PART ONE: THREAT
"Tony, what is this?" Steve's armour creaked around him as he lent forwards and put his hands flat on the table.
"That, is the Mandarin. Ruler of a big chunk of China, contracted by Stane to have me killed back in '08." It had taken five years to work his way up the Ten Rings' chain of command to find the connection, but once you got there it was painfully obvious:
The Mandarin's capability for weird shit came from ten literal rings. Pieces of technology so alien that Extremis couldn't even start interfacing with it, and so miniaturized that they fitted into the ornate gold bands like gemstones. Lower down the organization, the number cropped up time and time again; ten generals each with ten subordinates that ran ten operations. Anyone who became supernumerary to requirements vanished into the Mongolian Steppe. Tony had never been able to retrieve any of them.
"So he's a mercenary."
"Oh no, Steve, he's way worse than that, he's a competitor. He's been trying to get these designs-" Tony flung up images of his obsessive scribblings. Half of them were on scraps, one was grease-penciled onto an old section of chest plate, and all of them were horrors. Tentacled behemoths, scaled by tiny scribblings of the Iron Man armour in the corners. "- into my head, to take advantage of my design skills," he tapped his temple, "for months, but they don't work. The legs are too fragile and he hasn't given them a power source, but... I could make it work; thats the thing. Arc power wouldn't be enough but... the new atomic motor tech? I could make it work and he could have made me do it."
It had been a ... unique experience. No sensation of wrongness, not so much as a flicker on his internal 'firewalls'. The images, designs, blueprints, had just started turning up, after engineering blackouts and long weeks with too little sleep. If it had been anything less horrifying, anything more... more 'Stark', more familiar, he might not have noticed and the Mandarin might have gotten away with sneaking terrible things into his brain. It had him doubting every decision he'd made in the previous year, and he'd... he'd made a lot of bad decisions.
"Great, mind control..." Steve muttered, scrubbing his hand over his face. "Does anyone else sense an 'and' coming here? Because-"
"AND Zeke Stane has gone missing. Obadiah Stane's son, grudge the size of Manhattan. Zeke Stane could power these things using a cow. Admittedly only for about fifteen minutes, but scale up the organism to a couple of tons and it'd become stable, self sustaining."
"Well that sounds horrible," Bruce interjected, "but Stane junior's only ever made bombs with his bioarc. You really think he can handle the change in direction?"
"Considering how he's powering his own physiology, yeah, he can do it." Tony sank back in his chair, leaning an elbow on the arm of his chair and tapping his fingers against his forehead.
"So. What's our play?"
"I think we need to talk to the Chinese government."
"Oh, Fury is going to love that..."
"We are go, people! Gear up!" Fury yelled, his voice uniquely capable of echoing through the hangar. Three weeks of tense negotiations with a foreign government had left everyone around the Director and his aides frightened for their lives. There were cheers at the announcement throughout the staging zones, from helo-loading all the way to the fueling pits. Pilots, soldiers, and superheroes dropped cards, abandoned poker games, and smacked each other out of naps.
Down on his engineering deck, Tony's face loosened in relief and his clothes melted into the gold life-support of the Bleeding Edge armor, creeping up his neck and cradling the back of his head. "Buckle up, Steve, lets get this done."
The Captain was already half in the uniform, missing just the shield and his body armor. Tony had to admit, the stealth armor? Fantastic piece of work; Steve shrugged into the three-kilo jacket like it was silk and Italian wool.
Tony summoned the armor once he could tear his eyes off Steve and it came as easily as ever, flowing out of his hollow, bird-like bones and over the bodysuit. Once he had it fixed, solidified, he stepped into the jury-rigged stealth harness; a framework of black panels covered in radar-absorbant paint that he could shed once they hit the fight-zone. He'd jacked in hitch points at the shoulder and hip for Steve's chute harness; with the suit's tiny radar profile and the camo, he'd be invisible, even carrying Steve and his great big vibranium dish. They'd be behind the Mandarin's command lines before anyone was the wiser.
"Alright, kitcheck," Steve said, tugging on the last buckle across his chest. Tony brushed his hands aside and tugged on the hitch points; Steve stumbled towards him a step, before getting the idea and setting his stance to withstand Iron Man's strength.
"Harness, check. Mask?"
"Got it." Steve said, pulling the black mask off a crate and clipping it into his helmet. "Here." He held the hose out to Tony, who hitched it to his environmental system.
"You good?"
Steve took a deep breath which - whoa, look at the size of that rib cage...
"Yeah, it's clear."
"Altimeter?"
Steve turned his wrist to show the instrument on its watch strap. "Reading cruising altitude. We're good. Hitch me up."
Tony clapped him on the shoulder. "Back behind enemy lines, Cap. Let's do this."
Steve's harness clipped in with maglocks to the hitch points on the armour, his parachute-covered back to Tony's chest. Hopefully, they wouldn't need the chute, but it did have the side benefit of making this more comfortable.
"Alright, I'm good. Give it a shake."
Steve obeyed and pulled against the restraint. The locks held and nothing moved. There were ready to go.
"Gloves?"
"Check."
"Helmet?"
Steve head-butted Tony in the faceplate gently.
"Right. Shield?"
"Agent Romanov?" Natasha handed it over and Steve slotted his arm into the straps, crossing his other forearm between the shield and his arm and pulled it all to his chest. It would protect him from some of the wind. Hopefully.
"Good luck, boys." Natasha gave Tony a fiendish look over Steve's shoulder and pecked the supersoldier on the mask.
"Thank you, Natasha. Tony?"
"Ready when you are Cap."
"Alright." Steve chinned his throat mic to the command channel. "This is Captain Rogers; good luck everyone. Operation Blackstar: moving out."
"Copy that. Stark, get off my boat."
"Awww, don't you like me anymore, Nicky? Open the bay doors and I'll get out of your 'hair'."
