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It starts as all good stories do— a long, long time ago. In a land far away, in the home of a family just trying to survive and, because this is where the story begins, in the home of a family where the parents die and the children are forced to become more .
It starts in Sokovia, with Wanda and Pietro Maximoff and their dead parents and Stark Industries weapons. Maybe, realistically, it starts before that, with Obadiah Stane and dirty, under the table dealings, and maybe even before that with Hydra and Howard Stark and a super soldier serum in the trunk. After all, all good stories have a good backstory. Strong bones to hold up the dumpster fire that awaits.
For now, it starts in Sokovia. Wanda and Pietro are alone and hurt and angry . They steal to eat and curl together at night to stay warm. They avoid the soldiers, they avoid the Stark Industries “rescue” crews, they avoid the men with long black coats that watch them too closely and become too many to avoid.
And when they are found, they become more than orphans on the street. They are given food and shelter, power and glory. And when the time comes, they are given Tony Stark.
It didn’t go to plan, but Wanda has always been ruled by her emotions and Pietro never took anything seriously when he could make it a mockery instead. So, Ultron became a bigger evil than even Stark. Big deal. They readjusted—apologized to Captain Good and Righteous and simpered to the others enough to get on their good sides and planted horrible thoughts into everyone’s heads to stir dissension.
When Ultron fell, so did Pietro.
Another one of Stark’s toys sent to kill Wanda’s family.
They may call themselves the Avengers, but Wanda’s the only one with someone to avenge. Her anger simmers beneath the surface as the others go about their days. She is told to stay in the Compound like a child in time out while the others continue to leave and fight and bicker amongst themselves.
To pass the time, she starts playing with their minds. They make it so easy with all of their mental hang ups. She only has to give them the smallest nudges. Banner already hates himself and Stark is already afraid. Rogers is stubborn and Romanov duplicitous. Vision and Barton so desperately see her as someone to look after and protect. There were others as well that made their way through the compound, and she played with their minds, too. A seed of doubt planted amongst their mundane thoughts.
When the Winter Soldier was framed for the Vienna bombing, Wanda knew her time had come. Steve started to sweat and Stark was getting closer to a truth that Steve was desperate to keep hidden. Wanda was practically giddy; her work would pay off. Her seeds would bloom.
Again, it doesn’t go to plan, but that’s alright. The world may call them Rogues, but Wanda will be controlled, patient. She spends her days playing with the Rogues minds and planning her attack. Every day she makes their hate grow. When they watch the news, they see Stark pick up the pieces and carry on with his life as if the Rogues were nothing but the dirt on his shoes.
Soon, they won’t be able to stand silent. Soon, they’ll come together, a storm of fury and retribution, to destroy the man who ruined her life. Wanda would get her vengeance.
If you need us— if you need me— I’ll be there.
That was the sentiment of the letter that Steve sent to Tony. It was a nice thought, only a little late to matter much. He read it in the workshop surrounded by schematics for Rhodey’s leg braces and promptly tossed it in the trash. Tossed the phone, too, but Dum-E dug it out to keep in his collection of old, decrepit tech.
See, Tony didn’t need people who would rather kill him than take accountability. He had people that cared about him. Rhodey, who had been his brother since their first year at MIT, Happy and Pepper who stood by him through Iron Man and Afghanistan and all the bullshit he put them through before. He had Vision and Harley and Peter— his children in all but blood.
So Tony didn’t need some half assed excuse and vague apology from a man that left him for dead.
But Tony, for some godforsaken reason, couldn’t leave them to lie in the bed they made. He kept tabs on them, from their escape from the Raft to their time in Wakanda. It was too easy, Tony thought, when they continued to use the gear that he had built for them. He had never hidden the fact that every piece of gear he created had a tracker in it. It especially came in handy to recover Hawkeye’s arrows after a fight.
He never mentioned them in his meetings with King T’Challa, but he could see in the king’s eyes that they were wearing out their welcome. When they eventually began a slow move across Africa, he knew that the king had finally come to his senses. They stopped some black market dealers near the coast, and only got spotted a handful of times. They went to South America, causing small disasters all the way. Somehow they had got in the middle of some cartel business that damn near leveled a village in West Panamá and, while not explicitly implicated, caused an international incident that sank two ships in the Panama Canal.
