Chapter Text
Steve woke up.
His body felt distantly painful, as if it belonged to someone else, and his mind struggled to form a coherent thought, dreams and memories mixing up together like paint on a palette. Where was he? How did he get here? He didn't know. Instinctively, he tensed up, but then he recognized the smell. Stale bleach, coagulated blood and antiseptic. He was in the hospital.
He could hear someone crying over the beeping mechanical bird. They were trying to be quiet, polite, but they kept sniffing wetly and choking back sobs. Steve recognized them, but couldn't pinpoint who they were. He turned his head towards them, trying to see them, but his eyes weren’t working well. He could only see splotches of color: blood red, white and forget-me-not blue. They feel like his old eyes, the ones with astigmatism. Back then, there were no stars shining in his night sky, a world so small it could be destroyed by a single baobab.
The pain marched closer as the Serum quickly burned the drugs in his system, and indistinct thoughts becoming clearer, pounding like soldiers’ boots on a bridge. Better-better-better-better watch your step. His stomach was tender and queasy, as if he were about to puke rotten meat, and each heartbeat made his head feel like a foot stepping on a nail. Part of him wanted to just go back to sleep, but he needed to know what happened. Why were they crying?
Steve tried to roll to the side and sit up, but something kept his wrist in place.
He was handcuffed to the bed.
It was like waking from a nightmare backwards. Instead of the overwhelming relief that everything had been a mirage created by his sleeping mind, the horrible reality crashed into him like an artillery shell, flooding his bloodstream with terror and stealing the air from his lungs. He remembered Tony, punching him in the face, forcing him to kneel. Unstoppable force meeting a static object. His friends, deserting him. Cape-killers swarming him in the safe house.
“Steve?” Tony asked. “You awake?”
Steve froze.
His vision was too blurry to see anything, but Tony's voice sounded strange, as if he'd a stuffy nose and a sore throat. For a moment, Steve wondered if he had a cold, until he remembered that Tony couldn't get sick anymore. Not since he injected himself with Extremis. Swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink, saving fifty-three minutes per week.
“Where I am?” Steve tried to say, but it came out as a croak. His mouth was desert dry, tongue tugging painfully with each movement. He would like one of those thirst quenching pills right now. Tears weren't drinkable.
The red stain near the wall stood up with a whirr, metal boots clunking noisily as he hurried towards the bed. “You’re in the Raft’s hospital,” Tony answered. “Don’t move, please, you were badly injured, you’ll-“
“And whose fault is that?” Steve rasped, suddenly angry. He pulled his left arm sharply, trying to rip off the cuff restraining him, but the agonizing pain in stomach stopped him dead in his tracks. It felt like his intestines were getting shredded, like he ate broken glass for breakfast and it was cutting up everything on its way down.
Tony grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him down. “It’s Doctor Faustus’ fault,” he told him. Steve could barely hear him, ears buzzing like a beehive. “Stop moving, Steve! You're going to rip off your stitches!”
Steve laid back on the bed, feeling clammy and lightheaded, taking quick, shallow breaths because breathing deeply squeezed the wound into a thousand shards. He didn't want to see Tony’s pitying expression, so he kept his eyes on the armor’s pauldron, on the subtle golden shimmer in the rust red paint. Microscopic stars in a sea of blood.
Eventually, the tide of pain receded and staying conscious stopped being a struggle. His skull still felt like a nail being hammered, but at least his thoughts were marching quick time now, going straight into the wood instead of bending halfway through it. What had he been thinking, trying to escape? Even if he managed to rip off his restraints, there was no way he could win a fight against Iron Man while unarmed and seriously injured. Better to bide his time and collect as much intel as he could.
“What did Faustus do?” he wheezed. The last thing he remembered was getting ready to free the heroes locked up in the Negative Zone Prison, but something obviously went wrong and he ended up getting arrested. But what did Doctor Faustus have to do with anything? He'd been dead for years.
“You need to rest, Steve. We can talk about it later,” Tony said, squeezing his shoulders and stepping back.
Steve glared up at him, unimpressed, and then nearly gasped in shock. Everything still looked a bit blurry, but his vision was better now that the drugs wore off, enough for him to see Tony clearly.
