Chapter Text
Devil’s Station Transport
“That looks like my supper there, pal.”
Tony looked up with a mix of amusement and dread. He’d been on the prison transport for four days, that was eight meals, and he kept expecting something to happen during the common feeding time.
Most of the rest of the days he was locked in a single occupancy cell and generally ignored.
The guy who was starting something was new; he’d been brought aboard with another half dozen mismatched prisoners yesterday. He looked human, but Tony knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. In fact, he looked like a refugee from a Kevin Bacon movie from the 80s, all wild hair and red leather jacket. He had the same collar around his neck that Tony did, though, which meant he was a prisoner.
Tony hadn’t been able to keep his own clothes; he was in the standard issue, brilliant purple jumpsuit. The prison automated guns were supposed to be able to instantly target any and everyone in the outfit.
This guy was wearing the jacket over his outfit. Tony wondered if that would keep the guns from being able to target him. And who he’d bribed to be able to wear it. It clashed horribly with the jumpsuit, but he was probably warmer than Tony was.
And he was eying Tony’s dinner like it was worth eating.
Because there were so many different aliens on the transport, food was… well, a mix of the inedible and unappetizing varieties. Tony had discovered the hard way not to try to eat the “meats”. But bread and the vitamin puddings, while disgusting, were at least digestible. Starving to death was not the plan.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Tony wondered if he could remember what the plan was.
The transport was horribly cramped, there were fights in the feeding room daily, and at least twice that Tony was aware of, someone had been taken away in a body bag and spaced.
But he was trying to keep his head down, mind his own business, and survive.
Get to Devil’s Station. That was part of the plan. Living until they got there, that was also part of the plan.
The guy in the red coat was still standing there while Tony decided what to do. He could meekly hand over his dinner, which seemed a good way to make sure he never ate again.
Tony grabbed the roll and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth, chewing insolently. He’d need the calories.
“I think you got an attitude about sharing, pal,” Redcoat said, taking the pudding cube off the tray and sticking it, unopened, into his pocket.
“Yeah?” Tony asked around the mouthful of bread. Not the best plan, the bread was chewy and tough and took a while to swallow. He reached for the vitamin drink to wash it down. Yarrow juice and water, it was the best part of the offerings. He got the cap off and chugged about half of it before Redcoat grabbed the tin tray to steal the rest of Tony’s dinner.
Which, while that was the meat and vegetables part and nothing that Tony could digest, he’d been making trades with some of the other prisoners for additional bread or juice rations.
“That’s mine,” Tony said, standing up. Redcoat was almost half a foot taller than Tony was, and while scruffy, seemed muscular under his jumpsuit.
“You think so? Come take it,” Redcoat taunted.
So much for trade tonight.
Tony grabbed the tray, jumped up onto his bench and smashed it down onto Redcoat’s head. The man went down like a ton of bricks, meat, gravy, and some sort of blue vegetable material dripping off him.
“Anyone else?” Tony demanded.
Unfortunately, the answer to that seemed to be a resounding yes.
When Tony woke up -- and he was astonished that he did, although the guards did get involved relatively quickly -- he was back in his cell with a ringing headache.
And a guest.
Redcoat.
So, it was a disciplinary action. Tony and Redcoat were left alone to work out their differences. No matter what noises they made, no one would come. Kept the guards from having to murder the prisoners, Tony supposed.
Of course, Redcoat was still out like a light, so Tony could probably kill him, if he wanted to.
He had to consider that. Did he want to?
Well, he really didn’t want to. Tony didn’t think of himself as a murderer, no matter what his reputation back on earth had been. Merchant of Death; he didn’t kill people himself, he just made weapons.
But maybe he could bargain with Redcoat. Probably better to do that from a position of power, in case Redcoat wasn’t in a bargaining mood.
There wasn’t a lot in Tony’s cell; a bunk that was bolted to the wall, a shelf that had been bolted to the wall to hold Tony’s (very few) personal belongings, and a toilet. Toilet paper was strictly rationed, and Tony sometimes thought that it was both unfairly rationed and used as a punishment method. Almost every alien life on this transport had some sort of elimination method. Although as far as he could tell, Mythrols only had to evacuate their waste every few months. Gross. But convenient if you needed to trade for extra toilet paper. They always seemed to have some.
But Tony wasn’t a genius for nothing, and he did have a shiv, tucked away in what looked like nothing so harmful as a comb. He fetched that, and then crouched over Redcoat, waiting for him to wake up.
“You can stop with the theatrics,” Redcoat said without even opening his eyes. “Do I look like the kind of idiot that can be knocked out with a tea tray? Rhetorical question.”
Huh.
Tony sat back on his heels. “Then you went through a lot of trouble to steal a pudding cube.”
“Do you not know a break-out attempt when you see one?”
“Did I see one? I thought I saw you acting like a clown for no particular reason in the mess hall.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Well, look at this, then--” Redcoat reached into his jacket pocket and Tony raised the shiv threateningly. “-- stop, Stark, okay? I’m here to rescue you. I’ve got your R2 unit, I’m here with Ben Kenobi.”
“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
Redcoat made a little cheering motion. “All right, that just made my cycle! I haven’t seen Star Wars in decades, but man, that was a great movie!”
“You’re human.”
“Half human,” Redcoat corrected. “The other half is -- dubious. I have father issues, let’s not get into that on our first date.”
“From Earth.”
“Missouri,” Redcoat confirmed. “My name’s Quill. You can call me StarLord.”
“Quill, right, I’m--”
“The great Tony Stark, I know,” Quill said. “Your boyfriend sent me to get you out of here.”
“Bucky?”
“He said his name was Barnes,” Quill said. “Gave me this to show you.” He took his hand out of his coat and offered Tony a single dog-tag. The last time he’d seen those, there were a pair of them and they were hanging around Bucky’s neck. Bucky valued them very highly, and would have given them to the person in front of Tony only in extreme need. Or the extremity of his death.
And Tony was pretty sure the Winter Soldier could beat the tar out of this asshole.
“We have a plan?”
“We have… twelve percent of a plan,” Quill hedged.
“I’m going to give Bucky eleven percent of the credit for even that much.”
“It’s a fluid situation, man,” Quill said. “We’re playing it by ear.”
“Yeah, but whose ear?”
“Barnes.”
“I feel better.”
Bucky checked the scopes again.
The Milano wasn’t the best ship he’d seen; which was saying a lot, given that he’d only seen about a dozen space ships in his entire life that weren’t on a movie screen.
But it was getting him where he wanted to go, and that was a start.
“Next time,” he muttered to himself, “get details.”
Tony had been kidnapped by aliens. According to Carol Danvers, he had been, in fact, arrested, tried and convicted in short order.
“Look, I’m already on the outs with Xandar,” she had said. “I can’t do anything about it, but I do know some people who can help you. They’re like, total assholes. You and Stark’ll love ‘em.”
Said assholes had allowed their leader to get likewise arrested, planning for Quill and Tony to end up on the same transport together.
“And then we’ll just track down Quill’s location and snag ‘em both,” Rocket had said.
Just like that.
Bucky watched out the front screen -- there was nothing out there that looked like anything except black and stars -- and hoped the hell these assholes knew what they were doing.