Chapter Text
Tony had the mother of all headaches, and he was about 72% certain he hadn’t been drinking last night. That was a fairly good probability, considering. He slowly opened his eyes, and as his vision adjusted to his surroundings, that 72% went to 100% real quickly. His heart rate sped up, even though he outwardly tried to force himself to look calm. Because, fuck, this was not happening again. Where was he? What had he happened? How did he get here? Who brought him here?
He was sitting in an empty room, in a chair. There was an empty chair across from him. He slowly leaned forward, testing his arms. He was bound, his hands cuffed behind his back, his ankles tied to the legs of the chair. He was wearing regular clothing, and he didn’t have any iron man pieces on him to call a suit to him.
He also didn’t have a ring or a bracelet to call for help with. Wriggling around and feeling for tech, he found nothing on him and could feel nothing that he could use for FRIDAY to track him. Which meant whoever kidnapped him had already removed everything, or for whatever reason, he had been out without anything useful on him when he had been kidnapped. That would be unlikely, but he couldn’t really remember what he had been doing before this. His memory was spotty, several blank spots in his mind filled with various bits and pieces of before. He remembered talking to Pepper and being in the tower, as well as various meetings of the day, and being in many places, but all of it was scattered throughout the day and nothing made much sense.
His dry mouth and pounding head signified he had probably been drugged, and the memory loss pointed to a rather fancy drug which meant whoever kidnapped him knew what they were doing. This didn’t bode well.
He tried to get his breathing and heart rate under control. He might have had his heart surgery but his heart wasn’t in perfect condition and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Hopefully his captors weren’t stupid enough to kill him by causing unnecessary stress that messed with his heart, but maybe that would end up being his way out of this mess. He clenched his jaw at the thought of dying of a damn heart attack because he, Iron Man, got kidnapped. Again.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, struggling against his restraints before he eventually gave up after his wrists got sore. No one entered the room, and he sat there in boredom, studying the walls for any clue as to where he was or why he was here. Who wanted to kidnap him? Well that list was rather long, and he could think of many people who had a grudge against him.
All the people he pissed off as the Merchant of Death. All the people he pissed off as Tony Stark. All the people he pissed off as Iron Man. Maybe Steve trying to get at him. Doubtful. Maybe Ross. Much more likely. With his record of people who hated him, it wasn’t a surprise someone hadn’t kidnapped him sooner. With the Avengers having fallen apart, and less people being at his side, it made him a much easier target to go after.
Rhodey was still undergoing physical therapy, improving but not fully there with his ability to walk. Vision was still struggling to deal with his strangely human emotions and his hurt feelings over Wanda. Rogers and Romanoff were in the wind. Clint, Sam and Wanda were on the Raft. I’m not the one who needs to watch my back, Romanoff had told him. Maybe it hadn’t been a threat.
Maybe he should have listened.
He squirmed a little in his chair but it made his wrists twinge and his head throb and he stopped again. This waiting for someone to come in so he could figure out why he was here and who had captured him and why was making him stressed and anxious, no matter how hard he tried to pretend it wasn’t. He had gotten good at his poker face and hiding some of his emotions, but he wasn’t at Romanoff levels yet. And goddamn, he still got angry every time he thought about her and he really needed to stop thinking about the rogues because he had more important things to worry about right now.
Like being kidnapped.
He spent the next few hours mentally preparing himself for what he was going to have to do. Were they going to try to force him to make weapons? Give up information? Did they want money? Did they want technology? Did they want to kill him? He could think of many different scenarios for what they wanted him for, and none of them were particularly good. If they just wanted money, it would be a simple situation and he would easily be able to get out. But if they wanted technology or information, specifically information that could threaten others he cared about, he knew it would be bad. Something he couldn’t give them. He swallowed hard.
He didn’t want a repeat of Afghanistan. Couldn’t do it all over again. Part of him knew his heart couldn’t take that anyway. It would give out long before he fell to that level again. At least they couldn’t torture him that far. His breath had quickened again, and he was already working his way into a panic attack.
He grit his teeth and forced it back.
Focus.
He just had to make it through this long enough for someone to come find him and rescue him. That’s all he could do. Surely Rhodey or Vision would come bust down a door in a day or two and get him out and yell at him for getting himself kidnapped again. Maybe even Peter would show up in his Spiderman suit. He smiled a little bit at that. It felt like hours had passed. His body was stiff from sitting in this position for so long. He was thirsty as hell from the after effects of the drugs and from not having had anything to drink, and he was hungry. His headache had not gone away, and combined with the added stress, it was also not getting any better.
He had just finished counting every last line on the ceiling for the tenth time when the door slammed open, and he just barely managed to hide the flinch. A tall blonde man walked in, who he didn’t recognize at all, and sat down in the chair opposite of him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Stark. We had a bit of trouble but the problem was taken care of.”
He tilted his head slightly, recognizing the slight eastern European accent. He mentally tried to list off the countries that he might have any obvious issues with, or that he had recently had missions in, that could potentially be holding a grudge against him. Anyone who may have lost a family member because of his actions or a fight that the Avengers had been involved in, for example.
“I’ll get into what you can do for me a little later. For now I need to make sure I accommodate your needs. You have been here a little long,” the man said, smiling a disarming smile that made all the hairs on the back of Tony’s neck stand up straight.
He shifted slightly, not feeling the least bit comforted by any of this.
“Who are you?” He asked, ignoring the hoarseness of his voice and how dry his throat and mouth was.
“Ah yes. I apologize. My name is Victor.” Victor stood up, backing up and leaving the room. A few other men entered, and began to untie Tony from his chair. His joints popped as he was pulled to his feet, and he winced slightly. They were all larger than him, not to mention significantly more muscular, and he didn’t see himself having any chance at taking them on in a fight, so he simply went along quietly for wherever they were going to take him.
