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He watched the Jeep blast toward Wanda Maximoff, watched her disappear under its bulk as the battle raged on. Cap came at him next, but the shield and his armor were an even match. His fist and Cap’s face, not so much. The super soldier fell back hard and a gray and silver version of his own suit fired at him, giving Rogers time to retreat.
Wilson swooped in front of him as he tried to fire on War Machine. Sam was faster than he looked. Everything seemed faster outside the visor, actually. Jerky and disconnected, like he was missing three out of every five frames in the movie. There was a part of his brain that was annoyed by that. Mostly, he just kept fighting.
A blast of gunfire slammed into the side of the suit and he shook it off and fired his repulsor at the mechanical bird, who flew out of the way again.
Too slow. He was moving too slow. The suit was faster than this, right?
<code>Data breach detected.</code> Friday sounded like a toy low on batteries.
“Sever exterior link.” Maybe he was running out of batteries, too. His words were plodding and slurred.
Something knocked him to the ground, and the suit rolled laboriously onto its back so he could shoot the person off of him. Nobody there. Vision…?
“Stark, can you hear me?” Rogers sounded concerned, talking through sludge. “If you can hear me, just... Stay down.”
That didn’t make any sense. He had a problem to take care of.
Every metal joint ground through his movements. He pushed himself to his feet to see a line of superheroes arrayed before him: Rhodey and Natasha and Steve and Sam and Vision. Little soldiers all in a row , he thought dully, bringing his repulsors up to fire.
“Tony, come on, man.” War Machine (war machine—really? that’s what you’re going with?) stood there, visor up. Rhodey’s eyes were trying to see through the increasing fog. Or maybe that was his eyes. “Fight it, Tony.” His brain dragged out all the syllables. It hurt his head.
Tony’s head.
He was Tony Stark.
His own visor came up without his permission and the world was suddenly scarlet and falling and he was somewhere else.
He’d forgotten about Wanda under that jeep, hadn’t he?
“So,” a voice said quietly. “Tony Stark.”
There was a bag over his head and this felt enough like the desert to start him sweating.
“You have no idea how pleased I was to hear that you had ‘retired’.” The voice didn’t sound at all familiar.
“Have we met?” Okay, so that was always a dicey question, right? The number of times he’d gotten in trouble for asking that question of people who were sure Tony Stark should know their names…
“I expect if you knew me, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Tony sparked off. “Are you a bad guy? Because then… yeah. Probably.”
“Am I a ‘bad guy’?” The words rolled off his tongue like he was savoring them. “What I am is a man with a problem. The Avengers.”
“Yeah, see I’m a silent partner there now,” Tony babbled. He needed the hood off. “You’ve heard the news, obviously. If you have a complaint, I can get you in touch with Cap—”
Electricity shocked through his system from the chair he was tied to, and Tony froze. Fuck. It didn’t hurt this way when he'd had the reactor in his chest. He’d forgotten what being electrocuted was like.
“Fortunately,” the voice went on. “I have an answer.”
The hood finally came off, and Tony squinted at a lab, cold and sterile and God only knew where. There were guards around the room and the ones by the windows were looking out. Probably waiting for one of the suits to rescue him. Which wasn’t going to happen because he’d been on vacation with—
“Where’s Pepper?” he growled. If they’d done anything to her…
“Miss Potts is currently shopping at the local mercado ,” the voice replied. Tony looked around for the person doing the talking, but there were only the guards. There were no speakers mounted on the walls, but they had to be there somewhere. “She is of the opinion that ‘something came up’ and you are on your way back to the United States.”
Great. Another reason to argue. As far as Pepper was concerned, something was always coming up. Which was true, but still...
The door to the room opened, and a man in a lab coat, carrying an aluminum tray, galumphed in. Tony didn’t have any other word for it. The guy was stumbling forward like a zombie; like it took a year for the impulses to get from his brain to his muscles. His face was completely blank of any reaction and it was creeping Tony out.
“You really hurting that much for good help?” he had to ask. He pulled at the restraints that tied him to his chair.
“Oh, Dr. Meyers is the best sort of help, Mr. Stark,” the voice commented. “I’m sure you’ll come to see the advantages soon.”
Dr. Zombie grabbed something from the tray and lurched toward Tony. Which was when Tony realized exactly what the voice meant. The needle the zombie held plunged into Tony’s neck and he yelled his outrage.
