Chapter Text
Clint knew later he should have been taking the fight more seriously, but come on – coiffed hair, three-inch fingernails and a neon purple mermaid dress?
What, did this lady take her fashion advice from Dumbledore? No, really. She’d probably be laughed straight out of Hogwarts dressed like that.
It wasn’t like he was the only one just going through the motions, anyway. This whole “villain-of-the-week” thing was getting annoying. Turns out Thor hadn’t been kidding when he said their meddling with the Tesseract put them on the map as a planet ready for a higher form of war.
Though Clint’d been thinking more along the lines of world-ending alien invasions, not these weirdoes crawling out of wherever they’d been before now.
“You will all meet your doom today,” Witch-Lady declared, her plate-sized earrings somehow defying gravity as they swirled up with the wind. Steve was crouched nearby, waiting for her to get distracted and drop her shields. Bruce was a short distance away just in case he was needed. Natasha was distracted by the animated trees clumping their way down the sidewalk, and Clint felt pretty damn useless at the moment. His arrows weren’t getting through the witch’s shields and how the hell was he supposed to shoot down a tree?
“And Villain Stock Phrase Number Three makes its appearance,” Tony sighed. He flew towards them, Witch-Lady’s magenta aura glinting off the armor as he got closer.
It really came down to bad timing. She started speaking in Latin – bad sign number one – right as Tony swooped down near her, probably intending to hit her with a repulsor blast. She seemed completely unperturbed – bad sign number two – and smiled – bad sign number three – and a deceptively small flash of purple light hit the Iron Man helmet.
Clint should have paid more attention to that. In his defense, she hadn’t seemed all that dangerous, aside from being pretty resilient with her magic shields and all. Besides, the suit was incredibly durable. It took a lot to get through Tony’s defenses, and that tiny little flash? It shouldn’t have done a thing. It didn’t look like it did anything, because even though Tony didn’t attack her he flew off as if nothing was wrong.
Tony flew around the corner and didn’t come back. Clint didn’t pay it any mind.
Female Dumbledore looked way too proud of herself, if a little tired out. “You may have underestimated me,” she said, and Clint paused in letting another arrow fly. “But you will fall, at the hands of one of your very own.”
“What do you mean?” Steve said, but she was already gone.
At least the trees stopped moving like eldritch abominations.
Clint dropped down from his vantage point and made his way over to the others, who looked just as confused as he was. “Why’d she suddenly take off?” Clint asked, not really expecting an answer. Natasha shrugged, her focus still on the trees now toppled over on the pavement.
“Nothing about that encounter made much sense,” she said.
“Did any of you see where Tony went?” Steve asked after a few moments. Clint furrowed his brow and glanced around, just now noticing the absence of the ostentatious suit of armor.
“No idea,” he said.
“I don’t know either,” Natasha said.
“If I may,” JARVIS’s smooth voice filtered through on the comms, “I believe Sir may have been affected by a surge of unidentified energy.”
“What? What happened? Where is he?” Steve demanded.
“According to my scans, Sir’s brain chemistry was unexpectedly altered after experiencing a surge of magical origin,” JARVIS said. “Sir has prepared several protocols for such an occasion. The Iron Man suit has been locked down and awaits your retrieval.” The coordinates flashed on Clint’s watch. Okay, creepy, Clint had no idea JARVIS was on his watch. There were more pressing matters at the moment, though, so he said nothing as he followed the others to Tony’s location.
The suit stood in the middle of the street, frozen in an upright position so stiff it made Clint feel off-kilter just looking at it.
“Tony?” Steve said hesitantly, letting his shield drop as he stepped up to the armor. There was no response. Iron Man just stood there, eerily motionless. “Hey, JARVIS? Could you let Tony out of there?”
“Engaging auto-release,” JARVIS said, and the front of the suit folded back.
Tony stumbled forward, bewildered and gasping for breath in obvious distress, and Steve instinctively dropped the shield to catch him.
