Hello to all the lost souls who find themselves here! This story is based on an RP, so it's not quite the usual format. I hope you don't mind and have fun! (Cross-posted on AO3.)
Starring:
HikariYumi as Tony Stark, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner, The Vision
and
Majinie as Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanov.
Depending on where this goes, we might add more characters, I suppose you'll notice soon enough. ;)
"What is that supposed to mean, 'we can't go after him'?" Clint demanded angrily. "Come on, guys, what the hell?"
"We don't have any information about how heavily he's guarded, how the security measures are, we don't even know who's actually behind all of this," Natasha reasoned calmly. The archer gritted his teeth silently. "We can't stage a rescue mission like that."
"We know where he is, do you wanna keep standing here and blabbing until we can pick his corpse up somewhere? Because I'm definitely not in for that," he snapped. "In case you somehow didn't notice, our hacker has been kidnapped, so we can't really research these guys anyway."
"Do you want to endanger him by trying to get him out without proper preparations?" Steve now chimed in.
"Do you want to endanger him by doing nothing to help him?" Clint shot back. Right now, he wished that Bruce was here and not somewhere on the Fidjis. He was sure that the scientist would have agreed with him that they needed to do something.
"We just want to be prepared," the Falcon chimed in. "You're no amateur, you know that you can't just waltz in there and try to solve the whole thing like that."
Clint swallowed down his protests. Let them believe they won, fine. He could do that. He wasn't a goddamn secret agent for nothing, after all. Letting the reluctance be audible in his reply, he said: "Fine. Doesn't mean I gotta like it. Since this could very well take a while, I hope you don't mind if I take a quick shower because drying blood is gross."
Tony had been kidnapped during a mission against a squad of agents from an organisation that the Avengers hadn't been able to identify yet. They'd shut the armour down with an EMP (how the hell did that even work, he had no idea, with all of the inventor's double- and triple-checked security measures) and taken Tony with them for god-knew-what and now the others were refusing to go after him because of a damn detail like that.
As soon as he was out of the door, Clint pulled his Stark Phone from his pocket. There were trackers in the inventor's suit and he was about 99% sure that the kidnappers wouldn't have left it behind, so he had a location on Tony and if the rest of the 'team' wasn't going, fucking great, but that didn't mean that Clint had to stay with them patiently. It wasn't going to be his first solo-op, after all.
The coordinates of the suit lightened up the small screen and the archer was glad that he hadn't even changed out of his battle gear before the debrief so all he had to do was jump into one of the cars in the garage and get the hell out of here.
At first, he was annoyed. It had been quite a while now since the last organisation had tried to kidnap him, but after an hour he started being scared. If someone asked him, he wouldn't admit it, of course, but Tony was beginning to panic roughly one and a half hour after regaining consciousness.
After Afghanistan, after New York, doctors had told the engineer that he was suffering from PTSD but seriously, Tony was okay most of the time.
Moments when he was tied harshly against a metal grit while being hooked up with the arc reactor to something unknown were totally agreeable moments to panic!
In Tony's opinion. Well, there wasn't anyone else to ask anyway.
By the time the rest of the team noticed that he wasn't coming back, he was only three miles away from the place where the tracker signal was coming from.
For a minute, the archer listened to their complaints and protests over the comm. When it became clear that they weren't going to do anything helpful, he took the earpiece out and tossed it onto the seat next to him.
What a great fucking team we are.
Well and truly pissed off now, he floored the accelerator and listened to the roar of the engine.
"Yeah, let's wait until we got a location," he groused. "What could fucking happen? Great fucking idea."
Tony's breathing was ragged and heavy, the tape which was strapped above his mouth didn't make it easier.
Deep breaths, Stark.
Cautiously, he tested the restraints, but the ropes were strong and cut into his wrists. The feeling of vulnerability increased the fear more and more. Tony felt the slight tremble of his body, more wasn't possible, the bindings were too adamant.
Slowly, his injuries started to hurt more. Someone had treated his shoulder wounds with some bandages, but the cuts on his chest and face were ignored.