Tony, of course, sent part of the Iron Legion to help in the relief efforts for both instances.
After more than two years of being fugitives, the Rogue Avengers finally crossed the border back onto U.S. soil.
“Aren’t you going to do something about that?” Rhodey asked. The tracker was pulled up on one of the screens in his lab, always showing their location as they made their way closer and closer to home. Rhodey hadn’t looked away from it once since he sat down in the lab. Tony was working on his leg braces again. They worked fine until he used the War Machine armor. Something caused them to loudly whir and squeak after a fight, and Tony couldn’t figure out why.
“I’ll deal with it eventually,” Tony said, distracted by one of his schematics and a bundle of wires near the kneecap, “Pete’s party is Saturday, so I want to wait until after.”
“Are they going to wait that long before they show up here?”
He scoffed, “I doubt they’ll come here. D.C. maybe, but they don’t have anything left for them here. I figure they’ll go see Eyepatch to try to work something out.”
Rhodey huffed and crossed his arms, “I don’t trust them this close. We should just report them.”
“If we do, Ross will shoot them down.” Tony stopped working to look his best friend in the eye, “I won’t have their lives on my conscience.”
Rhodey only sighed. They had already had this argument, but neither of them could come up with a solution to keep them away but alive. Tony wanted to just ignore them completely, forget they even existed and wash his hands of the whole mess, but they continued to make it their sole mission to screw everything up.
Rhodey wanted go to them and kindly tell them all to fuck off somewhere out of country and stay there. Tony didn’t think there was anything he could do about the Rogue’s bad habit of demolishing everything in their path, but if he could keep them out of the country, then at least Ross couldn’t order their deaths.
They spent a while like that, brief chatter about old friends with no real solutions to speak of. Both of them were frustrated by just waiting around, but neither were coming up with any lasting, safe resolutions. Eventually, Tony solved the easier problem of the day and helped Rhodey back into the leg braces, watched him walk around like an old lady in a shoe store until he was satisfied that his best friend could walk without turning into a squeaky toy.
He watched the red dot on the map— they seemed to have settled down in San Antonio for the moment— and made a decision.
“FRI, darling, shut down the feed for now. Set everything up to go after them on Sunday.” He would wait until Sunday morning before he flew to whatever safe house they thought they’d hide in and find out what they wanted in the U.S.
“I’m going with you, you know.”
Tony grinned, “I know.”
They didn’t say anything else as they left the workshop. It was a gentle silence, the kind that helped Tony relax even when he was surrounded by the ghosts of his old team. Rhodey just had that light about him, like he radiated love and safety, and Tony had been basking in it since he was fifteen. There had been times when that love had overwhelmed him. He craved it so badly in his youth, had fought desperately for every sliver of love in the house that he grew up in, that to see it handed out so freely by his college roommate had caused Tony to sour. Of course, at fifteen, that made him very much resemble a spitting kitten, so Rhodey never could hold that against him for very long.
Over the years, Tony learned to lean into it. First with Rhodey, then Happy and Pepper. Others, too, who hadn’t deserved it, hadn’t meant it. But that was okay. Even before the elevator doors opened to the penthouse, he could hear Peter laughing, and they both grinned.
“He’s going to try to come with us,” Rhodey said. He spoke lightly, like he was mentioning the weather instead of the idea of a teenager walking into Tony’s worst nightmare.
“His friends are spending the night after the party, which means they won’t go to sleep until daylight,” Tony replied, waving his hand through the air. “He won’t even know we’ve left.”
In true Rogue fashion, they couldn’t wait until Sunday to ruin everything.
Tony had wanted this one night to go smoothly for the kid, his kid. Peter had told him a few months back that he had never had a birthday party. He claimed it was his Parker Luck. For a few years, it was because his parents had died so close to his birthday that it ended up being a somber affair. Eventually, they started planning parties but something would happen to force them to cancel—he would get sick, or May would get called into work, or Ned would be out of town so “ what's the point of a party if it’s just me and Aunt May?”