Only to get sucker-punched in the underside of his jaw.
Steve jerked back with a grunt, blood trickling out of his mouth where he must have bitten his tongue. Startled exclamations erupted from the rest of the group, though Tony didn’t even seem to notice them. All signs of his distress had vanished in an instant, replaced with a stare so cold he looked like an imposter. He didn’t give Steve any time to recover, jabbing at Steve’s face in a fluid movement following the initial punch, and it was only thanks to Steve’s superhuman reflexes that he actually managed to catch Tony’s wrist before Tony succeeded in poking his eyes out.
“Tony, what the hell?!” Clint yelled, dumbfounded by the sudden turn of events. What the actual fuck? When JARVIS said Tony’s brain waves had suddenly changed Clint had thought, he’s been knocked out or even something like he’s got a magic brain tumor, not Tony’s been turned evil.
“Oh, shut the hell up, Barton,” Tony hissed, though he didn’t avert his steely glare from Steve who maintained his tight hold on Tony’s arm. There was no way he’d break free from Steve’s grip and it was evident he knew it too.
“What’s gotten into you, Tony?” Steve asked, his words slurring slightly, his free hand going up in a vain effort to staunch the flow of blood from his mouth.
Tony scoffed. “My eyes were opened, that’s what. I’m sick of playing nice with people like you who pretend to be heroes. Let the fuck go of me, Rogers.” That phrasing sent shards of ice through Clint’s veins. There was no way Tony could know – Clint hadn’t told anyone, not even Nat – just how reminiscent of Clint’s time under Loki’s control this was. His eyes were opened? Wasn’t that what Selvig had said? Tony didn’t have blue eyes, so whatever had happened to Tony wasn’t the same as what Loki’s scepter had done to Clint. Still, it was too similar for comfort.
He was gonna be spending a lot of time at the shooting range later.
“You got hit by some kind of magic spell,” Steve was saying. “You’re not in your right mind right now, Tony. Let us help you.”
“Like you helped me by sending me on a one-way trip into space with a nuke?” Tony said derisively. Steve jolted away like he’d been struck again, and Tony wasn’t finished. “Don’t act like you care, like any of you do. Let. Me. Go.”
Tony lunged for the gun on Steve’s belt, but an arc of electricity suddenly struck him and he seized violently before collapsing. He would have hit the ground if Steve hadn’t still been holding onto him, and Steve glared at Natasha as she pulled away with a satisfied glint in her eyes.
“Was that really necessary?” he snapped, carefully shifting his grip on Tony so the billionaire wasn’t hanging by his wrist. Tony’s eyes had rolled back into his head, and Clint winced on his behalf. He’d been hit by Nat’s widow bites before, and damn, they hurt like hell. When they didn’t knock you out.
“We need to bring him back to SHIELD,” she said calmly as she pulled out a pair of handcuffs from her belt. Steve took a half step back, gathering Tony more securely into his arms.
“Put those away,” he said firmly. “Tony’s our teammate and our friend. We’re not going to treat him like some common criminal.”
“You’re still bleeding from the hit Tony landed on you,” Clint pointed out. Steve shot him a look.
“He caught me off guard and I bit the end of my tongue off,” Steve said. “It’ll be healed by tomorrow, it’s not a big deal.”
“The rest of us don’t have superhuman healing like you do, Cap,” Clint said. “And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. It’ll only be until we’re sure he’s back to normal, right? It’s nothing but a precaution. I’m sure if Tony was his normal self he’d want us to make sure he can’t hurt himself or anyone else.”
Steve sighed in frustration, then nodded curtly at Nat. She deftly tightened the cuffs around Tony’s wrists, offering Steve a small, sympathetic smile.
“He’ll be just fine,” she promised. “Knowing Stark, he’ll have shaken this off by the time he wakes up again.”
“I hope so,” he murmured. “I sure hope so.”
Tony had not shaken it off by the time he woke up.
