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Anthony Edward Stark, son of the late Howard Stark. CEO of Stark Industries, billionaire, Casanova and the brilliant mind behind the success of his company. A celebrity, an idol, and an arrogant, obnoxious asshole you couldn’t even point your finger at because he had every right to be arrogant. Because he was better than everyone else. He was smarter, richer, more attractive, and he always, always had the last word in an argument. Tony Stark was the man everyone hated to love. The brightest burning star in the skies of business, celebrity and science.
But everything that burns will leave ashes. And from the ashes may rise … unspeakable, dark phoenixes. They hunt for the flame which birthed them, aiming to bring it down, just so their embers may glow the brighter for its downfall.
When Tony Stark got kidnapped and held captive by a terrorist group known as the Ten Rings, everything of value was taken from him – everything but his mind. There was shrapnel from one of his own weapons, threatening to tear his heart apart but for the electromagnet that Tony’s fellow captive Yinsen built into his chest. But he could live with that, he could improve on that. He remembered one of his father’s unfinished, unperfected designs for a power source, the arc reactor, and perfected it to replace the car battery that had been running his heart. Then they started to plan their escape.
However, before Tony could build half of the ten bombs that would clear their path, their captors got impatient and demanded results. It only took one idiot. One stupid idiot who pissed his pants and shot, blowing something up. The blast was strong enough to destroy nearly all of the equipment in the cave and maybe kill some of the terrorists. It sent Tony flying several feet, until he collided with the edge of a table. His spine broke instantly.
He didn’t recover from this as quickly as from the hole in his chest.
When he regained lucidity for the first time, he didn’t feel a difference. His feet were still there, right below his knees, below his thighs, below his hips, below ... But then why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he sit? The panic was worse than the pain he couldn’t feel, and not even Yinsen’s wise, soothing voice could calm his wracking sobs, when he realized that he would never, ever be able to walk again. No threats, no promises and no motivational speeches could get something else than the words “I can’t” from him. He didn’t flinch when Raza held a gun to his temple. He didn’t say anything when they brought him a wheelchair. He didn’t move an inch when they threatened to tear out the arc reactor.
They had taken everything of value from him – most importantly they took his will.
-
“You know,” Yinsen said calmly, polishing his glasses, “I think you are a very brave man.”
Tony blinked, but otherwise gave no indication as to whether he heard the man or not.
“You have suffered, have you not? Before this, you suffered. Now, you are suffering. The difference,” he tapped his forehead, “is your mind. You didn’t know you were suffering, before. Now it is obvious and you cannot look away. It is hard, yes. But you are a brave man, Mr. Stark. You will stop suffering, and then …”
Then what, Tony thought, but the words sank again, like a camel on quicksand. Sand. Yes, sand. There was sand everywhere. Even between his teeth. He gnashed them slightly, feeling the ugly scrunch. Maybe he was thirsty. He couldn’t tell anymore. He’d decided on not being thirsty and hungry anymore after he found out that he had lost control over his bowels. After some time the sting in his stomach and the dryness of his tongue numbed into the general vibrating pain he felt surging through his body – even those parts he shouldn’t and didn’t feel anymore.
From time to time Yinsen would say something, ask him to eat or drink, and sometimes one of their captors would appear and shout at them. Tony didn’t listen. Didn’t care.
He shouldn’t care. He didn’t want to care. But after days of lying motionlessly and silently on a table that had served as the operation table twice now, he just wanted to sit. He didn’t care where or how, he just didn’t want to stare at the stone above him anymore.
“Yinsen,” he tried to say, but it only came out as a broken croak. The man appeared by his side, like a faithful ghost.
“Drink some water, Mr. Stark. It will help you get better.”
But he didn’t want to get better. He just wanted to sit, goddammit.
He drank anyway. The water was warm and mucky, rinsing the sand from his mouth just as much as adding new particles of indeterminate origin. This couldn’t be healthy.
“I honestly do not know where they got the chair. Better not ask,” Yinsen said in a mildly joking tone. Gallows humor.
Tony’s torso felt squishy, like some of his muscles refused to move the way he wanted them to, like someone removed all bones from it. The bandages wrapped tightly to a wooden construction around his lower back, which should stabilize his spine, didn’t help much either; and despite knowing that his ass and legs were still attached to him, he couldn’t actually feel himself sitting on his butt, when Yinsen finally managed to haul him into a more vertical position. It felt like when he’d sat on his foot for too long and then stood, only to stumble, because he couldn’t properly feel his foot. It felt just like this, only much more permanent.