As soon as Peter left that evening, Tony and FRIDAY had started planning the best birthday party they could dream of. It was going to be huge! Everyone the kid knew, enough food to feed a small country. He could rent out Coney Island, maybe he could schmooze some of his Hollywood contacts and get someone from the Star Wars movies to show up for a bit.
Of course, the second he told Pepper about all of his grand plans, she shut it all down and called May to plan a much more reasonable birthday party instead. It would be at the Compound (boring), and would play host only to people Pete actually wanted there. The guest list would include Happy and Aunt Hottie, Ted and Michelle, Bruce and Helen, Rhodey and Vision, and of course, Tony and Pepper. Pepper would order a cake shaped like the Death Star and they would have the movies playing in the background all night.
The night of the party started off great. Peter hadn’t stopped grinning all night and was still wearing the party hat that Dum-E had given him when he first arrived. Ted had been freaking out since the moment he arrived, chattering on about the Compound and the Avengers, and oh my God, is that Pepper Potts?!
He was even more excitable than Peter was, but it was nice to see kids allowed to be authentically themselves. Tony’s favorite part, though, was that even Michelle couldn’t help the nerdy grin when Butterfingers took the neatly wrapped gift from her hands and placed it on the table with all the others. All three kids were obsessed with the robots, and given half a moment, Tony was sure Fred would try to hack into FRIDAY like he had Karen. U had been handing out drinks until he dropped two in a row. Even though Peter petted his chassis and told him that he was doing a great job, he had still been relegated to picking up wrapping paper when Peter opened his gifts. Pete had just gotten to the first of Tony’s presents when Friday alerted, “Boss, the Rogue Avengers have just crossed the property line and are headed to your location.”
Maybe the kid was on to something with that Parker Luck.
Happy commandeered the closest StarkPad and had FRIDAY pull up the live feed, with Ned and Michelle crowding him on either side. Vision, Rhodey, and Bruce were already out the doors to check on the situation elsewhere. Peter was already pulling his suit out of his backpack, web shooters always in place on either wrist. Pepper, May, and Helen were standing off to the side, waiting for some direction. They couldn’t fight, but they would go wherever Tony told them to go.
“Boss, what are your orders?”
Like a rubber band had snapped, Tony was suddenly in motion. He gave out orders to evacuate all personnel in the building to the basement bunkers. The bunkers could survive nuclear warfare, so they should easily withstand a super powered fight. Hopefully.
His suit formed around him as he walked. By the time he made it to the window, he was able to bust through it and fly out to the tree line closest to where the Rogues would appear. He hadn’t yet decided whether he would try to talk to them or shoot them down when FRIDAY locked onto an arrow whizzing through the trees toward him. In the same moment that he moved away, a web shot out from behind him and pulled the arrow from the sky.
“Wow, I can’t believe you booked some clowns for my party, Mr. Stark.” Spider-Man swung around him and then landed on his back, sticking to the suit as it hovered in the air, “How considerate of you.”
“Well, you know me kid,” Tony muttered as FRIDAY pulled up locations for the Rogues.
The spy twins were coming from his right and the super soldiers from the left. Vision was already flying circles around Wilson. The witch was missing, and he had no idea if Lang was still with them or not. When another arrow shot the trees in front of him, Spidey pulled it out of the air. “How about that! Clowns and a one-trick pony!”
The next arrow that sailed toward them sent warnings on his display, and he dived away from it. Karen must have shown the same thing, because Spidey didn’t try to snatch this one, just let Tony fly him to safety. As it zoomed past, he could feel the prickle of electricity the same way he could flying through a thunderstorm.
“Maybe don’t antagonize the man trying to shoot you?”
Spidey had the gall to laugh, “Where’s the fun in that?”
That kid was going to be the death of him. He was always mouthing off to every baddie that they fought. Little quips and one liners to prove that he’d been spending too much time with a certain unkillable mercenary for Tony’s peace of mind.
Rhodes touched down just in time to get caught by an exploding arrow as Romanov ran out from the tree line. It detonated around him, but barely scratched his armor. Tony made sure he wouldn’t be downed again after Germany.
“Mr. Rhodes, you gotta avoid those.”