Tony was a mess.
His right eye was swollen shut, black skin distended like an overripe plum. The rest of his face was covered in bruises and small cuts, with red and purple bruises in the shape of the helmet’s bracing, and his cheeks and nose were smeared with tears and snot. But the worst part was his expression. Tony looked hollowed out, as if his heart had been carved out his chest and he couldn't feel anything anymore, not even pain. It was the same expressionhe had when he disassembled the Avengers; after Wanda had forced him to drink against his will, after the Mansion had been destroyed and their friends killed, after his girlfriend had been murdered right in front of him.
Steve felt his blood turn to ice inside his veins. “Tell me what happened,” he said, trying to sound commanding, but his voice broke halfway through. He was desperate for a glass of water, but he wasn't going to ask Tony for it. He begged enough already. Join me. Denounce the act and help me fight it.
“Turns out Fennhoff didn’t die,” Tony explained, turning around and walking towards a visitor chair like an automaton. “He killed a psychiatrist, stuffed his body in a basement freezer and stole his identity. He’s been working at SHIELD for years, brainwashing his patients and giving intel to Hydra.”
Tony picked up a plastic bag from the floor, near the chair, and then stood there, back turned towards Steve. “You suffered a head injury, and the doctors put you in a coma to help you recover. While you were unconscious, one of Fennhoff’s patients got into your room and tried to kill you. They shot you thrice before Wilson managed to subdue them.”
Tony walked back to his bedside, rummaging through the bag and taking out a water bottle. Steve opened his mouth to ask him how he was supposed to drink it while handcuffed, but closed it quickly, cheeks burning with shame. How presumptuous, assuming that Tony paid him enough attention to notice he was thirsty. How pathetic, clinging to unwarranted hopes, begging for scraps of affection like a dog at the dinner table.
Unaware of Steve's turmoil, Tony opened the bottle, put a plastic straw inside it and brought it to Steve's mouth.
All the thoughts swirling inside Steve's mind stopped, snowflakes hanging suspended in the air before they could reach the sea and melt. He was desperate for a little bit of water, throat dry like a salt pan under an unforgiving sun, but he hesitated, afraid of wanting things, of being denied the things he wanted. Desire was the root of all suffering, and Tony had already refused to give him what he wanted most in the world.
In the end, Steve decided to drink it. He scowled at Tony while sucking on the straw, though, to stop him from making inappropriate jokes, but it ended up being completely unnecessary. Tony wasn't even looking at him; he was staring right ahead, unfocused, as he always did when using Extremis. Somehow, his indifference made the situation more humiliating.
“Wilson? Sam Wilson?” he asked, once he finished sipping his water like a baby.
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?” If Sam got arrested, too, why would SHIELD let him visit Steve at the hospital?
“He's with Sharon.”
“And where is Sharon?”
Tony hesitated before answering. “With her psychologist. She's very shaken about what happened to you.”
Steve scowled. Sharon had nerves of steel, she wouldn’t fall apart over him getting shot. One time, a couple of years ago, Zemo had ordered her to execute Steve as a way to test her loyalty to Hydra. She couldn’t disobey Zemo without blowing up her cover, so she'd given Steve a subtle signal to move out of the way before shooting at him. She barely missed him. And now Tony wanted him to believe that she was too shaken to visit him at the hospital? Most likely, SHIELD discovered she had been spying on them for the Resistance and arrested her.
“You need to come up with better lies,” he growled.
“I’m not lying,” Tony protested, sounding tired.
“I’m not that stupid. Why would you let Sam visit-”
“Because he registered.”
“No,” Steve declared, resolute. “He would never- “
“He registered for you,” Tony cut him off like a knife. “He wanted to make sure you were okay, and thought he could do more for you as a superhero than as a fugitive vigilante. You can ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me. He’ll visit you later.”
Steve gritted his teeth to stop himself from arguing. Sam had been the first person to support him, to join the Resistance against the SHRA. He didn't trust the government; he thought Registration would turn superheroes into cops, into nothing better than a beat-up squad. This was clearly a plan to infiltrate the Registration forces. Better change the topic.
“So, a supervillain has been working at SHIELD for years and nobody noticed anything?”
