Chapter Text
When Tony Stark woke up freezing, bloodied, and dangling from the ceiling in shackles, his first thought was, Whatever. This might as well happen.
Then the memories of where he was and what had happened hit and the snarky defensiveness his mind usually provided was gone.
Siberia. Barnes. Steve.
Tony jerked to full awareness, eyes locking onto his Iron Man suit, beaten and smashed at his feet. A battered shield lay beside it. Dizziness hit, and he shut his eyes again, trying to get his balance back, caught between straining to stand on his toes and dangling entirely by his wrists.
The last thing he remembered before passing out from pain and exhaustion as Steve walked away, walked away and left him, was that shield crashing straight into his chest.
The shield his father had made. Used against him by the man who had defended his killer without a second thought.
Tony had felt a lot of things towards Captain America over his lifetime. Dislike, resentment, envy—and that was before he had even met the man himself. The feelings had grown with every one of Howard’s repetitions of What would Captain America do?; with every birthday and award ceremony and graduation skipped for the slimmest of leads on a long-lost ghost.
But then 2012 hit and Steve Rogers was a ghost no longer. Then there had been frustration, and exasperation, and even outright anger. But also, over time, there had grown respect. Loyalty. Camaraderie.
Trust.
I didn’t know it was him.
The words had been even more of a gut punch than the video. Steve had known. And his first move after the truth was revealed, after Zemo had made Tony watch that, was to defend himself. To defend Barnes.
Then the fight. Tony had felt a lot of emotions towards Steve over the years, but this was the first time he had felt fear.
And Tony couldn’t do it anymore.
He knew everyone had a breaking point. He’d never found his. Not in Afghanistan, not after Obadiah’s betrayal. He’d come close; the palladium poisoning, the wormhole, the aftermath of Ultron.
Then the Accords. He’d been treading on the thinnest ice, and then the damn Sokovia Accords.
Pepper had left. Rhodey had fallen. The team was fractured beyond repair. The broken shield and Iron Man suit laid out with mocking care before him proved it.
He was done.
“Mr. Stark?"
Tony’s eyes flew open. He’d imagined it. His cold, pain-ridden brain had conjured his voice up. Why he didn’t know, he’d only just met the kid, but—
“Mr. Stark? Are you awake?”
Tony looked to his left, properly taking in his surroundings for the first time. And there, dangling from his wrists in the same manner Tony was, still dressed in the Spider-Man suit from the neck down, was one Peter Parker.
Because the universe could never give Tony a damn break.
“Kid?” Tony twisted in the chains as best he could so he could face Peter without craning his neck. They were still in the HYDRA base, as far as he could tell. If he twisted to his right, he could catch a glimpse of the TV screen where Zemo had played the video of the car crashing and then Barnes—
“Mr. Stark? Are you hurt? You, um…you look really hurt.”
Right. He could process that later. Or maybe never. He could just cram it down with all the other stuff he tried not to think about so he could halfway function on a day-to-day basis. He turned back to Peter, opting for the tiptoes position, which was slightly less painful than the dangling from his wrists option.
Whoever had taken them hadn’t given Peter the same choice. The teenager had managed to get both hands around the chains so he was holding on as opposed to hanging limply, his feet a good two inches off the floor.
“How?” Tony demanded. He wasn’t sure he had the energy for more words right now.
“How…what?”
If Tony could have summoned the willpower to roll his eyes, he would have. “How are you here? I told Happy to take you home!”
“So, yeah. About that. After Germany? I know we got most of them but also some of the…I guess bad guys? It feels really weird to call Captain America a bad guy. Like, that’s just wrong, on some level, isn’t it?” Peter glanced at the shield. “Did they get him too?”
Tony looked around him as best he could. No sign of Steve anywhere. The only thing left was that damn frisbee. “I don’t think so. He’s…gone.” He left and he didn’t look back.
“That’s good though, right? That they didn’t get him too?”
“I…yeah. I suppose so.” A full-body shiver went through him, and for a brief moment he wondered if whoever had strung him up like this had intended him to freeze to death. To die slowly staring at the broken legacy at his feet. And if he had been alone, Tony probably would have let it happen. “You didn’t answer my question. How?”
