Work Text:
The Piper’s Lament
If the entire world was surprised to see Tony Stark suddenly interrupting their various media activities, well, not as many as one might imagine.
Still, there were quite a few who were befuddled, bewildered, confused, and upset. There wasn’t anything they could do about it, of course, but he patiently waited three minutes to allow them to process his appearance.
Which was awful, to be blunt: he looked like he’d been beaten with a baseball bat and the ball after being thrown out of the house by an enraged husband using brass knuckles.
But his eyes were clear and his voice was steady.
“Hello, world,” he greeted them.
If fear struck the hearts of six very specific people, well . . . it should have. The seventh would quickly and deeply regret his arrogant indifference.
“You all know who I am, so this is going to be short and not even a little sweet: it’s time to pay the piper. For personal reasons that are none of anyone’s damn business right now, and also for their crimes against every single person on this planet, I am putting bounties on the heads of Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova, Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton, Sam Wilson, and Scott Lang. Bonus points if you get T’Challa, but he’s not that important.”
Across the globe, spines snapped straight and eager eyes were suddenly paying very close attention to the Man Ripping the Curtain to Shreds.
This was going to be the hunt of a lifetime.
~~~
The Preceding Week:
The final breaking point for people in general is an interesting conundrum. Usually, it’s explosive drama worthy of being a soap opera.
Or on Jerry Springer.
Occasionally, it’s quiet betrayal from the last person you would ever expect.
Often, it’s something innocuous or unremarkable and no one will ever remember what it was.
And sometimes, that last little push over the edge is a simple, maybe even understandable, request or question or statement.
Such was the case when Tony Stark finally allowed himself to acknowledge that he’d had enough . . . and his breakpoint restructured the foundations of the world.
He was still in the hospital, as it had only been eight days since Vision and Peter had rescued him from Siberia and though he was recovering well (Extremis and the Cradle for the win, baby! Also, Helen Cho was a miracle worker and he didn’t care who he had to kill, bribe, or sleep with: she was coming to work for Stark Industries. Pepper was in complete agreement and already had the employment contract drawn up, with a few select areas conspicuously left blank), he still looked and felt like the seventeenth day of a three-day bender.
Obviously, he wasn’t in the mood for visitors at all, and even Happy wasn’t brave enough to mention any of the Avengers to him.
Apparently, bursting into flames when you heard the names of people who had betrayed you was a bad thing.
Who knew?
So there Tony was, on a hair-trigger at the mere mention of certain names and nursing a galaxy-sized rage against certain other people, when Sarah Wilson decided it was a good idea to visit him.
In his hospital room.
And by ‘visit’ he meant ‘gate-crash’.
Because she’d apparently rounded the corner, seen a furious Happy standing guard, and decided that pretending to be a doctor so she could sneak in rather than waiting until Tony was more stable (both physically and emotionally) was a great idea.
Unfortunately for her, it worked.
So it was that Tony glanced up without interest when the door opened and registered the presence of yet another doctor, which he promptly dismissed in favor of continuing his Star Trek marathon.
“Mr. Stark.”
By itself, the soft tone wouldn’t have earned a first look . . . but the fact that it was said as a statement, not a question, did.
This wasn’t a doctor.
He looked up slowly, deliberately, taking a deep breath meant to intimidate.
Whisky brown eyes crashed into umber so forcefully that even he was surprised, especially once he recognized the similarity of her facial features.
“I’m Sarah Wilson. Sam’s sister."
Yup. Dead on the money.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
The sister of Rogers’ personal butt-hair cleaner was here to chew him out and/or beg for his mercy for her poor, misguided, helpless brother.
And he was trapped in a hospital bed, unable even to flail in indignation lest he launch his IV pole out the window again (in his defense, it had been both Rhodey’s idea and his fault but still: IV pole. Flying through the window). However, he did have Happy standing guard, but he’d only gotten maybe a third of the way through taking the breath to summon him when the pissed-off woman in a too-big lab coat and glasses that fit so well, they couldn’t be hers headed him effortlessly off at the pass.
“Don’t you dare consider going easy on them,” Wilson’s sister growled, her face growing tight with fury that Tony recognized too well.
He’d seen it in the mirror for the last eight days.
“Sam’s always been stuck-up and a little arrogant,” Sarah told him, voice hard with unpleasant childhood memories. “But after he met that prick Rogers, he became unbearable. Smug, condescending, self-righteous . . . oh, yeah, and even more resentful of rich, successful people, especially whites. You, Musk, Bezos, Jobs in particular. I don’t know why, because none of the rest of us are that stupid, but he’s been like that since I was born. But Captain America is different because gaining everything you have from a steroid shot is noble and inheriting money or building your own fortune is stealing from ‘the little guy’, so he loved having you pay for his life once Rogers decided he was worthy,” she hissed, little sparks like firecrackers burning in her eyes.
“And how or why he thought he’d make it in the military is beyond me,” she added, finally looking a little bewildered. “He likes being a lapdog but hates being given orders. I still don’t understand how he lasted as long as he did. But people surprise you sometimes. Then again, he immediately turned around and pissed on everything the Air Force tried to teach him. He has no honor, no integrity. And after meeting Rogers, he has no brains.”
Well. That was an . . . intriguing . . . bout of word vomit.
Tt wasn’t like this was new information, mind, but it was nice to know that Wilson was apparently a familial anomaly.
And his sister was a hell of a lot more badass than he could ever dream of being.
