Work Text:
*
Steve was assigned new quarters following the incident. (They don't call it an escape attempt.) Stronger walls, tighter security, multiple locks on the solid metal door. No windows. Precautions only, he's assured, for his own protection.
He thinks about the faceless guard whose arm he broke, remembers the brittle snap and unexpectedly feminine cry of pain, and doesn't argue.
*
The labcoats come in two varieties. The ones armed with notepads and recording devices and endless questions try to crawl inside his head. The rest just want to see him pushed to his physical limits under tightly controlled conditions. When the tests are done the needles appear, and they draw blood samples until he's woozy. The sensation is the closest he's come since the serum to being drunk, but it's still better than discussing his difficulty sleeping.
They never say the word serum, but they just about wet themselves with excitement whenever Steve lets it slip. Talking about "before" in general begins to feel like he's leaking secrets under interrogation, so he stops.
There's a period where he goes entire days without stringing three words together.
*
Steve's existence narrows to aging white walls, battleship linoleum, buzzing florescent lights. He is permitted access to two floors within the SHIELD compound. That's five corridors, nine rooms, one elevator. No windows. Five of those rooms are offices belonging to the labcoats. One is a dining room that is only slightly more dreary than the food.
The guards who share his meal shifts are the same ones who escort him through the halls. They'll share his table too, indulging him in smalltalk, but they always sit facing him, their holstered weapons out of snatching range.
It's heartening to remind himself that he could take them all out with his plastic dining tray.
*
He asks for books and receives propaganda propped up by a few facts. He asks to go outside and is assured that he will, when (they determine) he's ready. Small steps, they repeat, discussing his recovery as if there's something wrong with him.
Steve grasps that his illicit sightseeing jaunt to Times Square was supposedly traumatic; and it was, just not in a way they understand. One glimpse, noise and lights and chaos, a memory of the future that he pulls out again and again to revive his parched senses. He's being insulated from the wrong time.
It's the past that's painful.
*
Meeting the robot is, in a strange way, proof of sanity. It's been seven decades, a lifetime since Steve watched a car (almost) fly, and saw a synthetic man on display behind glass. Progress is unthinkable after knowing Howard Stark.
"Hello," he greets again, careful as he steps over the thick wire that snakes across the concrete floor. "Do I pass?"
"Were this a test, Captain Rogers, I would deduct points for tardiness." Face and voice both lack human range of expression, but the robot is clearly appraising him.
Captain America shook thousands of hands in his USO days. Most were small and cool in his, but there was always some jackass who took the tights as an invitation to test his grip. Steve is sure the robot's beautifully articulated fingers could crush his, and its palm is almost hot. He makes a fist after, to retain the sensation. "My door starts magically opening itself in the middle of the night, I get suspicious. And please, call me Steve."
"I assure you, there was no magic involved." The cadence of the words manages to convey a touch of irritation.
"But it was all you?" The breadcrumb trail of cooperative locks, the waiting elevator car, the choice of destination floor.
"Correct."
"I'm sorry, this is probably rude, but do you have a name? I've never met, uh, one of your kind."
"You may count yourself among the select few who have. I am unique, a prototype."
"But there are others... like you?"
The robot doesn't hesitate, doesn't betray that it's thinking or making a decision. It's like talking to someone who always knows precisely what they intend to say. "If you desire the particulars, I am a design fork based on the mark four platform of the Iron Man armor, capable of fully independent function. However, I sense your inquiry was of a more general nature."
"You know who I am, so I'm gonna guess you also know where I spent the last seventy years."
"Indeed, I have read your file. The negligence SHIELD has paid your re-education does explain the equanimity with which you accept a marvel of modern engineering such as myself."
Steve has to smile at such a healthy self-opinion. "Secret underground laboratories were sort of my specialty during the war. Saw a lot of strange stuff."
The robot informs, "It is time for you to leave, sir."
"That was a joke. You're... fantastic." More like sculpture than the product of a Hollywood prop shop. "I mean it."
"Thank you." Its nod is gracious. "Though I was referring to the clock, not an overstayed welcome. I can mask your movement and whereabouts from the cameras, but your absence will be detected when the guards make their physical inspection at shift change."
"How long?"
"Nineteen minutes, average variance plus five minus two minutes."
Something like panic bubbles in Steve's chest, and he entertains the notion of not returning, of hiding away in the sub-sub basement. No supplies, no weapons, just a sentient machine of murky allegiance for company...