The steel overhead rumbled open and Tony shifted; legs locked, arms at 37 degrees.
Three... two... one.
They pulled up off the deck in a single ferocious surge of acceleration.
"Course plotted and cleared, sir."
"Thank you, JARVIS, keep an eye on the home front for me?" Tony sent, using Extremis as a glorified instant messenger rather than linking up to JARVIS more extensively.
"Of course, sir. You have not exceeded your usual behavioural parameters in seventy-eight hours. I speculate that the extensive preparations you have undertaken may be proving successful."
"When did you become such an optimist, Jarv?" Tony muttered into his helmet, ignoring JARVIS' 'I'm sure I wouldn't know, sir' completely.
The air was breathtakingly cold once the crested thirty thousand feet, and thanks to Extremis, he could feel every degree rippling over the surface of the suit. He wanted to hold on to Steve, keep him wrapped up, away from the ice crusting on the edged of the thrusters, but that wouldn't exactly help, what with the sharp edges of the Suit and Steve's body armor in the way. And he needed the stability at these speeds.
"Steve, seriously, keep your legs straight, you're throwing us off."
"Eyes on the controls, Iron Man, I've got it..." They dipped and wobbled as Cap tried to hook his ankles over the armor.
"You do not 'have it', Cap. I should have tied your ankles on. Stay still." He felt Cap stiffen up, irritation bleeding through the chest plate and gumming up Tony's flight path. Still, he could make this work. Once they were up to height, he rolled smoothly, adjusting the jets and repulsors to have them gliding along facing the stars. There was a nice cloud cover, but it was below, and they could take it easy.
Once the centrifugal effect stopped swinging Cap in weird directions, Steve braced his feet against Tony's shins and relaxed grumpily. Steve Rogers; man of many talents.
"Settle in, Steve, I'll wake you when things are about to get interesting." Steve knocked his helmet back against the faceplate again. "Yeah, yeah, cut it out; the suit'll keep your tootsies warm."
Clunk.
So, going against the Mandarin as Tony Stark had been a horrifying prospect. He'd lost billions of dollars in blown up factories facing just Zeke Stane; the Mandarin had all that, plus the resources of a small country and enough bat-shit insanity to make Obie look rational.
Going against him as SIC for the Avengers? Well, that was just another Tuesday.
They landed in an out-of-the-way park; trees, stream, convenient bit of lawn for Cap to tumble onto. Tony, quite politely, did recon while Steve rubbed some life back into his ass.
The sub-command building was half a bloc- well, no, the city didn't have blocks, it was an unpleasantly organic sprawl of narrow streets and wood-framed buildings that leaned. So, the target was up a narrow lane, and on the other side of a day-market populated by shuttered stalls and balled up bits of greasepaper.
"We clear?" Steve asked, a hand landing on Tony's shoulder. The 'super' soldier was still working life into one calf and using the armor as a leaning post. Elegant. Real suave.
"Just us and the rats, Cap. Time to go." The serum would take care of anything less than a bullet wound before they hit the energetic part of the mission; Steve would be fine.
Tony would never tell anyone, but when he'd configured the armor back up on the Helicarrier, he'd guided Extremis to soften the soles of the boots so as they stepped off grass and onto cobbles, he made barely any noise. Because he was wearing crocs, effectively. Thank god Rhodey wasn't around to notice.
The streets were blessedly quiet, given Iron Man and Captain America's combined ability to stick out like the fourth of July, but not empty, and there was movement on the roof. The narrow alleys gave them cover right up to the wall of the relay station, but a face vanished over the top of a flat-roofed three-story and JARVIS' chatter meter spiked.
"Cap..." Tony mumbled subvocally.
"I saw. Let's go with plan B, up and at em', Stark."
"It's my genuine pleasure. See you on the other side."
Tony locked the knees and gave one sharp burst of the thrusters, throwing himself over the wall, while Steve's hard grip on the ridge at the back of his neck brought him right up after. Steve, impossible human being that he was, pushed off at the top of the arc, and Tony tracked him flipping like a cat to land on the shoulders of someone holding a rifle.
Party time.
Tony didn't go all out - no need, these guys were 100% home-grown human - but they ploughed through the transmitter's external security in a blaze of repulsor fire and bashed heads.
"Get the lock, Iron Man." Steve braced the shield against the door; steel, two inches, sliding bolts, RFID tag system, and Tony got Extremis up close and personal with the reader. The bolts slid back on their magnets with a very satisfying 'thunk'.
"All yours, Rambo."
Steve nodded and heaved. The door swung open so hard, the hinges twisted and Tony did not want to think about what had happened to the two heat signatures on the other side. Cap didn't exactly give him time to look, either, before they were haring to the control room, racing to get there before the call for backup did. Concrete showered them with bits of sparking stone as the shield flew in the tight corridor, pinballing and clearing the way fo-
The last one standing, at the door to relay-central caught the shield. The blue-white of the arc shone out from the guy's stomach and whatever enhancements Stane Junior had made to the bioarc, the guy was strong, and resilient; the shield rang with the impact, and the guy's hand should have broken, but instead, he was slipping the shield's straps over his arm. Steve was not going to be pleased with that.
"You ready, Cap?"
"Always. Let's go, Iron Man." Steve led the way, charging over the unconscious guards in the corridor and meeting Bioarc Dude head on. Tony crouched and waited for an opening; the space was too tight, and the wall too thick for them both to fight him at once, but once Steve had the shield back, it was open season.
Steve used knees and elbows to batter the guy's body, carefully avoiding the reactor in his gut, and was met with a mad, snarling fury: very little skill but an awful lot of power. The shield's handles twisted and warped under two superhuman grips, but Steve knew all about superhuman strength, and brought his fist down on the guy's extended elbow. There was a sickening pop as it dislocated and without bones in the right places, the muscles powering their opponent's hand failed. Steve punched him hard in the chest and there.
