Work Text:
“And when you are finished, he will set you free.”
Tony could see it in the man’s eyes – he was lying. No one was going to set Tony free. When he finished building the Jericho missile he would be forced to build more weapons or – more likely – killed. The torture had taught him quite a bit. At first, Tony had fully expected to be rescued, for the military to come storming in and the pain would stop. But that hadn’t happened. And it probably never would.
If Tony was in the military he wouldn’t save him either, not when his weapons were out there killing so many people.
People Tony was trying to protect.
Standing in the sunlight for the first time in who knows how long, Tony took in the morbid sight of stacks of his weapons waiting around him to be used against the people he claimed, his own countrymen. These weapons hadn’t been stolen – this wasn’t a single shipload gone missing or hijacked, this was some under the table deal Tony hadn’t been paying close enough attention to catch.
No, the military would not be coming to save him and Tony honestly wouldn’t let them if they tried. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to be saved, he deserved to die in the desert surrounded by strangers, killed by his own weapons. So he would refuse to work once again and maybe – hopefully – this time they would just kill him ad be done with the entire ordeal.
But then Tony looked at Yinsen and he realized that it wasn’t just about him anymore. And it wasn’t just about his translator. Tony had witnessed first hand what was happening and if he wanted to do his job – the job he had thought he had been doing – and protect people, he could no longer sit ideally by and let things happen and just assume it would all work out. He wanted his weapons to stop being used to kill innocent people, so he needed to put a stop to it.
Tony smiled at the robust man and nodded, shaking his hand while he bit back bile.
“No he won’t,” muttered Tony.
Cheers rose out as his captors celebrated their victory and the hope of gaining a deadly weapon soon. As if they honestly needed more.
Even as they cheered, Tony was building a plan in his head to get out – alive. He may not deserve to be saved but he needed to survive to set things right. Someone in his company – possibly more than just one person – was dealing under the table and Tony had to find out who it was. To do that, he had to get out alive. And to get out alive he would need to make it look as though he were creating a weapon.
Or perhaps he could create a weapon. It would have to be something big, something strong, to fight against so many humans and his own genius at the same time. It had to be something impossibly formidable, something visually different to give him that split second edge he would gain if people were staring instead of shooting.
Something like a knight.
Only, Tony wasn’t a knight in shining armor, his armor would be scraps assembled in a cave and there would be nothing beautiful about it. It wasn’t about beauty, it was about redemption and surviving and destroying all traces that this place ever existed while he was at it. It was about those soldiers from the fun-vee who died protecting him. It was about proving for the first time that Rhodey wasn’t insane for being his friend – he knew what people and the media said about it and knew that he was a horrible friend and had never been able to understand why Rhodey would put up with him for so long if he had no redeeming qualities. It was about making this world just a little bit better after he had apparently made it all that much worse.
Tony wasn’t a knight. He was just a man.
A man no one was going to come save.
A man who didn’t deserve saving.
A man who would save himself because that’s all he knew how to do.
Only this time he actually had a reason to do it.
That was the moment he knew Jarvis had meant when he had told Tony, “There is going to come a time when you must decide between doing what is right and doing what is easy. You’ll be faced with that choice throughout your life and I hope, when it matters, you do what is right.”
So far in his life, Tony had mostly chosen to do what was easy. He hadn’t been interested in focusing on doing what was right – he always thought life was too short to be worried about the consequences. But not this time. This time, this choice, he would end all that and make it right.
So he continued to smile as the cheers continued, as those people celebrated his perceived downfall. As they enjoyed the moment when Tony seemed to have finally given up and given in. As they rejoiced in their unknowing benefactor finally knowingly contributing to their cause.
He continued to smile as he confirmed that all those people around him knew what he himself had only recently realized – that he wasn’t the type worth saving.
“No he won’t,” agreed Yinsen.
Tony smiled as he nodded along because they were correct – he wasn’t worth saving and no one should have to risk their lives for his anymore. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t escape and take them all down as he did.
Because Tony Stark might not be worth saving but that didn’t mean he thought the world deserved the same fate.