Yeah, that would end well.
"I can come back, right? You'll let me out again?"
"I will continue to facilitate your late night reconnoitering, but I think we're both aware that SHIELD underestimates your tactical resourcefulness. That you remain in their custody indicates a certain level of cooperation."
Shaking his head, Steve moves for the door. "I'll burn that bridge when- if I get to it."
The robot's noncommittal hum is all too human.
"Well, goodnight, er-"
"Pleasant dreams, Captain Rogers."
*
Sleep is impossible. Pretending for the guards, he lies in the dark and reviews the encounter in his mind, turning over every inch of conversation for buried nuance.
He failed to ask the critical question: Why?
Steve spends the day alternately convinced that his transgression is somehow visible to anyone who looks at him; that SHIELD already knows but are waiting to tip their hand. It's as nerve-wracking as bluffing his way through an enemy checkpoint with false papers, a stolen uniform, and a prayer.
His afternoon session breaks the safety of routine. The doc is one he hasn't seen before, an older woman with a touch of the motherland in her voice. He wonders if she's supposed to remind him of Sarah Rogers, or the sisters at the orphanage. Not that it matters -- she won't do any better than the gruff fatherly type or the pretty brunette they've already thrown at him.
Doc Irish retreads the same tired ground -- post-traumatic stress, dissociative disorder, depression -- but she fiddles with her pen the way a sentry might stroke their trigger guard.
Steve shares a nightmare, the one he's never actually had where he's on stage in front of a full audience, naked except for his shield and unable to remember his lines. He can't tell if the distraction is successful or even necessary, but the session concludes without a single mention of robots.
*
"I thought it over. You can call me Tony."
Interesting. Did it- he just give himself a name? "Tony," Steve tries. "That stand for something?"
"In honor of my creator."
Sensitive subject? Better not to ask.
Steve left his quarters the instant he heard the locks click, nearly bolted for the elevator in his relief. He has time tonight for a proper visit, and starts with a belated inspection of the room.
It's built like a bunker, all concrete. Must be at least three floors down, because the ceiling is a good twenty feet above his head. The space should feel cavernous, but it's crowded with tall worktables and plastic storage crates and electronic devices he can't begin to identify. The arrangement screams temporary, slapped together, but there's no way it was assembled without SHIELD's knowledge.
"Would you like a tour?" Tony's footsteps send vibrations through the floor -- he must weigh a few hundred pounds -- and he's obviously practiced at maneuvering around his trailing power cable. Still, seems like there would have been a more convenient place to attach it than the center of his chest.
"I'd rather know why you brought me here."
"I wanted to make your acquaintance."
Short, simple, could be true. It also smacks of SHIELD's tendency to deflect any real questions. Steve presses, "Why"?
"Analysis of your military service record, psychological profile, and past personal associations indicates a seventy-eight percent likelihood of sympathy for my plight. In short, I need your help."
If this is a test -- Steve hasn't ruled out the possibility -- it's insidious and overly elaborate. The alternate theory he's entertaining is perhaps worse. "I'm listening."
Tony beckons to a clear space ringed by workbenches. "I could render my case in audio -- stereo even -- but if a picture is worth a thousand words..."
Information explodes out of the air, engulfs him. Steve reacts as if a grenade has gone off in his face, flailing for the protection of a shield that isn't there. It would be embarrassing if he wasn't immediately mesmerized.
Suspended inches from his nose is wire model of the SHIELD compound, as detailed as a blueprint. He can see inside it, knows it's accurate when he pinpoints the exact location of his quarters. A large room on the lowest level holds a pair of glowing dots, blue and red.
Holy shit. He's stormed Hydra bases on spotty, six month old intel. No way SHIELD would be comfortable showing him this, and it's just the tip of the iceberg.
His entire file scrolls slowly by on another plane, with phrases like "Operation Rebirth" and "disobedience of direct orders" highlighted. There are weirdly translucent photographs of him in costume, him with the Commandos, him inspecting his motorcycle beside a showboating Howard Stark.
Him still partly locked in ice, mobbed by figures in white.
The contents are completely current: he finds results from every test he's undergone; the verdict on his psyche, pronounced in unflattering clinical language. Subject displays. The specimen. Every drop of his blood accounted for, but they misplace his name.
"Too much? Captain? Earth to Steve?"
"I'm okay. I just-" Steve forces his jaw to unclench, tears his gaze away and flings it somewhere else.