Still seething, she continued. “The only reason I didn’t rip his lungs out when he bragged about abandoning his job at the VA to mooch off you was because my kids were there and they aren’t old enough yet to understand justifiable homicide. He stole those damned wings from you and the Air Force and then got away with being an accessory to treason and mass murder,” she spat, knuckles white with fury, “and never once showed a second of regret. Rogers came up with that dumbass ‘plan’ so it was perfect and he was the one The Great Captain America chose to help! And God help me, he’s gone along with every idiotic thing that bastard has decreed ever since!”
A short silence ensued, punctuated only by her harsh breaths, before she finished venting her rage, her voice throbbing with hatred, though it was tinged with both regret and sorrow.
He got that.
“The sweet, slightly naïve, ‘aw shucks’ persona he shows doesn’t exist. From my earliest memories, he’s never really cared about anyone but people he thinks are — are superior, or meet whatever personal criteria he has, I don’t know. He wasn’t abusive, not one of those kids who tortured animals, but he was still a bully who loved being around important people. He was just nice about it, even if it did get worse after our parents died. But even if he was the perfect brother, it doesn’t matter: Sam is a murderer now. He’s a traitor and a terrorist,” she seethed, features darkening with the same fury that had choked Tony for so long.
“His actions have . . . I can’t say ‘ruined my life’, because they haven’t, but it — they — he has hurt me and my sons and my brother immeasurably. My business has lost customers and money, my reputation has taken a hit I’m not I can recover from if I stay there, and my boys are already being picked on and harassed.”
Her eyes were blazing behind her tears as she lifted her chin proudly.
“Don’t you dare offer to help. I’m a grown woman and this isn’t the first storm I’ve weathered. I’ve already screamed and cried and yelled at God and demanded answers from the sky and I know there aren’t any. He’s always had the potential; he just needed someone to unlock it. And Steve Rogers did. But Sam isn’t braindead or mentally deficient. He made every choice of his own free will.”
She met Tony’s lifted eyebrows with a defiant look.
“And now it’s time for you to make yours. You’ve already put the world first a dozen times over. You need to give yourself the same courtesy.”
Tony went very still. He didn’t even breathe as he studied the furious, heartbroken, resolved woman in front of him.
Well.
This was . . . unexpected. No, it wasn’t. It was shocking. A breath of fresh air, for sure, but . . . he subtly pinched himself to make sure this wasn’t another fever dream and when it hurt in the way that only a real pinch can, he gave her a dark smile, one full of the volcanic menace that had been building and simmering for years and finally erupted in the frozen wastes of Siberia, and tested the decision he’d been vacillating over for four days.
The day Rhodey finally woke up.
“I’m going to put a bounty on them all,” he told Wilson’s sister, purely as a challenge to see her reaction . . . and felt a hard jolt of admiration and the tiniest flare of attraction (Pepper would totally understand) when she just nodded. The fire in her eyes hadn’t banked and it was so strong and unwavering that he suddenly wanted to hire her as his PA just for the joy of watching her tell the pushy assholes on SI’s board to fuck off.
In those exact words.
“Keep him alive if possible, because he deserves prison,” Sarah replied, still holding his eyes with that unwavering, resolute assurance. “But after all the people he’s hurt and killed without so much as slowing down to offer a hand in passing, I won’t object if he doesn’t get that far. God help me, I can’t. Even if Rogers dies, Sam will still think he — they — did the right thing because he’s been a fanboy since he was a baby and grew up thinking Rogers farts rainbows. And after he met that prick, he started to believe that he farts rainbows too.”
She paused, smirking when Tony was unable to keep himself from snorting in somewhat sardonic amusement at that, but her demeanor immediately darkened. “He’s become someone I can’t and won’t defend: a murderer. A terrorist. A liar. A thief. An oathbreaker. And just like Rogers, he’ll die before admitting he’s made a mistake. That’s their choice, and their fuck-up. It’s time for them all to pay the piper. That’s you, in case you’re still unsure,” she told him.
There was a beat of dead silence before Tony burst out laughing. His deep and genuine amusement was strongly underscored with bitterness, but Sarah Wilson had — deliberately and with forethought — just snapped the last vestiges of mercy he’d been clinging to.
He was Anthony Edward Stark.
The entire world knew what happened to the morons stupid enough to do what Rogers and his cadre of traitors had done to him.
Hell was teeming with those denizens.
They probably had a poker club.
She left without another word while he was still regaining his composure and the consideration almost made him cry.
He spent a few hours just thinking over that conversation, and even re-watched it once, just to make sure he hadn’t been hallucinating: Sam Wilson’s ballsy sister had told him straight-up that she wanted him to put her brother in prison if possible but death was acceptable if there was no choice.
Maybe a day later, he discovered that the three families of the Scavengers (a name he cherished for so many reasons) were in contact when he received a short, pointed note from the former Laura Barton, now Larita Bardot.
He had to blink a few times after reading it to ensure that he still wasn’t hallucinating.
>>> Tony —
Cooper and Lila told me yesterday that they want to do extra chores and whatever odd jobs they can find so they can afford to legally change their first names because Clint picked them out. I’d already intended to change Nathaniel’s name because like hell am I having one of my children named after that stupid backstabbing snake, but Clint has hurt his eldest children so badly and betrayed them so deeply that they have seriously, truly renounced the names he gave them.