Somehow they managed to get Tony into the wheelchair, but sitting by himself was actually far more challenging than he thought it would be. Whenever Yinsen removed his hands from Tony’s shoulder, he sort of just toppled, like a friggin’ Jenga tower with too many blocks removed from his base. It was frustrating, and it kind of hurt, without actually hurting. It was weird and confusing and stressful, and he just couldn’t cope, so he broke into hyperventilating, panicked tears.
He felt kind of detached, like he was looking at himself from a distance. The broken man who was sobbing like a little child … that wasn’t him. Tony didn’t cry. Stark men never cry. (But the women, the wives do, yes.) This must be someone else.
“Who do you want to be?” Yinsen asked, over and over again, calmly, but unwavering in his kindness, while he wiped Tony’s tears and bound his torso to the back of the wheelchair, keeping him from toppling over. “Who do you want to be? If you could be anyone?”
I wish, Tony thought then, with a voice that wasn’t his own. Sometimes I wish … he was still here. Sometimes I wish you were him. Who, him?
“A name means only so much,” Yinsen continued, not waiting for an answer. “What you fill it with … That’s important. Names are … like balloons. You fill them with water, to throw at people. You can fill them with stones, and they lie like dead, heavy and stupid. Or you fill them with Helium, and they rise high into the sky. What is Tony Stark filled with, hm?”
Metal and explosives, Tony thought, blinking more tears away. I am filled with metal and explosives. I’m a bomb. I am going to explode and leave shrapnel in your heart. I wish I was … what?
“They want you to build Jericho missile.” Yinsen leaned against the table, arms crossed, and looked at Tony over the rim of his glasses, face kind but hard. “You invented Jericho missile. Jericho missile is what you build it to be.”
Building, engineering, mechanics, hacking, inventing, tinkering. Tony thought about metal bending and wires connecting. The whirring sound of a machine coming to life. Suddenly, he missed his babies. His stupid little babies. He wondered whether J.A.R.V.I.S. missed him; if Dum-E was still holding a fire extinguisher; if Butterfinger and U were still playing with each other. Or did someone shut them down? More tears spilled over his cheeks at this thought.
Yinsen lowered himself to a crouch in front of Tony, the eyes behind those glasses clear and piercing.
“What do you need to build … a new Jericho missile, Mr. Stark?”
I wish I was a hero, Tony thought and tapped the arc reactor humming in his chest.
-
He still didn’t speak much. His mind was active again, making plans, adjusting technology to his purposes, devising theories and testing them. But active didn’t mean … whole. Sane. He knew that. It was like he’d lost control over parts of his mind together with his legs; maybe it was still some sort of aftershock. But he didn’t have much time or energy to dwell on this, so he made do with what faculties he managed to salvage. First, he needed to learn how to control his body again. With his legs being dead weight, his balance, strength and the accuracy of his movements was challenged. It took him days until Yinsen could loosen the ties that strapped him to the wheelchair, and even navigating the damned thing was more difficult than he’d imagined. Sometimes he’d forget to put the brakes in and suddenly roll off to one corner of the cave that was slightly lower than the rest. They also had to cut the legs of their workbench, in order for him to be able to reach it more comfortably. And he still had no control over his bladder. It frustrated him to no end, but frustration was better than self-pity, he decided. After all, it could be worse. He still had Yinsen, who helped him with the calm kindness of the wise. He was like a teacher, and since Tony owed him his life at least twice over now, he felt a kind of reverence towards the older man like he hadn’t felt it for a long, long time. Actually, the last person to make him feel this kind of respectful devotion had been Jarvis. The real, flesh-and-bone Jarvis. Maybe, when he got home, J.A.R.V.I.S. would get a little brother, Y.I.N.S.E.N. Specialized on surgeries, prescriptions and medical knowledge. Or something like that.
At the moment he had Yinsen work on a fake hull for a Jericho missile, while he devised the plans for their escape. Their last plan had failed spectacularly, because he hadn’t been thinking big. Now he was thinking like Tony Stark used to: give him something impossible, and he’ll make it possible. And bigger than anything before.
I wish I was a hero, he repeated, like a silent mantra. He now remembered the voice of his father, Howard Stark. Tony, Tony. If only you could be like he was. Steve, he … he had a pure heart first – then came his abilities, and that is the right way of doing it. You’re doing it the wrong way around, kid, always the wrong way around.