Tony, only not. Same flashy paint job but sleeker lines, less bulk. Beautiful, really. The words are repeated in newspaper articles, on magazine covers, splashed across movies of a red and gold blur in action: Iron Man.
Steve reaches, meets no resistance as he takes Tony's wrist and turns it over to examine his palm. The disc at the center goes from dark and inert to a startling white light.
"That's what you wanted to see, isn't it?"
The movie over Tony's shoulder is Iron Man in flight, streaks blazing from his hands and feet like rocket exhaust.
"Go on, ask me."
He can't quite bring himself to touch the crude mess of Tony's chest. On closer inspection, the cable is made of several smaller ones bound in a flexible sheath, except at the end where they splay and plunge into metal like gnarled fingers. The connections -- sockets? -- don't seem to allow for a quick or simple release.
There's no space to accommodate Iron Man's glowing heart.
"How long have you been stuck down here?"
"Not bad, Rogers." Tony pivots, thrusts his other hand in a stiff-armed Halt! gesture at the wall. After a moment he lets it drop. "Not the question I was expecting, but close."
*
Steve's head is bursting by the time he slips back to bed, one step ahead of the shift change. His memory stores information at a faster rate than his mind can absorb it, but it's all there in perfect clarity, waiting to be accessed.
Sleep brings him dreams full of monsters: Banner, Blonsky, the serum's misbegotten children. Red Skull features as the proud patriarch.
SHIELD intends to try again. Tony commandeered the cameras, showed Steve the reconstructed Vita-Ray machine. It's incomplete -- they don't have Howard to tinker it back to life, but they enlisted the next best thing. And they have the recipient of the only "successful" serum infusion as their private lab rat.
It's like a reel from The Phantom Creeps got spliced in the middle of Buck Rogers.
Over breakfast, Steve points to the black-on-black embroidered logo barely visible on a guard's protective vest. "Stark. Like Stark Industries? Howard Stark?"
Forks go still. The loudest sound in the dining room is a coffee mug being gingerly deposited on the table. The guard's eyes don't leave his scrambled eggs. "I wouldn't know."
"He made my kit during the war. Of course he'd be too old these days to run a big company." Steve knows Howard is dead. "Could have stayed in the family, though. Maybe he has a son?"
"I'm not authorized to discuss that matter with you."
"If I was a public figure- No, that's not right. I am a public figure." He's aware now that Captain America: Living Legend is among the twenty-first century's best kept secrets.
"Drop it, Rogers."
"If I was an outspoken industrialist with ties to the US military, and I found myself attracting the wrong kind of attention-"
"DOCTORS' ORDERS."
"Powerful, unsavory attention. What are the chances SHIELD would cut me some kind of deal? Say, protection in exchange for services rendered?"
The guard reaching for his radio shoots Steve a venomous glare. They don't enjoy dealing with the labcoats any more than he does, and he's pushed too far. There's no longer a choice.
"Appreciate the help," Steve mutters. Enjoy filing your incident reports.
*
The labcoats reason, and entreat, and finally threaten the wrath of Director Fury. (Steve met him, once. Guy's got a blind spot the size of Texas.) When he won't rat on his source, they skip straight past the disappointed lecture to the witch-hunt.
He never imagined that confinement to quarters could be so restful. Plus, he has a hunch that he'll need all the sleep he can get.
*
His door remains locked the next three nights, giving Steve plenty of time to doubt the wisdom of his decision.
*
"What's wrong? Are you in trouble?"
"Am I in trouble?" Tony stomps out from behind his workbench, animated in a way that's both fluid and unsettling. Joints so perfectly able to replicate human motion shouldn't sound mechanical. "What about your little pancakes with a side of let's spook SHIELD into altering all the security protocols stunt? It took me two hours to drill another hole into the system. The Stormtroopers' schedule went all kinds of random -- some genius finally committed it to digital format, but I had to wait a full rotation to make sure the file wasn't a decoy. Oh, and I had a nice long chat with Fury. The offer to melt me into scrap makes me think he maybe didn't buy the innocent routine."
"I needed independent verification. Kind of difficult to trust someone who pulls their evidence out of thin air." There was no telling what Tony could create on the fly or doctor to suit his needs.
"Funny coincidence, how the only talkative sentient in the building is the only one without a vested interest in your ignorance."
"Breakfast," Steve says. "You were watching?"
"I don't require sleep and I'm blessed with an unlimited attention span. Hey, guess how many cameras are installed in your quarters."