And then
the world went
sort of
sideways...
Dr. Zombie, who suddenly looked more zombie and kind of liquidy, untied him, but Tony couldn’t seem to move. The phone that was handed Tony was too small for his huge fingers.
“I know you can summon your suit using your lovely StarkPhone.”
“I can,” Tony agreed, listening to the way his words slobbered out of his mouth. Didn’t mean he would.
“Do it now.”
“No.”
“Mr. Stark…” The voice was slowly, subtly, moving into his brain. His brain was… “Summon your suit, please.”
Tony fumbled his fingers over the glass of his phone until the red exclamation point appeared. His mind fought against the thick, foggy, mindless power of… something.
Mr. Stark?
The voice was right inside him. There was only room for one person in Tony Stark’s head, damn it.
Mr. Stark!
So Tony pressed the button and faded out of the way.
You will destroy the Avengers’ base.
He nodded clumsily.
And you will destroy them.
Tony shook his head. “No I won’t,” he said, the words so distorted he barely understood them.
You will destroy them.
The suit was coming. Comforting and safe. Just had to get to the suit. Tony stood and took a galumphing step of his own before slamming his face into the floor.
“More, Dr. Meyers.”
The voice was in the room and in his head, and that was bad. Tony rolled over with a painful jerk and Dr. Zombie was kneeling next to him. An impossibly tall man, skin as black as night and eyes that reminded him of a wormhole in New York, stood beyond the zombie. More sludge slid into Tony’s veins and he felt his mind disconnect.
I’m not one to be trifled with, Mr. Stark.
Tony’s last, desperate, conscious thought was, Neither is Cap.
********
“I’ll let you know when he wakes up.” A door closed and the speaker clicked toward him on heels and settled into a chair he’d probably see if he could open his eyes.
“Which can be any time now, Stark.”
Romanov. What was it about Natasha and bedside vigils?
Tony drifted for a while, his mind catching him up on what had been happening. The zombies and the mad man and trashing the Avengers complex, which, man, was he going to pay for that. Why couldn’t a rich guy just get a vacation once in a while? Vacation...
“Where’s Pepper?” Huh. That sounded almost normal.
“She’s downstairs,” Natasha informed him with an edge of relief. “We wanted to make sure you were clear before we let her come up.” Her voice turned teasing. “Still have a taste for brains?”
Tony realized he might actually be glad it was her waiting for him. Anyone else would have gone right for It wasn’t your fault, or maybe You were a victim. Natasha knew only too well that people like them were never victims.
“Did I hurt anyone?” And she’d be truthful about that, too.
“Wanda’s a little shaken up,” she admitted cleanly. “She did have to get inside your mind—said that was more painful than the Jeep you threw at her.”
He groaned at the reminder of his misdeeds and went ahead and opened his eyes. Natasha looked all right, though he remembered her and a wall… They were in his apartment at the Tower.
Too slow…
He looked down at his hand and touched each finger to his thumb in series, as fast as he could.
“The toxin works its way out of your system apparently,” she explained. “Your blood tests were negative at last check. Just been waiting for you to wake up.” She sat back as Tony sat up and swung his legs around to put his feet on the floor. “Recovery will take a little longer with Okannrin’s other test subjects.”
Tony looked up at her in surprise. Skin as black as night and eyes like a wormhole...
“We backtracked your phone's signal and found the base. The rest of his zombies were still there.” She gazed out the window, her voice going wry. “The guards were initially less than forthcoming about who was behind it and where we might find him.”
Tony snorted. “You didn’t cripple any of them, did you?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she replied. And then she smiled that deadly smile of hers. “Vision’s logic can be terrifying.”
Standing up was a little harder than Tony wanted it to be, but he made it.
“Cap and Rhodey are hunting Okannrin down now,” she continued. “He’s a new player. One of many lately.”
Tony walked to the window, making a conscious effort to do it smoothly. It was twilight. “Yeah, well, when you change the world, it’s going to change, isn’t it?” And people were going to take advantage, in the worst ways, unfortunately. Thank God there were people like Romanov to take care of the problem.
He turned to her. “I’m still retired, you know?”
Natasha rose. “So I heard.”
“And hungry.”
“You’re not getting any brains, Stark.”
Tony grinned at that and headed for the door. “There’s a great Pakistani place on fifth. Does an amazing maghaz.”
“Stark…”
*******
the end