Tony snorted, unamused. “Nobody wants to work for SHIELD, Steve. Most people don't want to deal with international science-terrorists and radioactive giant lizards. Their employee turnover rate is off the charts, and instead of hiring more people, Fury spent most of their budget on sentient robot doppelgangers. They just don't have enough manpower to keep a close eye on everything they should.”
Given that Steve had personally hospitalized a good number of Cape-killers since the war started, he had to agree that working for SHIELD sounded like a terrible career choice. But still, they were being more incompetent than usual. How did they let a brainwashed agent get into his room? Steve opened his mouth to ask that, when he suddenly knew the answer.
He was the most wanted man in America. Hill wasn't stupid; she must’ve posted at least thirty guards outside his hospital room, to stop him from escaping and to protect him from anyone with a grudge. They must've checked his doctors before letting them in, to make sure they weren't smuggling anything dangerous, but Tony was wearing his armor, so people with Paladin-Plus Clearance must be allowed to keep their weapons.
There was no way some random SHIELD agent just walked in with a gun.
“It was Sharon, wasn’t it? She’s the one who shot me.” It wasn't really a question.
“I'm sorry, Steve,” Tony answered.
Seeing the pity on Tony's face was like staring into the sun; even if he looked away, the purple afterimage was burned on Steve's retinas. He took a deep breath. It hurt, but the pain stopped him from screaming.
“You can't help yourself, can't you?" Steve hissed, another question he already knew the answer to. Disappointment made his anger feel heavy and dank, a wet trench coat. “You always do this. You always make decisions for everyone, because you think you know what's best. I know you're trying to help. I know you probably didn't tell me for my own good, because I'm injured and you didn't want to stress me out, but did you ever think that maybe I don't want your help?”
Tony’s expression shifted between a kaleidoscope of emotions until it settled on resignation. “Wilson asked me not to tell you. He wanted to break the news to you, personally, and I was trying to respect that.”
“Since when do you respect what people want?”
Tony opened his mouth, outraged, but changed his mind before speaking. “I’m going to call Wilson,” he said instead, refusing to take the bait. “Just… put up with me for a little while, will you? I'll leave once he comes here.” And then his eyes went unfocused, his attention on adjusting radio frequencies and finding cell phone traffic channels.
“No,” Steve snapped, suddenly desperate. “I want you to tell me.”
Tony blinked back to focus and gave him a baffled look. “What? Are you sure? I think you should hear this from-”
“I want you to tell me.”
Tony stared at him, eyes darting all over Steve’s face like a fox searching for the hunter rifle. Steve gritted his teeth and waited. Impatience was compressing the air inside his lungs, getting it ready for the combustion chambers, but, before it could ignite, Tony nodded and straightened his back.
“She doesn’t remember shooting you,” he said, voice soft and firm. “She was in a dissociative fugue, and came back to her senses two minutes later, with Sam pinning her to the ground and the doctors rushing in.” He stopped and watched Steve warily, like he was a bomb and Tony wasn't sure he was cutting the right wire. “SHIELD ran the standard mind control tests on her. Blood and urine came back clean, but the results of her hair analysis didn’t match with the meds she’s taking.” He paused, face losing all expression. “And- and-”
“And what?” Steve asked, full of dread.
“And her pregnancy test came back positive,” Tony told him. Steve gasped, happiness sprouting inside his chest, but Tony kept on talking before it could take root. “I’m so sorry, Steve, she doesn't remember removing her birth-control implant.”
For a moment, Steve wondered if Tony was lying, trying to hurt him. He knew that Steve always wanted to start a family. But no, Tony wasn't cruel. If he lied, he only did it to further his own purposes; if he hurt him, he was collateral damage, not the objective. Steve closed his eyes tightly, trying to hold back the tears.
Tony was telling the truth.
There was only one reason why Hydra would want him to have a baby.
Grateful that they forgot to restrain his knees, Steve brought them up and braced his feet on the mattress, trying to get better leverage. Mindless of the pain, he twisted his body to the right, pushing with his legs and back, left wrist straining against the cuff.
“Steve! Stop!” Tony screamed, and Steve obeyed immediately, like a well-trained dog. In an instant, Tony’s hands were back on his shoulders, pushing him down onto the bed.