“I swear to God, kid, I’ll take back your present.”
Peter laughed at another one of his own jokes, this time at Romanov's expense. Who am I kidding, Tony thought, he’s been like this since he put on the suit.
FRIDAY alerted when a projectile came flying from his left. He already knew what it was before he turned, and all he could do was put up an arm and hope his own improved armor could withstand a shield. Tony could feel his heartbeat in throat, could taste the coconut from the reactor reinstalled in his chest.
He didn’t have to put it to the test just yet. When he looked up, Spidey was holding the shield up. “You know,” he said loudly, “I should have done this last time, but Mr. Stark said to go easy on you.”
Everyone stopped for a moment to watch Spider-Man lift the shield above his head and bring it down across his knee. Everyone stopped, shocked, when the shield cracked along the center. When he ripped the two halves apart and threw them on the ground. He spoke again, the sound resonating over the battlefield, “You don’t deserve that shield.”
Tony was transported back to a bunker in Siberia. Those last few moments when his suit was failing and his breath came in shorter and shorter bursts. He had said the same thing. Rogers didn’t even turn around. He had just kept walking, half carrying Barnes out. When he looked to the trees, Rogers and Barnes standing side by side, they locked eyes and both remembered the same moment. The same words.
It was Rogers who aimed a gun first.
The fight was an amalgamation of all the hurt and anger and none of them were holding back anymore. When the Widow electrified Spidey’s webs, Tony threw her across the field. When Barnes pointed his rifle at Rhodey, Spidey cocooned him to a tree. Hawkeye at least had the good sense to stay out of range and hidden among the trees, shooting off arrows only when he knew he had an opening.
For a while, Tony thought they just wanted to duke it out. An all out brawl just to prove that the Rogues could. Then, of course, it came together. Bruce over comms called out, “The witch is trying to blow up the reactor tech. I need help on evac.”
“Spidey,” Tony said, but Peter was already on it. He asked Vision for a ride and then he was webbing away, attached to Vision’s foot, on the way back to the compound.
Tony fought for his life. He didn’t think about days in the tower, gathered around to watch movies, laughing and bonding. He didn’t even think about he didn’t do it or don’t bullshit me, did you know. Instead, he remembers the look on Rhodey’s face when they told him he was being discharged from the military. He remembers Peter punching a hole through the shop wall when he finds the footage from Siberia. He remembers Pepper after three solid days of board meetings and press releases telling Ross to leave her office or be removed. He thinks about every person that continues to stand beside him, even when it’s hard.
These people, who would come to his home with the sole purpose to destroy… Tony can’t bring himself to care about them anymore. Not Romanov, downed already, leaned up against a tree with a bone sticking out of her leg. Not Wilson, trying to fight his way to the widow with only one wing still attached. Not Barton, out of arrows and still hiding in the cover of the forest. Not Barnes, who gave up trying to get out of Pete’s webbing. And definitely not Steve Rogers, still fighting, still doing everything he can to tear Tony apart.
He wanted to scream at him, ask him why he couldn’t just stand down. He was just about to open his mouth when the world turned red. The fighting stopped and everyone watched the witch rise up. Even from a distance, Tony could hear her cackling as her hands raised up, red burning brighter, and below her—
For half a second, Tony went back in time. Only an hour ago, he was laughing with his family, standing beside Peter as he tried to blow out the trick candles on top of the Death Star birthday cake. For half a second, Tony had been happy—
Below her, he could see through the busted out window as Peter Parker ran to escape. He watched Peter throw out a hand, watched a web form, and watched the arc reactor powering the building explode in a brilliant purple light.
“Peter!” He was flying before he realized he’d made a sound. Maximoff fell out of the sky, unconscious, in front of him, but he didn’t spare her a look as he sped through the air to the crumbling compound. Distantly, he heard the crunch of a body hitting solid earth, and felt a moment of sick satisfaction.
On the ground, he could see Happy hold back Pepper from climbing the rubble. Ned and Michelle were down on their knees holding May as she screamed for Peter.
