A/N: It's worth reiterating that this fic will be friendly to both Civil War "teams". Steve is not perfect, neither is Tony. You will get different perceptions of the battle and its fallout from the different points of view throughout the story. Chapter One starts with Tony's POV for plot purposes. That doesn't mean I only agree with him or that I'm anti-Steve. They both made their fair share of mistakes in the Civil War and will be working through them over the course of this fic.
[If you don't want to read me setting the stage, which involves some rehash of the Civil War and its fallout, then you can skip ahead to the first bit of dialogue.]
A/N 2: This fic would not be possible without four wonderful people: you-cant-just-import-answer (Tumblr) and MoparGirl1 (Fanfiction) who were wonderful sounding boards throughout the writing process, and Mellia Bee (Fanfiction) and merryrf (Tumblr) who graciously beta read the final product and far exceeded my expectations with the depth of their comments and suggestions. This fic wouldn't be the same without any of their time and efforts. (I did fiddle with it before I posted so any mistakes are mine and mine alone.)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Tony Stark's life had been a certified mess for a long time now. A well-intentioned, certified mess to be sure, but a mess nonetheless. It'd started with Ultron, which he designed to protect the world, not ruin it; then there'd been the whole Mandarin incident (though most of that wasn't his fault); and finally what was now dubbed the Superhero Civil War.
Since Tony was arguably the best known Avenger, he was receiving the full brunt of the fallout. The Tower was being graffitied almost every day of the week; his employees were being harassed; rocks were thrown through the front window; and he himself was constantly badgered by the media about the massive amount of destruction he'd done, how he pushed away Captain America, and on and on. Everything he'd done over the last decade was now plastered on the news, with people scrutinizing each and every action for a hint of wrongdoing, of something that hadn't gone to plan.
Sure there were a few supporters, but they were far outnumbered by the people who were ready to see Iron Man stand trial for his actions. The same people would like to see Steve stand trial too, but considering he was hiding in God-knows-where, the public's frustration with Captain America was being taken out on Tony as well.
Tony forced himself not to react to any of it. He didn't engage with the press anytime he was seen out in public, and pushed his way through the crowds (as politely as possible) to his destination.
He almost could have handled it, if he'd have had a little bit of support. But he and Pepper were on their stupid break, so he was going at it alone—by design really. She'd come back after Siberia, willing to be a shoulder to lean on, but he'd pushed her away. There was no reason for both of them to go down for his mistakes. She was around more than she used to be but their interactions were all business: managing the company, his public image, his press conferences, and the restoration efforts.
He had just started to move past all of it, to find his new normal, when the freakin' Accords reared their ugly head again.
It had been contemptible for Ross to present them to the team with only four days before they were going to be ratified. It wasn't enough time for anyone to read them fully, even his high-paid team of lawyers; Steve was the only one Tony knew that had actually gotten pretty close. Tony himself wasn't happy with a lot of things about the document, but it was good enough that he was willing to sign it, knowing he'd work on amending the questionable parts later. Steve had almost signed too, which would have eliminated their entire feud… but then Tony'd opened his mouth and mentioned Wanda—just another thing he'd been trying to fix that had ended up making things much worse.
To his credit, when he'd seen just how bad things had gotten, he'd tried to help. Unfortunately, that was exactly what Zemo had counted on.
No one besides the Avengers knew what had really happened in Siberia. All the public knew was that Leipzig airport had been trashed and that the man who had blown up the UN had been secured in Siberia. The exact details were kept confidential.
"Stark!"
Tony jolted upright in his seat and quickly refocused on Thaddeus Ross who had been in the process of explaining the new Avengers protocol. "Are you with us?" the General demanded, his eyes as hard as steel.
Not trusting himself to keep back a smart comment, Tony just nodded.
"Good," Ross said before he turned back to the board. "Now, after a mission—"
He was interrupted by a loud ringing. Ross scowled then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "What?" Then his expression sobered. "They'll be there."
"Who will be where?" Tony asked, straightening up ever so slightly.
"The Avengers… or what's left of them," Ross replied, his tone sharp and biting. "Northern Manhattan is under attack from a very well-trained militia group. They call themselves the New Order. They've been on our radar for a while, mostly for small things: protests, disorderly conduct and the like. Never anything of this sort. NYPD is on the scene but they're requesting back-up to keep the group away from President Ellis."
"What's the President doing in Manhattan?"
Ross' expression soured and he looked seconds away from citing 'classified information'.
"It's tactical information," Tony retorted, barely keeping his tone level.
Ross considered this for a long moment before unhappily responding. "Ellis attended a supposedly-secret meeting with the heads of many of our major security agencies. Because of the nature of the individuals involved, the panel is officially authorizing an Avengers presence."
