Chapter Text
Tony is in pieces.
He finds little bits of himself scattered throughout the tower, every single day. He sees a piece in the living room, where they used to have movie nights and Clint would ruin it by falling asleep and snoring halfway through. He sees a piece in the coffee machine that he’s replaced a dozen times in the last five years because someone (Steve) kept breaking it. He sees a piece in the training room, tucked between the abandoned water bottles and lockers that are growing specs of mold.
After a while, Tony stops trying to find the shattered bits. He stops trying to piece himself back together, broken fragment by fragment. He’s starting to become Frankenstein's Monster when he looks in the mirror, all unnaturally stitched together and glue bursting from the seams between his flesh. Some pieces are better left broken.
It’s been thirty-four days. Thirty-four days since his team, his family packed up and left, disappeared into every crevice of the Earth. Thirty-four days since Steve Rogers left him to die in the snow. Thirty-four days since Tony saw The Winter Soldier wrap his robotic fingers around his mother’s throat and squeezed until her eyes popped, a vision that plays behind his eyelids every night when they close.
And Tony was left in pieces.
The silence is the worst part. It’s jarring; awful to listen to. Tony would rather lie in the snow for the rest of his life, bleeding and seizing into the cold that bites against his skin, than spend one more minute in this void of silence. There’s no laughter or arguing or TV noise to fill up the static that stays firmly planted in the forefront of his mind, nothing to distract him from his self-built tomb that overlooks the greatest city in the world.
There’s ringing in the silence. Tony blinks, fingers tightening over the screwdriver that he’s been attacking the latest mark with. His cellphone is vibrating across the workbench, mocking him. No one calls him anymore. Pepper stopped answering his increasingly desperate phone calls weeks ago. Rhodey is still in physical therapy every day for hours, probably in too much pain to even think of reaching for the phone. Or he resents Tony so deeply, so painfully, that he’s finally bitten the bullet after all these years and cut him off for good. Tony’s brain has a way of convincing him that it’s the latter.
He wipes his hands with a towel, sparing a glance at Dum-E, who is chirping and spinning in an off-kilter circle carelessly. Tony snorts humorlessly. It’s delicious irony that Tony Stark, the same man who has spent over half of his life in front of a crowd, glass of whiskey in hand and a crippling need for approval set in his heart, is alone. His only friend is a fucking robot. A robot that he created.
The billionaire not-so-secretly hopes that whoever is on the other line wants to kill him slowly as he answers, “This is Stark.”
“It’s Ross.”
Oh, so maybe his wish will come true. Thaddeus Ross might be the only person on the planet that he doesn’t want to talk to, the only person that can’t soothe the crippling loneliness that has taken ahold of his limbs, rendering him useless. “I thought you were supposed to be on your honeymoon with Captain America’s less sexy body double. I was under strict instructions not to bother you.”
Ross doesn’t miss a beat. “Iron Man is needed.”
Of course, because it’s only Iron Man who is ever needed. Only Iron Man. Never Tony. Tony stopped being needed a long time ago.
“Am I going crazy, or did you not throw half of the Avengers in jail over signing a piece of paper that specifically says that we’re not needed?” Tony drops the screwdriver, stretching over the well-cushioned rolling chair that Steve bought him for his birthday last year. It burns him to sit in now, feels like fire crawling up his skin.
“It’s HYDRA.” Ross says shortly, voice flippant. “The government isn’t touching them with a ten-foot pole.”
“And if I say no?” Tony watches Dum-E continue to spin, bolts knocking against every corner. He wishes they could trade places, for a moment. He wishes he could be as carefree and stupid as a robot, as emotionless. It would make all of this a lot easier.
“It’s your job, Stark.” Ross spits. The shuffling in the background, the rustle of papers. Tony is an afterthought. He’s only ever an afterthought. He wonders how often what’s left of the team thinks of him, if Pepper ever misses his shit-eating grin when something goes his way. “You go where we need you. It’s being sent to you now.”
Ross hangs up. Tony lets his fingers tighten over the phone, picturing himself throwing it against the immaculate tiles and stomping until it’s nothing but tiny little pieces of scrap metal and busted wires, just like Tony is. Nights like these are the worst; the times where he’s vibrating at a frequency too high to be seen. The trillions of nerves that buzz under his skin won’t quiet, crying out for salvation, for human contact.
