
This is the first mission he has been sent on. It is not a high stakes mission, but it is important, as important as every other mission they send the Asset out on. He cannot help with this- elimination of the target only requires one weapon.
“It is a test,” the answer comes, the shared silence dying the moment the rough voice graces the air, and the Asset doesn’t shift his gaze from the pavement below as he searches for the target among the dwindling crowds.
“A test?”
“Don’t ask what for. The handlers are the only ones who know. Follow protocol and programming. You will pass.”
The Assistant tips his head to the side just slightly, a feeling, unidentifiable (weapons do not feel) suffusing through him. It’s becoming a commodity around the Asset, rare as their interactions are.
The Assistant feels like those rare interactions might just be becoming more common.
He’s snapped from his trail of thought when the quiet graze of metal against metal hits his ears, eyes shifting to the walkway, just as the muzzle barks with the sharp retort of a gunshot. Red paints the sidewalk and the screams ring in the street.
It covers the sound of twin sets of steel capped boots on the rooftops of the buildings as two figures in black vanish like ghosts.
-----------------------------
There are several more missions like that. Simple assassinations, the Assistant being present, around to help if so required, but not to interfere. Intermittently, he’s put into cryo sleep.
Cryo sleep is not something he particularly enjoys. Lying pliant on a bed while they push chemicals into his body in the preparatory phases is uncomfortable at best, but it’s nothing like the freeze itself. It happens quickly enough that he doesn’t truly feel it. Everything goes dim quickly, but the chill lingers in his blood even when he’s been out of cryo for a longer period of time than usual. He’s carved from ice, shaped by harsh Russian winters and hardened by blood.
They check him over as they always do whenever he is pulled from cryo, and the moment he is given the all clear, he usually heads off to training. Other times, he is brought right to a lab. Different projects are passed to him, and when he has completed them, they are erased from his memory.
Once, he stays out of cryo for three weeks straight, working on a project coding for the entirety of a long-distance targeting system that will ultimately bring about the demise of any who oppose the organisation. Richard runs his fingers through his hair when he sees the completed algorithm and coding involved, and fondly strokes his fingers over the screen.
Project Insight, he murmurs, and the words stick with the Assistant, even as he’s escorted to the chair and he’s pushed down and into the seat, and everything is seared from his brain.
He doesn’t remember screaming. (But he knows that he does.)
-----------------------------
Eventually, he’s introduced to missions where he’s expected to play a more vital role. His first kill on the field is simple and quick, and made to look like an accident even when it’s not. The man struggles even as the Assistant holds him down, struggles even when the Assistant snaps his neck at just the right angle, before pushing his broken corpse down three flights of stairs till he lays sprawled at the bottom.
The Asset reaches out, and brushes metal fingers along the nape of his neck, the faintest whisper of a reminder that they should be moving, unwilling to speak given there are occupants footfalls already sounding from the room toward the back of the mansion. Brown eyes meet blue fleetingly, and the wife emerges at the bottom of the stairwell and sobs when she spots her husband. When her eyes lift to the top of the stairs, only shadows remain.
-----------------------------
Failure was not tolerated.
It is a lesson the Assistant learns quickly and learns well. In training, failure results in punishment. During a mission, however, the punishment is far worse. The Asset and the Assistant do not fail missions- until they do. The mistake is a simple, but catastrophic one. There are more people in the base than they had been lead to believe, and they had operated with the assumption that they were capable of fighting back any should they be caught in the midst of their assignment.
The fight was gruesome, bloody, and the Asset and the Assistant walked away with more injuries than they should have, a partly compromised mission, and the destruction of resources they had been sent to yield- all decimated by the bomb the Assistant had constructed on the fly as a last-ditch effort when reinforcements had come. Burnt and weary, they’d walked away, but all those within the building hadn’t. HYDRA was pleased over that much- but they were not pleased over the loss of necessary construction materials and plans they’d lost during the war.
“Mission report, Asset, Assistant.”
“Faulty information was given. The operation was carried out under the assumption that numbers within the base were between ten to twenty members at all times on a rotational basis which scoped out corridors and wings on a fifteen-minute pass basis,” the Assistant began by rote, ignoring the scratch of pen against paper and the tap of fingers against keyboards. “In reality, the numbers were between seventy and eighty men strong. Rounds were done on a five-minute basis; more security measures were implemented within the structure than previously anticipated. Mission guidelines dictated we enter through the lower west sewerage tunnelling into the west corridor. The operation was allowed to proceed after verbal confirmation from handler delta was given. The west wing held surveillance. The moment the Asset and Assistant emerged, the security measures were triggered. Tactical retreat was impossible- hostiles were engaged and disabled with extreme prejudice.”
“Which resulted in you building a bomb?”
“Numbers were growing too large to effectively fend off. The explosive device was a final resort.”
“Asset?”
“The report the Assistant has given is accurate. There is no further additional data.”
The handler stares then, eyes narrowed, displeasure clear on his features as he eyes them both. “You have lost us necessary materials.”
Silence from both the Asset and Assistant then, both awaiting the inevitable. “Recalibration is needed. Both of you will report to lab 342 at 1200 hours sharp.”
-----------------------------
Metal slick with blood glints dimly in the light, and the Assistant turns his eyes to the landscape beyond, hidden away in the Swiss Alps at a meeting point obscured in the cold depths in the heart of a ravine. The knife he’s been twirling idly loses it’s shine soon enough, and he cleans the blade off on his tac pants, tucking it back away as he turns to the Asset. He doesn’t speak, he merely watches as brunet locks are picked up by the wind, stares at a stubbled jaw and takes it in.
At some point, the Asset turns to meet his gaze too, and the Assistant has no recollection of exactly when it happened- just that it does.
Pale fingers washed lighter by lack of blood flow to his extremities in the cold he does not feel trail over metal plating in a familiar pattern, the same one that comes instinctively now, done every single time before maintenance. Instinct is the only way to remember, muscle memory is more reliable than their own memories they hold tight to until they’re stolen away.
The arm whines quietly between them as the arm twists until it’s palm up, and the Assistant trails his fingers across the open palm, savouring it, the stolen moment they were aware they shouldn’t share, but did anyhow.
Maybe they were seeking something neither of them could name, but no matter what it was, in the freezing cold of a stormy night, fingers slot together, and wordlessly, they hold tight.
-----------------------------
Moments like that are not rare. Whenever they have a quiet moment, whenever no one is looking, they steal fractions of seconds with each other. Sometimes, it’s a glance. Other times, they hold one another’s hands in silence.
In those fleeting moments…things seem more tolerable. Things seem freer, but heavier, laden with something neither of them wants to label. Labels and names give rise to knowing, and to know is a dangerous premise. They communicate with gestures more than they do with words, with glances and a myriad of other things, secret and hidden as the rest of themselves are. They covet it- because if HYDRA knows, they will steal it.
As it is, they steal it fleetingly, but there’s something natural to it, something engraved into their essences that ends with them finding each other again and again. No matter how many times they forget, it always comes back.
Always.
It feels like, even if just for a moment when they touch, they’re less broken then they usually are. Like when they slot together, the broken chasms and fissures littering what’s left of them are filled. Like a jigsaw puzzle of broken shards. They are something that’ll never quite be whole again, fragile and consisting of more sharp edges than smooth planes and lines, but it’s better than what they are when they’re apart.
(The Assistant stares at the Asset’s profile in his line of sight and wonders what it would be like if they could touch more than they dare to. Maybe then, they’ll be whole.)
-----------------------------
“Again.”
The Assistant slides back, eyes narrowed, and mouth pressed into a grim line as he breathes in ragged breaths through his nose, the Asset staring him down, and he can see it there, the displeasure in those light eyes that they’re being pushed this far today. Regardless, the Assistant does as he’s told, and closes the distance with a select variant of strikes, ones that the Asset swiftly counters, again and again. The Asset strikes out with the intent to catch him in the ribs again, but this time, he twists, knocking the arm up with a heavy push and throwing the Asset off balance enough that he’s able to plant his foot squarely against the other’s chest, kicking him back and sending him stumbling.
“Again,” the handler repeats, watching curiously, too curiously- looking for any hint that they would disobey the orders at hand.
Fight until one of you is disabled.
They fight again and again, until both are worn down to nothing.
The Assistant sees when the Asset pulls a punch. He knows when his knee strikes the Asset’s chest that the Asset could have had him.
Instead, the Asset takes the fall for him.
He doesn’t stop hearing the Asset scream from down the hall until the ice steals him away into darkness again.
-----------------------------
Ice. Fire. Trigger words. Compliance. It’s a simple but effective set of reprogramming protocols, and the Assistant always dazedly thinks that as he jerks in the chair long after the electricity has stopped.
The Asset is waiting for him this time, rather than the Assistant being awake before the Asset to aid in checking over the arm as he is usually tasked with doing when the Asset is brought out of cryo. He wonders briefly, but squashes down that feeling as soon as it rises.
“доброе утро, помощник… you have a mission today.”
Because when else did they wake him up?
-----------------------------
The mission is different. It is not an assassination mission. It is not a mission he is used to, but it is still a mission regardless. So here he is, instructing a class of young girls, teaching them to use their agility and speed to their own advantage. The Asset is with him, a secondary teacher, while the Madame strolls around, and explains what is going on for her pupils, while the Asset and the Assistant demonstrate for the next generation of Black Widows. It’s through their hushed whispering they share that the Assistant learns many a thing.
“-you can turn the battle back in your favour, so long as you know how to use your opponent’s weight against them and use gravity to help topple them. When they are toppled, it’s likely they will either end up in a position you can easily finish them if they are not proficient in combat,” Madame continued, and the Assistant kicked off the wall nearby and mounted the Asset’s shoulders, who mimed the same sort of imbalance someone unlike him would experience, which was plenty enough for the Assistant to twist and use gravity to use his grip to bring the Asset crashing down and into a position the Assistant could easily dispatch of him.
“Or, they could be proficient-“ the Asset shifts, coiled and battle ready, rearranging himself to how he would have landed otherwise, already moving to correct himself and lash back out, while the Assistant immediately widened the distance between them, “And it will give you a chance to evaluate and act as necessary, to either close in if you see an opening, or retreat temporarily to enable you more time to plan a more efficient way of felling your target.”
The Asset stands, and turns, ready to repeat all over again, and the Assistant stands tall, eyes shifting to Madame and waiting silently. “Take a moment, girls. Evaluate what you’ve seen, and then we’ll introduce key concepts before sparring will begin.”
Madame moves off to the side and out of the class or a moment, and the Asset and Assistant stay where they are, eyes surveying the room and overhearing the whispering of the girls.
Some spoke of the concepts, others were interested in other things.
“Is it really the Winter Soldier?”
“The Winter Soldier and the Assistant. Some call him the Mechanic. The most proficient assassins ever produced,” one lazily corrected. The Assistant liked her diligence- but her arrogance would likely be the end of her.
“The Mechanic is skilled, but he is still new. He’s a whisper in the intelligence community.”
“Just like the Winter Soldier. He is a ghost story. To be a whisper in the intelligence community means he is well hidden. Undoubtedly though, that whisper will get louder, with how he fights. I pity anyone who they are pointed at. Their targets do not live long after they get their orders, I hear. It’s no wonder they’re ghost stories.”
“Enough chatter! Back to work,” Madame called out then, voice harsh, venomous despite her poised demeanour. Every potential Black Widow in the room knew better than to argue. “Asset. Assistant. Repeat the set again. Quicker.”
His eyes flicker over his shoulder to Madame, who is in the hallway still, speaking to a woman who looks slightly older than he himself does- perpetually stuck at seventeen years of age as he is. Her red hair is vibrant when she shifts, and the Assistant stares for a beat longer as green eyes meet his own, before he turns back to the demonstration, launching off the nearest wall- and repeating it all over again.
-----------------------------
A positive of being out here, working with the Red Room, means it is a mission that is long term, and that means wipes are not necessary unless they begin malfunctioning. They are ordered to report if such a thing happens, and two handlers linger around the Red Room facility at all times, but there’s little need for it, HYDRA thinks. It’s that extended period of time of not forgetting that draws the Asset and the Assistant closer than ever.
Their touches get bolder. They last longer, they linger closer, and the Asset and the Assistant find a little piece of solace, a haven for both to share in whenever they get the chance.
Tonight, is one such night. Neither can sleep, and the Asset has found his way into the Assistant’s quarters, and the Assistant is where he usually is, perched by the window, fingertips stroking along the dull edge of a knife. The Asset is soundless when he sits, and the Assistant pauses in his ministrations before the gentle tap and rasp of metal against the wood of the table top becomes audible for the faintest second.
Hands intertwine again, resting atop the hardwood, flesh to flesh, all warmth and coarse skin and comfort.
“Do you ever wish that we had names?” he eventually asks, quiet, a shared secret in the darkness of the night, and the fingers laced with his own flex, a thumb grazing pleasantly over the back of his hand, slow and steady.
“Names belong to people. Not weapons.”
“Weapons do not feel.” And yet, here they were. That earned him a look then, the Asset’s eyes shining silver in the pale light of the moon, the familiar blue orbs washed out, bleached of colour, but the Assistant cannot bring himself to miss it when he’s too busy appreciating how the other looks in this new perspective.
“… Sometimes I think I had a name.”
“Sometimes I think they stole mine.”
Fingers trail up then, letting go of hands, smoothing over his skin instead, a mimic of the pattern he so often traced against the Asset’s metal arm, now being repeated back to him by the other. They’re pressed together from shoulder to thigh now, huddled in front of the same small window, eyes fixed on the same landscape, stealing looks at one another like they’re precious trinkets that can’t be treasured too long in case they lose their meaning.
“They steal more than names.”
The Assistant hummed at that. “They steal everything. Everything…but this.”
“Everything but this.”
“…if you had a name. What would you want it to be?”
The Asset turned his eyes to him then, and the Assistant tipped his head back, breath fanning across the other’s face, they were that close, breathing in each other’s air, gazes levelled with one another’s as the silence stretched.
“Yasha. I think I would be called Yasha.”
-----------------------------
The Assistant begins calling the Asset that when they are alone. Yasha. It’s something that makes the Asset startle at times, but there’s a look he gets every single time he does it, something that screams of appreciation, of warmth, of something more. The Assistant feels his chest blooming outward, inflating too far, far too warm, his pulse in his throat racing along and a warmth that bleeds through his veins.
He's malfunctioning.
The ice that once felt permanent…begins to melt.
Slowly.
Surely.
(The Assistant does not turn himself in for recalibration.)
-----------------------------
The woman with the red hair approaches him at one point, looks him over and settles back into the seat beside him at the head of the class. Two girls were currently sparring, trying to get a handle over one another, trying to win with the techniques that the Assistant and the Asset had been training them in. The Asset was not currently here now, off doing another practical demonstration in an adjoining classroom, but the Assistant was, and he watches and analyses in order to give feedback. The red-haired woman merely stares until he breaks his attention away from them as Madame lectures them on form and posture when one girl falters in something simple for most to grasp.
“Natalia.”
He blinks, processing, but he says nothing, and she seems to have anticipated that response, considering she continues like she hadn’t even allowed a pause for him to process what she’d said. “You’re the Assistant. You’re new to this still, aren’t you? Been at it for a few years. Madame said to ask if you would like to spar when you’re free. In a less controlled environment. I feel like we both could use the relief.”
Confusion crosses his features for the briefest of seconds before that too is erased. “Clearance from a handler is required.”
“That can be arranged soon enough.”
His only response is a nod, and he turns his eyes back to the ensuing battle as it grinds to a halt as the stronger of the two overwhelms the other, her legs wound tight around the other girl’s throat. The weaker one struggles, and the other turns her eyes to Madame.
Madame nods.
A sickening crack echoes in the space, a low gurgle tapering off into the sound of the weaker girl’s body hitting the floor with a dull thud.
In the Red Room, only the best survive and prevail.
-----------------------------
Natalia becomes a common soul lingering around when he or the Asset are not hidden away in their rooms, stealing idle touches and brief moments together. They know how to hide, even from a Red Room graduate. The training at the Red Room is long and arduous and effective, but HYDRA’s courses were much more in depth, and much more gruelling, in a way no normal human could keep up with without breaking in a week, and so, it’s easy to hide something like this from the woman. Easier than he felt comfortable with.
Wherever he goes, Natalia is likely to follow, and the more she is around, the more he speaks, and the lack of punishment as a result only furthers his change. Natalia is still careful, as is he, but they steal moments together. They are not the same moments that he and Yasha share, but there is still something pleasant about them to him. With Natalia, there is comfort, but there is less of the warmth that he encounters when he is with Yasha. A different kind of warmth.
Dancing around each other like they are, striking with deadly accuracy, sparring with furious blows and quick steps, there is no fear. They will not harm the other, it’s an unspoken rule, and they click well together, know when to pull their punches when the other does not manage to evade in time, and when it is safe to drop the other and pin them without compromising themselves further down the track, where injuries tend to hinder them, a dangerous thing when missions were as frequent for Natalia as they were.
Such shared times are as fleeting as the ones he steals with the Asset, but like everything, it had to come to an end at one point. Natalia was sent out on a mission, and soon thereafter, the Asset and Assistant were pulled away from the Red Room temporarily to undertake their own missions.
The wipes steal everything… or so they all think.
Over time, during the missions, the Assistant still gets flickers of warmth, comfort and quiet. Of blue-grey eyes, of a name spoken under the cover of night, of explorative touches.
The Assistant gets the feel of warm lips brushing against his temple. He remembers the same feeling against his lips, the tingle of sensation radiating down his spine.
He remembers red hair, green eyes, and a wickedly sharp smile.
Yasha and Natalia, he thinks.
The Asset and the Assistant stare across the room at each other, and the sight of a metal hand brushing against defined lips has something blooming outward in his chest again.
The Asset remembers.
(They’re malfunctioning. They do not report to their handlers.)
-----------------------------
Natalia is not at the Red Room when he returns years later. He knows this the moment he steps into the hall her bedroom is located in, knows from the marks on the door, the dust collecting under the lip of it that no one has been in or out of that room through that door for a long while.
He doesn’t worry over it. Natalia is strong. She is strong enough to knock him on his back sometimes, and pin him to the ground. She isn’t dead, she just isn’t here.
It’s a little over a month later that he finds out she has defected, when he overhears Madame speaking with a handler over it, lamenting over the loss of one of her best.
The Assistant can’t help but feel proud.
Natalia got away. Good. She needed to, here was not the place for her.
-----------------------------
They’re hidden away in a bedroom again, and this time, it is the Assistant who has snuck into Yasha’s room, having stolen through the window at three in the morning, the Asset already wide awake and waiting. There’s no hesitance to their movements anymore, they merely shift, rearrange themselves to better fit on the undersized cot of a single bed that the Red Room provides, and only then do they slot together. The Assistant ends up half sprawled across Yasha’s chest, the metal arm tossed haphazardly around his waist, and a nose pressed into his hair. Their legs are a tangled twist, knotted together as they are, but it’s easy to fall into such situations and positions with each other. Like it’s meant to be, like this is how they were meant to be.
The rough edges are smoothing down over time, no longer jagged, like a vase that’d been shattered into shards of countless numbers and stuck together with glue. They slot together more easily now- one piece to another, jagged edges falling into place with the cracks and crevices. Two pieces of the same puzzle designed for each other instead of two haphazardly cut and shapes forced to fit together.
Yasha guides the Assistant’s head back, and the Assistant lets it happen, and drowns under the unfamiliar sensations he’d been craving for a while as soft lips press to his own.
Weapons do not feel, the voices repeated in his head as he pressed closer, lacing a hand through long brunet locks, lips parting in the chase of the feeling that built in his chest with every maddening beat of his heart.
Maybe…. maybe the Assistant was not a weapon.
-----------------------------
The next mission they are moved out onto is so sudden that a wipe is not possible- so they merely add another handler to the roster to wait in the tree line while they move in to take out a Russian diplomat who’s under protection. The Assistant disposes of two, the Asset of three, before they finally come to a halt when they spot the final barricade between them and the target who’s fallen to his knees behind his protector.
The woman’s red hair flickers in the wind like a flame, burning bright and impossible, and the Assistant feels the horror lace through him. Failure results in punishment- Natalia is in the way of completing the task.
“Neither of you need to do this,” she tries, her gun levelled, pointed at the Asset, who has his own pistol raised, while the Assistant clings to his knives as he usually does. His eyes flicker to the shuddering, quaking man behind her, protected by SHIELD. SHIELD is the enemy- and often causes trouble.
Trouble that needs to be remedied on a daily basis, almost.
“It is the mission,” the Assistant tries, as the click of the hammer on the Asset’s gun is pulled back.
“Do you need to complete the mission, Antoshka?” Green eyes land on him, and he goes deadly, impossibly still, breath hitching and dragging down his throat like it’s made of razor blades, tearing him apart from the inside as the name sends him spiralling.
Antoshka?
Antoshka.
Anthony.
Tonio.
Tony.