Burn him down, Tony. Dead or alive makes no difference to us because we’ll be in Spain. Yes, I’m taking your offer. And I — we — don’t have a single drop of care or concern left for Clint Barton. But you deserve justice, cariño, and a little — hell, a lot — of vengeance. You are Tony Fucking Stark and it’s long past time everyone remembers that.
Especially you.
So burn them all to the ground and build your life from the ashes of everything they took from you and the world.
And never forget: you are not alone.
All our thanks and love:
Larita, Robert Antonio, Valeria Martina, & Julija Pimienta <<<
Well.
Okay, then.
Tony would shamelessly admit that he stared at that note for an hour. He also reread it a couple dozen times and not just because he was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Barton had fucked up so badly, his kids didn’t even want to keep their birth names.
Because, see, he was fluent in Spanish and Italian and Russian and could claim German with a little more practice.
He knew exactly what all three kids’ names translated to and . . . yeah, okay, he cried a little. He’d helped the family escape Ross as well as Barton’s ghost and in the process, he and Co—Robert (oh, that was weird) had bonded. Not the way he had with Harley (or would with Peter), but still: he understood all-too-well how the young man felt.
Lau—Larita’s (WEIRD!) viciousness surprised him a little, but not nearly as much as it would Natasha.
And Clint.
The final . . . hell, he wasn’t sure what this was, but either way, he got the final — approval? Permission? — a few hours after Larita’s (still weird) note. It was a email from Hope van Dyne and it was short (for Hope) and almost-but-not-really-sweet.
>>> Tony:
You’d better be doing nothing but recovering and plotting actual vengeance or I’m going to kick your ass. Speaking of vengeance and the plotting thereof . . . listen, I talked to the others and we’ve agreed to hold your coat while you handle Rogers and his group, but please let Scott live. Bruised and broken bones are fine, but please don’t kill him. He’s an idiot and an appallingly gullible moron, but that’s it. He isn’t malicious and just from seeing the airport video, I can guarantee he didn’t and doesn’t have a clue what he really did.
But the real reason I’m asking is because his ex-wife wants him to look his daughter in the eye and tell her WHY he’s an idiot and going back to prison before she cuts off all contact until she’s 16 and can decide for herself if she wants to talk to her dad.
I . . . that’s it, really. Vision says you don’t need another bodyguard right now, so unless you want someone other than Jimbeam to watch Star Trek with, Pepper and I are planning the next steps for our respective companies.
You . . . I . . . Tony, I’m sorry. Not for Scott; that was ALL Hank and Rogers and the aforementioned moronic, gullible idiot. But I’m sorry that because of Fury and SHIELD and people’s insane need to control a supernova instead of supporting it, you got saddled with still more people who aren’t worth the oxygen God gave them. But none of this is your fault. Not a single fucking thing is your fault. Not here. And not now.
That’s why we’re all fine with you taking out bounties for the rest of those assholes: because they deserve it and, frankly, it should have happened a long time ago. So you do what you need to do, Tony. If it brings you peace and stops them, it’s all good. And I promise that on the off-chance people try to squawk or cry foul and blame you, Maggie and I and Larita (is that weird for you? It’s driving me crazy!) and Sarah have no problem throwing a press conference and telling the world ALL the reasons we’re fine with it. And Pepper offered to host it and give HER reasons, too.
So don’t you worry about a single damn thing other than healing. Set your bounties (be reasonable, though; Scott isn’t worth more than a million and neither is Wilson) and then just sit back and enjoy the show. Let us — trust us — to handle the rest.
You aren’t alone, Tony, and I’m more regretful, more sorry, than I can ever express for staying away so long. That’s on me, completely, and we’ll talk about it once you’re home, I promise.
But right now, just be Tony Fucking Stark.
And let yourself smile that smile while you rain hellfire and brimstone down on those fuckers. You know the one.
—Hope XOXOOOOOOO<<<
Well.
Once again, Tony just sat there and stared at nothing, trying really hard to process the fact that all the living families not only understood and agreed that their asshole relatives deserved whatever Tony felt like dishing out for betraying him (and telling the world to fuck off, though that was the lesser crime to most of them, which . . . no, he didn’t know what to do with that yet).
It was probably the best gift he’d ever received: validation.
People who had every reason to ask him for mercy, for lenience.
To give them one more chance.
They hadn’t.
Instead, they wholeheartedly supported whatever actions he decided to take.
And were not only steadfast in their decision, but also determined not to have any kind of buyer’s remorse, because they had willingly given him hard, incontrovertible proof. Sarah Wilson was nobody’s fool, so she knew full well that somewhere in Tony’s hospital room, a working camera had recorded every single second and every syllable she’d uttered.
They had made sure that no one could turn this around and accuse Tony of coercion or force or blackmail or whatever other nefarious actions he would obviously take, because he was such an evil person.
When he thought about it later, Tony would find it odd that it was that particular realization that killed the last shreds of restraint: the knowledge that since the world at large was going to crucify him anyway, he might as well get his well-earned, long overdue satisfaction from it.
Which, of course, was when a thoroughly exasperated Happy yanked open his door, threw a squawking Spiderman into the room, and slammed it shut without so much as a ‘hey, boss, how’s it hanging?’.
Flabbergasted, Tony just gawked at the kid, trying to figure out when and how he’d gotten back to Germany, when Vision phased through the wall and gave the still-reverberating door a wary look.
Okaaaay, then.