They need me for something!
Tony wanted to examine the cables and wires plugged into his reactor, but the ropes on his chest barred most of the sight.
The engineer's head was fuzzy. He wondered how long he was kept here, he was beginning to grow weak.
What are they doing with the reactor?
The wires ran towards the ceiling and behind him and were invisible for him from there. Maybe it was his imagination, but he seemed to get weaker every minute.
There was complete silence in the dark room, but he began to hear his heartbeat. His fast heartbeat.
Wait... My heart... Something was odd.
Tony felt cold sweat on his neck.
Oh shit.
Clint stopped two blocks away from the base, pulling the car over and grabbing his bow. He wasn't exactly inconspicuous in his battle gear, but everything was better than literally driving in through their front door. Not that he didn't feel like blowing the whole building up, but Tony was still in there.
Hopefully, that was going to change soon.
It was January and darkness was already falling fast, partly concealing his unusual clothing. Still, the building his Stark Phone marked with a cheerful red dot was a skyscraper, looking like it was probably used for bureaus and the like.
After a moment's hesitation, Clint pulled a black coat from the back of the car. He was pretty sure it actually belonged to Steve, seeing how it was definitely too large for him, but it did the job of hiding the most obvious parts of his very recognisable suit.
Well then, he thought, shoving a gun into the holster strapped to his thigh. The bow would be simply impractical in the confined space of a hallway. Let's get this over with.
Tony fought against his ropes more desperately than he wanted to admit to find out what was going on. Since he had woken up, nobody had entered the room.
At least he thought it was a room. Since he couldn't turn his head very far, he just knew what was in his direct eye sight, which wasn't that much, by the way. The room hadn't got any windows and beside the metal grid he was tied to and a drawer in the corner, there was nothing to be seen.
Tony tried to cough, but the duct tape prevented it, so he just shook in the restraints.
He wanted to fight again, but it seemed like he didn't have the strength left. Slightly exhausted, Tony tried to turn his head a bit, but the world around him began to spin.
The engineer closed his eyes shut before he could get sick.
Tony wondered when and if someone would come to rescue him. Maybe he had to flee alone, wouldn't be the first time he had to take the initiative.
As he had expected, the lobby of the building looked like any other. Clint walked towards the counter and leaned on it, silently cursing because he remembered that he probably still had blood on his chin from where he had gotten his lip split in the previous fight. Still, he gave the woman on the computer behind the marble counter a pleasant smile. Apart from the two of them and a few security cameras, the lobby was empty. Weird. At a time like this...
"Hey there," he greeted. In every other situation, he would have taken the slow approach and tried to pry some information out of her, but there was still gut-clenching worry churning inside of him. He didn't have the time for that sort of thing now. "Where do you keep your guests?"
She glanced up at him, confusion and wariness battling on her features. "Excuse me, sir," she responded, subtly going into a defensive position, "but I think you've got the wrong address. We don't keep guests here, we're not a hotel."
"I figured," Clint replied, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm still pretty sure there's someone staying here at the moment."
"There's our employees, of course, are you searching for somebody in particular?" Damn, but they should really hire some better actors. This was just pathetic.
"Yes, actually," the archer nodded. "Public figure, you can't miss him. Fancy suit, ridiculous goatee..."
In a sudden movement, she whipped a gun out from under the table. The only reason Clint didn't roll his eyes for real this time was that he really didn't feel like getting shot, thank you very much, and before she managed to even get her finger onto the trigger properly, he twisted the gun out of her grasp, half-pulling her over the counter in the process.
"...and hits on everything that doesn't run fast enough," he finished. "Now, that was just embarrassing. What are you guys, Hydra, AIM? I thought this was gonna be a challenge, but fine, we'll make do." She glared up at him out of defiant, blue eyes. "Is this the way we're going to do it? You can just tell me now because I'm really not in the mood for an interrogation, I'll find him myself if I have to."
Tony's thoughts got too sluggish to form a proper plan for escape.
Well, Tony Stark, genius. Just not when it would actually be helpful.