And sometimes, if he’d been especially drunk: I lost him, Anthony. My greatest creation, lost to the ice. I’d hoped you’d be like him … But you’re not. Instead you became like me.
Yes, well, Tony knew he was better than his father. He would succeed where Howard had failed. He would become a hero and right his wrongs. But first he needed a suit that would allow him to walk out of this cave. A … high-tech prosthesis. That was the best way of describing it. A means to an end. Because if Tony Stark was to die, his flame would go out with a goddamn blast, while he was standing on his own damned dead legs – and preferably take down those Ten Rings assholes down with him.
-
It was only after Yinsen ran ahead, throwing their plan away, that Tony recognized the way the older man had treated him. The hard, cool kindness. The easy, soft wisdom. Compassionate, yet unforgiving. His ghost-like gazes. Yinsen had long been dead, only kept alive to … maybe help Tony walk again. To change him, maybe, into something better. The spark meant to ignite his ashes into flames again.
Perhaps that was where the white-hot fury that blurred Tony’s vision came from. He shot volley after volley into the men that tried to stop him, flames bursting from the machine’s arms, but it was all white noise to him. Inside he was calm. Don’t waste your life. Those were Yinsen’s last words. Don’t waste your life. And fuck him if he didn’t respect a dying man’s last wish. He didn’t risk his life when he set fire to the stacks of weapons, igniting the machine’s rocket boots instead, shooting him into the sky like a space shuttle. In that moment he was glad for the lack of sensation in his legs – there would probably have been a lot of pain involved, because despite the beautiful parabolic trajectory that would send him (in theory) as far away as possible, after some time the tank fuelling the rockets was bound to be empty. And then he fell, according to Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
He came to himself in a heap of bent, sizzling metal and electronics, half-buried in sand. His feeble attempts at freeing himself would have been successful, if not for the dead weight of his legs. With a pang he realized that maybe this hadn’t been a very good idea, considering that he was recovering from a spinal cord injury, but done was done. He just hoped he hadn’t further hurt himself, because he wouldn’t even be able to feel and therefore also not be able to know if he’d just broken his legs.
Resigned, dizzy from dehydration and also terribly sunburnt, he lay in the sand, fiddling with some wire and hoping that someone would find him before Raza would. When he heard the choppers and Rhodey came and pulled him out of the sand, he just laughed.
“How was the fun-vee?” his friend asked jokingly, patting him on the shoulder. “Next time you ride with me, okay?”
Tony made some sort of broken, groaning noise then, and Rhodey pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Rhodey, man,” he choked out. “I’m afraid you’ll have to carry me.”
“What … What’d you mean? Tony?”
“I can’t walk, Rhodey. I can’t walk.”
-
When they lowered the plane’s tailgate to let him and Rhodey out, the first thing he saw was Pepper’s puffy face, and he knew immediately that he had to be old-Tony again, even if just for her. Her eyes widened at the sight of Rhodey rolling him in a wheelchair towards her and Happy, but he kept a straight expression and waved the stretcher away, when a medical team appeared out of nowhere. She frowned at the wheelchair, at first, but then she bit her lip to keep back a joyful smile.
“Your eyes are red,” he said, before she could greet him, and maneuvered his wheelchair closer. “A few tears for your long-lost boss?”
“Tears of joy,” she assured him, unfazed as ever, apart from her swollen eyes. “I hate job hunting.”
“Yeah, vacation’s over,” he replied, offering her a quick smirk, and rolled past her to greet Happy. “Hey buddy, care to help me with this?”
Confused, Happy exchanged glances with Pepper and Rhodey.
“Sir, I’m- …”
“Just, ah, if you’d, you know, lift me into the backseat, that’d be nice.”
“Is something wrong?” Pepper asked and came to stand beside him, wide, glassy eyes flicking between him and the wheelchair. “To- … Tony, what happened?”
“I can’t walk, Pep. It’s okay, Happy, just help me get into the car.” He tried to wave it off, but just with Rhodey, somehow his … condition felt worse when he was faced with people he cared about and who cared about him. They looked shocked, hurt and confused, which in turn made him feel hurt, confused and slightly upset; but Happy carefully hoisted him out of the wheelchair and into the car, expression partially hidden behind his sunglasses.
“Tony, is it … permanent?” Pepper placed a slender hand on his shoulder, looking at him intently.
“Yes. Now get in the car.”
