Work Text:
The first time he’s fooled, and he really shouldn’t have been. “Tony…“ He hears his name. He looks up from his shackled hands, and it’s Steve standing at the mouth of his cell. Tony goes cold all over, remembering Steve’s weight on top of him, the feeling of the suit crumpling under the impact of the shield, the way it was so hard to breathe.
Steve approaches warily. “Tony?”
Tony’s heart is racing and his hands feel clammy. He should be grateful that someone has come for him, but instead he just feels sick—can’t stem the tide of anger that their last parting left or the fear he feels seeing the gleaming shield’s edge.
Rational thought asserts itself as Tony realizes there’s no way Steve could be carrying that shield. Tony stored it safely with an old friend in Japan after Siberia, before Ross remanded him to the Raft.
Not-Steve takes another step forward. Tony’s eyes narrow as he studies the figure in earnest now. Then he stands, raising his cuffed hands and bringing them down on Steve’s head. They pass right through and Steve doesn't even react. A hologram. It’s even slightly blurry at the edges of the image. Tony should have seen it from the start.
“Quite the spike in blood pressure,” Ross says, appearing to step through the projection of Steve.
Tony glowers at him, the collar heavy around his neck. He’s pretty sure the device is the reason Ross knows, though they've never told him exactly what it's for. It's the same design that they had on Wanda.
Tony deflects. “Unlawful search and seizure always gets me hot.” He’s pretty sure that collecting someone’s vitals against their will falls under that heading,
“We’re monitoring your health,” Ross replies, stony faced, as if it isn't a baldly convenient way of framing the collar's use. “In stressful times like these, it pays to err on the side of caution.” He brushes at some imagined speck on his left lapel.
#
When the hologram reappears the next morning, waking Tony from fitful sleeping, he thinks maybe Ross is trying to give him a heart attack.
Maybe this is payback for putting Ross on hold.
Maybe Tony should have taken Ross seriously when threatened him with a cell after Leipzig.
#
“Tony…” He hears Steve’s voice again, like he has for so many days now. He ignores it, not bothering to turn over on his cot.
Until he feels fingers on his orange sleeve. There’s a sudden crushing feeling in his chest all over again, and he turns, putting up his manacled hands, shaking though they may be.
Steve doesn't have the shield. Tony is caught in a wild moment of awful hope that this is real, interlaced with awful terror that this is real. Because Tony can still hear the crunch of the arc reactor splintering at Steve’s hands—still wakes up from nightmares about it.
It had felt so akin to the moment Obie ripped the reactor from his chest that for a moment Tony had forgotten about the surgery, sure that he was going to die.
He’ll never tell anyone, but sometimes in the dreams it’s Obie smashing the shield into his chest.
“Come on, Tony,” Steve says, extending a hand. “I’m here to get you out.”
Tony hesitates.
“We don't have long until the guards wake up,” Steve warns.
So Tony stands, following him through the open mouth of the cell.
They only get to the middle of the room before he hears the buzz of the blast doors opening, and Ross, along with three soldiers, enters.
“Good job,” Ross says, and at first Tony is puzzled by the satisfied tone in his voice. Then Tony realizes Ross is talking to Steve.
Ross crosses the space between them and then he opens up a panel on the back of Steve's neck and starts adjusting something.
“What do you think?” Ross asks smugly. When Tony is too shocked to answer, he smirks. “I’d say the LMD is pretty convincing.”
Tony wants to know why Ross needs an LMD of Steve Rogers. But then he puts two and two together. Without any Avengers left in his deck of cards, Ross has instead opted to create his own—ones that are perfectly servile.
Tony feels like he might throw up.
#
“Tony…” This time when fingers touch him, they’re warm-blooded, not the steel-cold touch of the LMD. Ross has sent Not-Steve back several times, fine tuning the personality, and each time it has made Tony's skin crawl. But whatever this is, it's different. Steve isn't blurred at the edges, either, like the hologram.