“I need to see her,” he explained, miserable.
“I know, I know, but you can't. You know the procedure, Steve. You know you can't see her until they deprogram her.”
“Let me go!” He to struggle, but Tony’s hands kept him easily in place, as if he were nothing.
“No!” Tony yelled, frightened, but then his face suddenly became blank, a computer shutting down. “Can you stop acting like you're above the rules for once? You know the procedure! You know that seeing you could trigger another dissociative fugue! Blacking out and turning into a murderous puppet isn't fun, Steve, trust me. She's having a terrible time already, don't make it worse!”
Steve was speechless, couldn't even form a coherent thought. A knot of contradictory impulses pulled him in different directions, effectively freezing him in place. He wanted to scream and beat the shit out of Fennhoff. He wanted to cry alone and bite Tony. He wanted to go back to sleep and to go back home.
“Fuck you,” he finally managed to whisper, exhausted.
Tony was still holding him down, looming like a skyscraper, but at least his eyes weren't ice blue anymore. He looked pained and drained, his mouth twisted in regret. “I'm sorry, Steve, but you can't see her. I still haven't- I need to tell you something else. I’m going to call Wilson. I think he should-”
Steve bared his teeth. “I want you to tell me,” he snarled weakly.
Tony hesitated, eyes searching, but the hunters must be dancing with the village girls, because he didn't ask why Steve wanted to hear it from him. Good, because Steve himself didn't know the answer to that question. He didn't know how to explain it. He knew who stood by his side and who stood against him, but he also knew that Tony always held back when they fought, careful to only leave bruises when he could’ve decapitated Steve with a single punch.
“She wants to get an abortion,” Tony told him gently. “The doctors told her to think about it for a couple of weeks, take some time to process everything before making a decision, but I don't think she'll change her mind. I'm so sorry, Steve.”
Steve closed his burning eyes and endured it. He wasn't really surprised. He already knew Sharon didn’t want to have children, much less under these terrible circumstances, but he couldn’t help but grieve. For years, his dream had been to fall in love, to marry, to start a family. It was the only thing that kept him going, sometimes, when he felt his life was a perpetual battlefield, when he felt there was no place for him in the future, when he cried alone in his dark apartment. And now Hydra had turned it into a nightmare.
“Steve?”
Steve glanced up at him, unaware how long he just laid there with his eyes closed. Tony looked worried and a bit war, still holding him in place by the shoulders, but it wasn't necessary. Steve was so drained he couldn’t even muster the energy to cry, much less struggle for freedom.
“What else?” Steve whispered. There was always more. More suffering, more violence. If he learned something since the Mansion was destroyed, it was that his life could always get worse. He was so tired. Sometimes he thought it wouldn’t stop until he lost everything.
“I'm sorry, Steve. SHIELD isn’t completely sure about this yet, because they haven’t finished running the tests, but you need to know. Just in case.” A brief pause and then, delicate like a surgeon, Tony asked, “You remember the protocol for mind control cases, especially when it involves… rape and reproductive coercion?”
Steve's eyes fell shut. It wasn't really a question, because Tony knew Steve would never forget that part of the protocol. It was branded permanently on both their memories. The two of them, together with Jan, had to write it after Immortus mind-controlled Carol into loving him, so he could impregnate her and escape the dimension he was trapped in.
“Any decision regarding a romantic or sexual relationship taken by the victim during the period of time in which they were under the influence of a substance or procedure that modified, manipulated or controlled their thoughts, feelings and/or personality, either partially or completely, must be analyzed by whichever methods available, to ensure that the decision was not infulenced, induced or undertaken by the perpetrator,” Steve recited without opening his eyes, not wanting Tony to see him. “I’m guessing her feelings for me started to change when Fennhoff became her psychiatrist.”
“The timing is… suspicious, but they aren't sure yet, not until the psychic tests are done. She thinks she was behaving strangely around you, but correlation doesn’t mean causation. It’s normal to second guess everything when you have been mind controlled for a long time. After I came back, I spent months wondering if Kang made me an alcoholic. Maybe her feelings are real. We won't know until the tests are done,” Tony said, because even after all the blood spilled between them, he still tried to give Steve hope for the future.