He sets the phone down and scrubs his hands down his face roughly. The clock on the wall flashes red numbers that burn his eyes. Tony presses a thumb against his eyelid and reads the 8:53 on the wall above his head, towering over him.
It’s never too early for a drink.
Tony takes the elevator to the penthouse level, foot vibrating against the floor. He shivers in anticipation as the doors creek open (fuck, he should get that fixed), and he marches forwards, towards the bar that was seldom touched when everyone was still around. There was no point in Steve drinking, the alcohol they have here on Earth is apparently nothing compared to what they have on Asgard, Natasha liked to be alert too much, and Bruce just didn’t really drink that much. Clint and Tony were the only ones who ever really used it, and even that was rare.
Now, the oak barstools are a familiar friend, like shrugging on your favorite hoodie after months of separation. The welcome burn of whiskey down his throat is comforting, a reassurance that all memories fade with time and liquor.
He grabs a tumbler from the cupboard, the same glass that used to be displayed like a trophy in Howard’s office, right next to a picture of him and Captain America, standing side-by-side like the war heroes they were. Tony contemplated smashing the glass when he was clearing out the mansion, back in the 90’s, but figured putting his lips to the same rim would be even better revenge.
His vision starts to blur after the second glass is drained. He migrates, unwillingly, from the bar to the living room floor, after the third. The world darkens after the fifth.
-
The following morning, graced with a pounding headache, it takes a handful of Aspirin and a cold shower for Tony to remember that Ross while have him thrown in The Raft if he doesn’t open the information on that HYDRA mission soon.
He flicks over it via a projection, yawning. He’s hardly paying attention, already craving the wonderful burn of whiskey and the blackness that follows. He thought he got over this years ago, but over the last couple of weeks, it consumes his every thought. It’s a familiar cycle. It starts with thinking of the team, then Steve, then The Winter Soldier, then his father’s face being caved in under the weight of a metal fist or his mother’s veins popping until there are red cobwebs all over her porcelain skin, and then he wants to drink.
Tony is just about to banish the projection and pretend like he has all the information he needs, for Ross’ sake, but a sentence near the bottom of the screen catches his eye.
The base is located in Olsztyn, Poland, at coordinates 53.8007783, 20.4875413.
He sighs. Of course, Ross would send him on a wild goose chase in Poland. It’s revenge, or a plan to break into the tower while he’s away. Tony doesn’t want to go anywhere near Europe after Leipzig. He doesn’t want to leave the safety of the tower ever again, even when he’s only surrounded by ghosts and echoes of memories.
Ross wants him to leave by this afternoon, though, so he’s out of luck.
Tony chugs a cup of coffee and eats the leftovers of cold pizza in a desperate attempt to get his energy up. That’s another thing that has gone down drastically in the last few weeks; long gone are the days of eating actual meals. Bruce did most of the cooking for team dinners, but Clint and Sam each had their own little surprise dinners that tasted better than anything Tony could make on his own. Now, his diet consists of coffee and whatever is left in the fridge until FRIDAY reminds him to order groceries before he sends himself into heart failure.
When he’s done, he boards the jet that is stored in the lowest level of the private parking garage, tucked away beneath layers and layers of concrete. He doesn’t want to take the suit all the way to Poland, and the jet is big enough for any captives or criminals that Ross is, inevitably, setting him up to find.
The ride is long. Tony distracts himself from the acute anxiety in his chest by tapping his fingers on his knees until they’re numb. Any thoughts of HYDRA just bring him back to The Winter Solider, to blood and popped eyes and the shield crushing his chest into smithereens-
He holds his breath as he passes over Germany.
Finally, after the longest hours of Tony’s life (only second to when he crawled out of the bunker in Siberia, chest gaping as he pushed himself forward on shaking hands, the armor weighing him down until he was nearly falling through the thick concrete), he touches down in Olsztyn.
The jet is left tucked away in the trees as he taps his chest, letting the familiar feel of NanoTech encase every inch of his skin. The suit is a newer version of the destroyed one that’s been sitting on the floor of the workshop since That Day. He has a panic attack every time he tries to repair the gaping, shield-shaped hole in the center of the chest.