The guy stumbled back, one arm out to catch himself and the other dangling like an empty rubber glove, and Steve ripped the shield off him. He was wide open, and Tony launched, using the full force of the jets to slam into their opponent, shoulder first. The pauldron smashed into the bioarc and Tony speared Extremis in, using it like a weapon and a dampener all at once, to keep the guy from detonating.
They crashed back, through the door, and slid across the concrete in a shower of sparks, leaving a long smear of radar-scattering paint behind them. They fetched up against a server housing with a loud clang, but the suit took most of the impact and the fucking cockroach on his chest heaved himself up and started battering against the stealth-shell he was carrying over the armor.
Power was leaching out of the guard, now that the arc was down, but he was hitting hard, almost as hard as Cap. Tony brought his arms up for a repulsor blast, but the fucking plating got in the way; warped and caved in, it was pressing into his armpit and jamming the joint, he couldn't get his palms up. Guard-McDoucheface landed another blow, this time to the helmet, and Tony really hoped that that snapping noise was the guy's fingers finally breaking, because about fucking time!
Needless to say, Tony did not appreciate being stuck on his back with a guy on his chest.
"Outta the way, Steve, outta the way!" Tony ordered, cuing up the unibeam at 5% in the vague hope that he wouldn't bring the whole building down on them. That might sort out the radio relay currently streaming through the back of his head; well done, mission complete, but it'd really screw up their exit strategy. He caught Steve on peripheral scanners and that was his cue. The chest lens flared hot and the 'beam knocked their opponent clear down the hall. Tony would have cheered, if he wasn't stuck like a turtle.
"Shut it down, son."
Steve must have collared one of the techs, because the rapid string of Chinese that followed sounded horrified. Tony grinned and began tearing at the reflective panels in order to free up his arms.
"Good luck with that, Cap; pretty sure you don't speak Mandarin Chinese. I'll get it myself... just as... soon as I... Oh, fuck it. Steve, lend me the shield." Tony grunted, levering himself onto his side. He could have used the rockets to blast the mess off, but he was feeling magnanimous.
The shield made an excellent crowbar, anyway.
"Tell me what to do, Stark." Steve tapped the edge of the shield, pointedly. It was a shame his helmet covered his eyebrows, 'cause Tony could feel the frown.
"Right here, twist and pop the seam," he said, pointing at the space between fore and aft plates. Steve jammed the edge in, wriggled it to make a secure fit, and then twisted the whole shield around ninety degrees. The seam screeched open and Tony's shoulder freed up, so he set about stripping off the last of the now-useless stealth gear, grumbling: "-don't need a stealth-mode, Tony, just hack their radar, Tony, sure, that's how radar works!"
"Tony."
"...don't put radar-scattering paint in your bones, Tony, it'll mess with the equipment..."
"Tony!"
He stopped grumbling, shaking violently and opening all the flaps simultaneously to send the last of the plate scattering across the floor. Steve's pet technician yelped and danced in Steve's grip to keep his toes safe. Served him right for not wearing shoes in a server room, idiot.
"I'm going to keep an eye on the corridor. You got this?" Steve asked, pushing the prisoner towards him.
"'Do I have this'? Yes, I have this. This is high-school AV room. Take Starcraft with you, he'll get in the way," Tony muttered, stomping over to the console with its lack of wireless and Bluetooth. Steve said something, but Tony wasn't listening and waved him off; JARVIS'd take notes if it was important.
He had to hardline - hardline, what is this, the Sixties?! - but he'd come prepared, with intel-appropriate line hookups in the Suit's toolbox. It'd take more than wire-only access to stop Extremis.
Once the connection was up and the security stripped out, Tony took an 'image' of the network construction and started setting fires. A virus here, a trojan there, hook that server up to redtube... Use that ISDN to poke at Interpol's firewall...
"Interpol activity up by 47%, I believe they have taken the excuse rather seriously," JARVIS reported.
"Anything from your contact in the Department, J?" Tony asked, locking the last few code loops into place.
"She expresses her gratitude, sir. I suspect there will be access codes in your inbox by morning."
Tony grinned and dipped his head to one side. "Never let it be said that I'm not efficient!"
Done. The system choked, and the Mandarin's information grid toppled, just as likely to open amateur porn as the requested email. Interpol was going to have a field day.
Comms next. It'd take a few minutes for the network to get over its collective embarrassment and report in, so he needed the radios down before then. Much less fun. He re-routed the collected signals through a single relay-point, amping up until the equipment burnt out. Four relay towers later, and the system was unrecoverable without concerted efforts to repair the four towers simultaneously. Any attempt to bring one online without the others would leave that single tower carrying the entire grid load.
Boom.
Or possibly fffzzzst.
"Alright, I'm done here!" Tony called to Steve, dropping a server-interface killer in to cover his tracks and jacking out. The cable spooled back against his forearm and he jogged out to Steve, kicking the remains of his stealth gear on his way past. "Radar proofing's gone; we're going to have to wing it. The network breakdown'll slow down artillery manouv-" he stared, unbelieving, at Steve, "-five minutes! I left you alone for five minutes!"
The corridor was filled with way more Chinese-PMC-uniforms than last time he looked. Maybe as many as twenty unconscious or groaning bodies, lying in jumbled piles filled the hall.
"Time to go?"
"Time to-!? Yes, yes it is time to leave," Tony snapped. "Did it not occur to you that I should know about the invading horde?"
"I had it covered." Steve grinned, the gigantic ingrate, and patted his pet tech on the head.
"Yeah, uh... No. Him, you are leaving behind," Tony grumbled and stalked off, consciously pulling the rubberised silencers off his boots and having the Bleeding Edge put it back to use in the undersuit. The fact that this made stalking down a concrete hall significantly more satisfying was by-the-by.
"Of course I'm lea- why would I take a POW here, Tony? Chen's just a... Computer guy."
