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Tony couldn’t say he was happy with the predicament he had found himself in, he’d admit that much – to himself at least. He would not let his captors in on that, however. If he treated the small cell as a five-star resort – a venue he was rather familiar with – they would feel off-kilter and, if he knew AIM right, wouldn’t think about what they were giving away.
With a little bit of luck, he’d be out of the cell before the Avengers even knew he was gone. The Avengers being alerted would mean calling on Iron Man, and while Tony was good at literally everything he put his hands to, he hadn’t quite figured out how to be in two places at once.
The best plan Tony had so far figured out how to orchestrate an escape that he’d be able to disguise as having just come off a five-day bender involved one of the henchmen being more incompetent than usual, thus dropping a screwdriver within Tony’s reach, access to a security camera (doable through the ceiling), and fifteen minutes unsupervised cell time (he usually had five-minute stretches).
There were some wrinkles to iron out, of course, but according to his calculations, he should be out of his accommodation before Thursday morning. He thought it should be Thursday morning, at least – he was fairly certain it had been around noon Monday when he was grabbed. Tony was a genius, but he’d never claimed to be good at time-keeping. He had people for that.
Tony hadn’t planned for getting knocked out by his cell filling with some kind of gas, but he couldn’t account for everything.
When he came around again, it was to the sight of Steve Roger’s very concerned blue eyes hovering a foot above him. After he’d blinked blearily a couple of times, the rest of Steve appeared as well. Tony was rather certain it had been one of his teenage daydreams and hoped that somewhere Howard was spinning in his grave.
“…Steve?” Tony said groggily, still not entirely sure about what he was seeing, and not awake enough to properly compute it either. The red, blue and white spandex – which he despite his best efforts hadn’t been allowed to change – was difficult to mistake for anything else, of course, but AIM’s knockout gas seemed to be a knock-off and left him feeling cottony.
“Hi, Tony. Found you,” Steve smiled wanly at him, something that didn’t fill Tony with any kind of confidence.
“What are you doing here?” Tony finally managed to gather his wits enough to ask, sitting up and burying his face in his hands. Never again knock-off knock-out gas.
“Well, you were kidnapped, and we couldn’t get ahold of Iron Man, so someone had to rescue you,” Steve’s voice faltered a little halfway through the sentence, probably due to the arch look Tony sent him.
“How’s that working out for you then? As I’m seeing it, things aren’t optimal at the moment and now we’re all sitting in AIM’s cells.”
“It’s not going right, that’s for sure. Cap, Nat’s not doing well,” Clint suddenly chimed in from the cell next to the one Tony and Steve were now sharing, startling Tony out of what could’ve been a tirade for the ages. He hadn’t even realised the rest of the team – minus Thor and Iron Man, that is – were there as well. A cursory scan of the cells around him showed Bruce drugged to the gills in one, and Clint hovering over -
“What’s wrong with Tasha?” Tony demanded, getting to his feet and moving over to the wall separating their cells in the same movement. Natasha was lying on the floor, brilliantly red hair soaked with blood from a wound on her temple.
“She was grazed by a bullet before they knocked us out, and she went down hard,” Clint explained, tone modulated in a way Tony recognised.
“Are your hearing aids fried?” he asked anyway, just in case he was wrong. If he wasn’t – he wouldn’t be, he was always right – he might have the beginnings of a plan percolating in his brain.
“Nat’s in bad shape, the closest thing we have to a doctor is passed out in a cell, we’re all in cells in fact, and the only one we have on the outside is your incommunicado bodyguard, but all you ask about is my hearing aids?” Clint wasn’t wrong to sound incredulous, Tony would give him that, but he had a reason so if Clint could just answer that would be great, thank you. Tony didn’t say anything to him, but Clint seemed to get the gist of what he was thinking, anyway, because he heaved a deep sigh before replying. “Yes, okay, they’re fried, I don’t know what the assholes did but I can’t use them.”
