Chapter Text
If someone asked Tony what he would do differently if he had life to live again he had a list. He had it loosely prioritized in that there were eight things in the number one spot and twelve things in the number two spot. Three and below were nice to haves.
One of the things vying for the top spot was HYDRA. Just fuck HYDRA. Don't let them get their hooks into anything or anyone. Barnes for a start. Don’t let any of that happen. infiltration of SHIELD also a big nope. Project insight could not get more of a fuck you from him. Mass murder with the sole purpose of removing anyone who disagreed with HYDRA’s agenda.
FUCK. THAT.
List of targets was basically Tony’s contact list. Tony himself was high on the list. Apparently he was resistant to HYDRA’s attempts to indoctrinate him. Fuck yes he was.
Honestly, Tony would be disappointed if he was in their top ten people to kill. But Pepper, pepper was also on that list, Rhody too. Something about being too dangerous when he had access to the war machine armor. Bruce had been on the list. Which showed a spectacular lack of research on HYDRAs part. If it was a fight between a Hulk and a Heliocarrier, the Hulk would win. Natasha, Clint, Agent, Fury all also unsurprisingly on the list. HYDRA at least knew it would have to purge SHIELD’s ranks once it started, you know, mass murder.
There were a bunch of scientists on the list, too, that Tony respected but there was one name, a name that hadn’t meant anything to him at the time, but a name that meant everything to him now, Stephen Strange.
Stephen hadn’t even had his car crash when they put him on the list. He hadn’t even started doing magic. What the hell had the HYDRA algorithm seen in Stephen that would have put him HYDRAs list? If you could get marked for murder for being an asshole Tony had about a hundred people he could recommend. So douchbaggry wasn’t enough to get Stephen on the list. At the time he had been one of the best neurosurgeons on the planet. And young. He had been out pacing colleagues years his senior.
If Stephen had stayed in the profession he would have done great things. Maybe that’s why HYDRA had wanted him dead. Tony had shown him a scan of Barnes’ brain once. Stephen had grimaced then started spouting off potential treatments and how much he wanted to see an MRI because it was amazing that a man with this hack job inside his head was still functional.
Maybe that’s why Stephen was a threat before his magic. HYDRA needed to control minds whether through fear or brainwashing. And Stephen had a lot of thoughts about personal autonomy, and about his oath as a doctor to do no harm. He was also the kind of stubborn ass that, if he had to, could have advanced neuro-science by decades just to say ‘Fuck you’ to a group like HYDRA. Which was one of the reasons Tony loved him.
Maybe that’s why so many of Tony’s nearest and dearest made the list because Tony couldn’t help seeing that mix of competence and grit and not think ‘mine’.