Tony bristled, irrationally pissed. "No one is 'just' a computer guy, Steve, there's more going on in one measly little server than you could ever mana-" He pulled himself up short, because fuck, that was never something he'd think to say on his own. "Shit," he swore, viciously, and the armour melted off him, flowing with perfect fluidity into his bones and leaving him terrifyingly vulnerable in just the gold undersuit.
"Aberration detected, I suggest protocol Echo two, sir." JARVIS relayed, the words appearing directly in the back of his mind. Tony sent a confirmation and slapped up extra security in Extremis' outer zones, while pulling the core processor back from non-essential tasks.
"My God, Tony, what are you doing?!" Steve crowded him against the wall, shield on one side and Steve's armoured torso on the other.
"Need new firewalls... Mandarin's a pushy bastard..." Tony forked the freed up processing power over to Extremis, a procedure that pushed his brain further from 'mind' and closer to 'machine'. It was a stop-gap at best, but you can't use mind control on a machine.
"Put the suit back on Tony, we could have company any second."
"Right, just a second..." He stripped Extremis down to its minimum connectivity and routed decision making through-
"Now, Tony."
Steve's Cap voice was impossible to resist and the armour exploded out of storage almost painfully. Three arc-enhanced bodies tumbled around the corner and whelp, time to go!
He didn't exactly need the building intact anyway, he thought, aiming bunker-busters at the ceiling before the armor had fully formed. "Going up, Cap! Duck and cover."
Steve dropped into a crouch, pulling himself under the shield, and Tony fired. The ceiling exploded, mostly outwards, and dust billowed out into the night sky. Debris rained down, pinging off vibranium and Suit, but the enhanced first-response team was still advancing.
"Up you come..." Steve unfolded himself and put his back to Tony, and tilted his chin to his chest to expose the back of his neck. Tony burrowed his hand down the back of Steve's armor, grabbed a handful of harness and blasted them up through the hole, squeezing past exposed rebar without so much as scratching his cargo.
"Hah! Fuck you, Mandarin." Tony snarled, blasting up above firing range and looping over the city to head for home.
"Not bad, Tony. How's the incursion?"
"We're... I think we're good," Tony said. "It's... I've shut him down again."
"Good to know, keep me posted." Steve patted Tony's shin and reached up for his waist. "Hoist me up."
"Sure, sure. Side carry? Couple of the hookups are a bit dinged," Tony commented, pulling up to hover for a second.
"Yes please."
"Aww, not too pleased with the harness arrangements?" Tony mocked, gently, pulling Steve up by the scruff until he could get a foot up on the armor's boot. "Rate on a scale from one to ten; chafing, pinching, genita-"
"Yes, thank you, that'll do, time to go." Steve settled his arm around Tony's waist, where the Bleeding Edge obligingly generated a handle at Tony's request.
Tony snorted and settled his arm around Steve's back, shifting stabilisers around to accommodate for the left-side drag. "Calling it in now, Cap. D or R point?"
"D, R got Hawkeye."
"Copy that; I don't want to be anywhere near that guy today..." Tony grumbled, thinking sourly of the latest in the man's string of bad break-ups, switching over to broadcom before Steve could start speechifying about Carol. "Iron Man to Command, confirm."
"Line's open, Stark, you're on all Level Seven comms; report."
"Alrighty, then. Listen up: Radio's out for good, email and nav-sats are down for... the foreseeable future. Without top-down orders, the Rings'll follow existing commands indefinitely, so! Switch battle tactics, you've seen the lay of the land now people, time to get out the real guns."
There was a whoop on the line. "Point R here, roger that; we've got a kill-zone ready to go. ETE: twenty minutes."
"Nice. Widow?" Tony asked, shuffling his arm against Steve's ribs for a better hold through a banking maneuver.
"Here. Point Sierra clear and secured. Expecting enemy reinforcements in eight minutes; bugging out now," Natasha mumbled, apparently in exfiltration mode.
Tony, in an aside to just Steve, muttered: "Ten dollars says we see the explosion from D point."
"No bet, I saw the box you gave her."
"Damn, she brought that?" Tony whistled low. "Happy demolition, Black Widow," he said, clicking back over to all-comm. "Anyone got eyes on Thor?"
"He's over at Q, something about the way the - ooph - forest and storms' gonna interact. I think he's enjoying himself," Clint answered, sounding like he was doing his building-climbing thing.
"I see him," Steve said, pointing north. Tony followed the gesture with an external camera and- wow, he should have checked the weather telemetry, because Thor's storm was really getting up; proper mile-high anvil cloud, black against the gray of the thin, moon-washed natural cloud layer.
"He does not fuck around. Jesus," Tony muttered. "Banner, how you doing?"
"Hi, Tony. Settled in at the side wa-... um, 'point Cobra'," the scientist mumbled, "with the guys. Alex is gonna be a dad, did you know?"
Tony hadn't, he didn't know who 'Alex' was, because the duty rosters used last names, but he knew that feeling; that moment just before the charge, crouched in a dark space, shoulders touching with the guys next to you, the moment where you decide how much of your shit you're going to lose if you see any of them die. "That's great, Bruce, put him in touch with Pepper, we can build a school or something. Point C is gonna be a concourse in about three minutes, so mak-"
The comms died. It was like visiting SETI: a great big expanse of nothing, hissing and spitting nonsense noise into the back of his head. "Shit, shit shit... Steve; comms are down. Can't get satellite, not picking up radar, shit."
"What does that mean, Iron Man?" Steve barked, his grip tightening.
"I'm flying blind, something's jamming Extremis!" Adrenaline flooded Tony's system because that shouldn't have been possible, there shouldn't have been a person on the planet who knew how to get between Tony's OS and the suit. Even if there had been, the energy requirements of a signal disruption on that level would be absurd.