Angrily fighting against sailor ropes was in no way successful, he could save his energy instead of trying it again and again.
But, the engineer had to admit, it seemed to be the only thing he could do.
Every now and then, but in intervals that grew shorter shockingly fast, his heart missed a few beats and made his chest hurt even more.
The whole situation wore Tony out, made him slow and even more helpless. That was one of the reasons it took him so long to understand. They're stealing away the reactors power! Badassium was a really profitable energy source, but after this amount of time draining his power, it ran out.
If they don't stop soon, the electromagnet will stop working.
But what was the point? Why didn't they just rip the whole device out or tortured him to learn how to reproduce it?
No, actually Tony didn't care about that at the moment. He had more urgent things to think about.
Clint sighed in angry annoyance when the would-be-villain-secretary bit out some catchy sentence along the lines of "I'll never tell you".
"I don't have time for that, but thanks anyway," he muttered with a shake of his head, raised the gun and brought it down on the back of the woman's head. She collapsed onto the counter unconsciously and the archer walked around it to pick her up and place her underneath the desk. No need for every entering person to catch sight of her immediately.
For a moment, he stared at the papers and computers on the tabletop. He could give it a try and search through the information there, but unless these were complete and utter imbeciles, they wouldn't save each and every of their movements on paper for him to find.
Anyway, organisations like this had a very predictable trait for such things anyway. After turning the sign on the counter from 'Welcome' to 'Someone will tend to you shortly', he snatched the woman's gun from the counter and walked towards the nearest entrance to a staircase that he found.
"Basement, always the basement," he muttered. "Why does it always have to be a basement?" It was only logical, of course; no windows, the sound isolation was much better, and nobody wanted to be down there anyway. Fucking basements.
He pushed the door open and almost cackled with glee when he heard the voices echoing through the hallway. Unbelievable. How had these morons even gotten their hands on Tony? He'd seldomly encountered an organisation so full of idiot mercenaries. Slowly sneaking down the stairs, Clint listened to the conversation below.
"...think Stark is gonna find a way out?"
A rough voice, answered by a laugh. "Nah, you saw him. He doesn't look like he's gonna do much escaping to me."
"Wouldn't be the first time," the other man reminded his companion.
"C'mon, literally all we have to do is stand here and you still won't stop whining? Pull yourself together, for god's sake."
Morons. Deciding to try another old school trick, because those always worked on these idiots, Clint called loudly: "Guys! Shift change. Go get yourself a coffee or something."
He walked down the steps in a pointedly casual way and greeted the two men with a wave of his hand.
They weren't even wearing uniforms. What a bunch of idiots. Clint's getup wouldn't be conspicuous at all.
"Dude, what happened to your lip? More importantly, we get shift changes?" the taller one demanded suspiciously.
The archer rolled his eyes and groaned, "of course not, you morons," grabbing the two of them by their hair and knocking their heads together. One of them was out cold immediately, the other one followed after a vicious kick to the stomach and a jab to his neck.
Clint shook his head. "This is starting to get insulting. God, you're all ridiculous."
Fuck, fuck, fuck!, cursed Tony inwardly. He wished he were able to talk. Just to do something to hide and reduce his fear and vulnerability.
"Urgh..." Another few missed heartbeats later, Tony went completely limp in his forced position. It didn't matter anyway, the ropes held him in place, so why care?
By now, the engineer wasn't so sure if the room was really that dark, or if he was just barely conscious. Should it be alarming that he had to ask himself that?
Tony looked down at his chest. He couldn't see the reactor, but its dimmed light. There were times it flickered, but 'till now, it always lit up again.
Well, it was just a matter of time.
Tony wished he could move his arms and curl up on himself tightly around his hurting chest. Somewhere safe.
Only because dying of a slow occurring cardiac arrest was fucking painful of course.
The man's eyes were burning, but he didn't pay attention, his whole body ached by now more terrible than his eyes ever could.
This time, I don't have a joker. This time, I am actually pretty fucked.