“FRIDAY, baby, pull up those coordinates for me, please.” Tony commands, slipping through the backyards of little cottages seamlessly.
“The coordinates lead to the building twenty yards to your left, Boss.” FRIDAY helpfully informs him, leading Tony’s gaze to the borderline pile of scrap metal that looms over him. It doesn’t look much bigger than the cottages surrounding it, but he knows HYDRA well enough to know that he’s probably looking at the attic of about fifty basement levels of a torture chamber.
After a long moment of hesitation, allowing it to almost convince him to turn around and get back on the jet, he steps forward.
The cold, metallic door is locked with a keypad. Tony raises his hand and blasts it with a quick beam, letting it fall to his feet. The hole of darkness that it leaves in it’s wake sends a chill down his spine, settling heavy in his bones. Inside is nothing more than an empty, dark room, no bigger than the washroom attached to Tony’s master bedroom.
And a staircase leading downwards.
“Bingo.” Tony grins triumphantly, stepping into the darkness. It doesn’t feel like much of a smile, though. Just a baring of his teeth. “Scan for heat signatures.”
There’s a brief pause as FRIDAY searches, allowing Tony’s eyes to adjust to the utter darkness. “There’s a single heat signature seventeen levels below you.”
“Sometimes, dear, I hate being right all the time.” The billionaire sighs, sucking in a long breath before braving the rickety staircase. The air smells like metal that burns the inside of his nostrils. Something heavy settles in his stomach, a stone of dread that’s ready to come up at any moment.
The wooden stairs creak and groan under his weight, a stark contrast to the reinforced metal that covers everything else. What, did HYDRA cheap out on quality stairs? It’s probably to make room in the budget for whatever horrors lie seventeen floors below him.
He keeps walking until he gets to the bottom of the spiral of empty floors and endless stairs, until FRIDAY alerts him that he’s close to where the heat signature was picked up. The stone of dread feels more like a boulder as the NanoTech naturally slips the helmet on him for protection, turning on night-vision to see through the darkness.
“Whoever is in here,” Tony calls into the silence, hand raised to fire. “You’re going to want to come with me before the old government fucks get here. At least I’m nice to look at.”
His only response is a metallic rattling and a soft clang.
“FRIDAY, lights.” Tony whispers.
Sterile, white light floods the room, blinding him, for a moment. Tony blinks harshly, taking a second to adjust after minutes of nothing but pure darkness, and when his vision returns, he almost wishes it stayed black.
There, in the corner of the room, hidden deep in a fucking cage, is a person.
A teenager.
Tony freezes, blood running ice cold in his veins.
The kid is nearly curled into a ball in the corner, torso hidden by his knees. His chest heaves up and down sporadically, wide and unblinking eyes staring right at Tony. He’s wearing nothing but boxers that are so thin they resemble paper, and he’s loosely bound to the wall by chains connected to each wrist and ankle.
This... this isn’t a HYDRA agent. This isn’t a war criminal. This is a kid, a child that can’t be older than fourteen or fifteen. A child that’s being held prisoner.
“Shit.” Tony says out loud; he can’t help it. The gravity of the situation falls on him like a two-ton weight, leaving him rooted in place.
The kid whines; a high-pitched keen that sounds terrified. The sound of the chains rattling makes vomit splash around in the back of Tony’s throat. If this kid is the only living thing inside the building, that means those HYDRA dickheads just left him here, chained and half-naked like an animal.
It’s enough to get Tony moving.
“Do you know who I am?” He keeps his voice quiet, trying not to scare the kid. “I’m going to take those off, okay?”
The whining gets louder, more high-pitched, as the kid jerks backwards from Tony’s reaching hands. The man drops them and pauses, dumbfounded. The Avengers have never found a prisoner in HYDRA’s clutches that they didn’t already know about, especially a prisoner that’s a fucking kid. Tony feels sick.
Another jerking motion from the kid. Tony reaches out and gets three of his fingers wrapped around one of the cuffs that sit around the kid’s ankles, but it surprised when there’s no give. He uses the strength of the suit, tugging on the metal, but it stays just as tight and pinching around the pale skin.