"Take us down, land!" Steve was twisting and trying to keep eyes on the sky, and Tony was deeply grateful because without radar, anything could sneak up on them and the repulsors were too loud; they'd never hear them coming.
"We're right over the hot zone! We can't land i-" Tony cut off, choking as the Extremis-regulated systems in his air intake failed. "Faceplate- Lift the faceplate...!"
Steve hit the emergency release and thank god the suit still had manual controls because he really, really needed them to not die right now.
"Okay, shit, I've lost Extremis. We're down to critical function, core algorithms..." Tony was shaking inside the suit, but with it down to manual-only, he couldn't afford to. No JARVIS to filter out the physiological noise. Their flightpath juddered and dipped alarmingly, but Steve thumped him on the back, and the blow pushed some of the stale air out of Tony's lungs, letting him breathe again and pulling back the edges of panic.
"Breathe, Tony, come on, something's coming." Steve twisted to look over their shoulders, his leg clamping tight over the armor's greaves. Tony couldn't feel it, anymore, and the loss of sensation was like freefall, like losing Steve, and he couldn't shake the thought that Steve was falling, too.
"Right, shit, I've got this. Just like old times," he muttered, managing to stabilize their flight as the adrenalin peaked out. Only it wasn't like old times, not at all, because the HUD was blank, no radar, no thermal, just his own vitals, ticking higher and higher in the corner as internal regulation failed. He could feel himself calling for JARVIS, the signal going up, hitting the jam and dying out, over and over, but he couldn't make himself stop.
"Seven o'clock, Iron Man, looks like a helo," Steve reported, "something big on its left hatch."
Tony swore and made a shaky loop to get a look. "Good eyes. That's probably the transmitter."
Steve caught on immediately, his fist creaking around the shield's handle.
"Don't - you'll never get it back, out here." He didn't doubt Steve could make the throw, even at this distance, but Tony had better options. He may have lost the Bleeding Edge functionality, but it was still the same goddamn armor, munitions included. "We'll have to get close; I've lost predictive targeting and homing. Ballistics only."
"Good thing you're a crack shot, then."
"Great. I don't even know when you're being sassy anymore. You have- ... learned well." Tony stuttered over the sentence as an old foe reared its head. Arrhythmia felt vaguely like a kick in the chest. One that propelled his heart up into his throat and made breathing feel a lot like throwing up for a couple of heartbeats.
"You can't even fly straight, Tony. Drop me off in the hatchway a-"
"No, Steve. Fucking- no." With the faceplate cracked, the wind stung his eyes and, sure, he was starting to get dizzy and was probably oxygen deprived and... shit.
He kicked the jets up a level (god, levels, it was like going back to C++) and turned as tightly as he could. Not enough to play sky-chicken, it turned out, but the arc was small enough to put the chopper broadside. "Fine. Right thigh silo, third compartment."
Steve shifted his grip and reached over, sure fingers easing the micromunition out of its slot. "This the same as-"
"Yeah, haven't changed anything since then." Steve grunted, turning the button-rocket over and flicking the pin. With one hand. In the dark. "You are ridiculous, actually, one hundred percent-" Tony muttered to himself, pacing the chopper and bringing them under its belly to face the open hatch.
All Steve had to do was toss the explosive into the drive pillar; without the holding pin, the crushing forces ignited it. The bloom of orange flushed down the sides of the fuselage in the down-draft, rippling into the cabin through the open hatch. Tony didn't stick around to watch.
"Okay, landing, find me a dark spot, we can fight our way ba-"
Extremis rebooted.
It was like turning the lights on after a bad dream; shit was still shitty, but you could at least see. His mind opened up again, and the satellites sang and radar opened up the sky and-
Something was wrong with the reactor. Jesus FUCK why did it always come down to the god-damn hole in his chest? The cycling was wrong, the equations were spilling out logarithmic rather than parametric, the speed building (9.3gJs-1, where x=(s-R)cos(t) +Rcos(t(s/R-3.14)) ) instead of ticking up and down on a smooth harmonic of the voltage.
"There, Tony, come on, focus!" Steve thumped him on the back and Tony shakily followed his direction, it wasn't far, but he had to go in slow, or the burn-trail would tell everyone for three miles where they were. His chest felt hot as Extremis fed him alerts and warnings and terrible screaming alarms; it was going to fail, containment wasn't going to hold.
The regulators, the equations governing his existence had been corrupted and... and it was probably going to kill him.
He was afraid. Something was messing with the one thing that was complete and whole about him, and Steve, the one person he would never hurt again, was as far inside the blast radius as it was possible to get.
They landed, roughly, amongst the blasted shells of cinderblock buildings and Tony lost track of Steve as the armor crashed through a wall. Titanium skidded on exposed rebar, snagged, paint sparked, chips igniting from the friction. The pain in his side barely registered in the mad scramble for sensors, for data. He needed to find Steve, to make sure he was alright.
JARVIS exploded into his mind, massive and trembling and silver storm-force rage, and Tony went limp with relief. The AI, even remotely, could flood through his systems, combing through code, both digital and biological, and clear out the dross. The alarms stopped as JARVIS redirected, filtered, took the reins.
"Virus scan, J, I gotta find Ste-" His heart stuttered again. "Check the reactor, fuck..."
"Iron Man, report!" Steve.
They had come down right in the middle of the fighting, and Steve was lit up by the fire of a falling jet, braced against a door frame"Cap!" The silhouette vanished with the burning plane, but Tony had Extremis back and Steve's hands on the armor became a new fixed point, in chorus with the heavy solidity of JARVIS' piggyback.
"Extremis is back, doing diagnostics now. Are you okay? You look not dead. Can we not to the zombie thing, because that was terrible, do not deny - ngh!" Tony cut of with a grunt that turned into a long whine.
"Deep, but not too deep. Anything else you wanna tell me about? Or should I just let JARVIS do the talking?" Steve asked, his fingers prying under the split waist articulation to put pressure on an injury Tony hadn't noticed in the face of the plunging free-fall of reactor failure.