Worse, he refused to talk to any of them. He just glowered silently at the one-way mirror in the SHIELD interrogation room, handcuffed to a chair to keep him from trying to attack anyone again. The door was double-locked with a guard stationed outside, which seemed a little like overkill for one already restrained, unpowered man.
God, Clint felt bad about this, even if he knew it wasn’t his fault. He’d never wish mind control on anyone, much less Tony Fucking Stark. He was one of the most fiercely independent men Clint had ever met and rightfully protective of that genius brain of his. And take it from someone who’d experienced it before – mind control sucked ass.
Thank god Tony had had the foresight to plan for this sort of disaster. A world with Iron Man as a supervillain? That was a horrifying thought. Clint did not want to face off against Iron Man. He’d get blasted so hard he’d probably find himself in another dimension or something.
At least Tony didn’t have the suit at his disposal. As Iron Man he was extremely dangerous – that suit had way too many things right at his fingertips. And that wasn’t even counting the damage he could do with JARVIS’s assistance.
But Tony? He was human. He didn’t have any special enhancements, had no access to JARVIS or his workshop, and he was a very recognizable public figure. Even if he’d managed to escape them somehow he wouldn’t have gotten far, and now he was safely contained in the SHIELD Helicarrier.
The Avengers-sans-Tony were gathered in one of the debriefing rooms, Fury staring them down at the head of the table.
“Does anyone want to explain to me why we’re detaining one of the Avengers – who, may I remind you, is a multi-billionaire with some of the best lawyers in the world on retainer – in a goddamn holding cell?” he demanded, placing his hands on the table and leaning forward to look each one of them in the eye.
“Like we said, Witch-Bitch hit him with some kind of magic spell that made him turn evil or something,” Clint said with a shrug. Fury did not seem to appreciate this answer, his one-eyed glare darkening even further.
“You mean Adria, the low-level threat you all should have been able to detain with minimal problems?” he growled.
“Hey, those animated trees were hard as hell to stop,” Clint defended. A vein on Fury’s head bulged.
“They were moving at two goddamn miles per hour, Barton. A civilian could outpace them by walking at a reasonable pace. Does that sound like more than a fucking low-level threat to you?”
Clint had to concede that no, that didn’t sound like more than a low-level threat.
“You know of some way to turn him back to normal, though, right?” Steve said. He sat in his seat stiffly, back ramrod straight, no trace of any humor on his face.
Steve’s posture pretty indicative of the atmosphere in the briefing room as a whole. Sure, Tony wasn’t really the favorite of most of them (except Bruce, probably) but he was still their teammate. And he was a friend – that one abrasive friend that could lighten the mood while simultaneously making you want to tear your hair out. He was talented like that.
Regardless, Clint liked Tony, and the thought of Tony being used like this made his stomach turn. He still had nightmares of what he’d done under Loki’s control, and he’d never wish that on anyone else. Clint, at least, had had training on how to cope with torture or whatever else an enemy might try to throw at him. Tony was still a civilian.
“Not without figuring out exactly what she did to him,” Fury said. “Which wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t failed to apprehend her.”
“She disappeared into thin air, Director,” Natasha said. “Even if we had managed to catch her, I don’t think it would have stopped her.”
“Well, you’d better hope you can track her down fast, because this is going to blow up in our faces if we don’t handle this ASAP,” Fury said. “Can you imagine what the press would say if they got wind of this?”
“Did anyone ask JARVIS what the protocols Tony specified did, besides locking up his access to the suits?” Bruce questioned. Steve frowned.
“No,” he admitted. Bruce nodded like he’d expected that answer.
“He probably has more flight data that could give us some insight into what happened and how Tony’s brain was affected,” he said. “We should talk to him. I don’t think we’ll get much farther without his input.”
“Well?” Fury said when no one moved. “You brought the Iron Man suit back with you, didn’t you? Someone go get it."
Suddenly the alarms went off, the red light flashing ominously. They all jumped to their feet, Fury covering his earpiece with his hand to better hear what was being said. The muscles in his face tightened, and he turned to them with a deadly serious glint in his eye.
