Chapter Text
Tony Stark hadn’t meant to become a villain. It had just sort of happened. After Afghanistan, when he’d built the suit to deal out his own justice, he’d been approached by Nick Fury about the Avengers program. After blowing him off - though he was just a little bit grateful for his dad’s crate of stuff - Tony had gone through all of SHIELD’s files. And what he’d discovered had turned him off of the superhero gig entirely.
But he wasn’t about to stop doing what he was doing, wasn’t about to continue letting Stark Industries weapons fall into enemy hands. So he had Obie killed in an “accident” and handed over Stark Industries to his CEO to deal with. Pepper would be so much better at it, and they both knew it.
And then he’d gone away. Nobody knew where Tony Stark was. Many assumed he was dead from an overdose, or had been killed in the same accident that had taken Obadiah. Pepper knew how to keep her mouth shut, and when Rhodey brought back the War Machine armor, indicating that it had been a gift from Tony, the last thing the genius had built - technically true - the army stopped looking, too, leaving Tony in relative peace.
He was sure that SHIELD still knew he was out there, but since they were undoubtedly busy trying to fix their little Hydra problem, they didn’t bother to come look for him, either.
And so he spent his days tinkering with cars, and his nights tracking down stolen weapons. Occasionally, he’d come across a group of baddies engaging in drug or human trafficking, and he put a stop to those, too. A few of them died, most of them lived, though their quality of life was severely lacking afterwards. A lot of the time, there was collateral damage, in the form of public and private property.
Apparently, people who killed other people were bad guys, even if they were doing it for the right reasons. Not that Tony cared, really, what other people thought about him. But the honest truth was that he’d never meant to become a villain. He’d just sort of meandered downwards until all the news talked about was the villain Iron Man’s latest swath of destruction.
Unfortunately, being labeled as a villain meant that other villains inevitably tried to recruit you. And since none of them knew that Tony Stark was Iron Man, they’d resorted to setting traps for the Gold Titanium suit. Tony was almost grateful, as their fumbling attempts helped him to find weaknesses in the armor that he could then make sure were no longer weaknesses.
He’d turned down AIM and Oscorp and Hydra - who he’d had to turn down three different times so far, each refusal more violent than the previous one - and now he was just humming along to the music, bopping to the vibrating rhythm while he worked on an old 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster.
The music dropped to non-deafening levels, and Jarvis spoke up. “Sir, I believe you have a guest.”
Tony raised an eyebrow, grabbing a rag and wiping ineffectually at his hands. His friends knew what they were getting, and anybody else could just deal with it. “Show me,” he demanded, walking over to the computer stationed in the corner. Several pictures popped up, and Tony whistled low. Dark, shoulder-length hair, ice blue eyes, a chiseled jaw to die for, muscles for days, and…was that a metal arm? Tony gave a soft whimper. “Please tell me he’s here looking for a good time,” he said.
“I’m afraid not, Sir,” Jarvis replied dryly, zooming in on the man’s metal shoulder and the red five-pointed star painted there. Tony sighed. He recognized the guy now, though he didn’t know what he was doing here. There was no way Hydra knew that Iron Man was the not-exactly-deceased Tony Stark. Which meant…Tony wasn’t actually sure what it meant, but it couldn’t be anything good.
“Drop him,” he ordered. “Non-lethally.” He knew who the Winter Soldier was, or had been, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. Besides, he was apparently a sucker for large, beefy brunettes with tragic backstories that he could climb like a tree. Sue him.
The floor upstairs buzzed to life, delivering a jolt that would’ve been deadly to a normal human. The Winter Soldier dropped like a stone. Two of Tony’s guard-bots cuffed the man’s arms in front of him, as well as his legs, and carried him off to the set of rooms that Tony called the dungeons. Really, they were probably better furnished than most prison cells, but they were meant to hold in superhumans. Just because Tony had never faced one directly before didn’t mean he wasn’t aware they existed. One day, he’d really like to meet Doctor Bruce Banner. The Hulk sounded like he’d be a smash hit at parties.
After ordering Jarvis to let him know when the man woke up, Tony turned back to his cars, whistling cheerfully. Upstairs, James Barnes remained blissfully unconscious as his silver arm sparked, unaware that the mechanic he’d come to see for repairs on the suggestion of one Nick Fury was the very same villain that Hydra had been hunting for months now. And perhaps the only person in the world that would be able to help him.