He landed on top of the rubble, Rhodey and Vision landing only seconds after him. All three of them started pulling debris and throwing it out of the way. Tony heard the Hulk yell, his first appearance of the fight, and he pounded towards them. Tony looked up at his friend, green and angry above him, and said, “Hulk, please.”
The Hulk grunted and said, “Spidey friend.” With his help, they moved the debris quicker. If a few slabs of concrete were tossed in the direction of the remaining Rogues, well, who could blame the big guy?
“Boss, there’s a heat signature about five feet down.”
Tony looked up, “Hulk, stop!”
The Hulk stopped, grunted, and lumbered back. He growled deeply as he watched the Rogues approach, but they didn’t dare come closer than Happy and the others evacuated.
Rhodey and Vision pulled up the last slab covering him, and Tony immediately stepped out of his suit to get to his kid. He pulled off Peter’s mask first. “FRIDAY, scan him,” he said, voice wobbly, as his armor threw out a hologram with the readings and he assessed the damage.
His eyes weren’t hardly closed but still unseeing, blood matted his hair and a cut down the side of his face bleed heavily. His chest rose and fell rapidly, but too shallow. His left shoulder was completely crushed. Tony sucked in breath at the sight. This was so much worse than Rhodey’s legs, than his chest. There was also internal bleeding. A lot of it. Every inch of him was lit up in oranges and reds.
Tony took a shaky breath and said, “c-call Stephen. FRIDAY, call Stephen!”
No one moved. Just Tony, petting his hair whispering, “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” like a broken, heart wrenching record. When an orange ring appeared and a wizard stepped out, he didn’t say anything, didn’t ask for an explanation. He just got to work. Tony was a man of science, so the spells Stephen whispered and the runes appearing on Pete’s body meant nothing to him.
He realized that Rhodey was holding him. He held both his arms, talking. Surely telling him what Doctor Strange was accomplishing with his mumbo jumbo hand waving. After a few moments, his cloak floated down and wrapped tightly around Peter. Tony must have made some noise of dissent, because Rhodey started talking again, “Come on, Tones, he’s gonna be alright. The doc just has to get him to a hospital, okay? He’s gonna help him, they just have to get him out of the rubble.”
Through a fog, he heard Stephen speak. “I’ll take him then come back for Helen. I’ll send Wong to get the rest of you as soon as I can.”
Then he was gone, Peter was gone, and the world was silent. Tony felt the world turn to fog around him. The sounds were distorted, the ground shifted below him like he was walking across clouds. He couldn’t see anything but Peter’s broken body in front of him. Were hands grabbing at him? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t exist.
When he blinked, he was in front of Steve Rogers. He looked worn out and confused. Defensive, but in a way that he looked more ready to bolt than to punch his way out. He was talking, too, Tony realized suddenly.
“—must have done something… Tony, I swear, I don’t know how it got this bad. I don’t know what we’re doing or why we were so angry. Tony, please! Please understand!”
“What?”
And that shut him up real quick. His mouth opened and shut again. He gestured behind him awkwardly, but no sound left his mouth. Honestly, he looked like he was about to cry.
Sam slowly stepped forward, but stopped when Tony’s head whipped over to face him. “Something happened, man. When Wanda hit the ground, something happened to us. Or stopped happening, I don’t know. Shit, man, I didn’t even realize how angry I was until I wasn’t anymore. I’ve spent years angry at everything that wasn’t the six of us, and when she died all that anger was gone.”
It was Barnes who spoke up next. He was on the ground, head cradled between his knees and arms up to grab at his hair. He was rocking a bit, self soothing the same way Peter did when he was upset. It made Tony hate him even more, even though it was blatant distress. “She was in our heads,” he said, voice haunted, “she fucked with our heads. Not again, not again…”
No one moved to comfort him. Rogers didn’t even look at him. He just stared at the wreckage of the Compound, eyes flitting around like it was all some horrible dream that he would wake up from, and not the product of his own two hands.
“Boss,” FRIDAY said quietly in his comms, “their brain chemistry does appear altered in a way that doesn’t appear to be the adrenaline from a fight. It may be something to look into.”