“What’s the trick this time?” Tony asks dully.
“Trick?” Steve is perplexed. “Come on, we have to go, the others are waiting for us.”
Tony feels his heart skittering dangerously, just like all the other times, but he figures he doesn't have anything left to lose.
He gets to his feet and follows Steve out, past the other empty cells, to the elevator. The heavy door slides shut, and Steve turns. Tony can see him pulling something away from his face. And with a sinking feeling Tony knows he's been had once again.
A mesh that disguises the wearer falls to the floor. He’s never seen one up close before, and a part of him wants to scoop it up and take it apart.
Of course he can't.
Tony can’t say he’s surprised to see Ross emerge from beneath it. But a twisted, conflicted part of himself had still hoped...
“Nothing?” Ross seems disappointed at Tony’s stoicism. Tony’s sure that somewhere there will be read outs of blood pressure and heart rate that Ross can delight over.
He forces himself to grin at Ross, above his grit teeth. “You’re getting predictable.”
Ross punches one of the buttons and Tony feels himself being sucked even further beneath the earth, deeper into the heart of this suffocating place.
“Tell me what happened to the shield, and we can put these games to an end,” Ross offers. Tony surmises that the shield is probably the last accessory his Captain Ken Doll is missing before he's ready for prime time TV and the PR circuit.
“Don’t know why you think I have it.”
“Rogers certainly doesn't have it anymore.”
Tony’s heart twists, knowing that that means Ross is still trying to bring the Avengers in. After what Tony’s seen here, he has no doubt that there is a personal facet to the Secretary’s obsession with them.
Ross raises an eyebrow, arms folded at Tony’s silence. “Well, if you really don’t have it, there are other ways to work yourself back into good graces.”
The elevator dings, the door slides open, and Tony finds himself on the floor with the guard’s armory.
“I’m not building you weapons,” he says automatically.
“I didn't ask you to,” Ross replies. “Strictly defense.”
He leads Tony into a small room. Inside is a workbench, metal scraps, and the Not-Steve LMD. Realization dawns as Ross hands him notes, old and yellowed, in his father’s handwriting—they’re all in Howard’s coded alphabet, but the sketch of the round targe shield is plain enough. “You want me to build another one,” he almost chokes on the words.
And Tony can practically feel the weight of the vibranium disk coming down, heavy on his chest again, hear the whistle of it in the cold air.
He wants Tony to make another one. How can he ask Tony to make another one?
“Make sure he doesn’t leave this room,” Ross says to the LMD.
Not-Steve salutes the man as he leaves and levels his gaze on Tony—Tony who is trying very hard to keep himself together, to rein the first signs of panic in before it can blossom into a full-fledged attack. Tony picks up a hammer, testing the weight of the heavy thing in his hand, letting it ground him. He wonders if he’d be able to smash the thing’s CPU quick enough--or if the LMD would strangle him before he got through the outer casing.
The thought of doing that to something with Steve’s face makes his blood run cold though. And even after everything, even if it isn't Steve, Tony can't stomach the thought.
He wonders if Steve felt the same, after he brought the shield down on Tony’s chest.
Tony sets the hammer down, and sits, beginning to carefully translate his father’s notes.
“Tony...”
He goes rigid, feeling a hand on his shoulder, heavy and solid. When Tony forces himself to shift and look up into the crystalline blue eyes, the hand comes up, warm on Tony's skin, the thumb resting just beneath the still healing bruises around his eye.
There’s an ineffable sadness in those blue eyes. “Tony, why didn't you call? You’re always ten steps ahead. Surely you could have seen Ross would do something like this.”
Tony forces himself to be calm. Ross has, after all, graciously offered him so much practice with this feat as of late. “I didn’t think you meant personal matters.”
“I didn’t qualify it with, if the world is ending. I promised I’d come if you needed me,” Steve says.
Tony swallows, and for once it isn't fear that sends his heart racing. “And here you are.”