Chapter Text
Siberia was cold.
It shouldn't be particularly surprising. A land of ice and snow, after all, with temperatures that never went higher than 10 degrees, was not going to be warm.
Yet, laying on the freezing ground of a the hidden bunker, in an over 85 pound suit, unable to move and slowly bleeding out, he was still shocked by just how could it could get.
How fitting: he became Iron Man after getting hit in the chest with shrapnel, and now his own suit would become his coffin. And wasn’t it poetic? The same man his father had been looking for for years in the lands of ice and snow, would protect his murderer and then leave his son to die in the lands of ice and snow.
Sometime after the first hour of pain and rage, Tony had come to the conclusion that Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier were nothing but the weapon used to kill his parents. They were the guns who had been placed against his parents' temple, but HYDRA was the one who took the shot.
Blaming either Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier - were they the same person? the little he knew about them from Steve made it sound like they weren’t but he couldn’t be sure since the man was a liar - was stupid and made him sound like Wanda Maximoff.
Still.
Wanda and Pietro could be excused for getting themselves experimented on and joining a terrorist organisation to get their revenge on Tony for a bomb he hadn’t made nor supplied, and they got accepted in the Avengers; Tony dared to lose his mind for a second after watching Howard get punched to death and his mother get strangled, and he got left to die.
How fucking typical.
So yeah, Bucky Barnes and Winter could be forgiven.
But Steve Rogers? Captain fucking America?
Tony welcomed the surge of warm anger that overtook him just thinking about the man. If his body could still produce warmth, then he wasn’t freezing to death quite yet. Someone might still get him in time.
Steve fucking Rogers, the paragon of truth and everything holy in America had been nothing but a liar and a hypocrite. Captain America, ultimate soldier, had left a man behind in enemy’s land.
And Tony couldn’t even find himself to be bitter.
From day one Steve - no, not Steve anymore, never again - Rogers had made his opinion of Tony loud and clear. That no matter what Tony did, he would never be regarded as Steve’s older companions, as the Howling Commandos.
I know men with none of that worth ten of you, he had said, and Tony had thought he had sure showed him when he took that nuke through the wormhole. He had thought a truce had been established, and that Steve had, if not started to like him, started to respect him.
He clearly hadn’t.
And part of him wasn't even surprised.
Tony came to the conclusion that he would die in that bunker around the third hour.
Steve Rogers had broken his Arc Reactor - and if his pained breathing was anything to go by, a bunch of other stuff too - with his shield. That meant there was no energy in the suit - no heat - and considering the man had made sure Tony’s helmet was the first thing to be broken and cut off from him, no FRIDAY.
His poor baby girl. She must be so frantic.
She was so young, too young to be going through this.
She had sounded so scared when the connection had caught off, and Tony wished on everything that the visual feed had cut off before Rogers had gotten on top of him and brought the shield down.
She didn’t need to see that.
He missed her so much. If he died, he really hoped she wouldn’t blame herself.
Around the fourth hour, he stopped feeling cold. He knew that it wasn’t a good thing, but he couldn’t quite figure out why it wasn’t. The cold had been biting till then, not feeling it was obviously an improvement.
He wondered about Vision, too.
He had been with Rhodey when Tony had left, and Tony had had to rush. He never had time to tell him that Rhodey's fall was not his fault. That he had aimed for Wilson and Wilson had moved - as one did - and therefore was not to be blamed.
He hadn't had a chance to console him, to protect him; not from Maximoff, and not from guilt.
Maximoff could rot too.
She should have never put her filthy hands on his son.
“Harley,” he started, sometimes around the fifth hour. “You take good care of your mom and your sister. And FRIDAY. Cause she is so very young, basically a toddler and you have experience with toddlers. And Vision too. He's a baby.”
His mind scattered.
Harley's blond curls turned into a strawberry blonde ponytail.
He remembered meeting Pepper, that first time. She had been so beautiful, with her hair untied and her expression wary and outraged, a can of pepper spray in one hand and a spreadsheet in the other.
“Damn you, Rogers,” he said, a while later. Or he thought? He wasn’t quite sure anymore if he was stuck in his own memories or if he was talking out loud or if he was thinking. “Couldn’t even kill me properly. You just left me here to die, you just-”
Went and picked up a whole team so that his mind fucked buddy wouldn’t go to trial. What other secrets that didn’t belong to him was the Captain keeping?
He was the Winter Soldier, after all. Probably killed J.F. Kennedy.
“Mamma,” he cried a second later (or a minute? or an hour?). His chest was burning and he felt like he was drowning. He didn’t want to drown. He had drowned too much in the past few years. “Mamma, aiutami, per piacere. Non ce la faccio più!”
His mom. Gone. Like Peggy, like Ana, like Aunt Janet.
Pym always said never to trust a Stark.
Tony giggled. Or sobbed. He wasn’t sure.