Knives hit the snow with a harsh sound, and the Assistant -Tony- crams his hands over his ears, pained sounds hitching up his throat, eyes unable to pull away from Natalia. Natalia, who takes a step forward- and the Asset fires. It skims by Natalia, past the spot she’d been standing, and drills through the man’s head, blood staining the snow a vicious, hateful red.
Snow. What was so familiar about snow? Snow and fire and Tony. Natalia’s hair flickered like flames. The Assistant felt like the flames should be lighting the darkness and burning thickly with the stench of imminent death. He felt like he should be running.
The cacophony that erupts drowns everything out but that, and he can see Natalia mouth an apology as something strikes him, and dimly, his eyes fall to the thing that looks…like a miniature arrow sticking out from his arm, the chamber of it thicker than usual and he knows why almost instantly as the world twists on its axis.
Tranquiliser.
He’s failed and allowed himself to be captured. The Assistant sags into the snow, and the last thing he spots is the Asset’s frantic eyes as trigger words are called across the field. He sees them set in, and he sees the Asset go blank before he retreats.
The Assistant lets the world fade around him as pain pushes through him, hard and impossible.
Impossible, because he knows he has no external injuries, so why should he feel pain?
-----------------------------
The Assistant wakes slowly. It’s a gradual thing, the warmth in the air settling around him like a blanket, something that keeps him under longer, relishing in the comfort it brings.
It does not linger long.
The Assistant’s eyes snap open, seeing the dust motes swirling through the air, of golden light streaming through a window, an old, rickety, wooden one that has laminate peeling back from the boards and trim. The room is in a similar state of slight disrepair, homey but run down, and the Assistant sits up with a suddenness that has his head spinning.
“You’re safe.”
His hand goes to grasp for his preferred knife- only to encounter empty air, fingers grazing over denim instead of durable tactical gear material. He’s been changed, stripped of his weaponry, and tied down as well. Leather. Leather against skin, biting but smooth, and he knows he can snap these if he tries, break restraints that used to be able to hold him back when he was weaker. The feeling is a familiar one, but he does not know why, because he cannot remember. The only reason he does not move is just that- because he is perplexed, and Natalia is the one who is holding him captive. She doesn’t seem to be hostile though. It is only her and him, in a run down…farmhouse. Yes. Definitely a farmhouse.
Natalia shifts in her spot, sitting by the door of the room, eyeing him with a gaze that looks almost sad, almost, but not quite. Natalia never allows herself to show much. Emotion is weakness. Emotion is exploitable. Even those you trust can betray you, the Assistant knows. “Where am I?”
“You’re in a safe place hidden away from authorities…and from your handlers and whoever they work for. You need help, Antoshka.”
Antoshka. Anthony. Tony. A harsh shudder rolls down his spine, a sickening feeling, a deadly anticipation. There is something linked with the name that he doesn’t understand- like remembering will harm him. “I am the Assistant. Not Antoshka.”
“You are. You just don’t know it yet. You’ll remember in time. It’s why you’re here, hidden away. I called in a favour just for you. The friend who helped me get out- he’s helping me help you get out. You don’t need to fight anymore, Antoshka.”
“Designation, Assistant,” he corrected, sharper this time. His head hurt. It throbbed with every beat of his heart, breathing in sharp and ragged breaths that he couldn’t hear past his pulse thrumming in his ears. Antoshka. Antoshka, Antoshka, Anthony.
Who was Anthony?
Was it him?
He didn’t know, but the thrumming and aching of his brain lead to one thing, and that was always a need to present to his handlers to be recalibrated, to be reset, wiped clean again. But he couldn’t, because he was not with HYDRA.
The Asset was not here. Yasha was not here. The Asset wasn’t here with him. There was no soothing touches or fleeting glances to act as a soothing balm to his internal panic, nothing to tether him, nothing to centre him. The Assistant wants the Asset, and he can’t have him- because he is not here. Natalia took only him.
In his mind, twin pained orbs stare down at him, fighting back against the control of the trigger words, struggling to get to him, until the Asset loses….and the Assistant is left behind in the snow.
“Designation- Anthony Stark,” Natalia firmly tries again, once more, and it’s heavier than her nickname for him. The name sears through him like a brand, red hot and painful, and the Assistant flails, thrashes, tugs at his bonds with a lack of finesse that would earn him punishment if his handlers ever saw. “Designation- Anthony Edward Stark. You have a name, Antoshka. You have a home. You have friends. You have family. All of them have been missing you. You have been gone a long time, but not long enough for them to give up. I couldn’t leave you with them. I could see it in your eyes, back at the Red Room- you’re still in there. There’s something there that they never made, something they never programmed.”
There are no words the Assistant knows to refute anything she says, nothing within his grasp, nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
The Assistant wonders if it’s true. If he was remade, if they stole who he was before, and created something new with the ashes. He doesn’t know, but he knows how it feels now, to be unmade. Everything he knows is being contradicted, every program, every instinct, every thought. Everything he knows is thrown up into the air, and the Assistant doesn’t know what to do. He never makes decisions of this magnitude for himself. He is not meant to question what he’s told.
And now? He needs to.
“There is something in there, Antoshka. Something human.”
Human.
The Assistant thinks back to the training he has kept. The training that was repeated over and over again after every wipe, so that it settles deep, so that it remains as a permanent fixture no matter how clean they wipe the slate. He knows few things, but one is planted deep, written into his very atoms, fleeting glimpses of eerily bright blue eyes settled on him, and a smile that hid vile intentions.
You are a weapon, Assistant. Where I point you- you shoot.
-----------------------------
The Assistant loses track of time for a while. Natalia doesn’t move from her spot, on guard as she is, but she watches him all the while, watches as he tries to remember more than what he does, tries to recall anything beyond what he knows, to prove or disprove what she’s told him.
A male, blonde and short in stature, joins at some point, and he only briefly manages to catch his name as Natalia speaks to him. Clint, the one apparently responsible for convincing Natalia to defect from the Red Room, an Agent of SHIELD, he gathers. Despite his internal dilemma, he doesn’t miss that. He is meant to be observant, even in times of distress.
The man eyes him with a quiet kind of suspicion, but there is an empathetic looking grief there too. A knowing. A look of apology. (In his mind, the same look is reflected at him dimly from achingly familiar steely blue-grey eyes, veiled by the darkness, Yasha’s gaze locked firmly on him before everything sparks a terrible white.) He doesn’t know where that memory is from. He doesn’t know if it’s real or something his mind conjures when it draws the parallel between the two same gazes, but no matter what it is, it lingers in his mind painfully.
His name is said with bated breath in the silence.
Yasha, Yasha, Yasha, Yasha….
“Kid?”
The Assistant snaps from his thoughts, and tenses immediately, body coiled like a spring as Clint takes a step closer, and clearly, the other realises what will happen if he makes a move that the Assistant does not like. So, the man props his hands up, palms flat, and dimly, it registers as a gesture of surrender first. Of ‘I am no threat to you.’ The people who usually made such a gesture ended up dead around him, but he has no mission to dispose of the other, no mission at all apart from the one he is told to follow should he be captured by the enemy. Wait, do not give them any of the information that they need, and then kill them. Return to base as soon as possible for recalibration and reset.
He should have broken out already- but he cannot kill Natalia, and she will not be pleased if he kills the man she considers a friend. He recognises that easily- Natalia acts around Clint like how she acts around the Assistant. Friends. Is that what he and Natalia are?
He dismisses it as soon as it comes and stares at Clint, who Natalia is gently grasping, her fingers wrapped around the man’s forearm. “It’s fine, Nat, it’s good. We need to talk with him. Need to get him remembering, right? The sooner, the better.”
“We don’t want to overwhelm him. He’s a flight risk, Clint.”
“Maybe, but right now, he needs comfort.”
“You’re trying to offer comfort to an assassin. One far better than even me, Clint. He does not hesitate if he is threatened. He has his programming, his protocols to follow. Those need to be eroded away before we can even try to do any of that.”
“Uh huh. Right, so you’re just going to sit there and watch him try to pull his brain back together himself? The kid needs help. He needs to know we aren’t here to do what those bastards did to him.”
“Maybe he does. But, maybe it’s too soon. Maybe he’s not ready for it. Tony needs all the breathing space he can get, Clint. It’s only been a few days.”
A few days? A few days. He’d been gone a few days. Presumably, that means that given HYDRA has not found him already, that they will not be able to at all. Escape is up to the Assistant alone, and idly, he wonders if he can manage it. Less idly…he wonders if he wants to manage it.
“Let him decide, Nat.”
“And if he can’t make his own decisions?”
“He needs to start it. Autonomy. It’s a good place to start, give him some control, slowly, right? Don’t overwhelm him, speak to him, introduce things that could trigger memories. It’s worth a shot, and it’s better than just…staring at the poor fucker.”
“You both realise I am entirely capable of overhearing your conversation?” The Assistant enquires then, and the way both sets of eyes swivel towards him have him stilling, jaw tightening marginally.
“Yeah. You just seemed distant a moment ago. Didn’t think you were listening.”
“I am trained to listen. To not do so results in punishment or death depending on circumstances.”
“Fuck. Jesus. I can’t believe they fucking did this to a kid,” Clint manages just barely, and the Assistant tips his head just slightly, confusion marring his expression, but no one says anything else or elaborates. Natalia just steps forward, dragging her chair to the head of his bed, tangling skilled fingers in his brunet locks, green eyes as vibrant and unique as the day he had first saw them. He can’t tense up around Nat- he trusts her. As much as he trusted the Asset. As much as he trusted Yasha.
“Sleep, Antoshka. I’ll be here to keep watch, okay? Sleep.” She hums, a low melody, something that twists upward in pitch almost hauntingly, voice sugar sweet, the lullaby soothing and quiet. The lyrics are dark, but it doesn’t faze the Assistant. Sleep, she had said. The Assistant does not remember the last time he slept, he doesn’t remember how…but he’s soothed into the darkness again quickly enough. Natalia’s voice lingers in his ears as he falls back into the warmth of it, and it’s the last thing his brain processes.
Tili-tili-bom,
Close your eyes now,
Someone’s walking outside the house,
And knocks at the door.
Tili-tili-bom,
The night birds are chirping,
He has already made his way into the house,
To visit those who cannot sleep.
He walks…he is coming…
Closer.
-----------------------------
It follows the same pattern every day for a while. They will sit with him, watch him, ensure he does not hurt himself or try to run, but no one else comes. It is just him, Natalia, and Clint. They call him Antoshka or Tony, Antoshka by Natalia, Tony by Clint. The Assistant pays it less heed with every day that passes, but they do not go further into depth on that like he expects them to. Instead, they talk of idle things. Natalia speaks of SHIELD. She tells him how it is to work for an organisation that does not assassinate any who oppose a single faction of society, or a single organisation. SHIELD works to better support a country, but in the legal sense, unlike the Black Widow Program, which supported very particular groups depending on their alignment with Mother Russia, and how much money they were willing to give in return for their services.
Clint speaks of other things. Sometimes he’ll whine about a mission he had been on, where things had gone particularly badly. Other times, he speaks of his partner, Laura. Sometimes, he speaks of how he wants this quaint little farmhouse to be a home one day, for him and for his future family.
They speak of these things endlessly, or they do, until they don’t. He’s not strapped down anymore, he’s allowed to sit up again, but Natalia knows how to restrain him and detain him if needed, and he knows both hold tranquilisers capable of taking him down- he had done ever since Clint had apologised for shooting him with the tranquiliser arrow.
He’s perched in bed, eating sweet corn and chicken soup, because his stomach cannot tolerate solid foods given all he had survived off of before was whatever it was that they’d pushed into his veins through his daily IV and the feeding tube they’d used even more rarely when he needed more nutrients than that could give, when Natalia and Clint come back again.
They carry files though, stacks of them, photo albums and things of similar veins, and they both move to sit at the foot of his bed, and the Assistant blinks.
“We’ve brought you a few things. Things for you to sift through, to study and the like. We’re hoping these will be more than enough to have you remembering some more, Antoshka.”
He opens his mouth to say something, to proclaim again that there is nothing for him to remember, that nothing is coming back, when the photo album closest to him is opened. The first picture has him halting, the familiarity striking deep, heart shuddering to a temporary stop for a moment when he realises he recognises the figures. The one in the centre draws his attention, however- it’s him. Him, smiling, arms tossed around the shoulders of another person in what looks to be an uncoordinated tackle. It’s him, irrefutably and undeniably, and he doesn’t remember it. He doesn’t remember this.
Natalia was telling the truth. There was more to him than he ever thought there was, there was more than he thought there was for HYDRA to take. Shaking fingers reach out to brush over the faces in the first photograph, Clint having reached over to take his food away soon after the Assistant’s eyes had landed on the photo.
His eyes shift to the second figure then, and the annoyed but fond twist to the man’s expression is familiar. He can…envision those lips lifting into a smile. He can imagine those features being utterly dead flat, and eyes stern. He can imagine a lifted brow and a heavy sigh. There is one word that sums everything up, sums what he sees up.
“Rhodey.”
Natalia’s eyes lock on him then, and he doesn’t know how he knows the name. Just that he does. He knows the person in the picture. He knows them…and he wants to know how.
“Rhodey. James Rhodes. He’s your closest friend, Antoshka. Turn to the next photograph.”
He does, it’s a simple reaction to a stated objective, and the warm brown orbs of the woman stare out of the photo at him, her hair dark, but greying, wrinkled but strong. There’s fire to her. The Assistant can smell the scent of lush carpet in his nose for a moment, and he doesn’t ask why. The woman stands at his side, and the version of himself in the picture is tossing up a hand sign and holding up a certificate proclaiming his graduation from a place called MIT. Summa cum laude, Mechanical and Electrical engineering and Physics. Aunt Peggy holds him close, pride in her eyes. Aunt Peggy?
Rhodey and Aunt Peggy….
Jarvis.
Ana.
Aunt Peggy.
Rhodey.
Mom and Dad.
Curiosity sparks, longing blossoming outward in his chest. The Assistant wonders… and the Assistant wants to know.
-----------------------------
Memories come back slowly, but surely- the problem is, they aren’t limited just to the memories of before. Missions, the most recent memories bubble up first. The Assistant does not care much for it, it does not affect him initially. Memories of completed missions he had executed with his hands do not faze him.
At least, they don’t until the other memories start bringing back more and more of the pieces he had lost of himself long ago.
It starts slowly at first, so slowly the Assistant barely notices it happening. It’s when a mission involving the assassination of an entire family comes to mind again that the Assistant first feels a pang of guilt. It strikes at the memory of the young child’s eyes a moment before he had lifted the gun and had fired a single soviet slug into the child’s head. It’s a queasy feeling, sickening, beginning in his stomach and spreading outward.
It takes him a while to identify the feeling as disgust with himself and guilt. The Assistant doesn’t understand.
(But he wishes that he would stop feeling it.)
The more memories that return, the more the feelings do. The more the emotions do. The Assistant dreams now, it’s not merely a period of rest, the simple shutting of eyes and of awakening however long it is later. He dreams, he sees things, things he wants to see, and other things he would rather he never remembered. Sometimes he wakes up screaming.
Natalia informs him that those are called nightmares, the ones he is terrified over.
The longer he goes without a wipe, the more it comes back, fragmented, yes, but the pieces begin to slot together, begin to heal and reinstate themselves.
The Assistant remembers his face pressed to the warmth of his mother’s skin as she sings to him, her fingers dancing along ivory keys as he sits in her lap and watches, small fingers dancing across his knees in a parody of his mother’s movements. The Assistant remembers the satisfaction and smug amusement as he slotted the final panel of DUM-E’s chassis into place, and the bot had immediately whirred off to go fetch the toolbox, something his lecturers said was impossible to achieve with today’s technology as his dad offered congratulations in the background over his achievement. The Assistant remembers Jarvis placing a cup of tea down in his lap in front of the flickering flames of the fireplace, talking to him about school, about what he’d been up to, anything at all- Jarvis would always listen. He remembers Aunt Peggy leading him down the Westminster bridge and pointing out a few of her favourite spots nestled away in London during a visit there that she had brought him along on. He remembers Ana tutting at him from the doorway as he stands covered in soot because he had tried to build something in his room that had resulted in the whole thing blowing up rather spectacularly in his face. He remembers Rhodey. He remembers Rhodey pulling him out from parties by the back of his shirt, scolding him and lecturing him all the while like the mother hen that he was.
‘I’m not your goddamn babysitter, Tones. You’re seventeen. Seventeen. Does that sound like twenty-one to you? Because it doesn’t sound like it to me. What part of il-le-gal do you not understand? Clearly fucking none of those three syllables because you’re drunk off your ass. Stupid. How a genius like you can be so fucking dumb is beyond my comprehension- no, you can not steal my hoodie, you jerk, don’t even try it, I will kick your ass so far into next week, the papers will be talking about how scandalous you are for months with how you’ll be limping….”
The more the memories come back, the more the memories from HYDRA hurt. The more it all hurts. He’d done that, he’d hurt people, broken them down, murdered them in cold blood- one part of him is still uncaring, the other part is screaming.
Natalia and Clint are there all the while though, teaching him the things he’s forgotten that take too long to come back.
“Were you always hopeless at cooking?” Natalia asks, peering over his shoulder as he stirs the sauce just like she’d told him to do, and he looks offended at that, brows knitting together just slightly. “Excuse you. I thought I was doing okay.” The countenance of the words is still off, but it’s more…human sounding. Or so Clint says. He’s decided he doesn’t like ‘android Tony’, and much prefers the Tony that acts and seems human.
“You were before you decided to stop stirring a minute ago,” she corrects easily, and the Assistant narrows his eyes just slightly at the criticism, still offended, even as Clint comes up at his side, dips his fingers into the sauce and sticks them into his mouth. Before Natalia starts hitting him with the wooden ladle in her hands, that is. The Assistant watches on, unable to help the amusement that curls at the edges of his lips as the two race off around the house, Clint praying for mercy, and Natalia promising no mercy for traitorous finger dippers.
It’s strange…. but it begins to feel a little like home. He wishes the Asset were here though.
Thinking of Yasha being left alone with HYDRA has anger bubbling in his gut because there is a sense of protectiveness that arises when thinking of Yasha being left to it without back-up. Yasha protected him, he protected Yasha, and now, he was failing in that. He couldn’t even convince himself that Yasha would be fine without him, because he certainly was not fine without Yasha.
Brown eyes turn back to the simmering tomato pasta sauce on the stove top, gripping the countertop as his heart aches. The emotion becomes more definable as time goes on, and the Assistant begins to think the heartache is tied to something much more complex than he had ever realised.
-----------------------------
The Assistant wakes screaming.
The Assistant wakes screaming many, many times. Sometimes, the nightmares linger in the darkness, unable to immediately fade the moment he rockets up in bed and grasps for a weapon. Natalia always comes along, always slots herself in at his side, and talks. She speaks of cool winter nights. Of the stars, of flowers that sprout through snow, life in a barren desolation, prevailing constantly. She runs her fingers through his hair, again, and again, and says he is like the flower. Struggling to survive the difficult conditions but managing nonetheless. He has survived so far, he can survive everything after this. Rise like a phoenix, she says, from the ashes and dust, with brand new wings. Sometimes he wonders what he would do without Natalia.
He knows the answer to that- he would still be with HYDRA, unaware he was being controlled like a marionette, with them holding the strings. But now, the strings are cut, there are no strings on me.
It’s the night when Natalia compares him to a phoenix that the Assistant decides to do as she says. Out of the ashes of the Assistant, who rose from the ashes of Anthony Edward Stark, he rebirths himself, and from that night forward… he decides to be Tony again.
-----------------------------
Things get both easier and harder from there. It’s all about perspective, he knows, and the months pass, some days with very little progress, and others are with plenty that more than makes up for any stretch of lacking progress. The more memories return, the more he feels like himself. He banters with Clint. It’s a stilted thing to begin with, half-hearted attempts at witty comebacks and such, but soon enough, he fires off with gusto, like he used to be able to. Everything the other says, Tony has a thousand things to say in return, and he can sift through them to pick out the best.
He helps around the farmhouse, sitting down to fix anything he can get his hands on, from the entirety of the electrical supply of the house, to the plumbing, to the tractors and cars parked outside and the many other things he has to preoccupy himself. Working feels normal, it’s something he’s always done, long before HYDRA had come along and had turned him into an assassin slash personal scientist to use whenever they wanted to. Working has been a commodity in his life since he was three and first allowed to touch a set of tools, since his fingers had touched down against cool metal and he’d watched his father work in silence in his workshop. Tony’s shaped by his mind and his abilities, and the more they come back, the less he is the Assistant, and the more he is Tony Stark.
The Assistant still lingers of course- the Assistant will forever be part of him, and it took him three months to realise that after he had decided he wasn’t that anymore. The Assistant is part of who he is, but it isn’t all of him. The skill set he has isn’t something he can just forget, nor are the memories of what he’d done over those seven years he had been in HYDRA’s grasp. Countless missions, countless assassinations, countless projects and hours spent down in the labs working with their scientists to do whatever it was they told him to do couldn’t be forgotten, but with the memories of the past there to balance it, it became easier to see through everything they had made him.