“Okay, so, I know you said to go home, that I was done, and everything, but it’s not really done until the fight is, right? So I…followed you.”
“You…you what?” Tony gestured as best he could to their surroundings—to the abandoned HYDRA bunker in the middle of Siberia. "Explain, now.”
“I just, you know, hitched a ride. On your plane.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “I would have noticed a stowaway in my plane.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Stark, I’m sure you would’ve but, you see, I wasn’t actually in the plane, in a manner of speaking.”
It took a full five seconds for that information to sink in.
“I’m, um, really sticky,” Peter supplied.
“Jesus, kid.”
“And I got most of the way here!”
“Most of the way? What do you mean most of the way?”
“Well, I didn’t really stick the landing. As in I kind of, um, fell off. But you had nearly landed so it wasn’t that far to fall, and the snow was all soft so—”
“Stop saying words.” Tony let his head loll forward, eyes shut again. His head was really starting to hurt, not to mention his wrists. The pain through his chest he resolutely ignored. Something was nagging at him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “You really shouldn’t be here.”
“But I am. Here. And I can help. Hold on, I’m nearly out.”
The words made Tony look up again. Peter was squirming in the chains, trying to get enough leverage. Because, okay, Tony wasn’t thrilled that a doe-eyed teenager had followed him all the way to a HYDRA base and gotten himself…was kidnapped the right word? He’d had more than his fair share of kidnappings in the past and they usually involved demands and threats and, you know, kidnappers. Tony and Peter appeared to be alone, which was tying back into Tony’s ‘left to die’ theory.
But Tony had seen the kid in action, surpassing his expectations in Germany. The kid had meant to be in a purely support role, fighting from the sidelines and restraining rogue Avengers where he could. Instead, he’d gone straight into that hangar and not only taken on Wilson and Barnes but held his own in there, from what Tony could tell.
A sick thought slotted into place. Peter had fought the Winter Soldier. He’d let a kid get near—
“Almost got it, Mr. Stark! I think…are these chains, like, super strong?”
That tracked—the bunker had been used to engineer super-soldiers, after all. They must have needed a way to restrain them at times. When they got out of hand. When they got dangerous.
Tony broke out of his train of thought when he heard Peter give a low hiss of pain and saw a deeper shade of red than his suit staining his wrists. “Kid, hey, it’s okay. Give yourself a breather, alright? We’ll figure this out.”
“No, wait I can—” Peter broke off as he slumped in the shackles, trying to catch his breath. “Okay, actually, yeah maybe a breather isn’t the worst idea. Just a…just a quick one though.”
Now that the kid was still, Tony could see how violently he was shaking. There was a heater built into Peter’s suit—Tony had built one into every model after the freezing incident in the Mark II —but Tony would have bet his sizeable fortune that it wasn’t working right now, or Peter would have used it. He asked anyway. “Hey, Underoos. How functional is that upgraded onesie right about now?”
“Um, not very. Sorry. He took it out, some kind of EMP, or something. I didn’t really get a good look.”
“He? Who’s he?”
“You know, the guy. He was here. After I fell off your plane—”
“Never say those words again.”
“—I saw the bunker and then I made my way here. And then I saw another plane take off and I thought that was maybe Captain America but I came towards the bunker and then he, um, caught me.”
That nagging ‘something isn’t right’ feeling was back. Okay, maybe Zemo—if it was Zemo—had a device that could take out Tony’s technology. That he could buy—just. Maybe a backup plan if Tony hadn’t fallen straight for his bait, if he and Steve had decided to take down Zemo together instead of taking down each other. But Peter was still capable as hell, had been long before Tony had given him the suit, going by the footage that was all over the internet. And Zemo was not exactly on Tony’s Christmas card list right now, but he was still just a guy.
“Hey,” Tony called over to Peter. “Listen to me. We’re going to work together to get out of here, but in order to do that we need to pool our resources, share information. So I need you to tell me everything. How did he catch you?”
Peter squirmed a little in the chains, still shivering even harder than Tony was. “Well…he had you.”
Tony felt a cold seep through him that had nothing to do with the Siberian climate. “Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
“What was I meant to do, Mr. Stark? Let him hurt you?”