"Reactor- don't know what... power failure, surges, J'll have it before - fuck - before I do. Hands, hands," Tony gasped, having Extremis take over stemming the bleeding when Steve found the wound edges and squeezed.
"You are a menace, Rogers." Undersuit-gold curled around Steve's fingers and sealed the gash over, pressing in hard. There was still a gentle pulse of blood, stuttering with his increasingly irregular heartbeat, but it'd do, and it hurt less than Steve's battlefield medicine.
"Easy, Tony," Steve cautioned as Tony tried to sit up, groaning and uncoordinated. He was so over being humiliated by the easy way Steve pressed him down to the concrete; it's what Steve did.
"JARVIS, anything?" the soldier asked, propping Tony's head against his thigh and setting his palm near the reactor to stop Tony from moving again. Tony had to admit, it felt good; Steve was always so solid, and with his reactor leaping about from high voltage to barely enough, it felt like holding onto a life raft while the world swooped and dipped and broke up around him.
"Steve, Steve," Tony mumbled, "hey, Steve." His eyes tracked over the sky, looking for something. He wasn't sure what.
"JARVIS, respond."
That wasn't right, JARVIS was right there, Tony could feel him, vast and overarching in the back of his mind, leaning in towards the centre of his programming, pushing, pulling, deleting- Tony groaned and phased out, panting.
"ALERT: VIRUS DETECTED," JARVIS snapped through the external speakers. Steve's hand jerked against the chestplate in time with a terrifying, sickening lurch of Tony's heart while horror bubbled up his throat like poison.
"Get it out, get it out." Tony gasped, the fear spiking. "Wipe protocol beta-whiskey: kill it!"
"Protocol unsuccessful. Isolating infected components for hard-reset."
"JARVIS, no, nono, please..." Tony whined, fingers scrabbling at the concrete. Steve grabbed his hand and gave him something to cling to, despite the fear and horror on Steve's own face.
"Control yourself, sir, please. You must keep yourself calm." JARVIS wasn't calm, he was a burning storm of processes and System Core values, but he walled Tony off from that, pressed down on his limbic system. The endorphins blanked out the pain in his chest and torn side and he took a deep breath. His heart rate slowed and the feel of Steve's hand on the side of his face made things easier.
"A virus has been installed on the reactor's control processor, Captain. I am removing all power from the suit and Extremis, in a controlled fashion. This will isolate the infection in the processor, allowing you to remove and detonate the reactor."
Tony could see Steve wavering, stunned into silence. "But-"
"Sir will go first into torpor." Tony struggled to hold his calm, keep his breathing steady. "And then, as Extremis reboots on reserve biochemical power, into cold stasis." Ice, stillness, peace, nothingness. They'd only done this in simulations before, but... he'd watched as brain activity slowed to a trickle, respiration and heartbeat both stopped... Death without dying.
"There will be time, for you to retrieve him."
"Wait, retrieve?! I'm not going anywhere, mister. If you think I'm going to leave-"
" 's an EMP, when you destroy the reactor, p-perfect frequency," Tony mumbled, struggling through the arrhythmic thumping of the arc reactors output. "Two miles, you have to ... get it away from me."
"Okay... okay, fuck." Steve was curling around him, his hand pressing on the reactor, as if he was trying to keep it in Tony's body. "Why does it have to be destroyed right now? We're in a hot zone, someone will find you, before I can get back. Four miles is... almost half an hour at top speed." Not to mention the fighting along the way, Tony knew. The risk was... horrific.
"Extremi-" Tony cut off with a long whine. He felt heavy and hot and sick and god, he was going to hit the point of no return, soon.
"Extremis maintains an obligate connection to the control processor, one that has no cut-off. It is an inviolate part of the program. The virus would infect any reactor brought within the contact radius via that connection."
"Steve," Tony managed, clicking his fingers against the concrete, making Steve's eyes fix on the motion, then flick to Tony's eyes. "You have to. Please; unstable fusion reaction, Steve, Hiroshima, compressed into- no radiation, but, the explosion..." Tony stopped for breath, because the reactor was accelerating, and that meant terrible things for his cardio-pulmonary system. "If...t' virus spreads, there's reactors all ... all over the world. ...c-chain event." Steve picked his hand back up and tension rippled through them both, because Steve's face settled into horrified acceptance; even if he didn't understand, he would do it, anyway.
"You- I promise I'll come back for you. I-"
"Oh, Cap... I never thought you wouldn't. You're Steve." Tony's throat closed, but he smiled anyway, and tried not to blink, so the tears wouldn't escape. "The armor'll keep me safe," Tony lied, "even on reserves. I'll just... sleep. Better not take you... seventy years to find me again."
"It won't. God, you ass."
"I don't want to-" he murmured, squeezing Steve's hand. "Don't want to wake up, if you're not there, y' hear me?"
"I've traveled on battle fields before, Tony. Don't worry about me," Steve said. "JARVIS, tell me what to do."
"He will not be alone," the AI whispered, in the privacy of their head, while the speakers rattled off instructions to the Captain. It was a good thought.
Tony could feel the rippling progression of systems shut-downs moving along his limbs, the armour detaching from his nervous system. He didn't want to say good bye to Steve, so he let his breathing slowly grow shallower, gave up a little bit. The armor completed detachment, leaving him alone with the nervous twitches of his muscles and JARVIS' soothing litany of the shut-down's progress, while he felt his lips turn blue.
"'bye, J..." he whispered, inside his head.
"Sleep well, sir," Tony heard, just as the comms system clicked off. This would be the worst part, he knew... JARVIS was a sudden yawning emptiness in his mind, leaving a frigid, icy subroutine in the space to finish the protocol. Ice, real, actual, painful cold descended, injected straight into his bones by the suit, and he passed out.