"Don't you have to ask the rest of the panel?"
Ross shook his head, his eyes gleaming. "In a matter of National Security where time is of the essence, each panel member is granted the ability to make the call on their own. I'm making this call. Go to Manhattan, protect the president and any other high-ranking official, and make as little mess as possible. We need some good publicity."
A lead weight settled in Tony's stomach at Ross' words. It was exactly what Steve had predicted would happen if the details hadn't been ironed out before the Accords were ratified.
But he didn't have time to worry about that now. He, Rhodey and Vision needed to help protect the president.
The secret meeting had taken place in the second-to-last storefront of a strip mall that had seen better days. The street on the far side of the strip mall was blocked off, thanks to ongoing construction for a new parking garage, which meant there was only one valid point of entry; it was probably one of the key reasons this clandestine location had been chosen in the first place.
The remainder of the Avengers immediately planted themselves at the open intersection to keep any of the New Orders from getting into the side street, while the various agency heads tried to secure transport to safety.
Ross hadn't been kidding when he said the New Order was extremely well-trained. What he'd failed to mention was how well-armed they were too. The militia group was using some sort of modified alien tech, which was mowing down hordes of officers in mere seconds. The General had also left out just how many New Order members there were, and how they kept charging the strip mall despite the numbers that were falling in the process.
There were a myriad of small explosions going off around the strip mall, keeping the reserves of LEOs busy, while the on-duty officers planted themselves along the main street. Tony, Rhodey and Vision had just spread themselves along the crosswalk, taking out any assailant that made it through the police formation, when a familiar voice crackled over their comms—a voice that was supposed to be in another country.
"Incoming, Stark."
"What the hell, Rogers?" Tony spat as he turned in the direction FRIDAY indicated on his HUD and stunned a New Order member who was exiting another store in the recently evacuated strip mall.
"We're here to help," Steve continued as if Tony hadn't spoken.
Tony's stomach dropped into the vicinity of his knees. "We who?"
"Clint, Sam, Natasha…" Steve paused for a brief second and Tony's breath caught in his throat.
"And Barnes," he stated, his mouth as dry as the Sahara.
"And Bucky," Steve confirmed softly. Then his tone hardened back into what Tony once referred to as his 'Captain America' voice. "We're just here to help."
"How the hell did you get here?" Tony spun around and took out another approaching man with the swing of his left arm.
"We were in the neighborhood."
"Bullshit."
"Can we talk about this later?" Clint interrupted. "Preferably when we're not taking heavy fire from alien weapons?"
"Switch to private frequency," Tony instructed FRIDAY, who moved Rhodey and Vision over as well. "What's our play?"
"I don't think we have a choice," Rhodey said before he unleashed a mighty yell. "I'm fine," he was quick to say, before Tony could question.
"I concur with Colonel Rhodes," Vision chimed in. "My calculations reveal the amount of collateral damage greatly decreases with the assistance of the other Avengers."
Tony scowled then switched back to the public comms. "Spread out and defend the strip mall," he ordered. "But keep Barnes away from me!" Tony was more than willing to work with Steve and the rest of his crew if it meant protecting the president and proving that they could once again work together, private opinions be damned. But Barnes was too much. Even though, deep down, Tony knew that Barnes hadn't been in his right mind when he'd killed his parents, he couldn't help but assign him some of the blame: Tony was only human after all.
Steve didn't respond to the last part but, as he was giving orders to his team, Tony noted he did put Barnes by Rhodes, who was as far away from Tony as possible.
The defending continued uneventfully with the nearly complete Avengers squad slowly and surely gaining ground, pushing the New Orders farther away from their intended target.
Sometime later, Barton danced in front of Tony, firing arrow after arrow at a burly man in a full tac suit, who had what looked like a giant repulsor strapped to his chest. Barton didn't say a word to Tony, which was probably fair; they hadn't exactly left things on the best of terms.
But then Barton took out a goon who was approaching from Tony's left before he could get his gauntlet up, so maybe things weren't that far lost. The archer didn't even unleash a snappy comment before racing back toward the building where the agency heads were hiding, his quiver exchanged for a pair of guns.
Tony couldn't spare Barton much more thought since the man wearing the repulsor still hadn't gone down. Tony forced the new arrivals out of his mind and focused on the more critical threat.
After two quick blasts from Iron Man's repulsors, the man was tilting backward. Unfortunately, in the process of falling, he'd managed to trigger his replica unibeam. Thankfully it shot straight in the air, instead of at any intended target, but the real damage came in the following seconds, when the power dropped out of Tony's suit.
"FRIDAY?" Tony asked, cautiously, hopefully, as a metal vice tightened around his chest. His breathing quickened when he heard no response.