“FRIDAY, why isn’t it moving?” Tony hisses into the helmet, letting go of the cuff when the kid makes a gasping sound and presses himself further into the corner, cowering. Ross is going to go into heart failure when he finds out about this.
“The handcuffs and chains both appear to be made of vibranium.”
What the fuck?
Why would HYDRA need to restrain a kid who looks like he barely weighs one hundred pounds, with vibranium, a material that not even Steve or Thor can make a dent in?
“What did you do, kid?” Tony grumbles, not expecting a response. He tries to meet the teenager’s eyes, but it’s useless. They’re darting in every single direction, never pausing on Tony for more than a few seconds and never meeting his eyes directly. “Hey, can you tell me your name?”
Nothing.
“Is the wall reinforced?” Tony turns his attention back to his A.I, crouching in front of the petrified teenager.
“No, Boss.” She assures. “A beam should cut through the root.”
“Great minds think alike.” Tony just barely smiles, then uses a singular finger to produce the smallest beam. He aims for the very root of one on the chains, flinching when the kid yelps loudly. He scrambles back from the yellow-white beam. “Hey, hey, it’s not going to hurt you-”
The chain unhooks from the wall, falling to the floor with a metallic crack that makes the kid flinch, shoulders raised to his ears and face still hidden behind his knees. After a few seconds and before Tony can unhook the second chain, the kid peeks up from behind his legs, and Tony gets his first good look at him.
First off, he’s young, obviously, but his undeniable baby-face looks wrong surrounded by chains and blood. He’s got these big, Bambi eyes, as brown as a tree trunk, and brown curls to match. The longer curls slip down his forehead and sweep his eyebrows. He’s pale as can be but has little freckles that dot his white nose.
“Let’s get those other chains off now, huh? You know it doesn’t hurt any.” Tony says softly, and, wow, his voice has never been something that anyone would describe as soft. Cocky, maybe. Booming when he’s public speaking. But never soft.
He doesn’t think that this kid-prisoner needs cocky or booming, though.
Slowly, Tony cuts off each of the chains from their hooks, one by one. There’s nothing he can do about getting the actual cuffs off of the kid, because of the vibranium, but at least he won’t be hooked up to the wall like a pig for slaughter, anymore. The result, when he’s finished, has the kid looking like Scrooge’s dead business partner, all chained-up and weighed down.
There’s about ten seconds of peace. The kid sniffs, examining the cuffs with great hesitation. Tony waits for him to stand and leave, to thank him, to say something, but none of that happens. Instead, the kid turns around while still sitting, lays both palms flat on the wall, and crawls up the wall to tuck himself into the corner of the ceiling.
Tony’s jaw drops so hard that it stings.
The billionaire swallows his shock; it burns his throat like whiskey. “What the fuck, what the fuck, FRIDAY-”
The kid squirms from his position on the ceiling, twisting until his knees are covering his torso again. He stays firmly stuck to the wall by the soles of his feet, which lay flat on the sterile surface. Tony’s head spins dangerously.
After a long moment of hesitation, staring in horror at the scene in front of him, he finds the courage to call up to the ceiling, “Uh... kid? Do you want to... maybe come down?”
He’s not even dignified with a nod or a shake of the head. He calls for him a few more times, but it’s no use. At this point, he doesn’t even know if the little wall-crawler can speak or understand English, and if he ever has, HYDRA has probably tortured it out of him ten times over.
After Tony gives up on trying to soothe him down, he starts mentally rehearsing what he’s going to say to Ross. The fucker will throw someone in the deepest level of The Raft for being able to read at a quick pace, who knows what he’ll want to do with a kid that can climb walls like it’s nothing, a kid that’s dangerous enough for HYDRA to keep chained-up in a basement in remote Poland.
“Alright, change of plans, FRIDAY.” He manages after a few minutes of pacing. “Give me some juice. No more than a percent.”
The suit lifts him just a few feet into the air, until he’s hovering above the dirty floor. It also puts him at perfect eye-level with the teenager, who is watching him with impossibly wide eyes, shuffling away before Tony has even approached him.