He’s changed, different, but he’s still him.
Nearly twelve months after Natalia’s saved him, the memories are all back, mainly with the help of the files and photo albums they’d brought him at the beginning, and through Clint and Natalia’s care. He focuses on the future, on what he’ll do after this, but occasionally, his mind will stray.
Tony misses the Asset. Yasha lingers in his mind through every waking and sleeping hour, a ghost that haunts his thoughts, and he promises himself that he’ll find him. He’ll find him and free him just as Natalia freed him from the grasp of the people that used him.
-----------------------------
“You need to grow out your hair and your facial hair if you’re planning on going back. You have a severe case of baby face. Everyone will expect you to have aged somewhat, which you clearly haven’t done. And you’ll need a story for where you’ve been. You’re still filed under as missing, which makes it somewhat easier for you to come back than if you were dead, especially with your parent’s properties and SI clearly on the board of acquisitions you’re entitled to,” Natalia, now apparently Natasha according to her shiny new SHIELD ID, states as she files absently at her nails as they watch Mythbusters on the crappy cable TV they have out here.
“Wow. Baby face, I’m sorry, what are you expecting from a seventeen-year-old, exactly? I’m not exactly the most macho guy out there.”
“I know. But it doesn’t change the fact that you should be twenty-five by now, and you don’t look twenty-five, and unless you feel like explaining to the world’s leading group of dermatologists on how you seem to be eight years off of how you should look, you should get to making something out of your appearance that makes you look older.”
“I’m not growing a full beard,” Tony immediately denies. “I can compromise on something a little more…me.”
“Translation: something weird and futuristic and completely Tony Stark,” Clint interjects, and Tony tosses up a hand, and carefully tucks every finger but one back into a fist. He eyes it for a second, before gaping just a touch.
“Oops, malfunction alert, I have no idea how that one got there- oh wait, yes I do. It got there because you were being a dick, Barton.”
“Hey. Enough with the sass, I don’t want to be sassed by the short stack who hasn’t even hit puberty yet.”
“I’m almost as tall as you, jackass, surprise, that means I’ll probably be taller than you.”
“Really? I doubt it. Do you want to place a bet on that one? I’m willing to place a bet on that one- “
“Both of you need to shut up,” Natasha mutters, nail file skidding across her nail a little too sharply.
“Yes mistress.”
“Kinky,” Tony chimes, which earns him a whack around the back of the head and a pained whine in result.
“Shut up, or I’ll get out the paddle next.”
Tony struggles to keep his lips shut at that, and Natasha’s smile says that she knows that he wants to talk. It’s only by sheer stubbornness that Tony doesn’t. (At least he doesn’t for a whole thirty seconds. Natasha trying to gut him with a nail file is worth the hassle for the raucous laugher he earns from Clint for his quip.)
-----------------------------
He grows out his beard, cut and trimmed into an odd shape that has him blinking at his reflection every time he sees himself- but he likes it. He does look older, and he’s sure that if he couples it with a suit, he’ll be good to go, no troubles at all. Twenty-five, and though he looks young, he’s sure he’ll pull it off. The media will swallow it down. It’s been almost a year now since Natasha saved his ass, and the year has worked wonders. There are still bone deep scars that he harbours, even if they aren’t visible, but Starks stick to their guns when their gut tells them to, and in this case, Tony’s tells him that he needs to do this.
He can’t hide away in the dark forever. He owes this to those who’ve been missing him for years. He owes it to Jarvis. He owes it to Aunt Peggy. He owes it to Rhodey.
He owes it to his mom and his dad, even if they weren’t here to see it.
Guilt clouds his thoughts over all those who died at his hands, but he’ll…find a way to remedy that. Toss some money into preventing things like that from happening again, but Tony won’t run out there himself. He doesn’t want to fight again. He’s not sure if he can stomach it. He knows he’ll never be able to stop himself from training and keeping himself fighting fit just in case HYDRA comes back for him, so he can fight his way back out again, but he has no intents to go out there and fight the battle himself. He has too much red in his ledger, as Natasha says, and she understands why he doesn’t want to fight.
He decides to figure things out first, get a handle back on living life in the fast lane again, get used to the media following him around on his tail, to functioning like a normal human being at galas and parties, to board meetings and churning out inventions to keep furthering on the company, from simple things like weaponry to a whole array of medical tech and intelli-crop technology he has already penned out and worked into paper schematic form, ready to be put into production the moment he gets a handle on the company. There’s a lot of things he’ll need to adapt to, and that’ll take time- but it needs to be done.
He’s ready as he will ever be.
He’s as ready as he’ll ever be, and yet, leaving the farmhouse behind is still a struggle. Natasha and Clint escort him back, lead him to the heart of New York, Tony ending up in one Nick Fury’s office, needing to explain the cover story to the guy, with Natasha and Clint at his back, agreeing with everything he says, before things start to set into motion.
The first person Tony sees again is Rhodey.
Mainly, because the guy bursts in the moment Tony returns to the old mansion, wild-eyed and breathing heavily like he’s just sprinted a thousand-mile race in seconds, and Tony? Tony feels like he’s going to cry at the sight of Rhodey, who looks different, more mature, straighter backed, like the air force had really whipped him into shape, but it’s still Rhodey. There, in the flesh, and every memory he has of the other seems to solidify, gain that bit more clarity.
“Tones?” Rhodey looks at him like he’s seeing a ghost, a dead man come back to life, like he’d been really expecting that Tony was never coming back ever again. Tony’s breath hitches just slightly, and he plasters on a smile, no matter how much it wavers with the tidal wave of emotion that tugs him down into the currents.
“Honey-bear,” he greets, easy as breathing, and a hitched laugh springs free from his throat the moment Rhodey springs at him and tugs him forward into a crushing hug.
It feels like finally coming home.
He isn’t sure how long they stand like that in the middle of the hallway, clinging to each other, arms wound tightly around one another, Tony breathing in Rhodey, taking in every feasible thing his brain can process like it’s the first time he’s seeing him, or the last time. Rhodey’s chest is staggering erratically, and Tony knows the other is holding back tears like the big tough guy type he is, and Tony’s doing the same, but they both know each other too well- Tony knows this is as close to crying as Rhodey will ever get…. unless he’s half drunk and watching bad TV, that is.
“You’re alive. Fuck. Fuck, Tones, where the hell have you been? Everyone thought you were- when the car was found, and you weren’t there they didn’t know what to think. You were just gone. Shit, Tony, where the fuck were you?”
“It’s a long story, platypus. Not one I can share yet, government orders and all that, I’m not being stubborn, I’m just following the law for once in my life, I know, shocker, where are the flying pigs already, right? Just- I’m back now. A little less whole, but back.”
“Little less whole?” Rhodey prompts, grip tightening on Tony. “Fuck, you’re not alluding to what I think you’re alluding to, are you?”
“What do you think I’m alluding to, exactly?”
“I don’t know. How else would you disappear from a car wreck where they found your blood smeared all over the back seat unless there was some asshole there to pick you up and whisk you away?”
“...’s a good point, actually,” Tony mumbles eventually, shrugging idly as he lets his eyes drift shut for a second just so he can savour the sound of Rhodey’s heartbeat, the tone of his voice, and a thousand other things Tony hadn’t learned to appreciate until he’d become much more intimately involved in the dealing of death.
“Kidnapped? Were you kidnapped, Tony?”
“It’s a word for it. It’s what I’m telling the press, but I’m not going into details. That’s for my psychiatrist and my therapist to sift through, apparently.”
Rhodey makes a sound that’s half torn and half like he’s definitely, 100 fucking percent imagining hunting down his kidnappers and maiming them with a rusty spoon slowly, one at a time. Not that Rhodey can do that, but it sounds like what he’s envisioning going by the sounds he makes as he slowly pulls back to meet Tony’s eyes. They scan over him, and Tony lets go of the other as he’s looked over from top to toe. Eventually, Rhodey manages a laugh, shaking his head slightly.
“You look pretty good for a guy that just got out of that situation. Paler than you used to be, but you look like you haven’t aged a fucking day.”
Oh Rhodey. If only you knew…
“Stark cross Carbonell genetics. Seems like pure luck to me.”
“Yeah, luck. You okay, Tony?”
“Me? Fine. Course I’m fine. I could be better, but I’m fine.”
“You remember I’m here, right? And even when I’m not, I’m a phone call away, you got that? Just off in a desert getting shot at, as you put it.”
“And flying military aircraft like a boss. Have you taken a picture of you upside down in a fighter jet yet, because if not, I am monumentally unimpressed with you. Missed opportunity.”
“I’ll take one next chance I get, just for you, now I have someone to take the photo for. You mind if I stay? I’m going to bug you for a bit- looks like you could use the company anyway, as well as someone to catch you up with what you missed- spoiler alert. It’s a lot.”
“And I’m a genius. I’m sure I’ll get it down pat quick enough.”
The two share a grin then, and Rhodey tosses his arm around Tony’s shoulder, dragging him deeper into the house, and Tony just chuckles, light and quiet as they pass down the hallway, and past a spider who lingers in the hall out of sight, watching as he goes.
Overprotective mama spider Natasha. Who would have thought?
-----------------------------
He and Rhodey have ended up sprawled out on the couch when the front door bangs open, and thought Tony doesn’t startle, he’s still acutely aware of every footstep that marches their way- his exaggerated and enhanced senses leave him little choice really. He can tell by the heavy gait and the sound of smooth fabric brushing together with every stride who it is. He can tell before the light scent of cigar stench hits his nose, and sure enough, when he tilts his head, Obie’s standing in the doorway, grinning brightly, expression one of careful disbelief. “Tony, my boy.” And a little forced, Tony notes, in the breath that Obadiah takes before he moves forward to plant one hand on Tony’s shoulder, a welcoming pat he recognises well enough.
“Obie. What timing. Hi, surprise, not dead. I was going to text you, but I got preoccupied getting a run-down of everything from my best guy right here.”
“No stress, no stress at all, I’m glad to see you alive. Here, in the flesh. You’ve been missing for eight years, Tony. No one thought you were coming back.”
There’s something about the way Obadiah says it that sets him off. Like he never wanted Tony to come back- well. Obie’s had the company for eight years, he’s probably a little stressed, right? Tony’s paranoid as all fuck at the moment, no need to get paranoid over his secondary father figure’s nervous energy. Obie’s always had a feel like that, like he’s just a little fake, there’s really no way of getting around it, so the best thing he can think to do is dismiss it. “I’m back now, and that’s what matters, right? I think I’m ready to dive right into the deep end- I’ve already got people out there informing other people of my resurfacing. Government’s all over it, they’re getting my legal team together for the company sign over, yadda yadda, same old, same old. Oh, press conference, tomorrow at ten am sharp, you think you can clear a spot on your schedule? Yes? Great.”
Obie just smiles, that slow grin he always does whenever he’s amused with the way Tony powers on through something, shaking his head just slightly. “I’ll make sure to free up a timeslot, Tony. Just make sure you don’t go running yourself off your feet. I’ll wait to hear the story till tomorrow, I’ve got a board meeting at five I need to be around for, and apparently, people I need to tell about you taking over. I’ll make it work though, I always do. We’ll chat later. When you’re free.”
“Sure thing, Obie, I’ll pencil you in. Metaphorically, pencil isn’t my thing- “
“Goodbye, Tony,” Obie huffs around a dark chuckle, before ambling off the way he came.
He still can’t shake the odd feeling that lingers, but he tries to regardless.
-----------------------------
It’s during his catch-up time with Rhodey that he finds out Jarvis is gone. He passed away a while back, peacefully, apparently, after he found all the Starks were gone. With no Ana left, Jarvis had moved to London, to be by Peggy in his final years, to share the solitude with at least one friend. Rhodey says he checked in on Jarvis frequently.
Tony mourns the fact he never got to say goodbye. It sits heavy in his heart, and Rhodey takes his hand in his own for a second, squeezes tight, and lets go as Tony breathes around the sorrow.
He never got to hear Edwin Jarvis’s voice again.
-----------------------------
The media erupts the moment Tony steps out into the room. Cameras flash, the questions come in a torrent, a roar, and every single part of him in that moment wants to turn and flee. Defence is what he wants to resort to, he wants to slip his foot back, lower his centre of gravity, and prepare for the worst, but Tony pushes that aside, swallows, and keeps his head high as he moves forward across the open space dividing the two sides of the room packed full of reporters. He keeps his strides smooth, sauntering forward like his father used to. Not the quick and agile fluidity he used now, but the showman type walk. It was all swagger, power and control, knowing how to conduct the room even in silence. Tony pauses as he gets to the podium, fiddling with his tie as he casts his eyes over the sea of people standing before him.
Right from the get-go, he can tell he hates this, and never wants to do a press conference ever again, thank you, why did he not stay at the farmhouse? Ah, yes, that’s right, Tony didn’t want to act like he didn’t owe the world anything when in reality he owed them all more than they could ever imagine. Tony didn’t believe in things like heaven and hell- and if he did, he was aware he was on the highway to the latter, but he would be damned if he didn’t try to change it. Literally damned, that was the entire point of going to hell- but that was getting off topic.
“Long time, no see, everyone,” Tony starts, lips twitching just slightly upward as he makes a point to make eye contact with as many cameras in the room as he can- he knows they will be seeing this after all, and he wants them to know that they won’t be able to take him as easily now he lives a life in the spotlight, not without exposing themselves.
He wants them to know he could tell people very easily they still exist- if he knew who to trust. He hasn’t told Natasha about HYDRA specifically, though she knows to keep her eyes out for potential moles in the government sector. HYDRA is a name that could cause panic- and telling the wrong people will result in a calamity Tony doesn’t want to be the instigator of. So, he waits, waits for now anyhow, until he knows who to trust. Telling a mole off the bat of everything he knows will only result in them wanting to assassinate Tony to wipe him off the chess board, and that’s not something he wants.
But he does want them to know that he’s here, alive and free and himself again, and that they can expect to hear from him at some point in the future.
“Did you miss me? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question to lighten the atmosphere a bit, come on, everyone, sit down, loosen up, I feel like you’re all about to spring forward and eat me with how tense you’re all getting in the shoulders.”
There’s laughter at that, reporters huffing out chuckles and lips curving upwards, as some merely pen out notes, likely trying to analyse him already, right from the get-go. Problem is- even if HYDRA hadn’t directly taught him, he’s picked up more than enough to know how to act, especially at the Red Room, and from Natasha. What they get will be what he gives them, anything else? That’ll be how they decide to twist it, but those ones will be far and few between, he’s sure.
“Alright, better, perfect, fire away then, I’m ready and waiting- yes, you, gorgeous blonde down the front.”
“Mr. Stark- “
“Tony. Mr. Stark was my old man.” He smiles a tad at that, though it’s infinitely sadder, no matter how quick he tries to cover it up pencils already scratch at paper, documenting that reaction, “and I like to think I’m not that old yet.”
“Tony,” she corrects, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, “you’ve been gone for eight years. Do you mind telling us where you’ve been? And why you’re back now?”
“There we go, two of the big hitters, right off the bat. Alright.” He drums his fingertips against the wood of the podium he was leaning against, and with a glance to the woman and the man up back, of wheat blonde and scarlet red, Tony took a deep breath, and began weaving his tale. The whole ‘kidnapped originally for ransom before the kidnappers had panicked when they’d found out they’d killed the both of Tony’s parents in what was meant to be a controlled hijacking and crash’ story. He mentions the bike, riding up to the side, and smashing in the glass of his father’s door and yanking the wheel hard enough that it steered them into a tree. He doesn’t go into depth on that, he doesn’t elaborate on anything after the tree at all, unwilling to think of his parent’s deaths, with how they haunt him now.
He tells them the kidnappers panicked, and not wanting to be found out, but too morally hindered to just kill Tony and be done with it, they keep Tony hidden away. They don’t treat him terribly, Tony tells them, but he’s not allowed access to things that could possibly get him free, such as computers and any form of communications. Mobile phones were a no-no. It’s only when they get lazy and Tony manages to contact the government that he’s rescued, he says. Moral kidnappers keeping him because they don’t want to be caught for the murders of two people and the kidnapping of a third is a viable prospect, add in the addition of being more morally hindered than your standard crooks, and the media drinks it up like the tragic story that it is.
The tragic bullshit story that it is.
But it’s close enough to the truth, Tony thinks as another reporter stands up and asks how he felt though all of that, and how he felt now.
It’s a lie riddled with truths, and that, he thinks, makes an effective lie. They swallow it all, and by the time he’s done, people are scrabbling their notes together and pushing for an exit- undoubtedly to rush home and start writing out their stories to get them published first thing tomorrow, while the television crews are running off to edit and slot together the entire story for some kind of exclusive.
Tony blinks, balances his elbows on the podium, and resolves himself to not looking at the papers or the television for at least a month.
-----------------------------
He’s alone in the mansion that night. It’s eerily quiet, Tony sitting by the fireplace with three empty bottles of whisky beside him, and the knowledge that a super soldier metabolism really does suck considering no matter how much he drinks, it’s impossible to get drunk. That kind of voided the entire point of drinking at all, which was a painful reality, because apparently, only elephant tranquilisers will knock him out now.
It’s in the dark times, when he’s alone, that the thoughts come back. As much as he’s been getting better, there’s no outrunning the darkness no matter how hard he tries to. The sun must set some time after all, taking the last hues of red, orange and gold with it, and the night brings about the perpetual shadows.
Everything seems to remind him of his time as the Assistant then. He knows he’s Tony. He knows who he is, and he’s thankful, so fucking thankful, that it’d only taken a year to come back to himself. Yes, the programming was still there, and there was always that shudder of fear that rolled down his spine at the idea of the trigger words still working, but now he was free, so that was something to be thankful for.
Even so, visions of blood-stained snow haunt him. Of limp bodies, of the cracking of bones, or screams and bullets and leather restraints being tugged at in desperation. He remembers the fear in people’s eyes first and foremostly, the look of knowing, of not wanting to believe what’s happening, or worse, the look of another kind of knowing, of unhidden, undisguised fear as realisation crosses their features when they know who it is they are facing and know then that they will not be walking away.
Steel dripping heat, muscles burning, breath coming like hurricanes.
The glass he's holding shatters in his hand, falling to the hardwood floors with a low tinkling sound that has him stooping, fingers soaked in red- they always have been, haven’t they? Even when the blood isn’t there, even when it’s not visible, his hands are still soaked in blood.
‘Assistant.’ It rings in his head, but there is no clawing, animalistic fear attached to this voice. It’s soft, soothing, gentle as a breeze, even if it’s rough around the edges with disuse. Tony can imagine smooth, porcelain pale skin and shadowed eyes. He can see hair that goes an odd shade of auburn in the light, just that slightest bit of orange that radiates warmth. He can see firm eyes, firm eyes that are only ever soft when they are looking at him.
Yasha presses close and tucks him against his chest in those memories, breathes quiet words into his hair. The arm is cool- but everything else is warm.
The Asset is a ghost, Tony thinks, and every part of him craves to have Yasha in that moment, even if he’s craving for an impossibility.
-----------------------------
He doesn’t sleep that night.
He doesn’t sleep the night after.
On the fourth night, Tony thinks he’s beginning to see a rather dangerous pattern emerging, but he can’t bring himself to care. Getting to sleep is difficult full stop, staying asleep would be a million times harder.
So, he makes productive use of his time. Over the weeks of the same cycle repeating over and over again, Tony going without sleep as long as he can before crashing spectacularly and then consuming his weight’s worth in overly strong coffee that doesn’t really work (but the taste has a Pavlovian effect that does, because fuck, he had lived off coffee like it was his lifeblood in college) he goes through the motions of fixing up all the legalities of him being missing for eight straight years. It’s an arduous process, and Tony feels like he wants to shoot a lawyer or two about fifty seperate times over the course of it all, but he comes out the other side as CEO of Stark Industries and with all his fortunes and such intact.
The first thing he does is move. He puts a whole construction company up to build on a spontaneously purchased plot of land out in Malibu, tells them to make it as elaborate and expensive as they like, and to run it through with his interior designer who knows all his tastes, and then get right onto the job and quick, because Tony can’t live in an empty house full of memories.
Sure, they’re good memories, but every person those memories include? Is dead. Mom, dad, Ana, Jarvis. Tony doesn’t want to stay around any more ghosts, because he already has his fair share hanging out on his tail.
He spends time in the R&D departments of SI, redesigning most of the old-line products, getting them up to speed and then ahead of speed to outdo the competition, before he even tries to start on his other projects. The intelli-crops are the first thing he gets onto, followed by a whole host of medical research, mostly into prosthesis tech, given Tony’s had plenty of experience with that lately. The company was thriving again, which was exactly what dad would have wanted. Mom would have wanted him to stop stressing, but like hell that was going to happen.
He stops over in London at one point to see Aunt Peggy, who seems far older than he had last seen her, and he stays for an entire week. They sit in more coffee shops and libraries than is probably healthy, but Tony’s learned to appreciate the family he has left when he lost everyone else in such a brief time period.