It's just an EMP. The suit will restart, you'll be fine, he tried to remind himself, with little to no effect.
His fingers twitched toward the manual override but he stopped himself at the last second. At least in the metal suit he was protected from the fight going on around him. His thin undersuit was unfortunately not bullet- nor alien-weapon-proof. So Tony stood there, in a rather awkward position—his hips turned right to make himself as small a target as possible, but his torso twisted back front, in order to utilize both repulsors—until the suit rebooted.
The villains must have realized something was wrong for a bunch of small fire began to rain down on the suit. The rounds didn't do much damage, but were painful to absorb all the same.
Wincing with each contact, Tony forced himself to count the time passing in "Mississippi's" to slow down his breathing, which wasn't really working with the bullets pelting the exterior of the suit. The worst EMP had only taken FRIDAY out for four minutes and twenty-two seconds; he just needed to hang on for that long.
Two minutes and fifty-four seconds after the suit had lost power, Tony heard thundering footfalls and a lot of screaming, followed by the number of oncoming bullets decreasing to none. Not long after that, someone came to a stop in front of his suit and Tony braced himself, not knowing if it was a friend or foe.
"Stark?" he heard Barnes growl and his heart stopped beating.
"Get the hell away from me!" Tony shouted, his voice growing from a shocked whisper to a roar as he regained his senses.
"I'm not gonna hurt you!" Barnes hollered, his own tone angry for some reason, but thankfully, Tony heard him take a few steps back.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Tony demanded as he once again took stock of his situation. He was unarmed, unable to defend himself, and his armor was structurally damaged from the hail of bullets. Unless he got FRIDAY up and running again, he was functionally useless against any oncoming attack from the Soldier. His breathing quickened and the Iron Man suit seemed to shrink two or three sizes. He was now keenly aware of just how close the metal was to his skin and how much air he had left before he'd be forced to trigger the manual override.
"Steve saw your suit go down. Sent me over."
"Get… away… from… me," Tony panted, his chest heaving with the effort of bringing oxygen into his lungs. He leaned forward slightly, his forehead clunking against the faceplate of the suit, and squeezed his eyes closed as he fought back the impending panic attack.
"I'm away, okay?" Barnes shouted.
There was a brief scuffle and a scream—feminine, definitely not Barnes, but not Natasha either.
"I told you this was a bad idea, Steve," Barnes seethed as a gun went off and someone else collapsed to the ground, swearing up a blue streak.
In the shock of hearing Barnes, Tony had lost count of how long it had been since the EMP triggered. All he knew was that if he didn't get any air soon, he was going to pass out.
He took as big a breath as he could manage then gasped, "Send… Rhodes."
Thankfully, he heard Barnes relay the message over the comms without argument.
"He's on his way," Barnes reported before a spray of gunfire punctured the air outside the Iron Man suit. The sound sent adrenaline rushing through Tony's system, allowing him to catch the tiniest of breaths. More importantly, it allowed his brain to realize the sounds were heading away from him, and not about to contact his already damaged suit.
"He says to tell you he called another one."
Inside the suit, Tony just nodded before he resorted to tapping his forehead against the faceplate to regain some sort of rhythm.
Then, he heard a loud shout and Barnes swore. A split second later, something crashed into the front of the suit and Tony was airborne, flying backwards on no will of his own.
"What the—" was all he managed before a cacophonous explosion filled his ears and he was whipped in the other direction so quickly his head collided with the back of his suit.
He hardly registered the crash landing until his side exploded in agony so sharp it stole away all his senses.
The next thing Tony knew was pain—lots and lots of pain. So intense he could hardly breathe.
His instinct was to curl up to alleviate it and he tried to do so, but a steady pressure against his shoulder stopped him.
"Don't," a low voice said—Barnes. That realization only made Tony fight harder against whatever was keeping him still. He opened his mouth slightly to tell Barnes where to shove it, but the second his lips were parted, a scream tore up from his chest and he barely managed to jam his mouth closed in time to stifle it.
"Stop!" Barnes snapped, shoving harder against Tony's shoulder and pushing him back to the ground. "You're going to start bleeding again!"
Bleeding?
Tony forced his eyes open and instantly wished he hadn't. There was a thick and bloody piece of rebar sticking out of the right side of his abdomen, undulating with his sloppy, uneven breaths.
He made a strangled sound as the flashbacks he'd worked so hard to get over assailed his mind: the cave, the original reactor, the surgery—
"Hey, hey, hey, breathe," he heard someone order and his hand was moved of its own volition until it rested on someone's chest. "Breathe with me, Stark. In and out."
—the silo, Barnes' metal hand on the reactor, getting pounded with the shield—
Tony jerked away before what was left of his cognitive processes could remind him that that was a bad idea and, almost instantly, his world faded out to white.