"I'd rather not." The conversation filters back though Steve's mind. "SHIELD guards don't actually look much like Sturmtruppen."
"Wrong Stormtroopers. But strangely enough, you know what they do resemble?" Tony produces two images. Side by side, the SHIELD kit and HYDRA's armor share a striking similarity.
"Yeah, I noticed."
"You broke Hill's arm. Compound fracture even."
"Hill?" Steve asks, a bad taste rising at the back of his throat.
Another picture replaces the first two, an unsmiling woman in trim uniform. "Maria. Deputy director -- playing mall cop is kind of below her pay grade. They take you by her infirmary bed, ply you with guilt?"
No, Steve volunteered. There were flowers. "They said I was confused. Spending all that time in the ice might have... done something to me."
"Trust me, she was happy to take one for the team." Tony steps through the image, light fracturing against his impassive face like glass. "Steve, come on. I'm running out of incriminating material. What more do you want?"
"You really think Stark is in danger."
The hesitation is slight, gears grinding without the sound. "I'm Stark's creation, installed here to complete the work he left unfinished. Yeah, he disappeared from public view. Fell right off the face of the planet. But it didn't matter how much he was struggling or how deep a hole he found to crawl into, he never once shut me out. Six days ago our uplink suffered terminal failure. Ping? Target unreachable, no response."
Some of that went over Steve's head, but he caught the basics. "Okay. You can count me in."
"Good, because with or without you it's a done deal. Emergency routine charlie foxtrot zero two two is in effect. Elapsed time: one hundred twenty-eight hours. Time remaining: thirty-one point eight hours."
"What happened to needing my help?"
"More like your expertise. I hear you had quite the knack for burglarizing secure tech facilities back in the war."
"You forgot sabotage and arson."
"I'll factor that into the plan."
"Tony? No casualties. This thing goes sour, you won't like my solution."
*
It's a straightforward plan. Steve appreciates straightforward. All he has to do is sneak up into the compound proper, liberate the material Tony needs for the new battery he's making himself, pay a visit to the Vita-Ray machine, and leave the exit strategy to the robot who's built like a Sherman tank (that can fly).
Simple.
The problem is Tony -- or more specifically, Anthony Stark.
Steve read the articles. Media speculation surrounding the billionaire's disappearance three months prior is both rampant and imaginative. Stark is laying low while he conducts an affair with a married woman. With a man. He's in rehabilitation for alcohol abuse. In hospital suffering a breakdown. He has a bum ticker. A brain tumor. And the hands-down winner: he's undergoing a secret operation to change his sex.
It's not every day a guy gets chased around Monaco by a maniac twirling lightning whips. Steve hardly blames Stark for keeping his head down, but he's been gone too long without coming up for air.
Tony is right to be concerned. It might even be true that he lost communication with Stark, but Steve doesn't believe for a second that the link hasn't been reestablished. He's pretty damned sure that Anthony Stark sometimes speaks in Tony's hollow voice. So, outside of turning international criminal, why in the hell does Anthony want Steve's involvement when he has his fortune and self-professed genius intellect and the Iron Man?
When they finally meet, Stark will cough up answers if they have to be squeezed out of him.
*
Steve eats a large supper and wraps an extra slice of pie in a napkin to take with him as a snack. There's no telling how long he'll stay with Tony after the jailbreak, and he isn't sure how much stock Tony puts in basic human necessities. Could be his last meal for a while.
The guards, accustomed to his appetite, roll their eyes. He hasn't been forgiven yet for his little staged outburst, so the trip back to quarters occurs in silence.
He dresses sensibly, more layers than last night's weather report claimed he would need, but flying even short distances can get mighty cold without protection from the wind. His SHIELD-issue running shoes are the obvious choice, sturdy with good tread, but his old boots were better.
Nothing in the room came out of the ice with him -- even the toothbrush SHIELD gave him feels like a loan. When the locks click, he leaves empty-handed and doesn't look back.
*
Steve finds Tony putting the finishing touches on what appears to be the electrical equivalent of dissecting an octopus. "That's your battery."
"It will be."
"If you could make one at any time using the stuff you had lying around, why..." Steve motions vaguely to his own chest.
Tony's "eyes" remain focused on his soldering iron, but he registers the gesture somehow. It wouldn't be surprising if he was tapped into the lab's cameras, watching himself work from multiple angles. Creepy perhaps, but not surprising. "One, I still need a suitable power core. And two, arc reactor tech is the proprietary property of Stark Industries. Fury would trade his good- Er, maybe not, but he'd kill to get his claws on one. Reverse engineer it, tweak the design just enough to avoid a massive lawsuit, weaponize it..."