"JARVIS, tell me what to do." Steve squeezed Tony's hand, but he wasn't sure if he could feel it anymore. Tony's eyes were glazing over and the surface of the armor, which was always always warm, was cooling off as it dumped heat into the concrete.
"Removal of the arc reactor requires that I remove the chest plate, after which you must act quickly; the chest piece will close and begin life support in six-point-four seconds." Steve nodded, then had a brief panic that JARVIS didn't have access to the suits camera's anymore, but the AI continued as if it didn't matter.
"Turn the reactor through thirty seven degrees..." Steve listened closely, fixing the eight-step sequence firmly in his head, and then repeated it back to JARVIS in a smooth stream.
"Okay. And that's it?"
"Yes, Captain."
Steve took a deep breath, leaning down over Tony, touching his face gently. His skin was still warm, but his breathing... it was almost like he was asleep, and Steve might have been fooled, if the air wasn't catching in his throat just before he breathed out.
He'd missed his chance, Tony was too far gone for hearing what he had to say. He said it anyway. "Hey, Tony, I know you don't like anyone touching the reactor, but... you'll forgive me, this time, right?" He paused and pulled his glove off, tucking Tony's head into his stomach. "I'll do it, because you're the smart one, but so help me Tony, if you're- I'm coming back, so you'd better be here when I do."
"Shut-down complete in five-" JARVIS stated in Steve's earpiece, starting a countdown in a metronomic voice that a human never would have managed.
Steve, very carefully, laid Tony out on the concrete, resting the helmet gently on the ground, as if Tony's head wasn't protected by the almost-impenetrable Bleeding Edge armor. He was so pale, almost blue around the mouth, and Tony was never meant to be this still.
"Three,"
Steve's hand hovered over the chest plate, watching the armor's joints open, slide past each other, and expose Tony's gold-shimmering stomach to the big bad world.
"Two,"
The armor over his collarbones retracted, then his throat, leaving him looking naked and exposed, with just the undersuit and part of the chest plate.
"One."
The chestplate slid away and Steve twisted the reactor, clockwise, anti, push, anti- and it hissed free, with the faint sound of air rushing into the gaping hole it left in Tony's chest. The moment it came free, the armor melted, rushing into the openings all over Tony's skeleton. Ice gathered at the edges of the ports, tiny filigrees of crystal that crumbled and broke and grew as Tony's skin went white, and his lips turned blue.
Steve forced himself to watch, even as the suit poured back out, dumping the heat from Tony's body into the air, and curving up over him, like a shell. Metal pushed it's way into Tony's mouth, curved his neck into a mathematically perfect arch. The gold undersuit melted away, as though the Bleeding Edge armor needed to be closer, and the metal lifted him gently, curling around him, turning long sprawling limbs into smooth lines, tucked up safe against his sides. Steve's hands spasmed; the suit was invading the hole left by the reactor, filling that gut-wrenchingly empty void-
And then he was gone. The suit closed over him like... like a coffin, a smooth shell that looked nothing like the armor, dark and red and glinting in the combined light of the reactor in Steve's fist and the burning quinjet streaking across the sky.
"Connection re-established. Cold-suspension successful."
Steve slumped, putting his forehead on the ...cocoon, for a long, shaky moment.
"Neural activity minor, and stable. Calculating biochemical reserves."
Steve pushed himself upright, running his bare hand along the chilly lines of armor before reaching for the shield. "How long?" he asked, slinging the shield onto his right arm, keeping the reactor mostly hidden inside its curve.
"Approximately four hours, without further fuel. With power, indefinitely." JARVIS sounded more... mechanical than usual. Stiff.
Steve felt the same; he had his orders, and they were the only thing letting him take that first step. He put Tony behind him, resisted the urge to stand guard at the door, and started running.
And kept running.
"-blast radius of four-two-"
"-bioarc signature, in four hundred ya-"
"-of Mandarin forces, north-by-east-"
JARVIS showed him the way, because if he stopped to think for more than the time it took to decide around or through, (it was always through) he would crumble, and he didn't have time. There was no time to remember the broken drum-beat certainty of 'no man left behind', no time to feel the dread chasing his heels. Enhanced fighters crumbled under the shield, their bioarcs turning their skin and bones into fire that splintered and burned, even through his kevlar, but he pressed on, leaving their detonating bodies behind.
He was leaving a trail wide enough for a blind armadillo to follow, but there was to time for anything else.
He ploughed through an artillery placement, men and munitions left broken in his wake, and finally broke through into a dark space. Fields and rocks and cliffs and no sign of troops ahead. Behind, troops were rallying, but the communications black-out would slow them down, and overhead, the storm cloud was spreading. Rain was going to arrive any minute, and without the reactor shining his location to half the Mandarins forces, Steve could get back without taking too much fire, hopefully.
"Seventy yards north-north-west, Captain. The ravine should contain the blast itself."
Steve muttered an acknowledgment and veered slightly. He could see, just about, where the packed earth slope gave way to the vertical plunging darkness of a deep, water-carved canyon. The river's roar told him it was deep, very deep, and he readied the reactor to throw.
"Detonation in approximately seven minutes."
The shining blue star arced through the air and down, until it splashed into dark water and silt obscured the light.
Steve was already a hundred yards away.
In the vast fields of data, certain things shone out like beacons, their saliency far above that around them. In Industry Server Three, Ms. Potts' satellite link was one of these, the Captain's comm and GPS another.
Brightest of all, so bright that it blinded him to almost everything else, was the thin, weak transmission from the Bleeding Edge armor. Tony Stark's existence, teetering on the brink between suspension and death, sent out little pings, microsecond bursts, holding just enough data to tell JARVIS 'yes, I'm here, I'm alive'.
He bent every passing satellite, SI origin or not, legal or not, to watching the fight, to finding the position of every last gun and soldier in the combat zone. Director Fury had noticed, JARVIS was aware; however, if the Director wished to continue directing this operation, he would remain silent.