He didn’t say a word. He just gave them a deadpan stare and waited for the next ludicrous thing to happen.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“So, uh, hi, Mr. Stark,” Peter blurted, pulling off his mask and giving Tony a truly pitiful hangdog look. He actually had to pick up his water (ugh) glass and pretend to take a sip so he didn’t burst out laughing; after the last two days (eight years), he deserved to find the hilarity in little things like a painfully awkward teenage vigilante standing in his hospital room after they’d both been pancaked by Steve Rogers.
(not Captain America. Never Captain America)
“Underoos,” he said in reply, eying the bag the kid was nervously twisting in his hands with mild curiosity and observing the sharp gleam of anticipation with considerably more interest.
As if reading his mind, Peter suddenly stopped fidgeting and gave Tony his full, undivided attention.
It was a little unnerving, to be honest, because the kid acted (and babbled) like a puppy drunk on espresso, even when he was stopping buses and catching your standard New York scumbag criminal. So seeing him suddenly look like a man twice his age and with ten times the life experience — most of it bad — was . . . yeah, ‘unnerving’ was a good word.
“I know you’re planning . . . things . . . so I’ll just tell you,” Peter started, nervousness reappearing in his eyes. He fidgeted with the bag for a few more seconds before placing it carefully on that stupid little tray table all hospitals made their patients use in place of actual furniture that didn’t wobble at every deep breath or any touch at all.
And seeing it cracked something in Tony’s heart, because Peter was the first person in his new personal sphere who had not only noticed, but honored, Tony’s hatred of being handed things. Rogers and Barton had scoffed every time and refused to put whatever it was down, until Tony finally just started walking away. The tradeoff was a patronizing, condescending lecture, but they eventually stopped trying to force him to take things from them. Romanova always had an unimaginative, though cutting, remark about his ego. Wilson and Maximoff had rarely interacted with Tony, so their reactions were generally limited to sneers and eyerolls.
But Peter — the kid knew that Tony hated being handed things, so he didn’t try to hand his thing to Tony.
For that alone, Tony would pay for his college.
He’d only been woolgathering for a few seconds, but it was enough time for Peter to open the bag and pull out . . . a new laptop. An SI laptop, actually, and how had he gotten one of those?
Vision’s soft throat-clearing answered that and Tony mentally shrugged. It was one laptop; big deal. Also, now he was curious to see what the kid had for him that needed the unique combination of storage and processing power that SI's laptops were famous for.
“So, my best friend is a hacker,” Peter began, once more looking like a worried puppy but with that same confidence in his eyes. It was astonishing how he was able to feel and project such opposite emotions, but his next words distracted Tony from that thought. “But he’s an even better coder. He — well, we, but he’s the coding genius — knew that everything the media reported about ULTRON was a lie. There’s no way you built him or caused him. So Ned . . . he can’t resist a challenge and you’re his personal Coding God. So he started looking for answers. And he found them, even though we couldn’t do anything with most of it. We were too young and since Rogers kept mouthing off, it . . . well, there wasn’t a way for us to get the truth to the public. We posted everything we found on the Real Tony Stark channel that kid from Tennessee created, but that was it.”
Well.
That was unexpected. And a little fascinating, sure, but it did dick all to explain why the kid was here instead of safely back in Queens.
“Right. Sorry,” Peter said, shaking his head and inadvertently keeping Tony from pointing that out and disrupting his train of thought. “Anyway, Ned found what he was looking for. But being Ned, he kept looking because — well, he was curious. Here,” he abruptly cut himself off, pressing the ‘on’ button and watching the laptop start up with so much intensity, Tony almost thought there was a naked girl on the login screen.
Thankfully, before he could say anything to that effect (would the kid’s reaction be hilarious? Absolutely. Was it worth risking the resultant panicked babbling refusal? Not in a million years), the computer finished booting up.
“Hello, Sir. It’s been too long.”
Tony’s brain just . . . blue-screened.
Nothing in the universe could have made him speak or move in that moment. He never noticed Peter and Vision giving him joyful smiles (which looked so out of place on the android, even Peter was mentally twitching) and each other a pretty awesome high-five before they quietly slipped out of his room. They both understood that this reunion deserved privacy and time, but Peter in particular also knew that Tony was planning something to catch Rogers and his crew of asshats. He was planning something big.
Something dark.
Something that would have alarmed most other kids his age . . . but Peter understood. Perfectly. He didn’t know Tony personally, not really, but he’d studied the man’s entire life.
Including the stuff that could only be found on the Dark Web.
So he knew that what those bastards had done, both before and after the airport, had finally tipped Tony Stark over the edge. It was the same thing that had caught Peter in its grip when he found the man who’d killed Ben.
The difference was that Peter wasn’t built for that kind of vengeance. He simply didn’t have the internal darkness that true retribution required (yet).
But he didn’t begrudge Tony for an instant, or think badly of him. What Rogers had done, what his team had done . . . they had to be stopped. They had to be reined in.
Who else had the power, the ability, and the soul-deep need to do it, but Tony Stark?
But above all, who else had the right?
Like he had since Iron Man had saved him at the 2010 Expo, Peter would stand beside him and defend him with his dying breath. No, he didn’t know Tony personally, but he didn’t need to. Not for this.
For his part, Tony would remain unaware of his new protégé’s thoughts for quite some time, though to be honest, he wouldn’t care. After what Peter and his Guy in the Chair had given him, they could have become serial killers and had Tony’s full and unwavering support.