“Stark’s escaped.”
Steve had had worse days, but this one was rapidly approaching the upper ranks.
Tony hadn’t been spotted since he’d broken out of the holding room. It was like he’d vanished into thin air. The guard who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Tony was still unconscious, and forty minutes later the surveillance team still hadn’t figured out where Tony had gone after he’d made his initial escape.
Steve had a feeling Tony’d already gotten off the Helicarrier. Either that or Tony was a lot better at hiding than any of them would have given him credit for – he was by far the most recognizable face on the ship, he shouldn’t have been able to disappear so thoroughly like this.
And yet none of the cameras had picked up on him since he’d disappeared into a blind spot. It didn’t make any sense. But then, Tony was always defying their expectations, wasn’t he? It figured he’d continue doing so under these circumstances.
He’d even managed to land a good hit on Steve. In hindsight it was obvious Tony had been faking his distress to keep their guards down, but at the time Steve had been way too concerned about him to tell. His tongue still throbbed where he’d bitten off the tip, though it had stopped bleeding shortly after they’d first apprehended Tony.
At least he wouldn’t be hard to track down. Tony had only hurt Steve because he’d caught him off guard, and now that they were prepared he really didn’t stand a chance against the combined efforts of the rest of the Avengers. Granted, they’d dropped the ball with Adria. But they fought and successfully defeated villains every other week. Tony was smart, no one could deny that, but he was only human. Once they found him they’d be able to bring him in with minimal injuries and everything would be all right.
“Keep in mind that we have no idea what Tony’s next move will be,” Steve warned, looking at each Avenger in turn. Natasha and Clint both looked peeved, while Bruce watched them all impassively. The scientist had been benched for the time being – they didn’t want to risk the Hulk killing Tony. “He’s not in his right mind right now, and that makes him unpredictable.”
“You say that as if he wasn’t already,” Natasha muttered.
“We’ll be fine, Captain,” Clint said confidently. “He’s stuck facing us, the Avengers, and he can’t even use his suit. How hard could it be?”
“Harder than you all seem to think,” Bruce murmured, but his input went unacknowledged. Bruce had always thought a tad too highly of Tony, Steve reasoned.
“SHIELD hasn’t been able to track him down, but if he’s still onboard it’s only a matter of time,” he said after a few moments. “We need to find him before anyone gets hurt. Spread out, and if you spot him notify the rest of us – we want to do this as peacefully and painlessly as possible.”
“Got it,” Clint said.
Natasha nodded in acceptance. “Understood.”
“Good luck out there,” Bruce said, and if Steve didn’t know better he would have thought there was a hint of amusement in his voice.
Stark was long gone, and none of the quinjets worked anymore. Unsurprisingly, one was missing.
Fury was completely incensed. Natasha understood how he felt – it was like Stark had spit on her skills as a spy and kicked dirt on them for good measure. Сукин сын.
“What I want to know,” Fury said, “is how one unarmed, handcuffed man managed to not only escape a secure SHIELD holding cell, move around unnoticed for almost fifteen minutes before the alarm was sounded, have the time to sabotage all but one of our quinjets, but also succeed in taking off in the last working one before any of us could fucking stop him. Did no one think to keep an eye on the hangar? Is everyone here this goddamn incompetent?”
The head of security quailed under Fury’s evil eye. “We had five agents stationed to watch that area,” he said. “We lost contact with them shortly before Stark escaped, but before that they said nothing was amiss.”
The look Fury gave him should have been saved for Stark, once they found him. It would have terrified the magic right out of him. It was the sort of look Natasha had been working on mastering for years.
Fury was truly an inspiration.
He sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do any of you at least have an idea where he might’ve gone?”
“We don’t,” Rogers said dejectedly. And it was true. They’d already asked JARVIS if Stark had tried to access any buildings JARVIS had access to, and there had been no sign of him yet. The quinjet wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, but at least it would likely tell them was where Stark chose to land – Natasha highly doubted he would be brazen enough to keep flying it for long.