“Come on, kid, it can’t be comfortable up here.” He tries, inching closer. The suit makes a quiet whirring sound as he goes. “Look, I can do it too. How about you, uh, un-stick yourself, and we can blow this popsicle stand, huh? How does that sound?”
The kid trembles, hiding his face in his legs. He’s back to no eye-contact. Tony can only sigh at the regression, shifting uncomfortably in the air. He gives the kid a few seconds to do something, but when there’s zero movement, he takes the risk and reaches out to set a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder.
It takes five seconds for Tony to realize how big of a mistake it is.
Because within those eternal five seconds, the kid’s head snaps in his direction. He’s moving quickly, so fast that it’s all a colorful blur to Tony’s eyes, and grabbing the armored hand on his shoulder. The kid rips it away with such force that the armor fucking dents the armor that nearly indestructible to even the most powerful people on the planet. Tony feels the iron dig into his skin just as the kid un-sticks on foot from the wall, planting a firm kick in the center of the man’s stomach.
The force of the kid sends Tony into the opposite wall.
His head nearly smashes right through the concrete, but thank God for FRIDAY, because the helmet wraps around his head just before it does. He groans as he flops against the floor, but he’s taken worse hits. He just wasn’t expecting it from a doe-eyed little kid.
Tony sits up, zeroing in on the kid, who is finally back on the ground now. He’s in the same corner he was when the man first came in, but he’s not curled into a ball anymore. The kid is watching him intently, chest heaving with the exertion of throwing a grown man in one of the most advanced armors in the world across the room like a discarded chicken bone.
So, wall-crawling and inhuman super-strength. That’s perfect. Even more shit to explain to Ross.
What did HYDRA do to this kid?
“Okay.” Tony breathes, standing on shaky feet. The kid doesn’t move an inch, but he looks fully prepared to throw him through the floor, this time. The billionaire desperately needs a new strategy. Natasha would know what to do, if she were here. But Tony doesn’t think like Natasha, doesn’t have the calm resourcefulness that seems to be her greatest asset.
Slowly, the man lets the NanoTech disappear, leaving him and just the T-shirt and jeans that he was wearing this morning. If there’s any hope in Hell of getting out of here uninjured and without sedating the clearly-already-freaking-the-fuck-out kid, Iron Man probably isn’t the best course of action. He doesn’t know how he would feel if he was some kid chained up in one of HYDRA’s torture chambers, and some robo-guy busted in and gave him zero explanation for what’s going on.
“I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” This seems like a good place to start. “I don’t think I could, honestly. You’re a pretty tough guy.”
The kid sniffs but doesn’t crawl away again. Tony can barely resist a borderline proud smile from stretching across his face. One step forward.
“Do you know who I am?”
No answer. One step backwards.
“Do you... understand English?”
Nothing.
“Not a talker? That’s okay.” Tony nods animatedly; he doesn’t have much (read: any) experience with kids, but he’s fairly sure that he’s supposed to be extra nice to them, especially ones who have spent God knows how long in dingy basements. “I’ve been told that I do enough talking for a few people, so this is already working out great.”
There’s no answer, but the panic heaving of the teen’s chest finally stops. His expression calms ever-so-slightly, the fine, panicked calming to one of tentative trust. Tony is still mildly terrified of the kid, but the feeling doesn’t seem to be reciprocated anymore.
“Listen, I know that you’re probably... comfortable here, but it’s sort of my job to get you on a jet in a few minutes.” Tony explains, whether the kid can understand him or not. He steps forward slowly, reaching a tentative hand in the teenager’s direction, leaving his palm open. “I don’t have anything that can hurt you, see?”
Confusion flickers on the kid’s expression, brows furrowing. He glances between Tony and his open hand. If he doesn’t understand a single word of English (which seems to be the case), there’s only one thing left that the man hasn’t tried.
“I need you,” Tony points to the kid. “To go out there,” He points to the door. “With me.” He shoves a finger to his own chest, holding his breath as he waits for any sign that he was understood.
The kid glances at the door, then back at Tony. The man opens his fingers a little more, moves his palm a little closer. He’s just about to retract it and call Ross for backup when the teenager twitches in place, hand moving jerkily towards Tony’s.