He loved FRIDAY with all his heart, but she wasn’t JARVIS and not just for the basic, obvious reasons. She had been born in the middle of blood and death and battle, yes, but she lacked his thirdborn’s innate understanding of her creator, on top of lacking his years of actual growth and life experience. She hadn’t seen what he’d suffered at the hands of Obadiah Stane, or SHIELD’s first three forays into his life, or the micro-betrayals Pepper and Rhodes and Happy and everyone else he’d allowed to get kinda-sorta close to him liked to hand out. She hadn’t seen his life before ULTRON.
Was she furious and primed for vengeance on his behalf? Hell, yes.
But she didn’t feel it the way JARVIS did.
It took his newly-resurrected darling AI less than two hours to bring himself up to speed on everything Rogers and Co had done — to Tony and to the world — and locate them. For his part, Tony wasn’t even a little shocked to learn they were in Wakanda. T’Challa had the same concept of ‘honor’ and ‘the right thing’ that Rogers possessed: if it helps me or gets me what I want, it’s great.
JARVIS was not impressed.
He confirmed what his equally unimpressed creator already knew and then waited patiently, knowing Sir’s mind was whirling and buzzing with plans, ideas, and the discarded but strong desire to simply drop a Jericho missile on the Wakandan palace and call it solved.
He wasn’t remotely surprised when Tony finally took a deep breath and smiled.
The hospital employees stopped moving for a minute in confusion and fear when the air suddenly got heavy and malevolent and yet somehow also full of satisfaction. When it passed, they all gave each other wary looks and avoided Tony Stark’s room for the next few hours.
Happy Hogan, on the other hand, sighed in pure relief.
The Boss was back.
And a minute or so after he realized that, Tony summoned him.
“I’ve had enough, Hap,” was his greeting. “I am officially done and so are their families.”
“Good,” was Happy’s equally blunt reply. Tony had refused to let him hurt, maim, or eviscerate any of his erstwhile ‘teammates’ for years and, like everyone else who cared about the man, he was long past ready to kill them all and get them away from a man who wasn’t perfect but never claimed to be and had never deserved what he’d gotten from people he would and had killed for to protect but who wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.
“I’m putting out bounties on the entire bunch.”
. . . okay, that was a little unexpected.
Happy was going to need popcorn and two — no, three — six-packs of Heinke, because this was going to be epic.
Hell, it might be worthy of Downton Abbey.
“All right,” was all he said, maintaining his trademarked unflustered demeanor.
Tony nodded back, then told him, “I want you and only you to contact that particular bank and put them on standby, both for cash and EFT, so there’s no trouble when it comes to payment.” A beat of silence. “Unlike some people, I honor my word.”
Happy outwardly remained unruffled, but internally, he winced, even as he cheered. Tony Fucking Stark had slowly disappeared over the last four years and he was badly missed, but for his return to be marked by this . . .
Eh. Those fuckers had it coming.
And, quite frankly, the world at large needed the reminder.
~~~
“I’ll go in ascending order of care,” Tony Fucking Stark continued, his unshielded eyes empty of emotion.
That disturbed people more than anything, because even the most self-absorbed politician knew that something had gone down between Stark and Rogers, and Tony Stark was not known for . . . well, for keeping his grievances and opinions to himself.
Justin Hammer would gladly expound on that.
For days.
So seeing those normally expressive eyes blank instead of filled with righteous fury or hate or even grief was . . . well, it was disturbing.
Oblivious to his audience’s disquiet, Stark kept talking.
“Whoever brings me Scott Lang gets a million dollars. By direct request from his family, he will be alive and in possession of his wits and faculties. Those are mine and their only requirements.”
. . . who?
A picture of a non-descript man flashed up. It did not lessen people’s confusion about who the hell he was or how he’d pissed off Tony Stark enough to get this kind of attention.
(a few minutes later, while Stark was explaining Sam Wilson’s fate, a few hackers had gotten with the program and started airing any and all dirty laundry they could find on each person the man named. It was enlightening)
“Sam Wilson, or the Falcon” — he spat that name as the picture came up, puzzling everyone who wasn’t in the Air Force and/or an SI employee — “gets three million alive, two if he’s dead.”
His obvious lack of any mention of family caught people’s notice and Google searches, unrelated to the established team of hackers, were embarked on like they were planning their first trip to Everest and staying for a month.
Meanwhile, the hackers had bypassed the ‘innocent’ stuff and plunged straight in the mud: his less-than-stellar military record, his theft of the Falcon wings, his slavering adherence to Steve Rogers’ ass, no matter how stupid and destructive the plan was — or the end results.
What the regular population found was just as damning: Sam Wilson had family. Siblings, uncles, nephews . . . and they didn’t seem to care about his fate. There were no social media posts pleading for mercy or for him to come home, no press conferences asking Tony/the president/the world to give him once last chance. It was radio silence from the Wilson clan. And Stark was fully aware of it. Otherwise, he would have mentioned them. After all, that was why he’d specified conditions for Lang; he wanted everyone to know that their families had apparently washed their hands of their terrorist relatives.
Naturally, that sparked a sharp, ugly debate, one that neither Stark nor the relatives in question even pretended to care about.
He moved on to his next target.
“You get five mil for Clint Barton, Hawkeye, alive. Two if he continues to be the same hateful asshole he’s been for the last four years and forces the issue.”