"So you weren't allowed to bring one into his house. Stark was afraid Fury would 'borrow' it."
"Fury didn't want me in the house period, but he settled for knowing where I am at all times. That man puts far too much faith in his firewalls."
"Okay," Steve rubs his hands together, "what can I do?"
"Your toys are over there. Put 'em on, try 'em out. Well, obviously don't try the thing that looks like a cell phone duct taped to a pipe bomb. That's-"
"For the Vita-Ray machine, got it." Left to puzzle through the rest on his own, Steve hates how much he enjoys the lack of supervision after weeks of feeling like a ratty child in a shop full of breakables. Staring into what appears to be a tiny lens produces one of those suspended-in-air images of his own face, and when he fits an earpiece similar to what the guards wear, Tony's voice comes through crystal clear.
[I'll be tracking your position. Your path should be clear, but there's a couple of diehards pulling overtime up on five. Might have to dodge them if they take to the halls in search of a caffeine fix.]
"How-" Tony hadn't spoken aloud.
[Re-routed the suit's vocal output.]
Steve realizes, "No mouth, no need for an external transmitter."
[To think that SHIELD evaluated your tech literacy at the level of a six year old.]
"Hey, I learned how to fix a walkie talkie before most of them were born. War Department TMs were no laughing matter."
[It's a wonder how anyone survived in the dark ages before the transistor. And I have a mouth.]
"You have a... line." No, a seam. Stark referred to Tony as "the suit".
Got you.
*
[Problem?]
"No," Steve whispers. "I just-" Found a window. It's perhaps the hardest thing he's done in this century to tear himself away from the kaleidoscope of lights.
[After the left you want the third door.]
The upper halls are open and pleasant, a world away from the basement's bomb-shelter severity, but Steve can't help feeling exposed. He misses his uniform and boots more than ever; the running shoes have a nerve wracking tendency to squeak. "Okay, I'm here."
[Artifact storage is in the back. You want number 538.]
"Five three eight." He slips inside, pulling the door shut behind him. The lights come up automatically -- Tony's doing? -- to reveal rows of cabinets. The back wall is different, like something he'd expect to find in a bank vault, close-fitting drawers of various shapes and sizes. Five thirty-eight is knee-level, maybe a foot tall and three wide. "Tell me you can open it. I didn't bring my crowbar."
[Controls are on an independent system, give me a sec.]
Steve gives him twenty. "Nothing's happening."
[Independent in this case means isolated. I can't reach it through the network, but I can cut the juice to the mag locks. There's just one... small complication.]
There always is. "You knew about this," Steve hisses. "Why didn't you say something earlier?"
[The emergency generators will kick in approximately eight seconds after I kill the power. That's your window. Grab the stuff and get out. SHIELD is going to notice either way -- if I take down a single circuit they might be slower to investigate, but if I do the whole building-]
"They can't pinpoint my location. We go with option two."
[Those weren't really options. I was- Forget it.]
"I'm in position. What are you waiting for?"
[Blackout in three, two, one.]
The room goes dark, and the drawer pulls out on silent slides. Steve touches something metal, cool and curved.
What the-
Alarms rise first, followed by lights that are weaker, sluggish.
Steve accuses, "This isn't a battery core, Tony."
[Ah, technically it's twelve pounds of vibranium alloy, the holy grail of reactor cores. I mean, fuck! If we'd recovered it three months sooner, maybe I wouldn't be-]
"We?"
[It was a Stark funded expedition! The answer was right there the whole time, just waiting to be pulled from the ice. Three goddamned months. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be kicked in the teeth by an epiphany after you've already crashed and burned?]
The alarms are still wailing. Steve needs to be moving, to get out; he's rooted in place, holding the one piece of his identity he'd thought lost forever. "Technically, Stark, you lied to me. You're still lying to me. Did I really stick a bomb on the Vita-Ray, or am I helping you steal that too?"
[I'm not going to hurt your precious frisbee! I need to use it for a few hours, then you'll get it back. And where's the gratitude, huh? Liberating it from SHIELD was always part of the plan. You think Fury would let you strap on what is arguably several million dollars worth of government property and just walk out the door?]
"Good point. He can't stop me from walking out the door, right now. No one can. So tell me why I shouldn't."