“Yes!” The outburst caused Tony to lose his balance, his wrists taking his full weight and ow. He gritted his teeth and maneuvered himself back onto his toes. “This is my mess. You shouldn’t be anywhere near it. So if there’s an option where you see an out, or it’s a choice between you and me, you choose you."
There was a pause before Peter replied, “I don’t think I could do that, Mr. Stark.”
It took all of Tony’s self-control not to curse his fellow prisoner out. Who the heck was this kid? He took a deep breath instead, focusing on what he could control. “Can you get out of the chains? Without hurting yourself? I can see those wrists, you know.”
“Um…” Peter started trying to wriggle out again, wincing as the movement caused a fresh wave of blood to spill into the fabric of his suit.
“Okay, okay, stop,” Tony said quickly. “We’ll find another way out.”
“There is no other way out, Mr. Stark. It’s okay, I can do this, I’m almost—”
“Kid.”
“I nearly got it!”
“Peter! Stop!” Something in Tony’s voice finally got the teenager to still. “These chains were built for super-soldiers. Just…stop hurting yourself, okay?”
“I’ll heal. I heal fast.”
“Good. Then take a break and heal.”
“That’s not really the best option, Mr. Stark.”
“Why?”
“Um, so, the spider bite? Gave me a lot of cool stuff, like the strength and the super healing and all that. But it also came with some downsides.”
Tony’s heart sped up a few notches. “What downsides?”
“Like, there’s this thing with spiders, see, they’re cold-blooded—and I’m not. Cold-blooded, that is, that would be weird, right? But spiders can’t really control their temperature, they just kind of become the same temperature as the air around them, and you remember that cold snap last month? When it got, like, really cold?”
“Hurry this along, spiderling.”
“I can’t thermoregulate,” Peter finished, meeting Tony’s eyes. And for all of the kid’s talk (and there had been a lot of it), Tony didn’t miss the hint of fear there. Fair enough—freezing to death wouldn’t be his choice of going out either. Or maybe Peter just didn’t want to die at fifteen because he made the choice to follow Tony out to this frozen hell. Because he had wanted to do the right thing.
Tony allowed himself all of three seconds before he grounded himself. Selfish as it was, Peter’s predicament actually helped. It gave him a goal, something to focus on. Everything with Steve and Barnes and his parents could wait. Peter couldn’t.
“Okay, we’ll sort that out.” Tony twisted in his own chains. He hadn’t tried to get out of them yet, not really. And even smashed almost beyond recognition, his Iron Man suit was right there. If he could reach it. “Okay, Peter? Listen to me. Grab your chains, take the weight off your wrists. Let them heal up a bit—at least until they stop bleeding. In the meantime, move around as much as you can, try to stay warm. Can you do that?”
“Yes. Yes, I can do that.”
“Good.” In the meantime, Tony tested his own restraints only to conclude that he wasn’t getting out of them any time soon. But maybe he didn’t need out of the chains. Maybe he just needed to be able to move around in them. Impossible for him, but for Spider-Man?
Peter was swinging himself back and forth, hands gripping the chains. They were anchored somewhere in the ceiling, far above either of their heads. Tony steeled himself, readying for what he was about to ask a teenager to do. “Okay, Spider-Boy, here’s the play. You see where your chains are attached in the ceiling?”
Peter glanced up, his eyes going wide as he realized what Tony was asking. “That’s um…that’s really high up, Mr. Stark.”
“I know,” Tony replied. “But if your temperature is dropping as fast as you say, it’s better we try this now.”
“Yep. Yeah, that makes sense.” Peter didn’t even give himself time to consider it. He was already hauling himself up, straining with the effort. “This is…harder…than it…looks.”
Tony felt a quip about it being easier if Peter didn’t waste breath on talking form, but swallowed it back and instead went for, “I know. But you’re doing great.”
Peter nodded and, fuelled by the words of encouragement, started pulling himself up the chain towards the ceiling.
Stuck on the ground, it felt agonizingly slow to Tony as Peter hauled himself up the chain until he finally reached the anchor in the wall. “Okay, Pete? You’re sticky, right?”
Peter’s voice was hollow and distant as he shouted back. “Usually, yeah!”