He makes sure he keeps up the visits, even as Aunt Peg gets more and more frail and less able and agile, and more forgetful.
-----------------------------
On the fourteenth of August 2002 at 3:14AM, three years after Tony returned from the dead, JARVIS is born.
Tony cries, listening to JARVIS’s voice for the first time because that was as close as he’d ever get to the real Jarvis’s voice, wasn’t it? It was like he was carrying around a little slice of home with him all the while. Someone to support him when he was low, someone to talk him through his troubles, just like Jarvis had done in the past.
For the first few months, as JARVIS learns, Tony thinks of him as a replacement for the one he’d lost. He does until JARVIS proves he is his own entity, his own person, sentient and brilliant and perfect in all the ways Tony had never initially tried to accomplish, not really. JARVIS was as much his own creator as Tony was his, and he can’t help but marvel in the beauty of that.
JARVIS helps him through many a tight spot- most specifically, when Tony is stooped over his work, endlessly sifting through all the data banks he can, legally or illegally, it matters little to him, in search of HYDRA. More specifically, for Yasha.
He hates that they cover their tracks as well as they do, and JARVIS usually soothes him- or snarks at him and does the AI equivalent of rolling his eyes at Tony when Tony flicks a stack of files off the desk in his frustration. It usually makes him laugh though, which Tony would bet was the whole reason why JARVIS did it in the first place.
-----------------------------
Tony still can’t sleep.
A woman begs him, sobbing, pleading, asking to be spared. Tony feels as his hands reach out, caressing over soft skin. He hears her last sob, before he digs his thumbs in and crushes her trachea. He leaves her, gasping and suffocating on the ground outside the burning house to his left, and it’s probably only that that muffles her ability to scream as the Asset picks her up, and pushes her back inside the burning building.
Nausea claws up his throat. (He can’t look at his own hands for a full day after the resurfacing of that memory.)
-----------------------------
“You made a mistake.”
Tony blinks, lifting his eyes from the sprawling paperwork spread out his desk, which he had been doing…slowly, sure, but he had been doing it. The woman in the doorway is waving a bit of paper around like it’s the white flag and she’s Italy during the Second World War. One of his bodyguards which he didn’t need was sprinting down the corridor, and Tony feels the laughter bubbling up already- and fuck, it gets better when the man tries to grab the woman, and she merely lifts a hand and honest to god pepper sprays the man in the eyes. It’s then that she huffs, tucks the spray away again, and brushes herself down before she’s striding forward and slamming the paper down on the desk- where sure enough, a mathematical mistake had been made, circled several times in bright red pen. “As I was saying, Mr. Stark. You’ve made a mistake, and your lackeys were trying to hold me back because apparently, it’s impossible that you make mistakes- “
“Absurd, really, I totally agree with you. I’m human. A human running on an unhealthy amount of sleep deprivation and caffeine and humans running on those things definitely make mistakes.”
She opens her mouth to talk again, before she goes quiet, jaw working, trying to find words, her brows furrowed, and eyes confused. Tony does laugh this time, stooping over as the man on the ground moans in pain. “Definitely worth coming into work today. What’s your name?”
“Virginia. Virginia Potts.”
“Virginia…. nope, don’t like it, no offence, it just doesn’t suit you. The red hair, the fiery but sweet personality- Pepper. I’m going to call you Pepper, to forever commemorate the fact you pepper sprayed one of my employees in the face because he was grappling you out of my office.”
“Pepper? Really?”
“Really really. I’m dead serious. Pepper. Pepper Potts. Alliteration, I have a thing for it, guilty as charged.”
“Oh. Well. Yes- anyhow, you made a mistake, right here, this one. It’d have lost the company- “
“Three point four million dollars in stock loss. Good catch, Miss Potts. Say. What level are you working here?”
“Third level, accounting- “
“How do you feel about a pay rise, Miss Potts?”
“A pay rise?”
“Pay rise, new job, both, all in one, the whole package. I need a new PA. Not just the coffee run kind of PA, the PA who does all the management of schedules and runs through my paperwork to make sure I’m not screwing up as I work kind of PA. The good kind that isn’t just the eye candy with a job title. So, how about it?”
“You’re…offering me a job. Working with you.”
“Technically, you already work for me, now you just have to work that extra step up and put up with my babbling and bad sleep hygiene.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Mad?”
“I just stole someone’s key card, took the private elevator, pepper sprayed your guard in the face, and told you you were wrong about something.”
“Point being?”
“Usually that would anger any normal person.”
“Oh. Well, full foreclosure, Pepper? I’m not normal, because all of that? Is exactly why I like you. It’s an extreme length of dedication you went through, especially considering everyone else usually just types in my figures without double checking the numbers. So. Do you want the job?”
“…I would love it. Thank you.”
“You can start tomorrow then, clear out your desk, you won’t need it down there anymore. We’ll talk details tomorrow.”
“Of course. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”
His lips twitched upwards at that, and he inclined his head just slightly. “That will be all, Miss Potts.”
"Yes, thanks for the help down here, Boss," Harold interjects as Pepper steps right on over his sprawled out form on the floor. Tony merely snorts and loses himself to laughter he doesn't even try to stifle.
-----------------------------
Pepper becomes a constant in his life. He’s rarely alone anymore, given Pepper has a habit of convincing JARVIS to bypass all of Tony’s security protocols just to get into his labs. She even takes it upon herself to move to Malibu when Tony does, and Tony’s quick to purchase out her place so she can live in it free of charge, considering the lengths she’s going to do every little bit of what her job requires- and then more.
Harold Hogan (quickly changed to Happy because Tony loves nicknames) becomes constant in his life too, and the three of them get along like a house on fire when they’re in a room together.
It feels like he has a family when he’s around them, and with the addition of Rhodey to the mix, along with Natasha and Clint, he feels like he has proper familial bonds, even if they aren’t related by blood. Natasha agrees with him in a heartbeat (Clint just laughs and shotguns the big brother title before Rhodey can even get a word in edgewise. Rhodey pouts for three hours following that, until Natasha states that feuding over a brother title is stupid when most people have more than one sibling.)
They’re an odd disjointed family, but they’re that at least- a family.
Rhodey stops by as frequently as he can whenever he’s not on base, and Natasha and Clint start crashing at his place often whenever they aren’t at the farmhouse between missions, which leads to Tony giving them designated rooms rather than guest rooms like they usually took whenever they did pop out of the woodwork. He tries the same with Pepper, naturally, but she huffs and Tony surrenders because he knows better than to argue with the woman, lest she uses her Louboutins to skewer him to death… which he would naturally rather avoid.
Death by Louboutin heels is not what he would like written over his gravestone.
Life is as good as it will ever get, steady and stable. Projects take up a great amount of his time, and behind the scenes, Tony begins filing through as much as he can on the internet, and when he finds anything, he pushes it off to SHIELD, through Nick Fury. He does it anonymously of course- he doesn’t want attention coming his way- hell, he still hasn’t told Natasha everything regarding HYDRA yet, and he’s hesitant to. He’ll always be hesitant to. Telling it out loud is a step that frightens him because then his sins aren’t just trapped up inside his head anymore, and though he knows Natasha will not hate him for the things he’s done, that she won’t treat him differently because of it, he still can’t shake that feeling that if she knows, maybe she won’t trust Tony as much as she does now.
Or that she’ll do something stupid, like go after HYDRA in his stead. Yeah, so, Tony keeps it to himself for now, no matter how much she tries to press for more information when she feels like Tony should be sharing more, rather than bottling it all up. She wasn’t his therapist, she didn’t need to know the details, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to burden her with them.
Tony lets that thought linger a moment more, as Natasha flips backwards to widen the distance between them, while Tony tumbles back, knives a familiar weight in his hands. Sparring sessions like this were a usual occurrence- and thinking during them like this would get Tony pinned back against the mat in seconds.
“You don’t have to get snappy just because you don’t want to share,” she huffs then, pushing a hand back through her hair as she catches her breath.
“Don’t I? Because you keep on pushing, Natalia. I feel like planting my foot into your gut is the only real way to get you to back up a few steps to give me breathing space- literally and metaphorically.”
“Well. You’re not wrong,” Natasha allows then, twirling her own knife in her grasp before she’s darting forward again, hand going for his throat while the hand with the knife is twisting for his left side. Tony slides a foot back, pocketing one knife and crossing the other across his body to counter her strike, driving their blades away from his body. He lets go of his grip then, the knife flipping up into the air, Tony shifting to catch it, changing his grip and realigning his next strike with a fluidity that has Natasha cursing and shifting to dodge the metal that heads for her chest.
“Oh, I know,” he murmurs, another flip, change, strike following, enough for Natasha to drop her weight and lash out with her legs to topple him, speaking as Tony flips back and manages to land on the balls of his feet, weight pressing forward into a lunge.
“You do need to talk about it- damn it, sometime, Antoshka. You can’t hold that weight on your shoulders forever.”
His knife strikes against hers hard enough to send her knife flying from her grip, and he drops his soon after, just to keep level ground, even if they both know who won that round. “And you don’t need my problems on your shoulders. You have your own, itsy bitsy, let’s not dump a whole tonne of crap on you when you need to- fuck, don’t play dirty when I’m trying to make a point- “
“Fine, let’s say I leave your past behind, but let’s talk about your current problems at least.” Natasha twists and gets her legs around Tony’s midsection, and he’s quick to toss his own weight in the opposite direction to throw off her own momentum, even as they hit the floor in a tangle of limbs.
“Oh, what, about SI? Paperwork, paperwork, more paperwork- did I mention the paperwork?”
He tips his head to the side just as Nat plucks up a knife and stabs down, blade embedded in the floor where his head had been before, as Nat grins down at him dangerously. “Mm, you did mention it, funnily enough.”
“Good, because it’s the bane of my existence,” he answers, yanking the knife free with little effort and reversing their positions in the blink of an eye, steel pressed to her throat, the blunt side of course, and Nat sags back with a heavy sigh of defeat. “Three to one, my my, you’re having an off day, or I’m having an on day.”
“Oh, please, you have all the advantages- “
“I try to keep it even by levelling the playing ground,” Tony refutes instantly, and Natasha’s eyes soften just a touch.
“I’ve noticed. How are you really, Tony?”
He stares down at her, and pulls the knife away, tucking it away in the holster with the second knife, brows pulling together just marginally. “It’s fine. Obie’s been a little off, but Obie’s always been off.”
“Are you sure you’re not picking up on something, Antoshka? He gives me the feeling that he’s playing you.”
“Obie’s an old family friend, Natalia. He has been since I was a kid, first my dad’s business partner, and then a mentor, guide and support for me. He’s always been a little odd. I just think I’m being paranoid.”
“Or maybe you’re not, and you should listen to your instincts, Antoshka. Use the abilities they taught you, but use them for better things. Perhaps you should just investigate him, just to see if anything’s amiss. If there isn’t, it’ll settle your paranoia. If there is, then you can deal with that.”
Tony stares down at her for another beat, before he carefully extricates himself from where he sits on top of her, pinning her like he was to effectively end the fight, and Natasha is quick to pull herself up and dust herself off. Tony doesn’t particularly like thinking that Obie might be doing something behind his back- but he knows he can’t trust anyone anymore unless they earn that privilege, and as much as Obie’s been helping him with the company ever since he came back, he feels like Obie hasn’t earnt it back yet. Tony’s very particular with who he trusts now.
“If you don’t look into it, I will.”
“I think I might actually prefer that.”
“…I’ll do it around my missions. Just to be sure.”
“Thank you, Nat.”
“Anytime, Antoshka.”
Natasha moves off after ruffling his hair, smiling all the while.
-----------------------------
Tony is twenty-two when he celebrates his thirtieth birthday. It’s a hilarious premise that he, Natasha and Clint laugh over for about three hours over present giving before it gets old. Pepper, Rhodey and Happy have no idea what they’re laughing over, of course, but oh, the shared joke between the three really only makes it better. (Tony has thirty-seven photos of Rhodey pulling a variety of faces of confusion and agitation as they laugh, and he makes a collage he puts on a blanket that he gets sent over to Afghanistan the next time Rhodey goes back. It comes back in shreds of material, and Tony merely snickers as he sends off another one.)
As far as thirtieth birthdays go, this one is tame and simple. There’s a mandatory gala, of course, which he makes sure is affiliated with the Maria Stark Foundation’s cause, in which instead of getting presents, Tony urges people to donate instead, because hey, why not? But the gala takes up only a sliver of time on his birthday. The rest is taken up of time with his makeshift family spread out over the couches in his darkened Malibu mansion living room, watching movies from Star Wars to Titanic, popcorn spilling everywhere, and DUM-E in the kitchen with his new sister Butterfingers, both trying and failing to make the group smoothies. Obie stops by, drops off a present Tony proceeds to shove into his wardrobe after he’s gone without even looking at it, but beyond that? Nothing much else happens.
The tamest of the tame. The media still isn’t used to how mature and reserved he’s gotten over the time he was gone, given he was a walking 24/7 scandal in college, and they dislike the fact that they don’t have an interesting story to run, but Tony doesn’t linger over things like that anymore.
There are bigger things to worry about, after all.
-----------------------------
Tony still wakes screaming most nights. With how it’s been going, he doubts that’ll ever change, even long into the future.
-----------------------------
Tony thinks he sees a shadow lingering out by the cliffs one night, tucked away into the outcropping, almost barely visible. The moment he notices it though, it’s gone again, and as he sits and presses his forehead against the reinforced, bulletproof glass windows that span the entire length of the wall of his living room, Tony wonders if it was a figment of the imagination, or something more.
It hurts to think that that may have been Yasha, so close, yet so far- but he doubts it is. If it was, he was sure he would have encountered the other by now, in an attempt on his life- because that was the only reason the Asset was ever around, for the elimination of perceived threats.
He’s surprised he’d not been targeted yet at all, actually. HYDRA waiting and remaining silent is because they want to stay hidden, it’s how they’d gotten this far after all, spreading everywhere like a silent disease, ready to mutate and increase its pathogenicity at any moment like a bioweapon ready to go off. Or, he thinks as he lets his eyes drift shut with a sigh, they have a plan, one he doesn’t know how to anticipate yet, no matter how much he sifts through the memories he has of his time with them.
There are many ways they could choose to emerge after all.
In his head, Tony pictures lines of sprawling code and pale fingers trailing over the screen, his own fingers poised over a keyboard and inputting another targeting mechanism.
Project Insight.
Tony would bet that would be the way, HYDRA emerging with a bang.
Forgoing sleep, he wanders down to his workshop, and starts creating countermeasures to that very code, even if just the basis of it, in case HYDRA decided to still use that protocol down the track despite knowing Tony could full well combat it with enough time, and time seemed to be something he had plenty of.
-----------------------------
Tony’s ‘thirty-three’ when HYDRA finally makes their first attempt. Apparently, they’re clever enough to not send the Asset, likely because they know that there is an exploitable bond there that may very well destabilise the Asset if Tony pulls the right strings.
No, instead of sending the Asset, they send a whole team of men, who catch him out while Tony’s driving back to Malibu. He barely manages to get JARVIS to send a distress signal to Clint and Natasha before a truck is veering him off the road, and really, what the flying fuck was with HYDRA and trying to get rid of him through car crashes? Once was enough, a second time was just fucking plain predictable.
He’s known this was coming, he’d feared it, prepared for it as best as he could, and now it was here…Tony felt little. Nothing, even. (Later on, it would alarm him just how easily he could slip back into the mindset of the Assistant.) It’s simply Tony going through programmed, familiar motions. He pulls the handgun from the glove box as he veers off and tries to regain his steering again, barely managing to before he steps on the accelerator, but clearly, they’ve come prepared- as they should, considering Tony’s driving around in a McLaren today, which is synonymous with speed. Whatever they’ve got going on under the hood of their no name, no brand, cobbled together in a back-alley workshop of a car is clearly made for keeping up with him, because the fuckers are level with him soon enough.
Tony doesn’t even have the patience to roll down his own window, his mind just runs through the calculation, spits out the numbers, and Tony adjusts his aim accordingly.
The bullet lodges in the driver’s temple, and there is only grim satisfaction as the car tumbles off the road and crashes over the edge of the cliff to the side, and into the rocky outcrop and white water below.
It lasts a fraction of a second though, because it’s not over. They know Tony is skilled, they know he’s capable of wiping out small teams alone- which is why there’s another three inconspicuous cars racing up behind him. It takes him only a second to know what they’re going to do. They box him in at all sides, and Tony, rather than accelerating, slams on the breaks.
The one touching his rear crumples the entire rear end of his own car, which effectively destroys the goddamn work of art his car was, but it takes one out, as the other two keep accelerating forward before they realise what’s happened. It gives him enough time to scramble out his own car and raid the broken remnants of the car half merged with his own for any kind of tac gear he can get his hands on, before the bullets finally start flying- and a figure from one car emerges that has his blood running cold.
“Tony Stark,” he greets, all eerie blue eyes, white-blonde hair and pleasant countenance. Eyes stare him down as Tony rattles off quips, and Tony remembers thinking of him as the mad scientist type as leather bites at his wrists and one of his legs throbs, a reminder of how broken and mangled it is from the crash-
“Captain Obvious. How lovely to see you again. And by lovely, I mean terrible, and I definitely would rather I never saw your ugly mug ever again, but apparently, wishes don’t come true.”
“Ah, you do remember quite a lot now, don’t you?”
“You can fucking bet I do.”
“Such a shame. I think you can guess why we’re here.”
“To kill me? Sorry, that office has closed for today, please try again…. let’s see, never? Never sounds great for me.”
“Kill you, reacquire you, whatever turns out to be easiest or most beneficial.”
“That’s a no from me.”
“You said the same thing last time.”
“Really? Well, this is a rewrite of old history, it has a different ending, it gets boring when you repeat the same old thing over and over again.” Despite the conversation at hand, Tony doesn’t let himself be distracted, he doesn’t let anyone start branching around at his sides- that’d definitely be a death sentence. Jesus fuck, where the hell was Nat and Clint when he needed them?
“Pray tell, how you think this will end then?”
“Your lackeys dead, and you in custody so you can start feeding us all we need to know on HYDRA, preferably.”
Richard tips his head to the side at that, a slow smile spreading across his lips. That smile alone is enough to make Tony feel sick. “By we,” he begins, “you mean you, yes? And by things you want to know, you mean things about the Asset. You were rather close, weren’t you? We could tell as much when you fell out of our hands. He asked about you frequently, even after wipes, when we left him out too long. He doesn’t work quite the same without you. It’s beginning to grow to be a pain. He’s not as effective alone as he was before. He still screams for you sometimes.”
It’s like he knows how that’ll affect Tony. Mentions of Yasha in pain, mentions of Yasha missing him, or Yasha asking for him… something in Tony snaps. Dangerously. He doesn’t even breathe as he lifts his gun, and fires off three rounds, each sinking into the skulls of three men thinking they could come up on his left without him noticing, and it’s to gleeful laughter and the hail of bullets that Tony flips and skids back over the bonnet of the car to duck behind for cover.
“Oh! Perfect, perfect, you feel for him too! Such a dangerous thing, such an interesting thing. We should have seen it sooner, but oh, this is the sweetest thing I could ask for. A gift, Stark, a gift. You’re attached. You’re attached to our Asset, our fist, someone who will not escape our clutches, try as you might. And that weakness….is something I intend to exploit.”
Tony hisses out a breath, snaps the hammer back, and lifts up to fire off another shot, before he ducks, and he hears the body of another man who’d been approaching hit the ground. “And you still kill with such finesse. You don’t even blink. Tell me, Assistant- do you think you’re still not the monster you were when you worked for us?”
Assistant. Tony wants to scream, but he bites it back, swallows it down, and remains painfully silent in return. He does kill with the ruthless efficiency he used to, there’s no denying that- a man springs over the bonnet, and Tony lunges, legs sweeping out, pulling the guy down and snapping his neck with a twist of quick and nimble hands. He doesn’t want to be- but HYDRA, HYDRA lackeys are not the same as the people they made him kill. The innocent people they made him kill. HYDRA is not innocent. (But they are still people.)
“Tell me, Assistant- do you remember your trigger words?”
Tony’s heart draws to a stop in his chest.
Never safe. He was never safe, it was the illusion of safety the years without incident had painted for him, and now, he was paying for it.
The first word makes him twitch, makes him jerk, and another person bounds over the bonnet, and that’s when the second word comes.
Tony wants to scream.
Instead, he crushes the stranger’s nose, and cracks the butt of the gun against his temple with such vicious strength that his skull fractures and he drops like a dead weight.
He probably is. Dead, that is. Tony doesn’t know, he doesn’t check, all he knows is that the third word makes his mind twist sickeningly, the feeling of need to comply settling deep in his bones, mind trying to revert to that state they’d trained him into with those words.
The fourth comes, and Tony stands, shooting down a few more, trying to aim for the white-blonde haired man, and missing as the man weaves away and back toward cover.
The fifth does have him screaming.