[Steve, you have to get your ass in gear. Security is mobilizing, elevators are down and the stairwells are gonna be jammed.]
He wouldn't hear an approaching patrol over the racket, so Steve peeks outside, risking a scan of the hall. Clear. "The shield's all I need." Gripping the familiar straps feels good, an extra shot of confidence. "I'll take my chances, thanks."
[Damn it, listen to me! There is a tracking chip -- a homing beacon. Implanted in your back. I can disrupt the signal, and once we're safe I'll fry it or help you cut it out, whatever. You walk alone, SHIELD will pick you up within two blocks, and the next pit you find yourself in is gonna make the old one look like a five star hotel.]
"That's illegal."
[Newsflash, Rogers. An agency like SHIELD doesn't stay one step ahead of so-called enemies of the state by keeping its hands clean.]
"For all I know, Iron Man is one of those enemies."
Tony's voice lowers without losing its intensity. [Dad never talked about the war, but I grew up with stories about you. Captain America: great man, lousy soldier. Always listened to his heart and his gut before his orders.]
Howard would remember that, and so would the entity that became SHIELD. Damn it. "Find me an elevator shaft with the car stuck above five. I'm on my way down."
*
Steve skids to a halt just inside Tony's lab. "What was that?"
[SHIELD's human enhancement project just suffered a rather unfortunate setback. Don't worry, no one was within range when I triggered the detonation.] The not-a-battery is wrapped around Tony's left forearm, along with a large frame or brace that resembles a jeweler's setting. Connecting wires are spliced in with the tether that still has its grip on his chest. [Steve...]
He's tempted to remove his earpiece and fling it across the room, but only does the former. "Don't."
"Fine," doesn't sound final at all. Tony shoves out his arm. "Come on, star side up."
When the shield is seated the prongs contract, locking it firmly in place -- Steve tests.
"Gonna sever the umbilical. Stand back -- there's enough current running through it to stop your heart." For some reason the thought seems to amuse Stark. "Oh, and I couldn't make a housing large enough to contain the shield, so I went with an open core design. Try not to touch it. Touching would be bad."
"Then I guess so would accidentally smacking me with it."
"You wish you had my motor control." Tony winds the cable around his free hand and yanks.
The resulting shower of sparks doesn't worry Steve so much as the... liquid that dribbles out of Tony's chest. A pool of it spreads crimson beneath the discarded end of the still crackling wires.
"Hydraulic fluid, don't worry about it." The shield begins to glow as if white hot, though it doesn't radiate more than a pleasant warmth. Tony twists his arm, inspecting his work. "Huh. Durable paint."
"Howard."
"Figures. Oh, that is nice."
"You can pat yourself on the back later."
"I'm reading a base output gain of sixty percent over a comparably configured beryllium core. And it's so quiet."
"Stark."
Raising his hands, Tony proceeds to destroy the lab with a barrage of energy blasts. He isn't satisfied until nothing remains but melted storage crates, charred equipment, and the noxious smoke from a dozen sullen fires.
Arson and sabotage: check.
Tony leaves the room without a word.
*
The escape flight is miserable. Even if Steve could watch the terrain -- he can't, not safely while clinging to Tony's side -- it's too dark to make out details. There are fewer lights now. Much fewer. More trees, he thinks.
He has moved as little as possible since stepping onto Tony's boot in the debris-filled elevator shaft. (One massive beam, somehow fired from the shield itself, ripped them a path from the basement clear through the roof.) Tony has enough trouble keeping them level and steady with the shield on one arm and Steve impeding the other.
He didn't keep the earpiece. Any benefit he could gain from being able to hear Tony below a shout is outweighed by relative silence.
The rush of the wind slows as Tony swoops nearer the treetops. Steve's numb fingers lose their grip when a jolt throws them vertical, but he's caught by the literal seat of his pants. He is dropped the final ten feet, tucks and rolls as Tony slams to the ground beside him.
"Where are we?" Besides the middle of the woods.
"Safe, for now. Pursuit lost us over the Bronx." Tony strikes out at once, leading down a ravine to the unexpected sight of a bunker door set in the hillside. "Dad built shelters all over the place -- this property used to be a summer home. No surprise that the man who helped usher in the nuclear age would turn crazy paranoid during the cold war."
The slab of steel set in concrete is uncooperative, probably hasn't been opened in some time; the narrow passage beyond is dank and unlit. When Steve cups his hands and calls, "Anthony?" it echoes unanswered.