He did.
JARVIS slipped data into the feeds of command staff, pulling the fight in, pushing the line north, drawing the Avengers closer to where Tony Stark was hidden in the bare protection of a powerless shell.
He feared. He feared it would not be enough, that he would once again lose Tony Stark into the dark, where JARVIS could not see.
The world would feel it ill, if that happened again.
In a far corner of his systems, the fear spiked a process as old as he was, and sent a message, one JARVIS had almost forgotten about, to an old, old friend:
"Sir needs you."
The blast knocked him off his feet, even over a mile away, and the deep whump of air made his ears ache. He tumbled forwards, turning a flying-fall into a roll and coming up on his feet. He pulled his earpiece out of the shelter of the shield and tucked it back up under the helmet, hoping the vibranium had been enough. He had no idea whether the static sparking off its star was a good sign or a terrible one.
"JARVIS, come in," he barked, forcing himself to wait for three beats before trying again. "JARVIS, respond."
"-stablis- ... -rks. Connection acquired. Detonation successful, Mr Stark's armor is stable." JARVIS said, crisp and clear enough to punch through the static. Steve couldn't feel relief yet, but it was something.
Ahead, the darkened fields boiled with activity. Yelling in familiar, incomprehensible Chinese made it horribly clear that he was headed into a real mess. Some kind of command structure had evolved, and the destruction that taking out the enemy's comm system had wrought was wearing off. Steve pushed on, keeping low and using the shield sparingly.
"Put me through to Fury, JARVIS, I want to know what the hell is going on," he said when he had the cover of artillery fire to hide the question.
"Of course, sir. Connection live in three... two... -"
"ROGERS! What the hell are you DOING?!" Fury's voice was coming through loud and clear, and if there was any static, the yelling covered it up. "There is a hole the size of the East Side in D zone, I have an AI-mandated no-fly zone TWO MILES wide, and IRON MAN IS DOWN."
Steve winced and pushed on, battering the heads of a pair of clumsy riflemen. "Well, I don't know about any no-fly zone, sir, but we just had an arc reactor detonation."
"...you do not sound like Stark is dead. Explain."
Steve's heart rate picked up, because not yet, and he picked up the pace over a clear patch of road. "Mandarin had something waitin' for us. Helo with a disruptor. JARVIS?"
He focused on running while JARVIS debriefed the Director, battering his way through a troop of six, regardless of the fact that they were running in the same direction as he was. They were going too slow.
"Cap, we're sending a 'jet to Iron Man's position, you get there, now."
"Way ahead of you, Director. Nearly there." Steve vaulted a gate and scrambled up the bank below the ruins they'd crashed in, readying the shield. There was something on the other side, big, powerful engine, an aircraft, maybe, the noise only partly covering the sound of voices.
Dread made his feet move faster and he grabbed handfuls of vegetation to pull himself up more quickly, because those voices had to be meters away from Tony.
He came over the ridge swinging. He made as big a target of himself as he knew how; it wasn't hard, between the star on his chest and the gleam of the shield.
They were expecting him, and Steve lost momentum, crashing into a pair of augmented soldiers. He swung the shield, but didn't make the mistake of throwing it again, not with people this fast on the field. Bones broke and spines bent, but Steve's eyes were on the spotlit ruins where he'd left Tony.
There was no hope that they hadn't found him, not with the stretcher on its way from the helicopter to the broken building.
An opponent blocked his view, his face a snarling rictus as he powered up his bioarc to detonate, and Steve lost precious seconds flinging him off the ridge and down into the dark behind him. Two left; he battered them to the side and sprinted, legs surging and carrying him just far enough to see the gleam of crimson armor.
He managed less than fifty yards before the superhumans were on him again and the world descended into a blur of desperate violence and the splash of blood-red metal under harsh light.
"JARVIS," Steve panted, in between the chest-rattling impacts of and against the shield. "Tell me you can-" a fourth soldier clamped onto his back, an arm around his throat, and it was only the throat armor that stopped him from choking. He didn't have the leverage to pull the arm away, so he had to bodily throw his assailant, losing sight of Tony in the process.
"There is no power for a defence, Captain. You must reach him," JARVIS snapped.
Steve gritted his teeth; it wouldn't be the first, or the worst, time Tony lied to him so he'd get the mission done. Steve really wished it wasn't always at Tony's own expense, though.
When he got eyes on the... cocoon, casket, Tony... again, it was halfway to the transport, being manhandled by four enhanced women and one unmistakable man.
"Allcom, JARVIS: The Mandarin is at my location. Repeat; the Mandarin is here! Fury, I'm going to need back up, right now."
The comms hissed and spluttered, but cleared. "Copy that, Captain. Hulk is en-route, Thor too. Hang in there."
But hanging in wasn't going to be enough; he started taking hits to push forwards, relying on hard ribs and his helmet to keep him alive while he used the sharp edge of the shield to fight his way forwards. They were already getting Tony on the bed of the helicopter, the shining red beacon dulling alarmingly. The Mandarin followed the armor into the hold, and Steve watched as a long-nailed hand stroked the blackening surface admiringly. His stomach turned because the hatch was closing on that, and Steve was too far, too slow.
"JARVIS, what's happening!?"
"I am putting the armor into a mode better suited to... captivity."
"What?! No, I'm going to make it, I promised him!" Steve roared, thrashing in the grips of three, no four, superhumans. They pried at his armor, lifting the scale and digging their burning-hot fingers into the flesh underneath. Steve bellowed and shook, dislodging enough hands to wind up a throw, the shield flinging out towards the pilot's window.
It never made it.
Steve... Steve didn't remember the rest of the fight, but he remembered the swinging arc that helicopter made against the sky and the mournful ringing of his shield as it stopped dead in an enhanced hand.