The sixth- the sixth never comes. Red sweeps across his vision with a vengeance, a gurgle and choked sound radiating into the air, before everything goes to hell. Tony doesn’t really notice it. He’s stuck halfway, torn, fighting, but crumbling, the Assistant mindset clawing for the surface, but not quite making it there.
Tony sees blonde and blue, and vibrant purple lined SHIELD uniform before history replays itself yet again. An arrow sinks into flesh, and everything fades into blackness.
Natasha and Clint really do have perfect fucking timing, he internally huffs in that last second of consciousness.
-----------------------------
Natasha is on his tail for months after that. If anyone so much as breathes wrong in his direction, she looks like she wants to strangle them with the nearest viable object capable of pulling that off. He doesn’t have just one PA for that period of time, no, because Natasha sticks by him under the premise of being a PA in training for whenever Pepper was sick- which was never, because Pepper could be dying, and she’d still drag herself out of bed and pester Tony to sign papers and attend events and actually shower and eat and sleep.
Obie seems more off than usual in that time, eyeing Natasha with confused amusement, and he eyes Tony with a hint of annoyance underneath his usual pleased and comforting countenance. Nat says she can’t find a scrap of dirt on him though, though she says that likely won’t last long. She talks about breaking into his office soon enough, to see if he’s hiding any dirt on his personal computer, and Tony doesn’t even try to argue with her on that, because he knows she’ll run in and do it no matter what he says. Besides, Tony’s preoccupied with a variety of other things, and he’s running on as much tension as anyone else at Stark Industries is with their latest weaponry line launch coming up.
Tony’s thirty-fourth (26th) birthday passes with little fanfare, mainly because he’s running a thousand other things at once at that point. The Jericho missile is state of the goddamn art- and Tony is proud of the damn thing. Proud, because it has more firepower than anything he’d ever built for HYDRA, because the targeting system is better than anything HYDRA had, and that alone makes him feel better that if something were to happen they wouldn’t be hopelessly outgunned by the opposition. He knows that it’s probably not the best to try and outgun the opposition like he’s expecting it all to come down to a fire fight, but really… what the fuck else is he meant to anticipate?
HYDRA was an organisation that rose out of war, it bred it wherever it walked, it worked to destabilise governments on the daily, and war was the ultimate and most effective way of doing so.
If he had to fight fire with fire? So be it. They’d have the bigger stick when it came down to that, and HYDRA wouldn’t know what hit them if they tried it. He hoped it never came down to that, but Tony was always one to let his paranoia rule him, and this would be what his dad would do, right?
(Course he’s right, his dad did the same thing during the Second World War, didn’t he?)
-----------------------------
The presentation goes perfectly. The Stark showmanship always sells, and he knows the Jericho missile could sell itself, but sometimes, a little pushing for it as he’s meant to do as a businessman goes pretty damn far in itself. He settles in the back of a Humvee, whiskey glass in hand and phone in the other, speaking with Obie for a while, before the call is ended and he’s left chatting with the soldiers and airmen (and women).
And that’s when it all goes to shit.
No, shit isn’t a big enough elaboration on how fucking terrible it is. Tony may be an ex-assassin, entirely capable of felling anyone who he comes into hand to hand combat with, and sure, he’s a super soldier, with enhanced strengths and durability no other can match unless they’re enhanced like him, but that doesn’t mean he’s impervious to pain and death. He’s especially not impervious to machine gun fire with no viable cover, or missiles, which are flying left right and centre. The enemy is behind him, and Tony had no weaponry on him, nothing at all, so even if he did want to run back and help, he couldn’t because he wouldn’t make it three steps across that field without being mowed down.
An ex-assassin, sure, but Tony wasn’t stupid. He camps out behind a rock, yanks out his phone, and uses his last few precious seconds to send out an alert signal to Nat, a quick briefing on something being wrong, before a missile lands in the dirt.
Tony’s eyes land on it, and he wonders in that fraction of a moment where he can’t remember how to move, if this is how it all ends. His own weapons turned back on him.
He’d deserve it, the poeticism is a heavy thing, the destruction of himself is much by his own hand then. He stands, scrabbles back three steps, before the thing goes off, and the shockwave sends him flying, sprawling out in the desert sand with a choked rasp as pain lances through spots, constellations of sensation sparking across his chest.
It’s only when he’s passing out that he thinks- where the fuck did they get my weapons?
-----------------------------
Being strapped down onto tables and having steel pressed past the barriers of his skin is not a new feeling, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less when he wakes to the feeling of being ripped apart, nor does that make it any less shocking. HYDRA had used to drive knives through him for fun, this- this is more methodical than that, though Tony barely manages to think of it past his own screaming and struggling.
For a long moment, he thinks HYDRA has him again. He thinks they have him, that they’re putting him through the same hell he’d been through before, tearing him apart and remaking him into a hollow, broken rendition of himself that they could use. He thinks that until he hears the voices, harsh, stilted Dari. Pashto. There’s some Arabic, and slowly, he realises that it’s not HYDRA. No, it’s easier than HYDRA, but still infinitely painful.
Being a prisoner of war sounds like no fun at all, but that’s where he is.
(Tony screams as they saw through his sternum, and the man with the glasses begins setting metal into his chest, Tony’s heart beating out of his chest. Literally, almost.)
He doesn’t know when he passes out, but he knows he’s awake for most of it. His pain tolerance really is astounding, and never has Tony hated that more than he did now.
Bleary, blurry eyes manage to focus on hands, slowly moving down, holding more metal, pushing it down, pushing it deeper. Tony can feel his heart beat against the metal, and he gets the feeling that no one should ever feel the coolness of metal press in that deep.
He feels the remnants of old memories of ice unfurling in his heart at the sensation, and wonders if maybe this is his punishment for everything he’d ever done wrong. Or maybe that’s just his own self-loathing he manages, as the cool metal warms and settles into him like it belongs there when every part of his body vehemently protests it.
-----------------------------
When he wakes, it’s cold. As cold as the bowels of HYDRA bases in Russia had been, cold enough for him to see his breath fog in front of his face as he breathes in, grimacing the moment he feels the obstruction of tubing through his nose. Every part of his body radiates pain, but nothing like his chest, which aches still, not with the rawness of a new wound, but then, Tony can never tell when he heals as quickly as he does. He’s alive though. Alive, yet again, when he thought he should have been dead. It’s almost like a repeat of HYDRA again, but with less criminal intent this time- Tony’s just unfortunate enough to be kidnapped twice, to be strapped down, and have procedures he hasn’t consented to performed on him while he screams and suffers.
He yanks the tubing out and sucks in staggered breaths, and god, does his chest ache. He gets the blurry mental image of something metal pressing into his body, and Tony freezes. Reprocess that- no. No, that’d definitely…shaking hands come up then, dragging himself upward, tearing at bandages and shuddering the moment his eyes settle on rusted metal inset into his chest. His tissue is healing around it, still angry red and raw, and dimly, his eyes follow the path to where he’s hooked up to a fucking car battery and he wants to rip the thing out-
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice interrupts from the darkness, and Tony jumps so damn high it’s a wonder he doesn’t pull the newly healed flesh around the metal in his chest and start bleeding all over again. His eyes find the figure in the darkness though, a small, frail man who is standing by a fragment of a broken mirror and shaving his face with a blunt looking razor blade.
“Wouldn’t you?” Tony manages, and he sounds tired, voice as abrasive as rough grit sand paper against a chalkboard.
Eyes flicker up to meet his own in the reflection of the mirror, and he stares for but a beat, but says nothing.
Tony takes that as it is, and plows right on. “What’ve you done to me?”
“I saved your life.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“…It’s an electromagnet hooked up to a car battery to provide it with sufficient power to run- it’s keeping the shrapnel from the missile you were in range of from making its way into your atrial septum.”
Oh joy. Happy times.
“You’re healing well, Stark,” the man continues, and Tony merely hums, eyes turning to scope out the cave, across every nook and cranny- including the blinking light in the corner that sits and watches his every move. Cameras in a cave, wonderful, the terrorists took their shit seriously, just what Tony wanted to hear. Stuck in caves in mountain ranges that had too many tunnels for Tony to even chance escape through at the moment with his limited knowledge, which just brightened up his sour mood considerably, note sarcasm here. Besides, he knows he’s healing well. The healing factor will make that all the more obvious soon enough, he’s sure, not that anyone will really be paying attention to such things, he’s sure. The only one to probably note it is the man in here, and one glance at him tells him he isn’t loyal to anyone out there. He isn’t a plant, Tony knows how to recognise people that are.
This man is just as unfortunate as he is for ending up in here, and the fact that he’s alive right now, and using such an ingenious way, tells him all he needs to know on why the other is here. He has skills they need, and skills they force him to use.
“That’s right, smile.”
“I’m usually one for smiling for cameras, but I don’t feel like flashing the Stark charm for assholes who are holding me hostage.”
“I would watch what you say,” the man warns, cleaning the razor and his face off, turning around to better address Tony, moving around the room and tidying up as he went. “They do not tolerate mouthy comments and wit here. They’ll sooner cut out your tongue than listen to you snark at them.”
“What are you playing for here, the threatening game, or the comforting game, because if you’re going for the latter, your bedside manner sucks, doc.”
That earns him a smile, as small and slight as it is.
The moment is broken quickly enough though, when the terrorists march their way in, and ask him to build them weapons. They asked nicely, with all smiles, but there is no room for argument even if they are phrasing it as a request. Tony knows how this’ll end.
He smiles, a grim, twisted thing of knowing, but he doubts they’ll beat anything that he’s been through before and meets the eyes of the man addressing him.
“I refuse.”
-----------------------------
He’s right. They don’t do anything nearly as bad as what HYDRA ever did to him. HYDRA was invasive, HYDRA had no limits, HYDRA had finesse and expertise and practice at stripping people down until they were nothing, until they had every single thing they could possibly want from anyone, and only then did they rid themselves of what was left of the person they had irreparably broken.
The terrorists lack all of these things. The Ten Rings may have the drive, but Tony was trained by HYDRA to endure situations like these. He can hold his breath longer than any normal person can even with his diminished lung capacity, which is a good thing considering they seem uninventive when it comes to methods of torture. They shove Tony under the water, again, and again, and again, demanding he build the Jericho, and then they’ll stop.
Tony’s no fool though, Tony knows full well how they’ll stop- stopping is them getting what they want and executing him afterwards. He holds no value for them, not right now that is, and they’ll milk him dry until there’s nothing left for them to take before leaving him to turn to desert sand out in the dunes.
They shove him under again.
Again.
Again.
One time, they shove him in a little too deep, and water drips down, and the battery zaps him. The electricity arcing through his body is nothing like the kind he’s endured before, but it’s that that brings him true panic.
He hears screaming in his head.
Pepper’s voice.
Rhodey’s voice.
Natalia’s voice.
Clint’s voice.
Happy’s.
And then, right at the end, there’s the faintest Russian whisper in his ear, almost tangible, almost real, and Tony clings to Yasha’s voice in his head like the saving grace it is.
He realises when foul water rushes into his mouth on the next dunking, why that is. He doesn’t just miss a friend. He doesn’t miss another broken soul who can familiarise with him like no one else can. He misses someone he loves. Not just the friendly, caring, you’re important to me kind of love. The proper thing.
Fuck, what a time to come to that realisation.
-----------------------------
They drop him off back in his cell a while later, soaked and heaving, dumping him down on a soiled mattress on the floor before disappearing back the way they had come, and the man from before stares, while Tony compartmentalises and breaks down that entire experience. Again, not the worst, but still not pleasant, and he has the feeling he’s not going to like water a hell of a lot by the time he’s done here, but he’s overcome previous aversions left over from situations like this before. He can do it again.
He will do it again.
There’s a bone-deep, crippling exhaustion settling in though, settling in like reality is at the moment. He doesn’t want to go through this again. He doesn’t want to battle through torture, through being manipulated to do what someone else wants. He doesn’t want to be a puppet. He’s been free for nine years. Nine, that was it, and now he’s being tossed back into the deep end again, a true test of endurance.
Tony isn’t sure whether his previous experience makes this worse or better.
Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
Worse in the way that Tony’s going through the same thing again, and it’s bringing back bad memories, bad moments, bad everything.
Good in the way that this is child’s play by comparison to his fucked up past.
-----------------------------
Tony was right about them being uninventive. It’s the same thing, day in, and day out.
Tony gives everyone a month, a month by his internal clock anyway, which is a month of hard thinking and strategizing on his part even when he’s trying not to choke on dirtied water, to find him. A month to hope that maybe he wouldn’t need to start thinking of busting out of here himself, of not needing to resort to violence of a calibre Tony actively tries to avoid.
Tony gives them a month, before he coughs and chokes on dusty cave floors and says he’ll build what they want so long as they stop.
They do, and the first thing that’s on his agenda to bust his ass out is to fix himself.
Yinsen, as he learns the name of his co-hostage is, helps with that. With a box of scraps in a cave, Tony does what was thought to be impossible, and when the sparking of the arc flutters into existence before it hums and comes to life fully, Tony smiles.
You are a phoenix, Antoshka. Rise from the ashes and make yourself new wings.
Oh, he would, Natalia, he definitely would.
-----------------------------
Tony is a mechanic. An engineer. An inventor. A pioneer of his time. The Futurist, they call him. The Da Vinci of our time, others say. No matter what, it always leads back to the same thing, the same root of work. Tony fixes things. He builds, and he fixes, and he improves. There is nothing that can’t be improved, Tony knows that. The moment something is made, it’s outdated, the moment an idea springs to life, it’s old news, and just like everything, progression is a steady uphill battle. It’s how humanity accomplishes so much in so little time, because with a deadline as short as theirs, they strive for recognition, to leave something behind, to be remembered and not fade into the blank pages of history and come out without having made an impact on someone, somewhere.
Tony is a mechanic, an engineer, an inventor. Tony builds and rebuilds.
It’s why he’s so good at rebuilding himself, rekindling flames from a smouldering and dying fire and reigniting what should have died long ago.
The arc glows like trapped starlight in his chest, and Tony taps his fingers against the glass through his shirt as the hum reverberates through him.
We’re all made of stardust, now he fits the description just a little better than most.
(Or maybe he’s just getting absurdly poetic, and he doesn’t want to think of himself as a human nightlight.)
-----------------------------
“You heal quickly,” Yinsen says, spooning soup up to his mouth during one of their breaks, away from the furnace and the construction of the armour that lays around in unidentifiable pieces around the lab space.
“I know.”
“I would worry if you didn’t know. You heal…miraculously fast. The scar tissue around the reactor is in stages I would expect to see several years down the track. Not mere months after the sustainment of an injury.”
“If you’re getting around to asking how, I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s a dangerous port of call, believe me. Let’s just say I’m inhumanly resilient and- “
“Inhuman sounds correct. Or, more superhuman at least.”
Tony stares. “Uh huh. Superhuman. Right, because that doesn’t sound 100% crazy, Yinsen, not at all.”
“There’s no other explanation. Eliminate the impossibilities and you are left with very few possibilities, and unless you’re going to proclaim you’re a supernatural creature, I would say superhuman is much more likely- genetic engineering has been achieved before, over fifty years ago no less, at least in the most major case any has seen.”
“Does it matter if I happen to have a conveniently quick healing factor?”
“It does. You have this…ability. If you were to have more- you would be wasting your potential. Your potential to help many.”
“Or my potential to harm many.”
Yinsen levelled him with a look at that, tilting his head to the side slightly. “You are your own person. What you choose to do with yourself is your own decision, but in saying that, I know there is much more you can do for the world than what you already do. Your weaponry is not your be all, end all. You may think it is, but as you’ve seen…if men like these can get their hands on such things, who else can?”
And didn’t that hit closer to home than Tony would like? It was the same things he’d been asking himself, but there was something more poignant about hearing it from someone else, something more shocking, he supposed. It was far more impossible to deny things.
It was easy to trick oneself, he guessed, but harder to do so when others could see the same problems and address them.
“All I am saying…is that maybe sitting back and dealing in what you are dealing now is not the best route to take. I don’t know what route it is you should take. I’m saying you should scope out your options when you are free from here, Stark.”
-----------------------------
Freedom comes at a price. It always does.
He’s naïve enough to believe that this time will be different, until Yinsen runs down the corridor to offer himself up as a distraction.
Tony knows that distraction is interchangeable in this case with sacrifice.
Someone is sacrificing themselves for him, and that’s the thing that strikes deepest when he finds Yinsen riddled with bullets, breathing in death rattling gasps.
Don’t waste your life.
Tony wouldn’t, he swore he wouldn’t. Yinsen’s blood on gleaming metal, Yinsen’s life given for him…that’s what makes him realise that he no longer wants to sit behind the sidelines anymore and avoid the fight simply because he cannot handle them.
Tony realises that that’s a barrier that’s been stopping him from doing the selfless thing all along. Weaponry was his initial way of securing people’s safety, but in seeing that as defective…the only hands he can trust for the moment are his own, and those he himself trusts intimately. The only way he can repay people for the things he’d done in the past is to put himself on the line for them, be the barrier to protect them, to save them.
Save people like Yinsen. Like his family. Those people should be saved, the innocent who couldn’t fight for themselves.
As Tony speeds out of a blooming explosion, he resolves himself to that, resolves himself to committing everything he had into protecting people. From people like HYDRA, the Ten Rings, and whatever else might come his way.
The Assistant will turn his guns back on the corrupt, and sure, it’ll mean more blood on his hands- but he’s already going to hell anyway, right?
-----------------------------
Rhodey finds him wandering the desert, stumbling about and struggling over sand dunes in what he thinks is the possible direction toward civilisation. Maybe. He really wasn’t too sure, but he wasn’t going to sit by a terrorist camp that’d be teeming with reinforcements after the magnitude of destruction Tony had left in his wake. Tony laughs when Rhodey jokes over Tony’s ride in the funvee, even if he can see the same terrible worry in Rhodey’s eyes that he’d seen when he’d come back from his time at HYDRA. Just like then, Tony ends up clinging to Rhodey the entire way back to base.
It feels like he’s already home.
-----------------------------
He’s not shocked at all when Rhodey gapes the first time he sees the arc. He’s not shocked when Rhodey goes from shock, to horror to anger in zero point three seconds flat either.
“Tones. Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“It is.”
“Fucking hell. What the fuck. How deep does that go?”
“Half the depth of my chest. It’s resting up against my heart. It’s not a nice sensation, but it’s a small price to pay for being alive, don’t you think?”
“Small price to pay,” Rhodey states incredulously over the sound of the humming engines of the military plane they’re in right now on their way back to the states. “Small. Price. To. Pay. You’ve got a hunk of metal stuck in your chest, keeping shrapnel out of your heart apparently, and you’re telling me that that’s a small price to pay?”
“I think anything is pretty much a small price to pay when I come out the other side breathing.”
“Not breathing well though,” Rhodey fires back with heat. Tony doesn’t even try to respond to that. He just reaches forward, and smooths a hand over Rhodey’s, trying his best to soothe the other, who looks like he wants to be sick.
“I thought I was going to lose you again, Tony. Have you got any idea what that was like for me? When you turned out to be missing, I felt exactly like I did when you went missing from the back of that car. I thought you were gone. Gone, never to be seen of again, that I wasn’t going to be lucky a second time, that you were never coming back this time.”
“I know. But I am back. Last time getting kidnapped, I promise. No more of that for me, I think.”
Rhodey eyes him at that, and his eyes narrow infinitesimally. “Why do I feel like you’re not promising as truthfully as you could be?”
Tony just smiles, exhausted beyond belief, but it’s nice to know that Rhodey can still read him like a book even now. “You’ll see in the future. I won’t get into kidnapping trouble again though. I’ll be good.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Rhodey grumbles under his breath as he slumps back.
Tony doesn’t offer a response to that. He just sits in silence and closes his eyes. The knowledge of being free again is liberating, but there’s many a thing he has to make up for now, and he intends to do just that. So, he sits for hours, plotting everything out in his head- starting with finding out how his weapons came to be in the hands of terrorists to begin with.
Eventually, the plane begins its descent, and the moment wheels touch down…Tony gets a shudder of foreboding rolling up his spine. Not a small one either, and the sight that greets him when he stumbles out onto the tarmac is maybe part of the reason. Pepper, Nat, Clint and Happy are all there. Pepper’s crying, Happy’s happy (Tony snickers internally at his own terrible joke) but Nat and Clint? Look equally worried and equally like they want to wrap him in bubble wrap and stash him away in a high-security facility. Him, they want to shove him, one of the most deadly and proficient assassins in history, in a high-security facility, and they want to bubble wrap him up like he’s made of china.
His family is insane, but he loves them anyway.
-----------------------------
Things go back to…relative normal. Relative in the way that everything is as it was before, just with extra mother henning from every single person he knows. Inclusive of JARVIS. JARVIS might actually be the worst, next to Natasha. Even Clint is dropping him texts to ensure that Tony’s alright. Which he is, he’s perfectly fine, he’s just got a lot on his plate. Shutting down the weapons division had brought up a response in Obie that had Tony thinking back to an old conversation that he’d had with Natasha, about something about Obie not seeming quite right. The idea of Obie being the one to sell off those weapons is a very probable, feasible one. He has access to shipping logs, to weaponry stocks, and would know how to hide it if he was dealing under the table.