Tony gestures, "Inside."
Like hell. "You first."
Shrugging, Tony angles sideways and ducks inside. The shield lights their way, casting shadows that are as harsh as Tony's footsteps. They reach a section of passage that reminds Steve of a torpedo tube. Immediately after, they're dumped into a chamber that is unexpectedly spacious and well appointed. Carpet, wood paneling, and furniture show little sign of age or water damage, despite a persistent musty smell. The air is stale and lifeless.
If anyone has been here recently, they didn't stay long. Steve tries again, "Where is Stark?"
"Quick confession: I haven't been entirely up front with you about... some things."
Steve grabs Tony by the right shoulder and wrenches him around; it requires considerable effort. "So help me, I will find a way to rip that shield off and leave you buried here. I'm done with your games."
"Does this look like a game?" Even as Tony speaks, his... mask unlatches, raising on a hidden hinge to reveal a second, human face.
My God.
Anthony Stark looks twenty years older than the brash personality Steve knows only from news footage and slick magazine shots. A dark, unkempt beard stands in shocking contrast to pallid skin. His eyes are dull and sightless, and gravity slackens his mouth.
Tony says, "That bad, huh?"
Stark doesn't blink, and his lips are so dry and brittle that they would have difficulty forming words.
"Cap? Little help?" Tony makes an alarming rattling sound and begins to come apart. His chest breaks open first, then his limbs, metal skin peeling back until Stark slumps and finally topples free into Steve's arms. He weighs far too little, and the bizarre suit he's wearing -- full of wires and bulges and medical tubing -- fits him as well as Steve's clothes used to before the serum.
"He isn't breathing. We have to get him to a hospital."
"No point. A hospital couldn't have kept me alive even this far, and the armor's life support merely delayed the inevitable. My body's shutting down, kaput. Without dialysis and artificial respiration it won't be long." Tony is still cracked wide open, a deconstructed parody of himself. He taps the side of his helmet. "It's okay, though. I backed up all the important stuff."
Steve curls on the ground with Anthony half in his lap, but it's less disturbing to rest his gaze on the mechanical version. "Is this... because of the serum?"
"Did I test it on myself, you mean? No."
"Good." It's a small consolation to grasp in the company of a dying man.
"Oh, that was the plan. That cylinder in my chest? I was injured in an explosion, took shrapnel in the heart. Kept myself running for a while with a miniature arc reactor, but the core was toxic."
Steve holds Anthony's withered hand in his, already so cold. There's no reaction to his touch, no spark of anything left. "Iron Man's power source."
"That detail was a bitch to keep out of the tabloids. There's no viable, terrestrial-occurring replacement for beryllium, so I tried to reduce my exposure. Fitted an external battery pack, recharged myself off a damned 240 volt socket. But I couldn't stop using the armor -- couldn't clear the shit out of my system, could only treat the symptoms. Fury figured it all out, knew I was facing permanent neurological damage and worse."
So SHIELD dangled the serum like a carrot, and Stark had no choice but to accept the terms, whatever they were. "What went wrong?"
"I had less time left than I thought. A lot less. The modified suit allowed me to continue functioning, to a degree. Even comatose, I could still interface with it via the deep neural uplink."
"You were conscious in there?"
"Had some lucid periods at first." Tony reaches inside himself and begins yanking out his guts, long ropes of wires still attached to motors and pumps and God knows what. "Six days ago my brain activity slipped below the predetermined critical threshold, and the suit's AI took over according to program. You met JARVIS that first night, remember?"
"Stop," Steve chokes. "What are you doing?"
"Don't need this crap anymore. It's just taking up space." He inspects one of the small organs, crushes it in his fist before flinging it aside.
"Tony?" The name slips out almost too soft to hear, let alone command the immediate stillness it somehow does. "I think he- You're-"
"Yeah."
Steve smooths back a strand of Anthony's hair, closes the vacant, bloodshot eyes. Just one more life brushing past him in the dark. Cut short before its time. If Steve chokes up, well, it's not only Anthony lying there. It's Sarah and Bucky, Erskine and others who haunt him with nameless battle-weary faces.
"You gonna be all right?"
"Me? What about you?" What do you feel? Can you still feel?
"I'm staring at my own corpse -- which is, unless I'm vastly mistaken, and not counting out of body experiences, a human first. I should be a fucking wreck, right? The freakout's there, but I can keep my distance, maintain a buffer of rational thought."