Tony holds his breath as slowly, the kid lowers his hand to the man’s, fingers wrapping around the back and the heel resting in the center of his palm. There’s this strange, almost sticky feeling where the kid’s fingers meet his skin. A quick glance confirms that the boy’s fingertips are glued to the back of Tony’s hand, stuck firmly near his knuckles.
“You’re... pretty sticky.” The man says lamely, clearing his throat. He helps pull the kid to his feet, steadying him when his frail legs shake from disuse. How long has he been alone down here, he wonders?
The chains rattle as the kid stands; Tony forgot all about them. As soon as they are back on the jet, he’ll pry the perverse metal off with the cutter specifically made for materials like vibranium, if it’s the last thing he ever does.
The billionaire sniffs and asks, “You ready to go, wall-crawler?”
He doesn’t give the kid a chance to respond before he’s pulling him, with all the gentleness he can muster, out of the cell and up the stairs. It’s clear that it’s been a long time since the kid has ever left, because it takes nearly thirty minutes to get him up the staircase, legs shaking the entire time. He shivers as they reach the top, the flesh of his limbs and stomach quickly being covered in goose bumps. Tony needs to get him into some real clothes, because the paper-thin boxers clearly aren’t doing anything to keep him warm.
The jet is exactly where he left it, and the kid looks almost green as Tony starts to lead him towards it. His hand is still firmly stuck to his own, so tight that he’s afraid the skin will rip as soon as the teenager pulls away, if he ever will.
Thankfully, he gets the kid on the jet without incident. He directs him to sit in one of the plush seats that the team used to de-stress in after long missions. “Okay, uh, just sit here for a minute, okay? Do you think you could let go of me now?”
Tony emphasizes his point by tugging his hand a little. The teenager blinks harshly and releases him, bringing both feet up on the seat so that he’s squished into a ball again. It must be a comforting position for him, something to shield him from the horrors that have, no doubt, surrounded that goddamn cell and everything within it.
The engineer grabs the cutters, which are stored away in a secret drawer, and slowly pries each of the cuffs off. The skin beneath the handcuffs is startlingly pale, thick rings of stark white that have probably never met sunlight. Tony feels nauseous as he pries the last one off, barely able to meet the kid’s eyes as he looks at the newly exposed skin with an almost curious expression.
The sentiment makes him too harsh, apparently, because a piece of the final cuff is pried off too quickly. It cracks and flies up, nearly whacking the kid right in the eye, but something strange happens. The kid catches it in midair, before it reaches his face. It clearly wasn’t a practiced move, wasn’t something that he had to think about, he just flexed his wrist and caught it with ease.
Tony stares. He’s been doing a lot of that today. There is no way the kid saw the cuff flying and was able to catch it that fast. It was almost like precognition, like a rooted instinct that’s impossible to shake. “Did you feel that coming?”
No response.
The kid has precognition, super-strength, and adhesive appendages. That’s just the stuff Tony knows about within an hour of meeting him. What the fuck is going on here?
The teenager shivers after a few moments of silence, arms curling around his legs. Tony rushes to another compartment and fishes one of the blankets that Bruce kept around to calm down after bad episodes, tossing it to the kid. He catches it, but just stares at the material like he isn’t sure what he’s expected to do with it.
“Jeez, kid.” Tony mumbles. If his heart was intact, it would have broken. He unfolds the blanket and wraps it around the boy’s shoulders, tucking it so that’s he’s wrapped up like a swaddled baby. The kid finally stops shivering, blinking at Tony with no expression. It’s creepy after a few seconds.
Tony sighs and retreats to the pilot’s chair, typing rapidly on the main screen. He types half of a message to Ross about what he found, asking where to bring the kid, but stops when something heavy settles in his chest.
He glances back at the kid, who is staring at him with droopy eyes, all cuddled up in his blanket cocoon like a recently tamed animal. Tony can only think of The Raft, of Wanda being collared and restrained, separated from everyone she ever loved. He thinks of the dead look in her eyes, the collar around her neck, ready to take her down at so much as a twitch.
Ross won’t care about the kid’s age. He won’t care about his past. He won’t even have to hear about the kid throwing Tony into a wall before he’s locking the poor kid up in The Raft, torturing him for information, cutting him up until he’s screaming for Tony to come back and save him again-
Tony deletes the message.