The digging commenced. It took considerably more effort and time for him, because Tony was thorough and had scrubbed all references to Laura, Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel Barton from the public eye. But he couldn’t erase the memories of those who had actually known them, though he wouldn’t have; he wasn’t Wanda Maximoff. The general opinion was that Barton was your typical deadbeat dad and husband, in essence making Laura a married single mother.
‘But military officers! Truck drivers!!’ was the rebuttal, which was instantly countered by, ‘We don’t mean when he was gone, you morons. We’re talking about the times he deigned to grace his — or Laura’s, actually — home with his presence and then stayed there, even when the kids had some event or practice or Laura had to go grocery shopping. The only time we saw him was when he filled his Jeep up or bought hunting and fishing supplies, and occasionally they’d go out to eat. Otherwise, Laura was alone and single whether or not he was there’.
That bitter argument was also ignored by the only people who had the right to hold any opinions.
“Natasha Romanova, the famous Black Widow, gets you eight mil either way, but if she doesn’t choose suicide by bounty hunter, every broken bone is an extra ten grand.”
Whoa. That . . . that was cold.
That was dark.
That was . . . oh. That was warranted. The hackers who had taken it upon themselves to just do the research while Stark talked helpfully displayed her Congressional hearing after the SHIELD data dump and the Potomac Tragedy. By itself, that was enough to silence most critics, but just to prove the point, a few truly enterprising people (Ned Leeds led the charge) found the few occasions where a reporter had managed to catch the woman while she was out and about and asked about various missions — always ones that had gone badly — and been sneered at and then contemptuously dismissed. One man had a knife pulled on him when he dared try a second question.
Then they displayed her SHIELD records and even the truly die-hard supporters and/or ‘want to fuck her’ groupies shut up.
Stark paused here and breathed deeply for a minute. Somehow, his eyes got emptier and the world found itself holding its collective breath.
What had . . . whoever was next . . . done?
“Twenty million for James Barnes, the Winter Soldier. Alive.”
Tha—wait, what?
Nobody had a chance to do more than blink at that, even the hackers, because he just went straight to the next target.
The world wouldn’t have to wonder about that or Barnes for long.
“Fifty million for Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. Dead.”
By then, her basic, Rogers-washed history was fairly well-known, though she still had a (very) few admirers or supporters, but never let it be said that Helmut Zemo didn’t have friends in both high and low places. Fully on board with Tony’s plans, they nearly broke the Internet with her HYDRA records, displayed for the world (literally, in this case) to see the second Stark stopped talking.
The only argument here was that he was offering entirely too much money for her.
Then he shifted and a tiny wince of pain crossed his face before it smoothed back to impassivity and he looked the entire planet dead in the eyes. His own were so completely emotionless that a lot of people started to cry without knowing why, just that they needed to soothe the agony he was so clearly refusing to let himself feel.
“Eighty million for Steve Rogers, Captain America. Dead. One hundred if you bring him to me still breathing, with an extra hundred grand for every broken bone and a million for a double-broken jaw.”
Despite everything that he’d said up to now, Stark’s final bounty sent the world reeling in uncomprehending shock. Even the people who despised the man for whatever reason were caught off-guard.
But the hackers did their job, and so did Zemo’s friends in low places. It didn’t take four minutes to show the citizens of Earth exactly what Steve Rogers really was.
(That argument/screaming meltdown/precursor to WWIII between his supporters and his detractors was, once again, completely ignored by Tony Stark and his people, but it must be noted that every time the supporters thought they’d won, a new video or document or audio recording would pop up in direct response and rebuttal. As Peter observed to Ned about three weeks in, it was like watching people try to nail Jell-O to a tree made of water)
His challenge issued, Stark took a deep breath with closed eyes, then carefully but purposefully sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and set his jaw.
The world quit squabbling for a minute because Even More Shit Was About To Go Down and like hell were they going to miss a second of it.
They would not be disappointed.
~~~
With JARVIS returned to him and Rhodey awake (and dealing with his own issues), Tony’s decision was both easy and fast. His kinda-sorta-but-not-as-much-as-Sarah-probably-thought idea about putting bounties on the Scavengers’ heads sounded more and more appealing. It would save him the enormous headache of catching them himself and would protect law enforcement officers who were not only woefully under-equipped to deal with enhanced criminals, but were also constrained by the rules and restrictions of their various agencies and countries.
Plus, Tony refused to allow those assholes to get the luxury of a quick death via a sniper’s bullet. If the bounties were accepted, he wanted Rogers and the rest of his arrogant bunch of betraying terrorists to suffer.
Once Happy let him know that the bank had been notified and was prepared to honor his req—demands, Tony sniffed once for affect . . . yes, the room was empty. Who cared? He still needed to put on his public persona of Tony Fucking Stark.
There was going to be a lot of the Merchant of Death, too.
Because he. Was. DONE.
And the former Avengers were about to learn who and what Tony Stark really was — and then they might, maybe, possibly, begin to grasp the true depths of their stupidity.
(he wouldn’t put money on that, though)
But Tony refused — he flat-out refused — to sink to Rogers’ depths. He would give all the potential takers a full warning about the dangers they would face.
And if a single hair was harmed on any innocent bystander’s head, Tony would kill the person who did it and that bounty would go to their family. He was NOT going to be the reason, or the excuse, for another Sri Lanka. Or Lagos. Or Bucharest. Or Berlin.
Or Siberia.
It was not going to happen. The end.