Fury scowled at each of them in turn. “So in all the time you’ve spent living in the same damn building as Stark none of you learned enough about him to even guess where he might try to go?”
“I think he’s smart enough to avoid going anywhere we could find him easily,” Banner spoke up from his place at the end of the table. Unlike the rest of them he almost looked slightly amused by the whole situation. “If he doesn’t want to be found we’re going to have a hell of a time tracking him down.”
“He’s one of the most well-known celebrities in the world,” Rogers pointed out.
Banner shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I think you’re underestimating what he can do.”
“He’s got no suit, no money, no help from JARVIS, and an entire government branch on high alert for any sign of him,” Natasha said, but Banner’s confidence made her uneasy. He shrugged.
“He’s also one of the smartest people alive. He’s insanely resourceful. We’re really lucky he doesn’t have access to that his money and suit too, or we’d all be screwed.”
Rogers’s brow furrowed. “You’re acting awfully unconcerned about all this, Dr. Banner.”
“Oh, I’m concerned,” Banner said mildly. “You’ve got no idea just how much. But I don’t think anyone here wants me turning green, so I’m trying to stay calm about it.”
The tension in the room instantly racketed up a few notches, and Natasha had to remind herself Banner would leave if he really thought he was in danger of transforming.
“We’ll find Tony, Director,” Rogers said. “I’m sure that with all of us working together, we’ll be able to bring him home in no time.”
Banner smiled wryly but didn’t say anything more. Natasha was inclined to agree with Rogers, in the end, even if Banner had a point. No one could deny Stark was a brilliant guy, but that wouldn’t be of much help here. She and Clint were professional spies, for god’s sake. IQ points couldn’t beat years of training. It was only thanks to luck Stark had gotten as far as he had.
As it turned out, Tony’s celebrity status meant almost nothing if he really didn’t want to be found. It was impressive, Steve had to admit. Even Nat had grudgingly acknowledged Tony’s ability to stay under the radar, and if she was saying it, there wouldn’t be too many people who disagreed.
He would have expected at least a couple of sightings, but so far the media had been quiet on any mention of the billionaire. Not even the more stalker-like parts of the internet had mentioned a Tony-sighting since his disappearance. Not that the public knew he’d up and vanished; that information was highly classified. It wouldn’t do them any good to have some sort of mass panic in the general population.
They’d located the abandoned quinjet, at least. It had been ransacked, though by Tony or by opportunistic civilians it was hard to tell. Anything of value was missing, including parts of the engine and all the fuel in the tank. It wouldn’t fly again, not without significant repairs.
At this point Steve wasn’t putting a lot of stock in Adria’s declaration that the Avengers would be ‘destroyed by one of their own.’ There was no Tony, no Adria, and radio silence on the supervillain front. The strangest thing happening in the city was the occasional power outage and break-ins, and that was hardly anything new, not really something worth mentioning. Any other time they would’ve taken it as a much-needed respite, but right now?
They were all on high alert, just waiting for something to happen.
And waiting.
“It’s been five days,” Clint grouched, drumming his fingers along the side of his bow. They were all slumped in the common room (sans Bruce, who was off in one of the labs working on something Steve hadn’t asked about) tired of looking without any sort of sign of Tony. Nat glared at his hand and he quickly dropped it.
“You’d think we would’ve at least heard something from him by now,” Steve said with a weary sigh. This was all his fault. He should have been more careful during that fight once it became clear Adria actually had some spells that could do some damage. He hadn’t taken her seriously, and now Tony was compromised. Oh, god. What if he was dead? What if Adria had gone after Tony while they were looking for him and killed him?
“I was expecting a supervillain monologue or something,” Clint said. “Y’know, since he’s supposedly evil and all right now. But he hasn’t done a thing but play a disappearing act. Worst. Supervillain. Ever.”