It’s not an idea he likes, but it’s all the more obvious that it very well might be the case that while Tony’s in his lab, putting the finishing touches to his Mark II armour, and he finds out he’s not even been invited to his own gala.
Natasha calls him as Tony’s straightening out the cufflinks on his suit and moving off to pick out a car for the occasion- and he slips into the Audi R8 just as he picks up her call.
“Natalia.”
“Antoshka. I’m presuming you’ve already seen what I’m seeing on the news?”
“That people are gossiping over why I’m not at my own party?”
“Exactly that. Did you know about it?”
“Hadn’t a clue till I saw the report. I think now’s the time that we should get around to breaking into Obie’s office. I’ll keep the distraction up tonight, but I need you to get in there. I think he’s been double-dealing under the table, and if he has, the files will be on his computer, likely under a private drive, or a ghost drive. If it’s there, then we need to get around to locking him out and locking him out quickly. The court case will be a headache, but it’ll be necessary.”
“I’ll be in and out as quickly as I can.”
“Perfect. Give me a ring when you’re done.” And with that, he hands up, and tears off down the street, weaving in and out of traffic and probably earning himself a speeding ticket in the process- not that he’s fussed over it, of course. Tony’s all about making an entrance.
-----------------------------
It’s one in the morning when Tony stumbles back home, and there’s still no word from Nat, not yet. He’s not quite sure what that means, but he knows better than to contact her if she hasn’t contacted him. Distress signals would be the alert to tell him something was up, and considering there’s nothing yet, he knows it probably meant there’s a slight delay considering Obie’s office was likely cleaned every night given the guy had a thorough dislike of lacking hygiene standards.
The suit’s done by then though, and fuck, if it isn’t the most gorgeous thing Tony’s ever made. An assassin can only get so far, he knows, but, with this? This could be the thing that paves the way to Tony being able to do more than shoot straight or fight well. The evacuations he could do with this. The speed is definitely something that sells him on it, the flying? Definitely a positive. The suit opens avenues for him he never thought could be opened before. He can do more like this, help more- but first? First, Tony needs to take it on a test flight.
He’ll admit that almost falling to his death was not part of the plan, but hey, at least he found his first way to improve it, right? Note to self: fix icing problem.
He’s coasting around the city skyline when Natasha’s caller ID pops up on screen, and Tony accepts it the moment it comes in, ready with a grin and greeting to go right along with it, but Natasha beats him to it.
“Tony. I’m in your workshop. We need to talk.”
The call blipped out without any further elaboration- and that’s when Tony knows he was right. It was Obie who’d been double-dealing under the table, but he also has the feeling there’s something else too, something important, otherwise, Natasha wouldn’t have sounded so serious when merely confirming what Tony already hypothetically knew.
He feels his heart fall out through his boots, but even so, he halts mid-air and changes direction, jetting back off home, even if every part of him wants to avoid facing the unknown problem he knows he’s flying dead on at right now.
Stark men are made of iron- and Tony wasn’t going to turn and run now. How bad could it possibly be?
-----------------------------
Tony’s swallowing down rage and disbelief not even half an hour later as Natasha slips the drive into his hands, and the first thing to pop up is a video. He remembers it, not from this perspective, but as the bleary man, trussed up and tipping all over the place, out of it with pain, anger and nausea. It isn’t seeing this video on Obie’s ghost drive that does it- it’s hearing what the man is saying.
Obie ordered a hit on him.
Obie paid a terrorist group who he’d been selling Tony’s weapons to to kill him, without telling them who they were killing, and it was Obie’s money hungry ass that had saved Tony from being killed that day, but Obie’s greedy power-hungry ass that had got him into that trouble to begin with. Obie had wanted him out of the picture. One of the last few remaining people linked to his family beyond Aunt Peggy had wanted him dead.
Natasha’s hands smooth through his hair, and Tony can only stare because everything feels numb. Quiet and broken and numb in every single way because Obie had been in his life since he was a kid.
Obie had been his rock, Obie had helped him with the company when Tony had come back, helped him get back onto his feet, and now? Now Tony saw Obie’s true colours and he couldn’t help but think maybe he should have trusted his gut instinct sooner. A lot sooner.
-----------------------------
They don’t know how to confront it, initially. Natasha demands to take care of him herself, and then have him conveniently die in a private plane crash somewhere really remote over the ocean, but Tony’s quick to push that out of the way, and then Natasha is even quicker to point out that if he takes Obadiah to court for every little bit of this, it won’t only put the company in jeopardy, it’ll put his private life out there on the line again, and bring attention to those three months Tony had spent out in caves in Afghanistan. Tony’s not sure if he’s ready to have the entire media find out about the attempted assassination, let alone the finer details, and Natasha is adamant about not letting Obadiah get away with what he’s done.
They debate on it, the whole night and the first part of the morning spent over it, and then Natasha brings in Clint, like that’ll make a difference on anything.
They don’t get to debate for long though, because while they were preoccupied over that, Obadiah clearly has other plans- plans that involve taking things into his own hands, if the giant hole through the side of Tony’s mansion is any indication at all.
And if that isn’t- well. The giant mockery of a metal suit being powered by an oversized chest battery in place of an arc reactor sure fucking does.
“Tony,” Natasha manages, as blue gleaming eyes turn toward them, and Tony curses.
“I know. Working on it. Distract him.”
Clint‘s already up and running, and Natasha’s doing her best not to be shot down by the monstrosity that crushes the piano in the main area with an oversized foot, and bright, but dark hearted laughter. “Oh, Tony. I thought the Jericho was your last hurrah, but the things you manage under pressure…. I have to say, I really do like this.”
“Asshole,” Clint claims immediately, pulling out his mission pack and firing off an explosive arrow, that hardly makes a dent in the armour. Shit. “Aim for the joints, Clint, aim for the goddamn joints.”
“Got it- you better have something on hand that’ll level this fight Tony, fucking robotic suits and shit, I swear to all that is holy- “
“I do, just keep him preoccupied!”
Natasha’s clambering up over Obie’s back as Tony sprints down to the lab, JARVIS already opening the way for him and prepping his suit. The moment Tony’s in it is the moment Obie literally drops down through the ceiling. The dust swirls in the air as the lights flicker for a moment, glowing blue eyes meeting glowing red eyes.
“You’ve really outdone yourself, Tony.”
“Wow, how kind of you to say, I always like compliments from the guy who tried to have me assassinated.”
The faceplate of the suit snaps down then, and he barely blinks as Natasha drops from the ceiling into the din of Tony’s lab space, eyeing him and the armour- cat’s out of the bag, he supposed, but that wasn’t really what he was stressing about. What he was stressing about, was Obie lunging forward fist rolling back and slamming into his chest plate, and Tony goes tumbling back, slamming into the wall as Stane continues his predictably villainous monologue sequence.
“You really have. I thought the Jericho was the pinnacle of your abilities, but you’ve proved me wrong, given just that last golden egg, just like your father did all those years ago.”
Tony’s prying himself out of the wall when Obadiah says that, and he sucks in a slow, terrible breath. The world seems to come to a crashing halt at that, and Obadiah’s faceplate snaps back. His lips are tilted up into an impossibly kind smile despite the words he’s saying, eyes alight with amusement, and Tony dreads what’s coming, because Obadiah keeps on coming, slow and measured steps while Tony’s trying to process and prepare for what he knows is about to be said.
“When he pumped out that serum…I just couldn’t say no to selling it off to a very interested party- it’s a coincidence that you happened to be in the back of that car. You were meant to die that night, Tony either way, whether it was through a house fire or otherwise. HYDRA was meant to get rid of you, but of course, they kept you- not that I know what they did with you. How you came back fine is beyond me.”
“You. You…killed mom and dad just for the money you’d get from the serum.”
“And the company. SI was in the works to become Stane Industries- but they refused to when they never found your body. It agitated me, I won’t lie…and then you showed up again and began making weaponry that outshone your father’s. You revitalised the company. Maybe that’s why I let you stick around so long, but you’ve over-extended your period of stay, Tony. I think it’s time to settle this.”
Obadiah’s still smiling, still grinning that self-satisfied, smug smile, thinking he’s won, won after murdering his mom and dad, after trying to get him killed not once, but twice, and now going for a very personal third. Anger catches in his blood like a flame to tinder, and the servos of his suit whirr as Tony drags himself to his feet.
“You don’t know who you’re fucking with, Obadiah.”
“I’m screwing with a kid who’s playing hero in a tin can toy. One I plan on keeping after we’re done here- we’ll make a market out of this. And by we, I mean me.”
Tony doesn’t respond- he just launches forward across the space and slams his fist into the nearest joint, hard enough to lock the entirety of it up at that spot, the arm sparking dangerously as Tony’s thrusters cut out and he drops, just to avoid the sweep of the hand that comes at him next, before rocketing back up through the hole in the ceiling. He needs to drag this out to larger ground, away from the mansion- and quick, if he wants any chance at analysing the weaknesses and not getting Clint and Nat killed in the crossfire.
He opens up a feed through the communicators, just in time to hear Clint swearing profusely as Tony smashes out his front windows.
“Nat, please tell me the guy in the smaller robotic suit in the flashy colours isn’t Tony.”
“If I was to say that, I’d be lying- watch your left.”
“Jesus fuck.”
“Watch your language there, Merida, do you kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?” Tony imputs, zooming out over the ocean- and he stares on as Obie honest to god manages to follow him out. So. Seems like Obie had been doing some hasty upgrades over the months that Tony had been back, and there’s no doubting the inspiration for this suit is the one Tony busted his way out of Afghanistan with. There’s a heavy rigid steeliness to it that hasn’t been lost through translation with all the upgrades Obadiah has forced into the overly bulky thing.
“Tony. Tony, if you get yourself killed out there, I’m going to drag your ghost ass back from hell and kick you until you come back to life, just so I can kill you all over again- “
“Are the threats really necessary? Just get to the rooftop, I need coverage, and you’ve got elf eyes and I need you to shoot this Orc in the back of the neck where the cabling is when I get him within range, preferably before he takes me to Isengard, AKA, the sea. Or to my death.”
“Did you just admit you’re a Hobbit?”
“Just shut up and do it.”
Tony’s getting in close then, clashing in the air against Obadiah’s suit, firing off his repulsors, missiles, flares, whatever he has as he grapples for Obadiah’s neck.
“Stay still, you little brat- “
“You killed my mom and dad. For HYDRA. You gave them the one-way ticket and gave them all they needed. You sold them out, if anyone’s going down here, Stane, it’s you.”
A laugh twists into the air then, and Tony grimaces as Stane locks a fist around his midsection and begins to squeeze. Clint chooses then to fire an arrow that settles in the plating of Obadiah’s shoulder, and goes off with a bang that has him letting go with a shout.
“Oops. Guess that was important, huh?” Tony jets up, clamps hands around the cables at Obie’s neck, and pulls them until they crack free from casing and break apart, which leaves Obadiah blind until he manages to force his faceplate up. Face to face now, or more so, he can see Obie, even if Obie can’t see him.
“You’re not going to win, Tony. You don’t have the drive to. You can’t kill, you’ve always been too soft-hearted. It was all the stories your father fed you about Captain America. Precious, sweet, dedicated, a hero- a hero you could never be.”
“You’re right. I’m not a hero, but I’m not a villain. And you’re wrong. HYDRA taught me many a thing, and the Assistant learned to never miss his mark.”
Obie’s features twist for a second, in recognition, and then for a moment in confusion and fear. Mostly disbelief, though. It's almost satisfying in a way Tony doesn't want to entertain, but this was a case of a monster Obadiah had made coming back to bite him. Karma's a bitch.
“You’re not him.”
“Aren’t I?”
He’s pushing back then, shooting Obie out of the sky, and watching with grim satisfaction as Obie crashes down into his backyard like a meteor tearing down out of the sky, and Tony follows closely, landing with a quiet thud next to the smoking heap of the suit. Obie coughs, a quiet, fragile thing, and Tony lets his visor snap back then, and only then, levelling Obadiah a look that’s all cold, malevolent anger. Obie seems to realise then that there is truth behind Tony’s words, and then Obadiah only laughs.
“Bet you wish you’d just died in the crash, hey, Tony?”
“I’m glad I didn’t. I’ve got a lot to make up for- starting with this.”
Tony lifts his gauntlet then, and tips his eyes back to the sun. Warmth. One last one for the books-
The sound of the power source of the suit fizzled out with a sharp bang, and Obadiah fell silent.
Tony wasn’t sure if he should feel pleased or not over it, but no matter what, he couldn’t help but feel just a little glad that the reason his parents were dead was gone.
-----------------------------
Apparently, beachgoers, passerby, and news crews that had raced over the moment Obadiah had took to the sky caught nearly everything on camera, which meant Tony needed to go out and make his statement.
Honestly, he didn’t know what drove him to do what he did, but he was sure the reason wouldn’t change the way the crowd jumped to their feet and roared the moment Tony admitted the truth.
I am Iron Man.
Let HYDRA quake in their fucking boots…
-----------------------------
Tony found out very quickly that the palladium was poisoning him. Not killing him, sure, but it definitely hurt like a bitch. Scratch that, Tony was dying, spoke too soon- seems like super soldier serum or not, heavy metal poisoning could still very well kill him if he exposed himself in high enough doses to the palladium, without allowing his body time for cellular repair.
It was a very easy thing to do, the whole overdoing it thing, when blasting off to places like Gulmira and annihilating the Ten Rings as well as he could and fending off people like the lately arisen Ivan Vanko problem. It didn’t stop Tony from doing all of the above though, because death honestly didn’t scare him anymore.
Not that Lady Death seems to want to take him in with open arms though, because Natasha’s sifting through his father’s old shit to try and find something to fix the mess Tony’s in.
Howard Stark can still take his ass to school apparently, and the newly synthesised Starkium nestles right by his heart, at the core of the reactor. It feels like a last little present from his dad, and even if he and his dad had never really gotten along, Tony still cherishes it like the gift it is.
(He really should get Starkium patented ASAP.)
-----------------------------
What did scare him, was going toe to toe with Ivan Vanko without the suit, and with Rhodey down in what Tony was planning on calling ‘War Machine’, which no shocker there, he’d named after an AC/DC song that’d fit Rhodey perfectly. Besides, it was badass, but not the point.
Anyway, scare was a very peculiar word. Tony being scared was more so because Tony still hated electricity with a passion, and that was kind of Ivan’s go-to thing, electrified whips and Russian hisses and curses. It reminds him of things he doesn’t want to remember, naturally, but he powers through it, he has to, after all, because if he doesn’t, he dies anyway, and more importantly, if he dies, Rhodey will die too.
That’s the idea that has him weaving past whips of arcing electricity and fighting with a ferocity and agility that throws Ivan off guard completely. Tony takes Ivan out with nothing more than a broken shard of metal from his suit which is in sparking pieces behind them as a makeshift knife. Ivan spits in his face as he dies, and Tony wonders when he’ll stop seeing red.
-----------------------------
Tony felt much like his entire body was one big bruise. Add in the fact that he was pleasantly jittery on his adrenaline high and a rush of overwhelming anxiety and voila, you have a one-stop-shop for a Disaster in the Making considering Rhodey’d been levelling his ever sharp gaze on him with an alarming intensity ever since Tony’s hauled himself off of Vanko’s bloodied and beaten armoured corpse.
(Honestly, his brain couldn’t help but chime in, when was he not a Disaster in the Making, really? Disaster in the making might even be a light way of putting it- that insinuated that Tony wasn’t already a disaster.)
Half the time, Tony was sure his problems were exclusively of his own design and making, and the other half were inherited from his father because fuck, his luck was lacking, apparently. A day in the life of Tony Stark, right?
So yes, this was more the former than the latter, a problem of his own design, and that was clear considering those of that variety were the kind to be completely and utterly fucked without any chance of redemption, with no way to lie or joke or weasel his way out of what had happened over the course of the last few hours.
Nope, it was done and dusted. Written in stone, here lies Anthony Edward Stark’s friendship with James Rupert Rhodes, who will undoubtedly walk away as any sane person would after this.
Tony wouldn’t blame him.
Of course he wouldn’t. He’d never blame a soul for turning tail and running when they found out their best friend was a wind-up murder doll once upon a time.
“You gonna tell me how you were able to play tag you’re it with the guy who was just tossing around electrified whips without even batting a lash or…?”
With a heavy sigh, Tony finally drags his eyes away from the blank, lingering darkness of Vanko’s eyes, lifeless as they were, yet still filled with anger and distaste that persisted even past the inevitability of death’s embrace. Hate. That was what he saw in Vanko’s eyes, an intense rage that was well deserved, honestly, even if Tony was only the stand-in for that rage, a second-best, an unfortunate understudy that had taken the place of the main figure that had truly deserved the anger- thanks, Howard. Away from Vanko, Tony’s whiskey brown depths instead level on Rhodey’s own eyes, which were stern yes, but… hesitant. Careful. Afraid? No, something else, something he couldn’t peg right now.
Expectant though, Rhodey was definitely that.
Bruised knuckles and fingers coil, smattered with blue and purple that would fade within the hour, the serum singing through his blood in time with each thunderous pulse of his heart. Blood would wash away, at least visibly, though the cloying crimson would continue to cling to his soul, he was sure.
Red. Tony both loved and hated red. Maybe he should invest in a new color scheme for the armour, red was a little too on the nose. Black? Tony did like black, a left-over preference from his time lingering in shadows, he’d bet. Or maybe it was from his time before that, too many galas in black tuxes- no, he’d only been to the ones he was forced to go to before he was seventeen, so that was off by a long shot. Preference for black after the Assistant shindig? Passable, he could say that was the case if he lied blatantly enough to himself.
“Tony? Earth to Tony.”
“Hm? I’m here, present, just…thinking. Processing. Not freaking out, all is fine on the Western Front over here, sour patch, don’t get your patriotic panties in a twist.”
“Sure. Is that why you’ve neglected to answer me and have instead been staring at your hands for the last three minutes and forty-two seconds?”
“…now that’s a blatant, bold-faced exaggeration- “
“No. It really wasn’t. I was counting.” A trimmed nail taps against the half-shattered glass face of a watch, and Rhodey barely lifts a brow to drive that point home all the more firmly.
“Okay, you caught me red-handed,” Tony announces, lifting his hands palms up in the universal gesture for surrender, only to pause as a wave of anxiety struck again with a surety that left him stilling for a moment, defence mechanisms gearing up easily enough even though he still felt like a deer in headlights. “Literally, technically.” Thank you, lack of brain to mouth filter.
“Still feeling good enough to joke. Not bad for a civvy. Least I don’t need to panic about you going into shock on me, Tones.”
“Yeah. Silver lining.”
“Exactly. So. You going to answer my question on how you learnt how to be a ninja, because you moved faster than I’ve ever seen anyone move before.”
A quiet whir, silver and gunmetal grey arms crossed over a chest awkwardly, the front plating too stiff and the profile too unaccommodating to allow Rhodey to really pull off the angle he was going for- but it was a stance Tony knew well enough. One he knew all too well.
Rhodey wasn’t going to budge.
Tony swallows, thickly, loudly, painfully.
“Alright. We’ll talk. Just at my place, and not in the middle of a scorched community garden I’m going to need to make a nice donation to the city to patch up.”
“Deal. Catch you at yours.”
And with that, Rhodey shot upward and tore through an unshattered panel of glass on his way out of the garden, and Tony was left blinking as the shards rained down, leaving him alone in the bleak darkness the broken remains of his armour spread out amongst his feet in a sprawl of razed gold and burnt red.
“…and he has the audacity to call me the fucking drama queen.”
-----------------------------
Tony swore that Rhodey had done it on purpose, leaving him to make his own way back to the Malibu mansion, to give Tony enough time to ponder and think in the back of the car as Happy drove him on home. (Because Tony wasn't going to drive in this state, alright? Sue him for it.)
Not enough time to come up with a hell of a bullshit excuse, of which Tony was the master of, but long enough for Tony to recognise that there was no way that he could make a bullshit excuse up for this. Tony was sure of that, and it all boiled down to a perfect little list that was all too easy to dot point in his head.
One: Rhodey was right in saying that Tony had moved quicker than any human could do, because it was the truth. Tony was enhanced, no person could feasibly pull off what he had without enhancements. Not even speed alone could have allowed him to manage it. Reaction time, flexibility, force, training- all factored in, and he was sure Rhodey, Mr Military Trained, would recognise that in him too. Sure, it wasn’t of the same vein in its entirety, but there was a strict rigour to Tony when he…fought without the suit, one that leant toward military precision, and one Rhodey would undoubtedly recognise. Thus: bullshitting on that front? Impossible.
