Chapter Text
“Tony?” called Steve softly, crouching down in his own cage as if that would put him on eye level.
“I really hate that guy,” grumbled Tony, pushing himself up with a soft gasp.
“Give us an inventory,” said Natasha in her ever emotionless tone. “What’s the damage to you?”
“Both legs are broken,” said Tony, closing his eyes to block out their looks as well as focus on pinpointing what was broken and what was just bruised. “Some ribs are cracked, a few bruised. Back a bit bruised but nothing awful. Bleeding in places but not a lot of places. All in all, not the worst thing to have happened.”
“Eyes open, Stark,” snapped Natasha.
“You’re the devil,” groaned Tony, forcing his eyes open.
“You’re only saying that because she can’t kill you right now,” said Clint with a chuckle.
Tony didn’t respond, instead used the bars and his impressive upper body strength to pull himself up. Once his was in a sitting position and the room stopped spinning, he felt better, more fortified. The next thing he needed to do was figure out how to move out of his cell. If he could get to one of the super spies they would be okay. Maybe. Probably.
“Alrighty troops,” said Tony, gritting his teeth and starting to pull himself along the edge of his cell with his arms. It wasn’t the fastest way but it would get him there eventually and he had to face it, he had time and not a lot of options. “We should all admit that while this is my fault, I think this counts as an abduction for all of us. So technically, I’m still at just 7 more than the next contender, who happens to be Clint.”
“Tony, just stay still,” said Steve, wincing at the harsh panting of his teammate. “Stop moving!”
“I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing, Cap,” said Tony, smirking vaguely.
“You’re going to hurt yourself worse,” said Steve in his best Captain America voice.
“And for that you are not the first one I rescue,” snapped Tony. “Now I’m just going to block you out because I really need to concentrate.”
It was slow going but eventually Tony made it out of his cage and to the door of Clint’s cage. He leaned back against the bars for almost ten minutes, shaking with pain and exhaustion, Clint’s calloused fingers slipping through the bars to skate up and down Tony’s bruised spine. Finally, Tony opened his eyes again and surveyed his next task.
“Take a minute, Stark,” said Clint quietly. “We have another 5 and a half days before our new best friend returns. We have time.”
“It’s electric,” said Tony, looking happy and ignoring the archer. “I love electric locks. They make me happy because I can poke them and make them go boom.”
Before Clint could stop him, Tony had reached up and wrenched the cover of the lock off, leaving it dangling by exposed wires. For a minute, the genius studied the contraption, then reached up and yanked out the blue wire and green wire, twisting them up and doing some other pulling and twisting before shoving the entire thing back into place and keying in a code. The door clicked and swung open.
Clint jumped out of the door in time to catch Tony as he listed dangerously to the right.
“Easy, princess,” said Clint. “I’ve gotcha.”
“Fuck,” groaned Tony, letting his head rest on Clint’s firm shoulder, panting as if he had just run a marathon with a tiger chasing him.
“Let’s get you lying down,” said Clint.
“No!” gasped Tony, sitting up slightly. “You can’t. If I lay down, I’m going to fall asleep and if I do that, you guys will die. So no laying down.”
“Okay, okay,” soothed Clint. “Then at least let’s get you propped up so we can free the others.”
“You-shit Barton, be careful!” groaned Tony while Clint maneuvered him to lean steadily against the bars of the now empty cage. “You won’t be able to open them on your own.”
“So direct me from here,” said Clint.
The archer stepped away and paused, making sure that the resident billionaire was not about to topple over, before heading to Natasha’s cage a few steps away. Her lock was different than his when he opened it. The wires were all the wrong colors and there were too many.
“This isn’t the same lock,” complained Clint. “What the hell? I can’t even do the little grabby twisty thing you did, Tony.”
“Told you,” said Tony, smirking even though it hurt his face. “Tell me the colors. In order. From left to right.”
“Red, yellow, green, red, orange, aqua, hot pink, salmon, maroon, black, gold, white.”
“Yank out the aqua, maroon, black, gold, and second red, all from the bottom, not the top,” said Tony, thinking back to all he knew about Tiberius and applying it to the color choice.
“Okay, done. Now what?”
“Strip the ends of all but the gold. Then put the aqua where the maroon went, the second red where the aqua went, the maroon where the black went, and the black where the second red went. And just yank the gold all the way out. We don’t need it.”
“Then why not leave it in?” asked Steve from where he watched.
“That’s what she said,” said Clint.
“Because it won’t work right if we do,” said Tony.
“Also what she said.”
“And I like gold, I want that wire to add to my collection. Collections are fun.”
Clint snapped the face of the lock back in place.
“Type in the word Idiot,” said Tony.
Clint did and the door beeped before opening. Natasha didn’t even pause to thank him, just slid her hand along his back as she passed before dropping down next to Tony, working to treat his injuries as best she could. Moving next to Steve’s cage, Clint was surprised when Tony spoke up, his voice tight with pain.
“No,” said Tony. “Sorry, Cap, but Clint needs to free Bruce next. The sooner those drugs get out of his system, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.”
Clint moved dutifully to Bruce’s cage, where he found a normal lock. With a grin, he pulled out his lock pick kit and set to work.
“Shit,” groaned Tony as Natasha set about setting his left leg.
“Sorry, Tony,” said Natasha softly. “Do you want me to wait?”
“Just get it over with,” grunted Tony, eyes clenched shut as if that would help keep off the panic attack and voices that sounded far more foreign and angry and years away.