Tony nodded distractedly, thoughts going haywire with possible plans, but all he could see was Natasha getting paler and paler, the crimson of her blood soaking the red of her hair, and over every single plan he was making he had one single thought going, akin to a voice-over: he hadn’t told her he loved her.
“Give them to me,” Tony demanded abruptly, imperiously holding out one hand to Clint.
“What?”
“Give your hearing aids. To me,” Tony said, hand and gaze held steady. Clint was trying to stop the blood flow, but considering he didn’t have much more than his uniform shirt to use as a bandage, it wasn’t an easy task. Tony softened slightly but remained firm. “Clint, as it is right now, our only chance is me getting a signal out to JARVIS, and I can do that – if I get your hearing aids and Steve’s belt buckle.”
In reflex, both Steve and Clint glanced at the aforementioned belt buckle. It was shaped like a star, and Steve had glared hotly at Tony when he’d received it, but eventually, he’d conceded to wearing it nonetheless.
When Tony didn’t elaborate more, Clint and Steve looked at each other for a long moment before both of them acquiesced. With a shake of his head, Clint put his hearing aids in Tony’s still outstretched hand, while Steve pulled his belt free with a single jerk, ripping the buckle off the strip of leather.
Allowing himself one last glance at Natasha, who was breathing noticeably shallower than she had been when Tony woke up, he begun dismantling Steve’s belt buckle. He’d never been happier for his tendency to plan for unlikely things, including stowing a virtually undetectable, tiny multitool in Steve’s buckle (and Natasha’s Widow bites, but he couldn’t think about that).
“Was that – in my buckle?” Steve asked in surprise. Tony just nodded absentmindedly while using the multitool to dismantle Clint’s hearing aids, looking for the small piece of metal he put in every single tech he personally made. It was a beacon of sorts, a beacon that needed direct contact with his arc reactor to activate.
Once it was activated, JARVIS would send the latest armour to the location the beacon sent out.
Tony knew this would mean exposing several secrets he really hadn’t meant to expose yet – maybe never – but it was the only chance he had to save Natasha. It should shock him, how deeply he felt after such a sudden realisation, but he was an all-or-nothing guy, and he refused to let her die before she could let him down – maybe via her Thighs of Death, but that had been his preferred way of going out since Clint first explained the term.
Tony took a deep breath once he was finished dismantling the hearing aids, before tearing his t-shirt down the middle.
“What the fuck did you do to your chest, Stark?” Clint asked hysterically, things getting a bit too much for him. Natasha was slowly bleeding out, Bruce was still unconscious, and Tony had a nightlight in his chest. Anyone would feel a bit off-kilter in those circumstances.
“Where are we?” Tony asked, grimly ignoring both verbal and nonverbal questions – Steve looked curious and very suspicious. Maybe he, unlike Clint, had identified the arc reactor as whatever it was that powered the Iron Man suit.
“Outskirts of New York, we’re not far from the Tower,” Steve answered slowly, gaze still trained on the arc reactor – or maybe the scarring around it, Tony wasn’t sure and he didn’t think it was the moment to ask either.
“Good,” Tony said. “Iron Man will soon be here.”
Natasha really didn’t look good.
Somewhere in the distance, there were the sounds of gunshots, and something heavy crashing through at least one brick wall.
“Stand back,” Tony told Steve, standing as close to the middle of the cell as he could. The armour should not hurt him, but it was the first time Tony had ever activated the beacons. He imagined JARVIS might be under a bit of pressure.
Looking Steve in the eye, Tony raised his arms straight from his sides, and as the armour flew in, enclosing Tony in an instant, the last thing he saw before the helmet closed and the HUD activated was Steve’s shocked, but not surprised, face.
“I am Iron Man, and I will. Kill. You. All.”
As Tony turned around, ready to exit the cell through the hole the armour had made on its way to him, he saw Clint start chest compressions.