Two: Rhodey was as stubborn as he was. Stubborn, and with an affinity for dealing with Tony like no other had managed to do until Pepper had ambled on along with her fiery wit and intense personality, one that lead Tony to obey rather than sass and fight back against every word she said- and oh, let it be known that Tony was not one to like directions or orders, thanks, he had had nearly a decade of taking orders without question, and he was deathly fucking allergic to it by this point, naturally, so when he willingly listened to someone? Fuck, it was a special thing.
Three: Tony was tired. Tired of lying. Tired of hiding. Of plastering on an easy, false smile and lying through his teeth to one of the people that he trusted most in the world on something this big, this intrinsically important in the scheme of what made him…him. Tony would like to lie and say HYDRA hadn’t changed him, hadn’t left their mark on him- but the simple truth was that they had. They’d shaped Tony to some degree, not entirely anymore like they once had, but even the smallest marks of their influence were left in him now, and he knew that full well. Hiding that part of him away was draining, especially when it came with the added loss of making him feel guilty for lying to Rhodey.
So yes. Tony was very sure Rhodey had essentially left Tony to ponder the upcoming unpleasant conversation, because this right here? Was like the adult equivalent of sticking him in the corner and giving him a time out. The only difference was that it was mostly self-inflicted, and Tony was stuck in a car as his crisis mounted.
Fantastic, right? Fucking wonderful.
It was times like this that Tony was glad, if anything, for HYDRA’s influence, because the anxiety was easily ignorable, expression easily controlled if he focused on one thing. If he focused on a mission, self-imposed as it was as he came to his resolution.
Tell Rhodey the truth.
Simple, yet overwhelmingly difficult in contrast, a perfect contradiction. Sounded great on paper, pretty shitty in practice. Deft fingers yank through tangled locks, scalp stinging with the viciousness that he used to tug through resistant knots in his matted tresses, pausing only at the vibration that tingled at his thigh.
He knew who it was before he’d even tugged his phone out, or before his screen had taken to lighting up the entire backseat of the car.
Found your mess in the garden, Tosha. Least you could have done is yank out the shrapnel you left in our bad guy of the week, so I don’t have to haphazardly falsify the SHIELD report to keep your cover. NR
Sorry. Had bigger fish to fry. Rhodey wants to talk. TS
About? NR
You know what. TS
I can guess. Your suit being in tatters and all, and him being a witness to you effectively skewering a man with a makeshift knife. NR
Mm. Fun, right? I made do with what I had, you shouldn’t tut so much, Talia, I know you’re pleased as punch that I did it without my fancy suit. TS
The suit is cheating. It’s making you lose your touch. NR
Says the woman I pinned to the mat yesterday in a spar. TS
I let you win. NR
I’m sure you did, itsy-bitsy, I’m sure you did. TS
Watch your back, your sarcasm’s not done you any favors. NR
I’m terrified. Shaking in my one-thousand-dollar custom made Italian leather shoes. TS
As you should be, Antoshka. NR
Are you going to tell him? NR
I’m lacking options on that front. But even if I wasn’t- I’d tell. It’s time, right? Spill the beans, rip the band-aid off, get it over and done with. TS
If you’re sure. I’ll be around after, if you need, but I doubt that’ll be necessary. Go slow. Don’t rush. Be honest. NR
Your faith is unwavering. TS
Mm. In Colonel Rhodes? For good reason. NR
“Boss? We’re home. You sure you’re going to be fine to get in on your own? Because if need be, I could offer you an arm or a hand.”
Tony’s eyes flick away from his phone then, light going dim and then off entirely as Tony pockets his phone hastily, gaze meeting Happy’s in the rear-view mirror. “I’m fine, Hap. I mean, I look like shit, sure, but hey, what’s new, I crawl out of my lab looking like this sometimes. Go home, relax, try not to think about the run-in with murder bots tonight,” Tony drawls as he slips out of the car, shutting the car door with an audible slam behind him, and despite the new barrier between them, he could still hear Happy interjecting and huffing back at him without pause.
“…like a fucking comic book, boss, you’re turning my life into a fucking superhero action movie in real life.”
“Home, Happy. Grumble in the car, then go for a bath. Toss in a bath bomb, some smelling salts, I hear Lush has good bath bombs, pink might soothe you-“ and that was all Tony got out before Happy was rolling his eyes, lips tilted into an easy, exasperated smile, and then the car was flooring it away from him.
Joking. Tony did it best when he was stressed.
So, all the time, really, but particularly right now.
Never before had the door of his own Malibu mansion looked as daunting as it did right now, knowing Rhodey was sitting somewhere behind it, waiting.
‘Hey, Rhodey, turns out, the reason I’m like a fucking Naruto character is because I’m a genetically engineered supersoldier made by neo-Nazis, surprise!’
Yep.
This could only go well.
Steeling himself, feet shoulder-width apart, shoulders back and mouth drawn into a flat line, Tony steels himself, and almost as if he was on autopilot, he drifts forward.
It didn’t take long to find Rhodey, as Tony ghosts along through the rooms of his own house, JARVIS lighting the way as he went, and if Tony hadn’t been so suddenly on edge, he might have found the vision of Rhodey sprawled out on his couch in the knock-off Hammer-fied armour with his hand in a packet of Doritos amusing.
“You took your time.”
“Traffic is a bitch during the aftermath of a mini-robot war, apparently, who would have guessed?” Tony crosses the space then, fingers drifting forward into the side panel of the armour, and thankfully, the manual release mechanism is still there. The armour falls away from Rhodey in a scattering of grey-toned hues that tumble onto the couch or onto the floor, leaving Rhodey bare as Tony.
Levelling the playing field.
He settles then, moving to sit silently on the other end of the couch, tucking his legs up beneath him, haphazardly crossed yet still comfortable, the silence only broken by Rhodey’s razor-sharp tone, impassive, immovable, brokering no argument.
“You need to start explaining everything. Now.”
He inhales.
A wavering, quiet, painful thing that speaks in louder volumes than his voice does in that moment, curling up in his chest tightly enough that it feels like he’s suffocating on it, like he’s gagging on words and unable to speak them aloud- because he’s never had to tell anyone this. Natasha and Clint had always known. Natasha had been there with him, Clint had found out from Natasha and had been around for his recovery, but Tony hadn’t whispered a word to anyone else of his true fate on that awful cold December night.
His vindictive admittance to Obadiah didn’t count of course, not like this.
But, despite the unwillingness to talk, despite the fear that haunts him, the awful choking realisation that he could lose Rhodey tonight, Tony breathes-
And he speaks.
“December 16th, 1991.” It’s impassive in return, a statement, carefully phrased, dispassionate in tone, but he’s sure his eyes say everything. To Rhodey, Tony’s always been an open book like that, and going by Rhodey’s stillness, the apprehension that flicks through the warm depths of his gaze, he reads Tony as well as he ever has.
“It starts there. Everything starts there. I wish I could say it haunts me because I witnessed the murder of my parents in front of me, but it doesn’t. Maybe I should feel guilty that that’s not the primary reason that night haunts me, but then again, maybe not. My kidnappers were kind of shit, Rhodey-bear. Not nice, but even less nice than I ever let on to them being considering they’re a group of assholes who’ve lingered on past World War Two when Captain America was meant to have gotten rid of them alongside the Nazi regime. HYDRA. That was who was there, and me living? Not a good thing, you could guess.”
Rhodey doesn’t say anything, not yet, but there’s a dawning horror in Rhodey’s eyes, one Tony looks away to avoid seeing, because he doesn’t want to see the sympathy, not when he hasn’t gotten to the worst part. Because right now, Rhodey’s only seeing Tony as the victim- he’s yet to hear about the victims Tony has made in turn.
“So. I end up with the bad guys. It might have been okay if they planned to do normal bad guy shit to me, but no, they went and upped the ante. See, apparently daddy dearest had re-replicated the serum, and with that in hand, they wanted some test runs, some investments. Who better than the newly impressionable genius they’d ripped out of the wreckage right? So, one out of five, I get into the guinea pig experiment, and voila, I’m super soldiered up. Sure, not as strong as Cap might have been, but I’m fast, quick, tactical minded. Perfect assassin material, and they knew that, but I didn’t want to play nice.”
“Tony.”
Rhodey’s voice is like fractured steel, like fatigued metal finally shearing along the fissures, raw and sharp and awful, and Tony glances away from the wall for a beat, only to find Rhodey half a couch length closer- and then Rhodey’s on him. His arms are winding around Tony, who remains absolutely stock-still, confusion lancing through him as limbs tighten around him firmly, squashing him against a broad, muscular chest that’s heaving with exaggerated inhalations, like Rhodey’s barely keeping his composure, and Tony honestly can’t tell if he’s pissed or upset.
He can’t bring himself to care.
It’s like coming home all over again, like that night he had walked back into his childhood home and found Rhodey waiting for him, like that moment that Rhodey had dragged him in for a hug, like finally being able to breathe right for the first time in years past the searing agony that existed forever in the space of his chest, a space that was now occupied fittingly with a machine of his own making that radiated that same ache on a physical level. Discordant but symphonious in their co-existence.
“Tones.”
‘I can guess what they did’, Rhodey’s tone says, wordless but oh so honest. ‘I can guess what they did, and I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. Let it out.’
And Tony does.
With trembling hands (traitorously trembling fucking hands) Tony grasps at Rhodey, fingers coiling into fists, grasping at Rhodey’s shirt by the fistful, holding on for dear life as he lets his head fall against Rhodey’s shoulder as he ploughs on, tension never once evaporating from the stiff line of his frame.
“They had a process. They’d done it to someone else before. Tortured. Broke them down. They did the same with me. Hurt until I was left wide open, and when I was, they stuck me in the chair. Electricity right to the brain. Being a supersoldier means I survive it, sure, survive, but forget. Again and again and again. I forgot. You. My parents. Ana. Jarvis. Everything. Myself. Tony Stark? No idea who he was, I was just…existing, nameless, given a title, given a position, and trained. The Assistant. I was an undercover Russian operative, an assassin- which sure, I know, sounds like I’m pulling your leg, me, Russian? Tony Stark, an assassin? Bullshit, right? Sounds insane, right?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tone-“
“Nope. No, no, don’t do that. I’m not done. Do you know how many people I killed? Men? Women? Children? They point, I shoot. They tell me to jump, I ask how high, they don’t need me anymore, they stick me in the freezer till they need me for something else, then they defrost, set me on a new mission, train me some more, so on, so forth. I killed people, Rhodey. Without blinking, Without question. Innocents. Soldiers sometimes. I could have been close to killing you more than a dozen times without ever knowing.”
“Shut up. Right now, shut it.”
“Shut up? Are you telling me to-“
“Shut up. Yes. Cause you just said it yourself. You were…fuck, you were fucking brainwashed, Tony. You were held under duress to the extreme, you were a prisoner, tortured, brainwashed, and they treated you like some sort of…fucking robot to push their agenda. You just said it yourself. They point, you shoot. They point. You shoot. To me, that sounds like they’re the wielder, and you were the weapon. You were the gun. You can’t blame yourself for that-“
Tony snorts at that. “You’d be mistaken on that front. Blaming myself? I’m a pro at that.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, because it wasn’t your choice. If you’d had a choice, would you have done it?”
“…No.”
“If you had a choice, would you have fought them rather than obeyed their directives?”
“Yes.”
“If you had a choice, would you ever have chosen that path for you?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then there you go. So stop, because you never deserved any of that. No one deserves what they did to you.”
Rhodey’s grip tightens then, hauls him in closer, and Tony…lets him. He lets Rhodey coddle him close, lets Rhodey push his nose into his hair as something in him finally uncoils, tension evaporating and leaving him space to breathe again, because Rhodey…wasn’t going anywhere. Rhodey was staying, Rhodey didn’t blame him for the things he’d done, didn’t put him at fault despite not knowing every sorry detail of his dark history, and that? That was enough to have Tony screwing his eyes shut and properly looping his own arms around Rhodey in return, breathing in a ragged breath against his best friend’s throat.
Fuck, sometimes he loved it when Natasha was right.
“You’re alright, Tony. Everything’s fine.”
And yes. Yeah. Alright. Maybe everything would be fine.
For a while, Tony was willing to let himself believe that, as Rhodey whispered words of promise into his hair, and Tony took comfort in the knowledge that Rhodey wouldn’t abandon him no matter what life threw at them, because this? This was probably the hardest bump in the road that anyone could ever have in a friendship, right?
Tony fucking hoped so.
-----------------------------
Rhodey doesn’t look at him differently after it. Rhodey only pulls Tony into his arms and tells him that he never deserved to endure that.
Rhodey doesn’t let go for a whole three hours.
(Tony’s glad, even if it’s just because he hasn’t lost Rhodey.)
Rhodey, Nat and Clint know now. That’s more than he ever thought would.
-----------------------------
For a long time, everything seems perfect. As perfect as could possibly be- really, it’s the longest stretch of time Tony feels he’s had in a while where things haven’t gone disastrously, terribly wrong. Tony doesn’t trust anyone or anything for ages, even when things are going as well as they are, and he’s fully expecting for something to come down out of the sky any moment and crash through his new and beautiful Stark Tower at any second like some sort of bad horror movie.
It doesn’t happen, but Tony still doesn’t trust anything, and apparently, he’s right to, because what feels like minutes later, he’s on a helicarrier up in the goddamn sky bickering with the Original Supersoldier™ after having battled back an alien who also happens to be a Norse god, and Clint’s gone AWOL and everything’s gone to fucking shit.
Shocker plot twist, he thinks, hands rolled into fists as he glares up at the asshole who thinks he’s lesser than he is simply because Tony has a habit of quipping and snarking at everyone and acting like a general asshole. Either way, no matter how much Nat goes to vouch for him, everything only gets worse, and fucking hot damn, he wants to punch Captain America in his stupidly perfect teeth and go back in time to kick his dad’s ass, and then his kid self’s ass for ever idolising the single-minded stubborn pig of an asshole in front of him.
Really, who had decided Steve Rogers was the right guy for the job when he was practically begging to go for a few rounds- a few rounds Tony could undoubtedly use to put Cap in his place when he realised Tony was not a pushover and Tony wasn’t going to be bullied by the dick- but they never got that far. The only thing that diffuses it is yet another arising problem, really, and then, they’re scrabbling around, Steve even going as far as to try to help him to his feet when Tony trips with the force of it. (Tony, the petty bastard that he is, yanks himself away, and Steve, the stubborn bastard that he is, helps him anyway.)
Someone (Clint, he finds out later) blows up one of the engines on the helicarrier, and Tony nearly dies again, stuck in a human blender that either would have chopped him up into fairy dust sized pieces, or have pushed him past the limits of G-Forces anyone could withstand and have Tony dying just from the pressure exerted on his body.
Phil dies, Loki tries to take over the world with an alien army, Tony nearly dies again flying up through a portal created by the Tesseract and wakes up with the Hulk roaring in his face.
For the first time in forever, Tony feels like his age rather than his biological age- in other words, he feels thirty-eight, not thirty. It’s not pleasant, and Tony really would like a refund please, his list of traumas is getting too extensive and he was already problematic enough to begin with.
Fuck his life.
Really.
Fuck his life.
-----------------------------
Despite how Steve and Tony got off on the wrong foot, they find that when there isn’t an alien invasion pressing down on their backs and stressing them out…they actually get along well. Really well, actually. Absurdly well. Somehow, through movie nights and Tony showing Steve the grandiose new future Steve needs to acclimatise too, Steve wiggles into Tony’s close-knit circle of friends quickly enough and joins the ranks with the rest of the patchwork of a family that Tony has. Steve wiggles his way into everything, and soon enough, there are pictures mounted on walls throughout the tower, sketches done in graphite and full colour and charcoal and paints, with Steve's signature in the bottom corners of each one. Steve's vinyl player is propped up in the main space and vinyls scattered across side tables. Steve’s an innocent soul, which means he probably shouldn’t be around Tony, but Nicky hasn’t stolen him away yet, so Tony keeps up his long deluge of spitting out pop culture references on the daily until Steve begins to catch onto them.
The Avengers work well together, too. Brucie-bear lives in the upstairs section of a renovated floor that’s essentially Hulk proof, and Thor stops by to steal all his pop tarts whenever he stops by on Midgard and he’s not with Jane Foster. Clint takes up collecting Avengers merchandise and pawning it off on everyone and decorating the insides of Tony’s vents with it too, Tony’s sure. Tony’s sporting Captain America’s shield emblazoned socks and an oversized mug that’s shaped like the Iron Man helmet one day, and then a Hulk shirt the next, simply because he may or may not find it as amusing as their resident archer. Nat’s got every reason to stay with him now, and she’s quick to take the floor below his, while Clint’s in the one above.
It’s nice, the Avengers are all an addition to the hectic and confusing thing Tony calls his life, but it works.
It’s Steve though, that he really gets, and as time goes on…Tony wants to tell him more and more about his own past. Of HYDRA, most notably, but he’s not sure how that’ll go down, considering Steve dove a plane into the water thinking he was saving lives, which he was, but that he’d also taken out HYDRA in the process.
It’s when he gets a call from Nat to come to DC that he realises he doesn’t have much of a choice in telling Steve, not really. Nat and Steve are tucked away into a small little building, away from sight, and out of SHEILD’s radar, which he can’t blame them for when they tell him SHIELD is very probably compromised.
“You need to tell him, Tony.”
“Tell me what?” Steve asks, sounding confused, but there’s a firmness to his eyes, something that says Steve doesn’t like having secrets kept from him.
“I can’t just drop that on him- Steve, I can’t just drop that on you. It’s- how is that even relevant?”
“You know a lot about how HYDRA operates, Tony. You have intimate experience that can be valuable in helping us.”
“Tony’s got experience? What’s that meant to mean?”
“Natalia. Shut up.”
“Antoshka, it was going to come out at some point or another.”
“No, no it wasn’t. Enough people know. No one needs to know beyond the three that already do. If I could forget, I would, I’d sear it out of my brain. I wish I never remembered that much.”
“Tony,” Steve interjects, voice flat now, and Tony can tell he’s taking it the wrong way, but Tony bites on his tongue and keeps his mouth shut. Plant your feet like a tree.
“Antoshka. They have the Winter Soldier on their side. He’s out and awake. This might be your chance. I know you never stopped looking for him.”
Yasha. Tony’s eyes go distant, gaze directed to the wall as he thinks that over. Yasha. Yasha is out there. Yasha is with them, fighting for them, but he’s within grasp and this may be the only chance Tony has to get him free. The only chance to save him like Nat and Clint saved him, the only chance that Tony can get him out and help Yasha find out who he really was, just like Tony rediscovered himself.
“HYDRA caused the car crash. Mom and dad’s- I was in the car,” Tony says then, says before he can take it back, before he can overthink it or double guess himself.
Steve goes paler than Tony ever thought someone can go, because Steve’s already pale, likely from his Irish genetics, and Steve looks like he’s been kicked in the stomach, because Tony had told Steve the half-lie version of this story before. He’d told Steve he’d been kidnapped and held by his kidnappers for years, and Steve apologised for days after Tony had told the story- and now Steve can put two and two together and put a name to his kidnappers faces.
“You mean…. HYDRA. They’re the ones who took you.”
“Exactly. And you dealt with them before- you know it wasn’t as peachy as my version I painted for the media is. You know what they do to people. They stripped me down to nothing. One of my dad’s work colleagues sold him out for having replicated the serum. HYDRA wanted to acquire it, and someone decided I’d be the perfect guinea pig, to replace Zola. You know who he was as well, and you know why they were thinking I’d be such a good fit.”
Steve stumbles then, sags back onto the bed, and looking like he wants to be sick no matter how straight-backed and put together he’s trying to seem. Tony pays it no heed, he just slips into the headspace he’d used before to report to his handlers on a mission- distant and removed, a recount with little feeling behind it, because if Tony lets that feeling slip into his words for a second, he knows he won’t be able to finish the story at all.
“They pumped me full of the stuff, stuck me under radiation until the serum took, and then when they were satisfied I wouldn’t break under it all, they began to torture me. Whatever they had on hand- they could burn me, cut me, pull me apart, and I’d heal up good as new for the next day. They did it until I was broken down and defeated, and then, they stuck me in the chair- the electricity they shove through you doesn’t kill you- but it wipes you, till you’re a clean slate. They do it, over, and over, and over again, reiterating protocols, trigger words and the like, until you are what they want you to be- you have no morals left, because by the end of it, you’re not human.”
He stops there, and his breath hitches painfully, and Natalia soothes a hand over his arm, before she takes over for him, and god, is he glad she does, because Steve is staring at him like Steve’s suffering every bit of pain Tony’s repressing, like he’s suffering for him. “Antoshka was known in the intelligence community as the Assistant. A Russian based operative who worked only with the Winter Soldier. Both of them were a team that no one wanted pointed their way. If they were- you wouldn’t be alive twenty-four hours after the hit was placed. It was a guarantee. I met Antoshka in the Red Room, back in Russia. The Assistant and the Winter Soldier trained some of the younger Black Widows. Back when I was still going through training, only the Winter Soldier was around, but after, when the Assistant showed up, I was there. I’m the one who managed to get Antoshka away from them, but he spent eight years with HYDRA, doing what they told him to do, and something tells me, Tony will know how to combat what they’re bringing to the table. He’ll know how to deal with the Winter Soldier…and I have the feeling that the Project we’re up against is of Antoshka’s making.”