Steve breathed deeply, making it hurt. He remembered spinning Sharon around after he found out that Bucky was alive, kissing her full of happiness, and his surprise at how seriously she was taking their relationship. With heart wrenching cruelty, he made himself remember their night together in the safe house, when she told him that she loved him, that she didn’t want him to die fighting against Registration. He tried to remember the expression on her face as he said it, to torture himself with it, but he hadn't seen it. She’d been looking down, and the light overhead hid her eyes in the darkness.
“I noticed she was acting differently,” Steve confessed, guilty and hollow. “But I thought… She told me she was in therapy and taking meds for her PTSD. I thought she was getting better. I should’ve noticed.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tony reassured him, voice gentle. “And she was getting better, it wasn’t just mind control. We ran a background check on her psychologist, and he has nothing to do with Hydra. He’s with her right now, supporting her. Sam too, and her sister is coming back to the States to stay with her for a while. She’s going to be alright.”
Steve didn’t believe him, but he was too tired to argue, so he just kept his eyes closed and took shallow breaths. He felt gutted like a fish, his head cracked like an egg before it hatched, yolk and blood and feathers.
“You need to rest,” Tony muttered softly after a couple of minutes of silence. “You nearly died, Steve. Two of the bullets hit your aorta and hey had to give you twelve units of blood. If you hadn’t been already inside the hospital, you would have died.” He sounded like he was choking back tears. “You flatlined four times, Winghead, I really thought you weren't going to make it.”
Everyone used to call him Winghead, Steve remembered sleepily, but Tony always made the nickname sound different. Special. Still did. There was a small blooming happiness in his chest, the relief that Tony still worried about him, still cared, before everything ignited into anger.
Steve opened his eyes and glared up at him, catching a glimpse of something indescribable in Tony's face before his expression morphed to surprise. “Why was I already in the hospital?” he bit venomously. Where was this concern when SHIELD was hunting him down like an animal? “I had a lot of head injuries in my life, Tony, I know the doctors only put me in a coma when I suffer a severe traumatic brain injury. So, whose fault is that?”
Tony flinched as if slapped, but he didn't release Steve's shoulders, didn’t step back. “I don’t think… I don't think you’re in condition to hear it,” he stammered.
“So you think I'm in condition to hear that Sharon shot me, but not that? You think I'm in condition to hear that Hydra made me rape her, but not that? Who gave you the right to decide what I can or cannot hear?”
Tony looked panicked, but there was a cold calculating edge in his eyes, as if he were trying to solve a complicated mathematical equation. As if he were trying to find a way to manipulate Steve into dropping the topic. Incandescent rage blazed inside Steve's heart chambers, making his blood boil and incinerating any trace of exhaustion, giving him the strength to keep fighting.
“Why was I in the hospital?” he snapped, like a dog with a bone.
“Steve, please,” Tony begged, face crumbling.
Steve stared at him in horror, feeling like he just fell off the plane, as if he just slammed on the water at terminal velocity. Time itself stopped, ceased to have any meaning, and his blood thickened until it froze, ice crystals destroying every cell of his body from within.
There was only one possible explanation.
Tony was the one to put him in the hospital.
It made sense. Steve had expected to fight Iron Man during the prison breakout, and even made a contingency plan with Vision to disable the armor. It must've failed. Tony probably had punched him in the face, but miscalculated his strength and fractured his skull. Accidentally. That was the reason why Tony had been sitting at his bedside, crying. He felt guilty about injuring him. It had to be an accident, because the alternative was unsurvivable.
“What happened?” he barked, because anger was always more comfortable than fear.
Tony shook his head. He looked like a corpse, skin pale and mottled with suggillation, empty eyes glassy with tears.
“Tony, what happened?” he repeated, desperate.
Tony just kept shaking his head. His chin was trembling, but his lips stayed pressed into a stubborn, silent line.
“Please, Tony, just tell me,” he begged. “I know you don't want to, but I won’t stop thinking about it. I won't. What happened? Did you hurt me? Just tell me, Tony, please don’t keep me guessing!”
“No, I didn't-” he blurted out, horrified, as if he couldn't help it. “Steve, you- you tried to kill yourself.”