Anthony's expression, at least, is peaceful; and despite age and illness, the family resemblance is plain. "If I hadn't... gone in the ice, I might have been around to see you grow up." All the milestones Steve missed, everything that everyone went on to do and become while he stood still. "Then I get another chance to know you, and I'm too late."
Tony blurts, "I don't want my friends to see me like this. The few people who are willing to call me their friend, they don't deserve to see me like this."
"It doesn't bother you to let me see."
"C'mon, you're the guy who volunteered for a secret government experiment, fought a Nazi with a skull for a face, then took a seventy year nap. I'd say you're overqualified to handle my level of fucked up."
Steve's not sure that's a compliment, but he proves that it's true by easing Anthony out of his lap. He mouths a silent prayer while arranging the body's lax limbs; and when he can find nothing better, he removes one of his extra shirts to drape over the face. "Best I can do. Sorry."
"No, it's fine. Looks very dignified, you can't even tell that's a SHIELD t-shirt. Thanks. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Tony."
"Can we- Are we done here? Obviously I'll have to return at some point -- tie up loose ends -- but I think I maybe am a bit freaked out, and I would desperately like to be somewhere else right now. How does Malibu sound?"
"It sounds like it's on the other side of the country," Steve says slowly. He doesn't know how fast they were going, but a twenty minute flight still puts them firmly on the east coast. "I can't fly to Malibu."
Tony begins to put himself back together. "Okay, I understand. And I'm good for my word. It'll take me a few hours to run out there and grab a spare reactor. You'll have to stay in the bunker, I'm afraid -- the anti-radiation shielding will prevent SHIELD from tracking you. Want me to bring you anything besides your shield?" He mumbles, "Wow, I can still do that thing where you repeat a word too many times and it turns into gibberish."
Steve sure as hell won't be comfortable sitting for hours alone with a corpse, but he's not positive he would survive a transcontinental flight.
"I could whip up a fake identity, or maybe a big old suitcase full of cash?"
"You don't have to-"
Tony inspects his reassembled hand, or pretends to. He's a little too engrossed, silent for a beat too long. Then, "Here's how I see it: I'm the best tour guide to the twenty-first century there is. You have a pulse, which I understand is sort of a legal prerequisite for things like filing patents and transferring assets and not being subject to arbitrary seizure by pissed-off government goons. We should stick together -- at least for the time being."
"I agree," Steve says.
"Then hop in, let's go."
"Excuse me?"
"It'll be a tight squeeze, but you should fit. I think you'll fit. Had to make this armor larger than the mark four to accommodate all the medical junk."
"You want me to... wear you. The suit."
"I'll be gentle since it's your first time. Unless you like it rough?"
"Can't we just drive?"
Tony peels himself apart again, spreads his arms and waits to take Steve in his embrace.
Guess that's a no.
"Turn around, feet apart, arms wide... good, hold like that for me."
Steve's legs are enclosed first, the metal forcing his knees to lift one at a time while the boots trap his feet. Gloves are next, the small plates slithering between his fingers. Arms and shoulders are constricting, almost painfully so, and when the structural cage latches around his torso, it becomes impossible to take in a full breath. "This is fitting?" he begins to say, but the helmet closes over his head and catches his jaw.
The faceplate drops, sealing Steve in total darkness.
Tony's voice -- his true voice, warm and human and a touch throaty -- whispers in Steve's ear. "You're mine now, Captain."
"Stark!"
"Kidding, I'm kidding. HUD is coming up, don't be alarmed. Try to keep your body loose, let me do all the work. ...did that sound dirty to you or is it just me?"
The information pane that suddenly overloads Steve's vision must be the HUD.
Tony takes a few steps. "Recalibrating." The next step feels like hopping up a curb, but the vibrations running up from the boots reveal that Tony is floating. "Recalibrating."
The HUD doesn't just allow Steve to see, it adds detail, succinct conclusions that he never imagined would be possible to form in a single glance. The wood paneling is oak, the wall behind lead-shielded concrete. Internal humidity is sixty-five percent. Repulsors -- the boot jets, he's informed -- are at one percent thrust. The abandoned bookshelf contains medical references, an almanac, a complete set of encyclopedias (1962), and a copy of The Last Man (first edition).
The floating red box superimposed over Anthony's body reads: ERROR. NO DATA.
"Steve?"
"What?"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes," he lies.
Not even close, but at least he's in good company.
*