Tony decided to ignore the ‘usually’ in case his overworked heart gave out entirely. “Weaken the anchor. Then climb across the ceiling and down the wall. Can you do that?”
“I think so!”
Tony settled back in his chains. He wanted to close his eyes, but it felt like a betrayal to tap out when Peter couldn’t. “How are you going, Underoos? Keep talking to me.”
“Um, it’s really strong!”
Of course it was. An instinct Tony didn’t understand was screaming at him to tell Peter to come down, now, but the logical part of his mind stayed in control, reminding him that this was the best option for both of them. He settled for, “Just be careful, okay? Kid? Kid, answer me.”
“Sorry, it’s just…”
“Peter?”
“It’s really cold up here, Mr. Stark.”
Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Screw the best option. “Come down. Come down now.”
“No, wait, I can do this.”
“Get your ass down here, kid!”
“I need to do this!”
“We’ll figure something else out. Okay? Okay?”
The next part seemed to happen in slow motion. One second Peter was clinging to the ceiling, oddly, scarily quiet, and then the next he was falling. Tony surged forward in his own chains, as though the adrenaline would rip them apart so he could stagger forward and catch the plummeting teenager.
But of course the chains didn’t break. And Tony didn’t catch him.
If Tony had thought watching Barnes kill his parents was going to be the worst part of this day, he was proven wrong when he heard the double snap of Peter’s wrists.
“PETER!”
Peter was hanging, awfully pale and still, his wrists at horrible angles. What was left of Tony’s survival instincts had his eyes shooting to the bones there, wondering if there was a chance they had snapped in such a way that Peter could now get out of the chains, but no luck.
“M-Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good.”
Christ.
“I don’t um…” Peter’s breath hitched. “I don’t think I got the chains out of the ceiling.”
Tony fought back a bizarre impulse to laugh. “That’s okay. You tried. We’re going to think of something else.”
“Hurts.”
“I…I know. I’m sorry. Fuck, kid, I’m so sorry.
“Give…give me a minute.”
“You can have all the minutes you need.” He twisted in his own chains. His suit was right there. Right there. He’d been in tighter situations than this before. He could do this.
“One minute,” Peter repeated, voice tight with pain. “Then I can…I can try again.”
Tony went stock still, turning to stare at the teenager in disbelief. Peter’s head was hanging, his breath hitching in his throat, but even so Tony could see him trying to maneuver his wrists back into position so they would heal correctly. So he could try and get them out—again.
The disbelief was replaced with a rolling tide of shame. He’d given up. Only for a moment, maybe, but he’d still given up. And here was this teenager, with two broken wrists in agonizing pain, still fighting.
And if Peter could, maybe Tony could keep fighting too. Just a little bit longer. There was still work to do, after all.
He had no intention of going after Steve or even Barnes. Let them ride off into the sunset for their happy ending. Let him finally be done with Captain Too-Good-To-Be-Real America.
But he had other teammates to think about. Ross wasn't going to let his prisoners go any time soon, but Tony could at least start by getting them off the Raft. He barely used the political sway his economic position allowed him—hated doing it, in fact—but he would use it for this. Clint, despite his words on the Raft, had been his close friend for years. He didn’t know Sam nearly as well, but he had trusted Tony enough to give him Steve’s location—playing into Zemo’s plan or not. Tony recalled Wanda’s pale face—the collar, the straightjacket. They’d never exactly been friends (he’d never quite gotten over the vision she showed him in Sokovia) but he wasn’t going to leave her like that.
And then Rhodey. Rhodey, who had been there for him since he was a brat of fifteen, who had stayed with him for longer than Tony knew he should have. Rhodey, who was going to wake up alone in an unfamiliar hospital room, unless the universe had granted Tony Stark some small mercy that Pepper had checked her voicemails.
Pepper. Pepper who had had every reason for leaving in the book and still stuck it out with him for years. She deserved more than putting out yet another one of Tony’s fires, and the Accords were a blazing inferno. He needed to go back, if not to be with her, then to be there for her.
“You’re not going to do a thing,” Tony instructed Peter. “You’re going to stay right there, and I’m going to get us out of this. I’m getting you home, kid. I promise.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, he heard footsteps approaching, and Helmut Zemo entered the room. “The great Tony Stark. Let’s get started, shall we?”