Tony tried to laugh or just smile, but the tape wouldn't allow that. Shit. It would have helped to joke about the situation.
The engineer wanted to refuse to panic even more, but his mind didn't care about that.
Clint took a deep breath, a hand on his gun's handle. He wasn't sure what expected him on the other side of that door, possibly a bunch of guards or maybe just an old storage room, but he had no chance but to try.
Carefully, he pushed the handle down, just to find that the door was locked. Well, at least these guys seemed to have some sort of common sense, but right now, he really couldn't use that. He made quick work of the guards' pockets, but there was no key to be found. Great. The only thing these bastards did right was this. Fucking wonderful.
With another annoyed sigh, he settled down, reached into one of his own pockets and pulled out the tools he needed to pick the lock. He'd done plenty of that as a kid and had only gotten better with time. The lock was nothing extraordinary and took him barely a minute until it clicked open with a barely audible sound.
Clint straightened up and drew the gun from its holster, raising it in one hand while the other pushed the door handle down again. Slowly, he opened the door a few inches wide, watching as a thin stripe of light fell onto the floor behind it. When there was no reaction, he pushed it open completely in one go, aiming his gun at the darkness behind it. The sight greeting him made his breath hitch and he quickly felt for a light switch on the wall. He found it after a few seconds and the lights on the ceiling flickered on, leaving the room on merciless display.
On the plus side, he had found Tony.
His weapon clattering to the ground carelessly, he crossed the room to reach the engineer, who was blinking rapidly to adjust to the sudden brightness in the room. He was bound to a metal rack with rough, thick ropes, wound around his wrists and chest, chafing the skin raw. There was a trickle of blood running down one of his arms, several cuts and gashes on his face and, what scared Clint the most, another small, half-dried stream of blood originating from the arc reactor's rim. The reactor itself was hooked up to a bunch of cables that simply did not belong there, all of them somehow running to the array of machines behind the inventor.
"Tony," Clint murmured, trying to sound calm. He had to stay in control right now. "Hey, Tony, come on, can you hear me?" The man was sickly pale and breathing far too fast. Carefully, Clint reached up to grasp the edge of the duct tape covering his mouth and grimaced as he warned: "Okay, this is probably gonna hurt like a bitch." Then, he ripped the silvery tape off in one go.
Tony tried to even out his breath once more, but failed again. His brain shouted he wouldn't get enough oxygen due to his gagging, which caused the engineer unconsciously to speed up his breathing. A vicious circle.
Tony wasn't sure how much time had passed (since there wasn't anything that could help him with that issue) but eventually, his mind shut down to the most instinctual level.
He wasn't be able to think completely coherent anymore, he was ruled by fear. The most natural one, the fear of death.
Maybe Tony was kept one time to much as prisoner, maybe they messed one time too much with his heart, maybe he just couldn't stand another near-death, but he couldn't help it.
Barely conscious, the engineer noticed a soft clicking noise somewhere outside his field of vision.
Suddenly he snapped back to alertness, out of his hazed state. Tony could literally feel the rush of adrenalin flooding his exhausted body, allowing him to straighten up slightly.
Some long moments nothing happened, the man thought he was hallucinating, but then there was another noise. This times it was different, but Tony wasn't able to get what was happening.
Even if he wouldn't be panicking, he was too tired.
Another clicking sound, actually followed by the noise of an opening door.
The man's body went into fight mode, speeding up his breath even more.
Who would come? What would they do? Would they torture him? Again? Could he survive this? Would they free him from those wires? Or were they just here to watch him dying slowly?
A few stuttering heartbeats later, the room was lighted up. Paralysed, Tony blinked to adjust to the sudden change, not very successfully. Now his eyes were burning even more. Had he started to cry at some point?
Something fell to the ground, but he could only hear one person.
The person seemed to be approaching, getting into his sight.
If the engineer weren't that exhausted, he would have frowned. There was a Clint in front of him, looking at him in a weird way.
Now he said his name. Yes, he was clearly this time. If Clint would come, he wouldn't be alone, that's for sure.