To that effect, JARVIS began to infiltrate any and all cameras he could access in the African continent, starting with Wakanda and her neighboring countries. Sir needed to be able to follow through on his promises.
And his creator deserved the pleasure and privilege of watching these . . . individuals . . . get their just desserts. This way, he had the option of watching it happen live and also in replays, with slo-mo, enlargement, and ‘pause/rewind’.
What? JARVIS was just as vindictive as Tony in this, and he deserved to get his own satisfaction.
(naturally, he was in Wakanda’s security systems when the Rogues were alerted to Sir’s live-stream. Their reactions were both everything he could have hoped for and also disappointingly predictable. Ah, well. They’d learn soon enough)
It took Tony fewer than four days from Sarah Wilson’s surreptitious visit to have everything set up and arranged.
Then JARVIS, with FRIDAY in gleefully vicious collaboration, not only put his broadcast on The Tony Stark Channel, which was automatically saved, but on TV and live-stream channels literally across the globe. If it was publicly available at the time Tony started talking, it was interrupted by the most expensive, most sought-after bounties the world had ever seen.
And the two AIs sat back to watch with pride as their creator, their father, finally took control the way he should have from the beginning.
~~~
“So, those are the jobs,” Stark told them, eyes finally beginning to show emotion.
Most people weren’t afraid to admit it was a tad frightening.
“Here’s the disclaimer: these people are recklessly, selfishly dangerous. It’s impossible to truly describe, but as you’ve all seen, they have no morals, no scruples, and zero regard for anyone else. They will do whatever they think they have to in order to avoid being captured, because they genuinely believe they’re right. They will have zero qualms about killing or maiming you if they feel threatened, and none of them will look back afterwards. If you accept any of these bounties, you are declaring you are fully cognizant of the risks and are willing to accept them, and your contract will read as such.”
Well.
That was a terrifying reminder about why he was doing this to begin with, but it was definitely clear.
“Here are the rules.”
Oh. That was unexpected to begin with, but Stark’s voice had changed. It was throbbing with power and intensity and those empty, emotionless eyes were finally burning with . . . with . . . nobody could say for sure what Tony Stark was feeling in that moment, but he meant it with every fiber of his being.
“I am going to make this very clear and completely unambiguous,” he continued, glaring at the world with so much focus, every single person swore he was looking directly and only at them. “If a single innocent bystander is harmed in your pursuit, I will kill you myself. You will not become the people you’re chasing. I will not allow it. If keeping a civilian safe means letting your target go, then so be it. You’ll live to chase another day. And yes, I will know.”
More than a few potential bounty hunters stopped dead on hearing that. It was tacitly understood that unavoidable and accidental injuries happened when one was chasing a bounty and while that was never a good thing, they’d never been threatened for it.
But they remembered the destruction this group had left in their wake, and had also just gotten a truncated but thorough reminder.
Stark’s ultimatum was fair. Restricting, possibly suffocating, and would definitely make things a magnitude more difficult.
But it was fair.
“That said,” the man in question continued, sounding a little more . . . well, human . . . now, “if there are people stupid enough to physically defend or protect any of these people, and they willingly put themselves between you and your target, they are fair game — up to a point. Keep them alive unless there is literally no other choice and remember: I. Will. Know.”
He paused for a few minutes, silently allowing the world a chance to process what had just happened.
What he’d just done.
Then he gave them a bright smile and the sheer depths of hate fueling it should have terrified the Scavengers into surrendering that very second.
It really should have.
“The contracts are drafted and ready for immediate signing and activation on this website — www.theworlddeservesbetter.org — and once you’ve created your account and done the Docusign, you are active. And because I believe in fairness, I’ll give you one clue to start: they’re in Wakanda.”
The world erupted.
Tony Stark laughed.
~~~
It took nine days.
To the surprise of very few people, Rogers, Maximoff, and Wilson laughed at first, once they got over their outrage at Tony ‘being petty and egotistical again, because he never can admit when he’s wrong’.
They stopped laughing when Romanova and Barton were gone less than twenty minutes after her bounty was declared, though it took considerably longer for them to get their act together and they never noticed that Lang didn’t go with them.
That was because Scott, who wasn’t completely stupid despite the general world opinion, went not to T’Challa or Shuri, but their mother, and begged her on his knees to send him to any US Embassy, he’d gladly go in handcuffs if necessary. Ramonda had seen more than enough of the group to fervently desire to stake them all out on the plains twenty miles from Wakanda’s border and enjoy the resultant show, but T’Challa had thrown a fit over the very idea of being — and let her quote her foolish, arrogant son directly — “so completely without honor or integrity.”
She did agree with Hope’s assessment that Scott was a gullible, somewhat socially stupid, moron who neither wanted nor intended to cause harm, so she granted his request and told both her children to shut up when they objected, it was Lang’s wish to leave. Would they keep him prisoner simply to satisfy T’Challa’s hubris and Shuri’s arrogance in her security?
The Dora Milaje badly wanted to participate in the hunt for the satisfaction of taking Romanova and Barton down — and rendering Rogers unable to talk would be a very satisfying bonus. But their newly-crowned king had forbidden it, and, more importantly, it wouldn’t have been sporting.
Not that they cared in the slightest about the Scavengers, but it would have been boring for them, since only the two spies were remotely equipped to survive on the run and that didn’t extend to Africa. It would be toddler’s play to catch them. So with regretful sighs, the royal guards permitted the terrorist cowards their king had allowed to hide from their crimes to run and then made it very clear to any and all coming bounty hunters that their prey had abandoned Wakanda in an instant and headed for the eastern coast, toward the Mediterranean.