“Where to, Sir?” Happy asked, as soon as they all sat in the car.
“Take us to the hospital please, Happy,” Pepper said softly, but he cut her short.
“No.”
“No?” she said incredulously. “Tony, you have to go to the hospital, the doctor has to look at you, your condition- …”
“’No’ is a complete answer,” he murmured, not letting her finish her sentence. “I don’t have to do anything. I’ve been in captivity for three months, there’s two things I want to do: I want an American cheeseburger … and the other- …” He looked at her for a moment, pausing for dramatic effect.
“That’s enough of that,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“… is not what you think, I want you to call for a press conference now.”
“Call for a press conference? What on earth for?”
“Hogan, drive,” he insisted. “Cheeseburger first.”
Pepper let it be at that, doing what she did best (which was coping with his vague, sometimes reckless whims), and Tony was content. He’d managed to be old-Tony, and maybe it hadn’t even been an act. Being around his friends sure helped with that. He realized, how much he’d missed having Pepper around, who was quietly organizing the press conference, and tightened the seatbelt strapped over his chest and lap, to keep him in his seat. It was nice, wearing clean, tailored clothes again, but as peaceful their car ride was, there were too many other pressing matters on his mind to fully appreciate the security and calm of home. Still, what screamed more America than an unhealthy, greasy cheeseburger? He dug into the first one with a delighted moan, which earned him concerned glances from both Happy and Pepper, but the second one was in fact even better, because it didn’t seem to evaporate on his tongue and actually reached his stomach.
When Happy slowed the car, and Tony could see Obadiah Stane – old friend, father-figure, uncle Obie – standing there, directing the hordes of reporters, smiling his Santa-smile and then rushing towards the car, opening the door … It suddenly felt all so surreal. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe this was just a cruel, cruel dream – the carrot dangling in front of his face.
“Look at this! Tony,” he was greeted and Obie didn’t even wait for him to get out of the car before swooping him into an embrace. Oh, so it was real after all. “Pepper already texted me about … what happened to you. I thought we were going to meet at the hospital.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said, belied by Happy gingerly lifting him into another wheelchair and handing him his third and last burger.
“Look at you!” Despite the Santa-smile, something else showed in Obie’s voice then, but Tony didn’t mind it. “You had to have a burger, yeah? Well, come on. You get me one of those?”
“There’s only one left. I need it,” Tony replied, but dropped the burger into his lap and fought with the wheelchair, trying to maneuver it up the pavement, through the crowd of reporters and into the Stark Industries factory, where they were going to host the press conference. He could already hear the shouted questions about his captivity, his escape, the wheelchair, his health. Obie tried to dissolve and divert them by cheering at Tony, who gave up fumbling at some point and waved at Happy.
“Hey, Hogan, help me with this?”
“Sure, Sir.”
“Just … At the base of the podium is okay. Thanks, Hap.” While he waited for the reporters and Obie to settle into a kind of awkward loose half-circle around him, since he couldn’t climb the podium, he bit into his burger. “Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down? You know, since … I’m kind of sitting here. That way you can see me, and I can look comfortably at you. A little less formal.”
He took another bite and let his gaze wander, unfocused, staring into nothingness for a few seconds, while everyone settled on the ground. Feeling Obie’s eyes on him, he turned and said softly: “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you,” Obie echoed, though he could hear the confusion in his voice.
“I never got to say goodbye to my dad,” Tony murmured around a bite of burger, before swallowing and raising his voice, so the reporters could hear him too. “I never got to say goodbye to my father. There's questions that I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. lf he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts. Or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels.” He hesitated and listened to the clicking of the cameras, letting the words fill his mouth before he let them out. “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. Hell, I was affected myself,” he pointed at his legs. “I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”
A reporter raised his hand then and called his name.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“A lot happened to me, and a broken spine is just the tip of the iceberg. I had my eyes opened. I came to realize that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up. And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division, until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be,” Tony stated with a strong voice that carried over the noise of dozens of reporters shouting questions at him. “What direction it should take, one that I'm comfortable with and is consistent with the highest good for this country, as well.” These words had been burning on his tongue ever since he’d been shown the Ten Rings’ arsenal, full of Stark weapons, and he wouldn’t let Obie’s panicked attempts of silencing him now keep those words in.
Clenching his jaw he allowed for Happy to roll him away and through the jungle of arms and microphones jutted into his face, but he let them. He’d said his words. Now he just needed to wait for them to explode, like a well-placed grenade.