He ended up being a bathroom, which surprised him, especially when they left him alone. There were no windows or alternative exits for him to sneak out of, so he didn’t really have any way to get out. For now he needed to play along and try not to do anything that would get him killed before he could escape. He used the bathroom, washed his hands, and gulped down some water as fast as he could to get rid of the sensation that his throat was as dry as the desert. His headache lessened somewhat, and hopefully having some water in him might help make it go away a little more as time went on. He stepped out, immediately surrounded by more guards, but none of them struck him or even touched him. They just led him through the halls, which had smears of blood all along them. The blood was notably fresh, but he decided not to mention it even though it was slightly worrying.
Whose blood was it? Where did it come from? None of the people who were escorting him looked injured or were bleeding. He wasn’t injured, other than feeling a little sore from being drugged. He thought back to what ‘Victor’ said about the little incident they had earlier, and wondered if that had something to do with the blood on the walls.
He was brought to another room, where he was handed a glass of water, which he also drank because he wasn’t sure when he would get more – it tasted significantly better than the tap water he had drank from the bathroom sink. They also gave him food, which he ate unhesitatingly.
He was wary, because this seemed like an unusual kidnapping situation. Soon this ‘nice’ phase would end and the torture would begin, but he was going to milk this out for as long as he could before that started. Or maybe they wanted him in good health, and were simply using him as bait for someone else because they wanted one of his associates? There was something else going on here that he didn’t quite know, and it was making him rather nervous. He was eventually escorted back to his room, and re-tied to his chair. Then he was left alone again, and he sat there, twitchy, and waited.
Victor returned a little later, with a smile that was somehow both charming and rather evil and it made his entire body tense uncomfortably. Why was he so damn nervous? This man made him feel so tense and uncomfortable that he just wanted to run out of here and get back to his tower as soon as possible.
Any time now, Rhodey. Rescue would be great.
“There are a few things I’m going to need from you that I understand will be difficult for you to agree to. That’s alright. You won’t have to agree right away, but I’m sure we will reach an agreement over time,” the man said, sounding very confident and not at all like he was in any hurry. As if he knew he had all the time in the world, which made him even more nervous. He shifted in his chair some more, wondering why this man seemed to think a rescue wasn’t coming in the near future. “It was going to take some time to get a bargaining chip for you, but someone showed up to try and rescue you much sooner than expected… I was surprised. It was an unexpected situation but I’m sure we can make do with it,” Victor said, and Tony’s breath hitched.
Oh God, they had Rhodey? Was that Rhodey’s blood all over the walls? His face must have gone pale, because Victor seemed to want to appease him. “Don’t get too worried. They’re okay. I’ll bring them in and wake them up in a little bit and we’ll see how you want to proceed,” he said.
The doors opened. Two guards came in, dragging an unconscious, tiny form between them. Tony stared at the motionless body, completely frozen. “I didn’t expect her to come after you two fell out so hard. It was quite shocking. She took out half my guards, and it was quite a set back. What we did to her was a bit regrettable but she is a prisoner, not a guest. And, it might help things along, of course,” Victor sighed, almost looking apologetic, while also managing to look quite smug at the same time. Tony was having a hard time tearing his eyes away from the bloodied form in front of him as the guards dumped her body on the chair in front of him. They then bound her roughly to it. He could see blood trickling down her face. There was blood coating most of her jacket, and the left side of her red hair was drenched with it. Even through her clothing he could see her right shoulder jutting out at an angle, meaning it was dislocated and would hurt like a bitch when she woke up and found herself bound to the chair like she was.
He slowly drew in a breath, realizing he had stopped breathing.
“What the fuck, Romanoff,” he whispered under his breath, not understanding why she had come to rescue him.
Victor nodded at one of his guards who stepped forward with a needle.
“Jesus Christ!” Tony yelped, as the guard slammed the needle brutally into her chest. She jolted awake violently, gasping for air, eyes wild and alert. If she hadn’t been violently woken up, she likely would have carefully slipped awake, letting herself take in her surroundings and slowly take control so shewouldn’t let her emotions get away from her. She didn’t have that choice this time. He saw them cycle across her face and through her eyes – pain, fear, confusion, then back to pain as her body jolted and shuddered and she wrenched unceremoniously on her dislocated shoulder. She recoiled, sagging back against her chair and gasping for air as she tried to relax and force some self-control back into her body. He wasn’t sure what they had injected her – hopefully not with adrenaline because that was extremely dangerous and could give her a heart attack – but she was clearly struggling with the side effects of it.
“Good evening, Miss Romanoff,” Victor said, smiling at her. She stared at the man and said nothing. She was trembling violently and her breathing was too fast, but her eyes blazed and there was no fear in them. “You made quite a mess earlier. You really do live up to your reputation, taking down 22 of my men in less than eight minutes,” he said. Tony raised an eyebrow, impressed even though he didn’t want to admit it.
“I-i-i must...must have b-b-been having a slow st-start,” Natasha said, her teeth stained red, struggling to speak clearly through both the blood in her mouth and the way her body was shaking from the after-effects of the injection.
Victor seemed amused, but in a dangerous way.
“You came here to save Mr. Stark. I wonder if he will return the favor?” Tony felt a jolt of panic as he understood why having her here meant they could continue faster now. No, no, no.
“I will let you two get reacquainted,” he grinned maliciously at them both, and all of them left the room, leaving the two captives to look at each other.
“Fancy seeing you here, Romanoff.”
“D-d-don’t give them anything. No matter what.”
“Always all business with you, huh?”