Rhodes and Vision were standing right behind, both with a hand on him, giving him their support. Hulk was behind him as well, growling deep in his throat if the Rogues so much as twitched. Further away, he could hear May still sobbing, Pepper and Happy murmuring quietly, the kids lending their comfort as well. Helen was on the phone speaking too quickly with too much medical jargon for Tony to keep up.
“My kid could die. My son. ” It ended up a choked sob. Rogers’s shoulders caved in on himself. “If he dies, I will hunt you down and slaughter you.”
Nobody moved. Nobody even breathed. Everyone listened with rapt attention, focusing every ounce of their being on his words.
“You’ve made me the villain for years, but this is how it really starts. If Peter dies, I will burn the world down just to find you. And I will make you suffer .”
Rogers took a step back. Tony couldn’t remember a single moment that Rogers had ever looked scared of him.
“Go. I don’t care where you go or what you do, but you better hope and pray that if it comes to it, Ross finds you first.”
Rogers took one step back. Then another. Rhodey pulled Tony back after a moment and they turned completely away from the Rogue Avengers, once and for all. After a few moments, two portals opened up. The one near Helen had Stephen on the other side. Tony could see the OR, doctors and nurses running around behind him. The other closest to May was opened by Wong. The others started to pile through.
Tony stumbled his way forward, Vision practically holding him up, and then he was in a private waiting room of the hospital. Somewhere here, Peter lay in a broken heap. Pepper grabbed him tightly and he had no idea if she was trying to give him comfort or leech it for herself, but either way they held on tightly. Heavy, shaking breaths but no words crossed their lips. Eventually they fell into seats beside May and he grabbed her hand and held on tight. A few nurses came in to check on them all. Everyone seemed to be a little scrapped up, but the nurses bandaged them all quickly.
Things happened around him, but he couldn’t focus on any of them. He was sure that Rhodey had stepped out at one point to make a few phone calls and Happy had been typing away on his StarkPad the entire time they’d been here. Pepper, too, had made calls, but she only stepped to the other side of the room, never out of sight.
Things had to be handled, and quickly. There was a dead terrorist in front of his collapsed building. Five more were possibly still close by. There had been civilians present for the fight who deserve compensation and time off. Meetings with the UN and Ross and police were somewhere in the works and Tony knew he needed to be a part of that. But Peter was dying .
It was hours later when Stephen walked through the door, looking just as worn down as all the rest of them. Everyone stood up. He looked at May and then Tony and said, “He’s resting.”
Tony’s knees hit the floor and then May was on the ground beside him. Peter was alive and resting and Tony knew that wasn’t all of it, but Peter was alive . There would be pain and tears, and God knows what else, but Tony didn’t care.
“Can we see him?”
Stephen looked a little pinched. Tony heart dropped at the expression. “You can, but I should mention… his left arm and shoulder were completely crushed. We tried to salvage what we could and waited to see if his healing factor would do what we couldn’t, but there was just too much damage.”
Tony knew what he was going to say before he could find the words.
“We had to amputate at the shoulder.”
The fog tried to slither in, protect him from Stephen’s words, but Tony listened anyways. He started listing other problems that seemed to be healing slowly— his left eye blind, but already healing, collapsed lungs that filled themselves, ribs and femurs and pelvis, all on the mend. He shouldn’t have survived, but Peter was special, enhanced, and Tony was so glad that he was bitten by that spider that he could kiss Norman Osborn with all of his shady experimentations.
When they were finally allowed into Peter’s room, the fog returned. He looked over every inch of his body, to the thick casts on his legs and the splint on his remaining wrist. The neck brace holding his head steady and all the tubes that gave him a chance to recover. He looked at the thick bandaging across his chest, thicker where the covered over the absence of his arm.
When Peter woke up, he and May would have to tell him the news, would have to hold him while he mourned, but Tony was already drafting a new design in his head. He had already helped design one metal arm, and he would bet his entire fortune that he could guilt King Kitty into supplying the vibranium for a second one. Better— with webshooters and a panic button and Karen built in. Maybe, with Shuri’s help, it could house a full nanotech spider suit.
He felt Pepper’s arms wrap around him. Things needed to happen, some sooner than others, but right now, he would bask in the knowledge that Peter was alive and the witch was dead.