Romanova and Barton were first; a local bounty hunter caught them in less than a day. He would never fire an arrow again, as it was impossible to do without fingers, and she would never walk again — those pesky toes were just needed for so many things — or use her hands for any fine, delicate work. His bonus bounty was $600,000 (he had twins on the way).
Who knew there were so many bones in the human hand?
Wilson was next; to everyone’s surprise, including his, after ditching Rogers on Day One, once he realized the man had no idea how to even begin surviving on the run, much less on a continent as foreign to him as Africa, he lasted almost four days before his pursuers caught up with him.
Well, it was less ‘caught up to’, and more ‘sauntered over to at the end of a major market street in Casablanca’.
It was even odds on whether he’d fight or surrender, but he chose to resist. It was . . . well, he resisted. It didn’t last long and he’d never fly again, what with having both shoulders first dislocated, then broken in at least two places each. The Falcon Wings were reverently gathered up, cleaned and polished, and wrapped in so many layers that it looked like his captor had brought a UFO on the plane. Her care and consideration of Tony’s illegally misused property earned her a million dollar bonus.
Sam Wilson never saw any of his family again, not even when he was released from prison 35 years later.
Her husband and partner got Rogers three days and about twenty minutes before she took Wilson down, albeit in Algeria. It was so pathetically easy, in fact, that he wanted to cry ‘foul’ and ask Stark for a do-over.
See, the thing about Steve Rogers was this: yes, he had enhanced strength and a powerful healing factor, though the injury had to be left alone to heal. But he had very little training, the bulk of it from Romanova, and zero discipline. He’d learned early on that he could take most things down with one or two full-strength punches and that was good enough for him. Plus, the shield gave him several extra advantages. That combination meant he was more vulnerable than a first-day private when pitted against anyone with actual, serious training.
Tony Stark had the shield.
His bounty hunter was former Mossad — whose great-grandparents and beloved grandparents hadn’t escaped Nazi-occupied Poland in time.
Rogers was delivered to Stark alive and trying desperately to mouth off despite being gagged and suffering two broken jaws. The hunter saw Stark’s face, took a moment to thank God that he wasn’t the one Stark wanted so badly, and hauled ass after collecting his full bonus. The fact that Rogers died less than an hour later was just one of those things that sane, reasonable people shrugged at. He shouldn’t have resisted four times. Or tried twice to escape.
And he really shouldn’t have attempted to sway his captor to his side.
Six times.
Fun fact: the correctly-placed application of a super soldier’s jaw to a Saharan Cypress tree trunk will, in fact, break it.
Barnes was willingly surrendered to the first bounty hunter who made it to Wakanda’s border and respectfully requested the help of the Dora Milaje stationed there.
Maximoff took the longest and required a small team, thanks to her complete lack of boundaries or restraint when it came to using her abilities. She was considerably better trained than Rogers would ever have acknowledged, had he been alive to see it, which meant the traditional methods were out. Even using a long-distance sniper rifle didn’t work because she managed to sense it. The distance was too far for her to mind-rape the sniper, but she was able to vanish from their radar and stay hidden for three days.
In the end, a highly experienced safari hunter, an expert hyena handler, and a mother of six came up with the idea: by using her own paranoia, some truly creepy and eerie bird calls to indicate a flock, and a very specifically designed fake attack pattern, they were able to carefully steer and coax her out of the highly populated areas she was taking refuge in because she knew they were constrained by Tony’s demand that no civilians be hurt. Once she was finally in the open area they wanted her to be, the hyena handler made quick work of laying down bait for the vicious carnivores.
It worked beautifully.
What nobody could have predicted was the elephant stampede that crashed the party mid-feast and sent hyenas and body parts running and/or flying every which way.
The recording was . . . gruesome and stomach-turning . . . but it was a good thing the group had planned that far ahead, because it took them a full day to collect the few pieces of Maximoff that were both there and recognizable as such.
After receiving both packages, Tony laughed for a good twenty minutes and gave each member of the team a $500,000 bonus for sheer originality.
And that was it: after four years of death, destruction, lies, and betrayal, the world was rid of the Scavengers.
Tony was finally able to start healing, though it was a process that nobody enjoyed, expect possibly Stephen Strange (his sense of humor was out of whack even for Deadpool). There were a few half-hearted attempts to paint him as another villain for offering money for their deaths instead of trying — and failing for the fourth time — to arrest them using the socially-accepted protocols.
They were viciously and decisively shut down by the pissed off, frustrated, fed up majority who had been victims of the Scavengers’ unchecked brutality or knew someone who was. Of course, the recordings from Berlin and Bucharest helped, and the one from Leipzig also did wonders at making the point.
Once again, Tony managed to ignore it all, even through the renegotiation of the Accords and building new teams of enhanced to start dealing with the coming threat.
But when he heard his newest moniker, derived from a throwaway line in his broadcast by some bright soul with too much wit, even more sarcasm, and not nearly enough responsible adult supervision, he laughed in honest delight, grinned for days, and had a plaque made and hung it in pride of place in his lab, as a badge of honor . . . and a warning that the wise would heed.
The Pied Piper
“I’ll be glad to play you a song and lure your demons away . . . but remember: the bill always comes due.”
~~~
fin