Pym stole from his Compound and Tony had been meaning to ask Wilson why he hadn’t reported it. He was gonna release the footage, but he had hesitated. Because of Hope.
Hope...
Tony imagined pulling off his suit and looking at the tattoo on his arm. It had been so long since he had thought about the tattoo and its meaning.
He sobbed again. Or giggled. He wasn’t sure.
He remembered all five of them sitting around the fire, the tattoo kit sitting innocently on their side. They were drunk, weren’t they? Some of them had been, at least. Hope was a good girl, even though Hope had had the idea of the tattoo to begin with.
And Tony had had the idea of the blood oath.
“Blood of the covenant, ink on my skin,” he thought, or was he speaking? “When I call upon you, you’ll feel it within. And if I call upon you, in my hour of need, in the name of Loki you will pay heed.”
They had been so stupid back then. Howard had been so mad when Tony had returned home with a fresh tattoo on his arm and Hank Pym had blown a gasket.
Though it was funny that they had prayed to Loki and then, decades later, they had met Loki and-
Tony’s sluggish mind came to a halt. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes or most of his face, and he couldn’t turn around or move his head. The pain in his chest was almost bearable when Tony stayed completely still and didn’t breathe.
But for some reason, his arm was burning.
“Dad, calm down,” hissed Hope Van Dyne, her ear piece stuck in her ear. “Yes, I have almost arrived in Germany. But I cannot find any trace of the suit.”
She understood Hank’s frustration, of course. He had kept the Ant Man suit a secret for so long and yet, for some reason, Scott thought it was a good idea to bring into a big fight with the Avengers.
And not only that, he went giant while using it too, like it was some stupid game.
Of course, Hank’s main concern was that Tony would steal the tech from the suit, but Hope was more concerned about the rest of it. With SHIELD’s files still on the dark web, it wouldn’t take too long for someone to find a link between Pym Tech and the Ant Man suit.
God, what had Scott been thinking!
He didn’t even bother asking anyone anything, just took off and-
Hope gasped suddenly, a hand flying to her collarbone. The pain had been so sudden, like someone just stabbed her hard on-
“Miss Van Dyne?” asked the driver, meeting her eyes in the rear-view mirror. His expression was slightly worried. “Are you all right? Your tattoo is bleeding.”
Carol Danvers was not a superhero for the fame of it all. She was a superhero and a protector because there were beings in the world who needed her protections. She did it because she was Air Force and a soldier, and the sense of duty had been instilled in her for years now.
There was still something to be said about the gratefulness of people, she mused as she walked into the large bathroom the Klyoens had offered her as repayment for her help.
It was really fucking cool.
Probably third best baths she had ever seen, with number one being the ones she had seen from images of Asgard and number two being the one from the Sovereign. Although the Sovereign pissed her off and she never got the chance to try them.
She slipped into the warm bath and let out a sigh at the feeling of her muscles relaxing in the warm water. This was heaven. It was like-
She winced at the sudden pain under her chest, eyes widening in alarm when the normal green water started turning red with her blood.
Her fingers went on her underboob tattoo and found no wound from which the blood would be leaking, but the water remained red even as the pain slowly subsided.
And when she looked at the only mirror, she saw it.
The fourth moon in the tattoo was bleeding.
“Seriously?” complained Stephen Strange, staring at the empty fridge. “Didn’t we go shopping like last week?”
Wong looked up from where he was eating the last of the pad thai in the fridge. “People eat. I am sure, as a doctor, you were familiar with that concept?”
The sorcerer rolled his eyes, closing the door of the fridge and picking up an apple instead. “You’re not funny, Wong.” He gave a longing look at the other man’s plate, wanting. “I would kill for some thai right now.”
His friend did not reply, eating the rest of his plate with gusto while Stephen was left to console himself with an apple. Well, there was plenty in the cupboards, if he wanted to make himself a meal. And he could go to Kamar Taj, if he was really starving.
But he didn’t wanna.
So apple it was.
“You know, as a doctor,” he started munching on the fruit, “I have to say it’s not very healthy for you to- fuck!”
Wong looked up at him usual impassiveness turning into concerned confusion as Stephen dropped the apple, his arm going to the side of his tunic.
“That hurts, fuck,” continued Stephen, pulling down the tunic and his robes until his naked shoulder was on display.
“Stephen,” started Wong, but then paused.
He had seen Strange half naked before, so the fact that the man had a tattoo of five different moons in different stages was not a surprise. He had asked about it, but the other man had never explained it, muttering something about ‘teenage drunks’ and ‘boarding school’ and Wong had not pushed.
However he was gonna push now, considering part of the tattoo, the waning half moon, in fact, was bleeding quite profusely even though there was no actual wound on it.
Stephen stared at it for a second, eyes widening in surprise before he looked at Wong. “Hey... so, are blood oaths a thing?”
James Rhodes remained in his medically induced coma.
His wrist, resting on his side, started bleeding.