“Project?”
“Insight.”
“Fuck.”
“My sentiments exactly, really.”
Steve’s standing again then, pressing close, and hesitantly reaching for Tony, interrupting the line of slow questioning between Natasha and Tony, mouth pressed into a grim line. Tony goes without flinching, pressing into Steve’s chest, and patting the guy lightly on the back. Steve's arms immediately circle him, tugging him in close, arms trembling just enough for him to feel.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t kidnap me and turn me into a mindless assassin puppet.”
“No, but I thought I got rid of- “
“No. Nope, no, don’t even go there, no taking on any of the blame just because you feel like you not wiping out HYDRA in your valiant effort to save lives rolls over to you having any sort of indirect part of what happened to me, because it doesn’t. The blame lies with the people who did it. I’m pushing it behind me now, because I really don’t want to go into all the terrible shit they did when Project Insight is apparently the thing they’re planning on bringing out.”
Steve doesn’t pull away even as they continue talking, which doesn’t surprise him at all, but there’s something about the warmth of a broad chest that continues to have his mind spiralling back to stolen nights with Yasha, and the faintest, barely there smiles Tony cherishes today.
“Did you make it, Tony?”
“Insight? Yes. Early on. Standard targeting system, I didn’t make them the thing they would have to use to target people, nor the weaponry, but I gave them all the coding and programming for it. I already have a virus that’ll destroy it.”
“Already?” Natasha chimes, and Tony pulls away from Steve just to shoot her the most offended look he can muster. “I made it. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that they have something like that, and I wasn’t prepped to take it out if they decided to play that card. Of course I already have the virus. It just needs to be shoved into the main console of whatever they’re using as their giant oversized gun meant to take out everyone who could possibly oppose them.”
“You’re on that list.”
“I know. If I wasn’t, I’d worry over what the fuck they were doing.”
“Either way,” Steve eventually interjects, quiet but strong, “we’ve got to get a move on.”
-----------------------------
Natasha helps him get outfitted- he knows going up against Yasha in the Iron Man suit won’t trigger any memories that could possibly get Yasha to stop, so, he decides to tug out his old uniform he’d stashed away long ago. It’s all black tac, hidden weapons scattered everywhere throughout the getup, and when Steve sees him for the first time in it, Steve has to pause.
“Was this how you looked? Back then. When you were with them?”
“Exactly. This is my old tac suit. I can still smell a hundred things on this I don’t want to smell, and it fits just like it used to- which isn’t really making me feel any better, but that'll give Yasha a fighting chance at recognising me. I’d shave, but I doubt I need to do that for him to recognise me- if he can recognise me at all. It’s all dependent on the last time he was wiped- memories start arising the longer you go without them. The serum fixes the damage the electricity does to your brain over time. I’m speaking from experience. I’m practically good as new now.”
“Good as new, apart from the fact the trigger words can still affect you,” Natasha states, and Tony lifts a hand and waggles a finger at her for that. “Uh-uh, no need to worry anymore, I’ve got hearing aids in, modified ones. Every sound is selectively filtered through. If the aids detect any Russian at all, they won’t filter it through. Speech is all delayed, so it can be filtered, but sounds won’t, so I won’t have some guy sneaking up on me. If I can’t hear the words, the words won’t affect me. That’s better than nothing, right?”
“It’s better at least. The question remaining is if you’re ready to face off against HYDRA- if you’re ready to fight the Asset.”
Tony’s eyes flicker to Natasha then, and he smiles, just slightly. “It’s my only chance I’ve got of saving him, isn’t it?”
They go silent after that, and even Steve has to take a second to process Tony’s dedication to getting the Winter Soldier out, but he knows Steve understands- Steve knows that the guy they’re likely to cross very soon in the future was the same as Tony- a free man, who was turned into something he has no desire to be. Surely, they have an obligation to get him out of that toxic environment and help him find himself again.
Tony owed Yasha so much- and thought he wasn’t going to push, he loved Yasha. There was no way of denying it, he loves Yasha, and even if that love was formulated in a time where neither of them were in their right minds, even though that love was shared by two people who didn’t know what it was they were feeling- Tony knows that that’s what it is. There was no force behind it, it was two fractured souls stuck in the darkness, who ended up being each other’s light. Tony would be there for Yasha now. He’d failed Yasha for over ten years now- he owed Yasha freedom.
And he owed HYDRA hell.
-----------------------------
The Asset crashes the car. Not a simple crash, either, no, the Asset lands on the hood, rips the steering wheel out of Sam’s hands and out of the car completely, and everyone goes tumbling. They’re all quick to recover, because not recovering? Results in death, and with the way things are going right now with SHIELD, which is really just infected beyond all belief with HYDRA operatives (Aunt Peggy would be fuming if she ever found out about that, he was sure) death seems like it’s definitely on the table if they fuck up badly.
Tony’s not really paying much attention to it though and is merely staring at the Asset as he stands straight, and that familiar metal arm whirrs as it clicks into place as Yasha rolls his shoulders back. And then he’s drawing out a gun, and Steve’s blocking bullets with his shield while Tony is trying to mentally prepare himself for this, trying to mentally prepare for going head to head with Yasha, with Yasha likely going for constant kill strikes.
Tony breathes, slow, deep and careful, and then Yasha is there, and Tony’s falling back into familiar movement as he ducks and weaves in, slashing across the Asset’s tactical gear, and blocking the knife that moves to stab through his back with his own, the sound of metal against metal a grating sound in his ears. The arm comes down then, and Tony winds himself around the Asset, using weight to his advantage and managing to get the Asset’s attention entirely on him now that he’s identified himself as the primary threat in the way of his current objective.
“That’s right, Yasha. Bring it this way.”
Yasha doesn’t even do so much as twitch, and he can hear Sam cursing up a shocked storm behind them as Tony and Yasha engage in a battle too quick to follow with unenhanced eyes, knives twirling through the air, grips being adjusted, modified, and then adjusted again the moment that the other moves. It’s a chaotic, perfectly choreographed dance, but Tony doesn’t let that lull him into a false sense of security. He knows the Asset has more than his fair share of cards that he can pull out of his metaphorical sleeves that could end up with Tony being strung up like a lamb for slaughter if he gets too complacent.
While the Asset goes for killing blows, all Tony is trying to do is buy time, to find a way to coax Yasha back to himself, at least a little, enough that he tunes out the handlers. The dance gets faster and more violent. Tony’s tossed off the top of the overpass, and he barely manages to catch himself in a perfect landing before Yasha’s bearing down on him again, more viciously with every strike, like he’s getting frustrated that Tony isn’t dead yet.
Steve’s there then, and between the two of them, they’re making some better ground. Steve’s covering spots Tony doesn’t think to cover, trying to open up more of Yasha’s stance with the distraction of two so Tony can get a foothold. He finds that in the form of a very familiar move, vaulting off the side of a van and getting his thighs around the Asset’s neck, before swinging his own body weight toward the ground. Like every other time he’s done the move, Yasha topples, but he’s in that poised and all too familiar pose he usually favours when he catches himself, and he knows just where and how to strike then, aiming to slam his hand into the other man’s sternum, which sends him stumbling back two steps, which leaves Yasha open for Tony to slam a kick up, and sending Yasha flying backward.
The Asset’s mask twists in the air as Yasha topples, going tumbling until he finally falls to a halt, and slowly drags himself to his feet, more than enough time for Tony to pick up his knives, and for Steve to ready his shield again.
The first glance at the Asset’s face has Tony’s heart pounding. He’s just as he was back then, a little older, from however many times he’s been pulled out of cryo over the years, that familiar smattering of stubble trailing along the line of the Asset’s jaw, steely eyes locking with his own as brunet locks flutter in the wind. He can see that figure in his mind’s eye against the wintry white of Russian snow, against the dark night, tucked away into tree lines, against raging fires, against cool lit rooms. He can see that silhouette everywhere.
And it’s then that Steve speaks, and the silence is shattered.
“Bucky?”
“Who the hell is Bucky?”
Tony blinks, and that’s all the time it takes for Yasha to lift his gun, and for the others to drive him away with a well-placed bang.
Yasha is gone, and Tony falls to his knees with a breathless murmur of confusion. “Bucky?”
Steve looks like he’s fracturing apart inside, and sure, everyone who’s heard of Cap knows about Bucky, even briefly, but if that… if that’s Bucky… then HYDRA’s had him for decades. The realisation makes his stomach twist painfully, and the guilt that rises in him is all the more painful. “Bucky,” Steve manages, a single confirmation that lingers heavily in the air.
He should have gotten Yasha out quicker. Faster. Sooner. Tony survived eight years and came out scarred beyond belief, no one deserves the hell of living out over half a century with those monsters.
The choppers come then, and Rumlow is there, Rumlow who he only recognises because Steve’s told him about the asshole. Tony hisses out dangerous Russian curses at people who pull their guns and try to execute Steve in the street, and a few shrink down on themselves, even if just for a moment. Rumlow isn’t fazed. Like every asshole too acclimatised to violence-
He just smiles.
-----------------------------
They’re bundled up into a van, and he knows full well all they’re doing is getting them out of the public eye so that they can execute them. Tony stares down the two assholes in the back with him, and slumps down in his seat, steering his eyes to Steve, who’s speaking with Nat and Sam on how Bucky would have survived.
“I think I need to get you hooked up with Rhodey. Both of you have a penchant for blaming yourselves for things involving your best friends. Look, it’s not your fault. He fell from a ravine, even serumed up like he is- it seems a hell of a way to fall, so I can’t blame you for not going back to find what you think would have been a corpse- he wouldn’t blame you either. The best we can do now is find a way out of this mess and help him. That’s all there is to it. It’ll take time for healing to start, but when it does… he’ll need you there.”
Steve still looks like he’s swimming in guilt, but he nods regardless, swallowing it down and trying to take Tony’s words in. “Thanks, Tony. You’re sure that’ll work?”
“You just need to trigger him enough. Say enough that’ll bring him back. His name didn’t- Yasha didn’t either.”
“Why do you call him Yasha?” Sam asks then, curious and tilting his head slightly to the side.
“I… asked him one day. Said I wished we had names, and asked him that if he could pick one, what would it be? He said Yasha. Russian, diminutive, a nickname for Yakov, which is the Russian equivalent of James, I guess.”
“James?” Steve asks, sharp, eyes filling with a whole new kind of fire, one Tony recognises as hope.
“James.”
“James Buchanan Barnes. That’s all of it. Maybe- maybe he knew? Maybe he’s still in there, close to the surface after all.”
“Let’s hope so, otherwise all this is a suicide mission.”
“Y’all are talking like we’re not in the back of a van with the bad guys,” Sam stated easily then, and Tony just smiles.
“It’s one against five. Who do you think will win?”
“One? There’s t- “
Hill chooses then to move, and a single shot is all that’s needed to dispatch of that one.
“I was wondering how long you were going to sit there and watch us bicker, Agent Hill. Glad to see you though, it makes this easier. Don’t suppose you have an express ticket to get the fuck out of here, by any chance?”
She does, of course, and the five of them sneak off, leaving Rumlow to scream in frustration behind them. The battle’s not over yet- seems kind of stupid that they thought they’d be keeping them down when they had people to save… and when they had Bucky to save on top of that.
-----------------------------
Two things come out of their meet up at a secret facility, three if you count Nat being patched up back to working order again.
“Mother fucker. Of course you’re not dead. You’d outlive god trying to have the last word, wouldn’t you, Fury? Don’t answer that, I know you would.”
“Stark.”
“The one and only, Nicky. You’ve been keeping secrets, clearly. All underground bases and the whole not dead but pretending to be dead thing going on.”
“I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets, am I? Seems like you’ve kept a lot of yours going by the way you went toe to toe with the Winter Soldier on all the news outlets blasting the coverage across the world. I think that’s a bigger secret.”
“Says the guy who had a feeling there was something going on under his nose and didn’t say anything about it until doomsday is out our doorstep.”
“Project Insight was not something I saw coming- “
“Great, because you’re lucky I was the one who made Project insight, otherwise we’d all be screwed right now. Jammers won’t work. This is my coding, so you can put that briefcase away, because those chips won’t do shit. Mine though- mine will.”
“You made Project Insight?”
“Under duress. Well, duress is a rather light term for it, I’d call it forced to do it because I was programmed to do it more than much else, but under duress works too.”
“…Do I even want to fucking know the whole story right now?”
“Nope. You can get a recount from Spangles if you’re desperate. Right now, we need to get moving. Tell us what you know.”
“They’re going to use the Helicarriers,” Hill interjects then. “Once the Helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites becoming fully weaponized. They’re going to take out anyone who’s a threat.”
“Jasper Sitwell told us that much,” Steve murmured, raking a hand through his hair and taking a deep and slow breath. “Tony? Show us what you’ve got.”
“My pleasure, Cap.”
-----------------------------
He and Steve decide to stick together. Sam’s talk of not being able to help Bucky gets them both really riled up, but Steve at least speaks calmly and clearly, while Tony’s resisting the urge to fatally stab the floor to death, which is impossible, naturally, but it’s that, or punching Sam in the face and insisting that hey, he turned out alright, didn’t he? Give Yasha a fucking chance.
Natasha brushes her hand through his hair one last time before she pulls up her disguise. “Good luck, Antoshka. Stay safe.”
Tony smiles, and offers a nod, before reciting with ease “To hell with it.” Russians were superstitious, and for once, Tony wasn’t willing to experience a luck reversal by saying thank you. Natasha laughs as she turns away, bright and airy, and in the tension-filled moment, it gives them a little reprieve, at least for a while.
The tension snaps after Steve makes his announcement to everyone in the Triskelion, and from there, it’s an uphill battle, Tony slipping into his suit and letting it click into place as he slots his arms into place under Steve’s armpits. “Hold tight, this might get real fucking ugly real fucking fast.”
In all honesty, the first helicarrier was a breeze. Sam got the second, and it’s by sheer luck that Tony manages to get Steve and himself into the third without being blown up, and they’re down to the last chip, the last helicarrier, the last hurdle-
And Yasha is standing in front of that hurdle and in the way of them completing the mission. He stares, eyes staring in that familiar, narrowed and calculating way that Tony knows means he’s been wiped very recently.
“Bucky,” Steve begins, and Tony’s surprised that Yasha hasn’t made a move yet to eliminate them, but Tony doesn’t complain, he uses that to step out of his suit and leave it on sentry behind him, so Bucky can see him, so Bucky has a chance of recognising both he and Steve again, like he knows Bucky did when that flicker of confusion had sparked in his eyes when Steve had said his name earlier. “We gotta do this. If we don’t, a lot of people are going to die. Please. Don’t make us fight you.”
Bucky steps forward then, and stands resolute, and carefully, Tony lets his own voice carry, Russian words spilling in stilted sentences from his lips, like they used to in the hesitant moments when they’d wanted more but didn’t know how to ask for it. Bucky halts then, goes painfully, perfectly still, and Tony walks forward half the length of the walkway, stopping when Bucky seems to get a little tense again.
“Yasha…do you remember me, Yasha?”
“…No.”
Tony felt that strike harshly in his chest, like a knife pushing through him, a red-hot knife, even, but he doesn’t pay much attention to it. “You do. You know me, you know Steve too. Steven Grant Rogers. Little guy from Brooklyn, used to be a stick in shoes, you two were best friends. HYDRA took that from you. I know because they did the same for me. Do you remember who I am, Yasha?”
“Assistant. You’re…Mechanic. Assistant. My Assistant.”
“That’s it. I am.”
“You’re different.”
“I’m free, Yasha. You could be free too. You and me, we used to dream of it. I used to run my fingers through your hair, and you’d press your lips to my temple and say you wish we never had to go back. That we never had to be apart again. They used to separate us all the time, Yasha. We’d be together whenever we had a mission, but as soon as it was done, they’d pull us away from each other and stick us back into the ice.”
The Asset frowns, eyes unsure, and Steve shifts closer. Tony knows they don’t have much time for this conversation- he just needs to get Steve to go behind and put the damn chip in, and then they’d need to find a way off of this thing all within the limited time frame before this helicarrier tried to take out people who were a threat to HYDRA.
“You left.”
“No. Do you remember Natalia? The Red Room. We were on a mission. Natalia was there, protecting a diplomat- she had a friend in the tree line, I was compromised, and the handlers pulled you because they didn’t want to lose us both.”
“You never came back.”
“I couldn’t find you. HYDRA hid you. I tried. I tried, I pulled apart every bit of every lead I got my hands onto,” Tony murmured, stepping closer, a breath away now, tipping his head back to meet those familiar eyes, wanting to reach out and touch.
He can hear Steve, trying and struggling to process that Tony had more of a connection with his brainwashed best friend than he thought, but Steve continued on, and by some miracle, Bucky lets Steve pass him, because Tony reaches out, and splays his hand over the centre of Bucky’s chest, while his other hand comes up to trace that familiar pattern across the metal arm, which has Bucky’s breath hitching in his chest, clearly struggling with the memories.
The chip slides home with an audible little click, but he and Bucky and pressed close now, breathing in quiet little breaths, breathing in one another’s air and savouring the feel of it. It’s familiar, heart-achingly, impossibly familiar, and Bucky looks torn, torn over having failed his mission, and over leaning in closer, a natural, instinctual thing that neither have them have been able to shake once they trained themselves into it.
“Come with me. You and me. I’ll help you find yourself, Yasha- all the bits they stole.”
“I’m not meant to.”
“There’s a lot of things people say we’re not meant to do, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them, Bucky,” Steve murmured then, and Bucky tenses, looks like he’s coiling and ready to spring as the sound of the guns turning their sights away from their targets and to each other hits his ears. Tony knows if they don’t get out of here, and get out of here fast, then they’re going down into the Potomac River, and there are no guarantees they’ll ever be coming back out again.
So, Tony rocks up onto his toes, steers Bucky’s face back to him, and seals their lips together. Bucky doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t move, Tony’s not even sure if he breathes, but Tony stays where he is. He doesn’t move, it’s just a simple press of lips, and he can see the flickering of memories surfacing in Bucky’s eyes.
Hope blooms outward in his chest, a violent thing that has Tony longing for once, just once, in which that hope isn’t crushed into dust.
“Come with us Yasha. I’ll always be here.”
“Till the end of the line,” Steve adds, and it’s that that does it. That line makes Bucky flinch, makes dawning realisation and confusion strike through those expressive eyes, and Tony recognises the look, because he’s been there himself, and it’s up to Bucky now, Bucky will do one of two things- turn and run, or stay with them, and satisfy the curiosity that lingers, the dawning desire to know.
Metal fingers lace with his own, and Tony allows himself to smile, even if just the slightest bit.
The Assistant and the Asset -Tony and Bucky- grasp onto each other, and this time…
They don’t let go.
-----------------------------
Steve and Tony don’t leave Bucky alone for even a minute. They huddle up in Tony’s floor in the tower, sequestered away from the rest of the world, and Tony really couldn’t care less that the entirety of America and the rest of the world are hypothesising over how Tony could possibly keep up in a hand to hand combat situation with a trained killer.
He couldn’t care less that people are asking where he is now, where Steve, and Nat and Sam and a dozen other people are right now after the fall of SHIELD and three fourteen-billion-dollar Helicarriers ending up in the Potomac River and causing millions in structural damage.
He couldn’t care less about people sifting through all the shit Nat dropped on SHIELD and HYDRA- he just palms some of it off onto JARVIS for JARVIS to try to fix most of the fall out, to protect undercover SHIELD agents from having their cover blown, for people like Natalia to have their pasts hidden away from the public eye so they didn’t get flack for it.
Tony can’t care less, because right now, the only thing he cares about is the recovering ex-assassin sitting in the lounge room bundled up in tracksuit pants and a hoodie, his hair tossed up in a careless bun and a cup of cocoa held tight in his hands and tucked under mountains of blankets as he watches a documentary on the scientific revolution that spanned across the last three decades.
Tony cares about how Bucky smiles, every single time Steve inputs something that sounds like a grumbling of ‘I don’t understand what that even means’ in regard to some outlandishly specific scientific jargon.
Tony cares about how Bucky smiles, every single time they mention Tony, or when he sees Tony pop up on the screen in reference to a lot of the technology Tony’s put out in his time.
Tony cares about how Steve smiles when he sees Bucky looking happier than he did when he first came here.
Tony grabs his cup of coffee and stirs in three packets of sugar, tipping them all into the mug as he crosses the distance, and settles into the couch at Bucky’s side, sharing the barest of glances with the other, everything said with only that.
The Asset and the Assistant had always had a habit of communicating without words, Tony remembers fondly, as a hand reaches out and begins stroking over his forearm in a familiar figure eight pattern that lulls Tony into a state of temporary bliss. It seems like that hasn’t changed.