After ripping the heavy sedative out of Bruce’s arms, Clint ran back over and helped Natasha set Tony’s legs, pulling the bones back into place and holding them steady while Natasha used ripped cloths to tie the dismantled cot Bruce had been on in place. The entire time Tony kept up a steady stream of babble, equations, curse words, stories, and towards the end a mesh of languages.
“All done,” said Natasha, nodding at Clint to get on with freeing the others while she tended to the genius.
“They’re too close,” whispered Tony, eyes slit open to barely make out the assassins face. “The voices. The cave. Tasha, it’s too close. I can’t-I can’t-make it stop.”
“What color is my hair?” asked Natasha, framing Tony’s face with her hands, physically forcing him to focus just on her.
“What? Red.”
“Good. Now the rest of me. Describe me.”
“You- you’ve got red hair,” said Tony, stumbling and slowly but growing steadier. “It’s not too long, which is nice. You hate pulling it back. Like, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen it pulled out of your face. And for some reason you went through this phase where you straightened it and parted it down the middle which I’m glad you stopped doing because you’re hot as hell but that is just not a good look on you. Your teeth are so white they probably glow in the dark and you’re scary as shit. I’m convinced you could kill me by blinking but I’m not going to test the theory.”
“Do you know who you are with?”
“You and Clint and Steve and Brucey and Thor.”
“That’s right,” said Natasha seriously. “You’re with your teammates. Are we going to let anything happen to you?”
Tony didn’t want to answer. If he answered they would know what he thought and if it wasn’t what they thought, he didn’t think he could handle that like a big boy. His emotions were balancing on a knife edge ready to topple into the abyss and he was not into falling into the unknown thank you very much. Once was enough.
“We’re not going to let them get you,” said Natasha.
Tony believed her because he hadn’t been kidding, Natasha was scary.
“Nat, is he still coherent?” called Clint, struggling with the lock on Steve’s cage- having already broken into Thor’s. “This lock is another one of the electric kinds.”
“Wires?” said Tony wearily, making zero attempts to remove his head from Natasha’s gentle hold.
“All the same blue.”
“How many?”
“13.”
“Okay, not bad. I’d go for the third, fifth, and 12th if I were you. I wouldn’t cross them with anything, I’d just disconnect them. Then I’d plug it back in and push the door open.”
Clint eyed him funny but did as suggested. Sure enough, the door opened right away.
“How the hell did you do that?” said Clint in awe.
“Magic.”
For a long time after that, Tony was silent, slumped and supported on one side by Natasha, who continually spoke to him softly and Steve, who kept his large warm hand on the back of Tony’s neck, which was surprisingly comfortable. Clint kept watch, prowling around the room, systematically dismantling each of the cells and sorting the bits into piles to be used at a later date. Thor and Bruce began stirring six hours after they were pulled out of their respective cells.
“What happened?” groaned Bruce, sitting up and rubbing his head, his brown hair a mess. “Did I hurt anybody?”
“We got abducted,” said Steve, not moving from his spot next to Tony no matter how much he wanted to check over Bruce. “Tony’s hurt.”
Those two words woke Bruce up much faster than anything else. He rushed over to the other genius and began inspecting him.
“Tiberius will be working alone,” said Tony while Bruce looked at a cut on his shoulder. “He’s not the type to keep others around.”
“He would have needed help to capture us all,” said Steve.
“Yes, but he would have killed them after they served their purpose,” replied Tony. “Trust me, that guy is six kinds of crazy, anyone who has helped him is dead.”
“So is he secretly watching us right now?”
“No. He’s recording, I don’t doubt that, but he’s an arrogant prick who truly believes he beat me into submission, so he will have left and gone about his business. The video will be what gets him off.”
“So if I let the Other Guy out, you’re saying no one would get hurt and he could beat a clear path for us to leave through?” said Bruce slowly.
“Pretty much,” said Tony, biting back a groan as he shifted positions. “But don’t, you hate that. I’ll figure something else out.”
“Not happening,” said Bruce, stepping back away from the group.
Bruce may have hated the Other Guy, may have worried that the Other Guy would hurt others, but he cared for Tony, the only person who had not only been unafraid of him but had also openly embraced the Other Guy. In short, Bruce would do just about anything for Tony and if that meant letting the Other Guy free to get them out, he would willingly do so.
One moment, Bruce was standing near the wall, eyes closed, breathing deeply, and the next the Hulk was exploding out of him and he was pissed. Instantly, the Hulk threw himself at the wall, bellowing his rage at his favorite human being injured. Because Bruce may have liked Tony but the Hulk had claimed the tiny human the moment he heard him declare his favor of Bruce turning into him. Now a man had hurt his human and the Hulk was going to find him and rip his arms – and other body parts – off.
“I do believe that’s our signal,” said Clint as Thor and Steve both hoisted Tony up, the genius finally giving in and passing out from the pain the movement caused.
Picking their way through the rubble Hulk left in his wake was time consuming but when they emerged they found themselves on the edge of the river. A small boat was docked a half mile up and they used that once Bruce returned to his less green self. Tony remained blissfully unaware the entire trip to the nearest hospital.
When the genius woke up, he groaned, not from pain – he was on the good stuff if the floating feeling of his brain was anything to go off of – but because the last thing he remembered was Steve and Thor moving to lift him off the cold ground and suddenly he was waking to a room absolutely filled with oversized stuffed animals and he didn’t know who to blame. Instinct told him it was Clint’s fault but one of the creatures looked rather like the depressed teddy bear from that one Supernatural episode and Clint hated Supernatural, so Tony was pretty sure Steve had something to do with it. Either way, Tony decided to close his eyes and go back to pretending the world didn’t exist.