“You’re underestimating him again,” Bruce said where he appeared in the doorway. “I still think we should call in Rhodes.”
“Like we said before, Bruce, he’s on a military operation,” Steve said tiredly. Bruce wouldn’t understand – he hated the military with a passion, of course he didn’t have a problem with interrupting Colonel Rhodes’s mission (whatever it was – they weren’t exactly privy to the details).
Bruce was fiddling with a piece of metal, and Steve’s stomach dropped as he realized it was an arc reactor. Bruce must have noticed Steve was looking at it, because he quickly offered an explanation.
“I was trying to find a way to track the unique signatures the reactor gives off,” he said, moving further into the room and perching uncomfortably on the edge of one of the couches. Steve felt a surge of hope that was almost instantly quashed as Bruce continued. “But the large-scale reactor Tony installed to power the Tower is throwing off all the readings in New York City. I’m still looking for a workaround.”
“So he’s still in New York?” Steve asked.
“Probably,” Bruce said. “I had SHIELD run scans of everywhere else in the world they could, and we didn’t get any hits. As far as we can tell he’s most likely somewhere in the city. We just don’t know where.”
“At least it narrows it down,” Clint said.
“To a city with a population of eight million,” Natasha said.
“Which means there are eight million who might notice him and say something about it,” Clint shot back. “It’s not like he’s got a lot of options, not with all the protocols he put in place before this whole fiasco.”
Tony had been nothing if not prepared for this sort of eventuality. If Steve had to guess he’d say it was a paranoia borne from Clint’s experiences, though Tony had never told any of the them about what he’d planned out. According to JARVIS, there were protocols in place if any of them ever got mind-controlled. Tony’s were by far the most restrictive, but then he was the one with the most access in the first place.
All of his suits were locked up, completely. They could not be flown or controlled or even entered by anyone, especially Tony, with the War Machine armor being the only exception and only usable by Colonel Rhodes. In the event that Tony was in the armor at the time he was brainwashed he would not be able to leave the armor until the Avengers, Fury or Hill were present. JARVIS would no longer respond to any of Tony’s commands and all override codes were rendered useless the moment he detected the change. JARVIS would remain operational as long as it was safe for him to be – if he registered any tampering with his code from Tony or anyone else, he would shut himself down until very specific conditions were met (though what they were Steve had no idea; apparently JARVIS had been instructed to create the conditions himself and keep them a secret so Tony wouldn’t be able to exploit them. Steve had a feeling it involved a lot of brain scans). Ms. Potts had been notified of the situation by JARVIS when it first started and she’d gained full control of all Tony’s assets in his absence, as well as license to decide what, when and how to tell the public. Tony’s cards and funds all had alarms on them in case he attempted to withdraw anything, and all his properties had been locked down with orders to report any sighting of Tony to Ms. Potts and the Avengers.
It was impressive how much thought Tony had put into all of this. He’d obviously been dead serious in planning out exactly what needed to be done to limit his potential for damage. Steve hadn’t even realized just how much harm Tony could have caused if he hadn’t planned this out so thoroughly.
Steve had always considered Tony to just be impulsive, and maybe he was, but now Steve could see why people called Tony a futurist.
Of course, Tony clearly remembered creating all these conditions and he didn’t do a thing to trigger any of the alerts. They didn’t exactly do much to help with finding him.
“Director Fury has just issued an emergency alert,” Jarvis suddenly interjected, interrupting the argument starting up between the other Avengers. They were all instantly on their feet.
“Where?” Steve asked tersely, grabbing his shield. “What did he say?”
“Tony Stark has instigated an attack on SHIELD,” JARVIS said.
“What part of SHIELD?” Clint said irritably, not up to dealing with generalities.
JARVIS was silent for a few seconds before responding. “I have now lost communication with Director Fury and all other SHIELD contacts. It would appear the attack is on the New York City headquarters and all online systems.”
“Fuck,” Clint said, and even though Steve didn’t appreciate the foul language he couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.