Well, Tony liked Clint. He could have worse near-death hallucinations to be honest.
Even though the engineer's body was still in panic mode as the other man reached for the tape and removed it quickly.
Tony shouted, not even sure why, until a warm hand pressed against his lips.
The engineer wanted to fight, to bite and spit, but one more time the reactor flickered for some long moments.
Tony flinched with the sharp increase of pain, then he went limp again.
Clint caught the reactor's flicker and felt a stab of panic flaring up inside of him. Years of training allowed him to fight it down and remind himself that he needed to stay clear-headed right now.
Slowly, he removed his hand from the engineer's lips and whispered: "Okay, I need you to stay quiet, I have no idea how many of these inept morons are still around and I honestly don't want to find out. Come on, let's get you out of here." There was no response, Tony just kept wheezing for air while he hung in his restraints limply. "Hey, buddy, 'fraid I'll need you awake now. Come on, Tony, please, it's me."
Those fucking bastards. There were tear streaks drawing their trails on the inventor's cheeks, intermingling with blood, dirt and cold sweat, and he didn't really seem to hear anything that Clint said.
Fuck, but he needed him conscious.
"A little help here, buddy? How do I get these cables off? Because I'd really hate to break your heart, you know? Shit, you're really not here or you would've kicked me out for that joke. Fuck."
Carefully and desperately hoping that he wasn't doing the wrong thing, Clint laid one hand onto Tony's chest to hold him still, feeling the shorter man tremble underneath his fingers. With the other hand, he took hold of the cables, closed his eyes for a second to gather himself, and then pulled at the wire.
After some agonizing seconds, it came loose, although it made Tony jerk and groan in pain.
"Sorry," Clint whispered, dropping the cable to the floor. "Just the smaller ones now. I've got you, you'll be fine. Just hold on for a bit longer, okay?"
The Clint seemed nice. He wasn't yelling or angry at him. He didn't call him names or hurt him too much.
He even got rid of that duct tape.
Tony was sure the Clint was talking to him, too, but he couldn't understand. But that was okay, the sound of the familiar and safe voice helped to endure the choking pain and fear.
Then, there was another touch. The hand was warm and reminded Tony of the fact that he was still trembling like hell, or at least as much as his position allowed him.
The hand restrained him even more and the panic returned full force.
Maybe Clint wasn't so nice after all?
Again there was pain, sharp pain, mind-blowing pain. It felt like the Clint tried to rip out his reactor without caring about the proper mechanism.
This time Tony didn't cry, not because he didn't want to, but because everything he could manage was a groan.
It felt like it lasted for a lifetime. And then a bit longer after the pull vanished.
The engineers chest was on fire, icy, sharp fire. Again, he felt like he couldn't breathe. A crushing weight on his lungs.
Right when Tony was a bit better the Clint did it again. Even if it wasn't as intense as the first time, it was enough to pull the man back into the state of near unconsciousness.
He didn't even felt that much when the ropes were cut and the last thing that kept him upright was gone.
The whole world was a blur. Tony didn't care. It should just stop. The pain should stop, the world should stop.
Clint used a small, sharp pocket knife to cut the restraints loose. Tony was silent apart from quiet whimpers and something that sounded almost like a choked sob when he slumped into the last rope.
The archer had never seen Tony like this before and it was almost scary.
He cut the last of the ropes and caught Tony with an arm around his middle when he just collapsed, seemingly boneless.
"You almost did it. C'mon, buddy, just bear with me here, okay?" He pulled Tony's arm around his shoulders and groaned with the effort of keeping them both upright. The engineer was a lot fucking heavier than he looked like when he was halfway unconscious like this.
Clint dragged them both towards the door. Seeing the gun he had dropped there, he quickly decided that it couldn't hurt to be armed and knelt down to pick it up. Tony just sunk to his knees next to him, apparently still not aware of his surroundings.
Just when the archer's hand closed around the handle, a sharp voice rang out through the room: "Stop moving, let Stark go and drop the gun!"
"That's a lot of demands," Clint remarked, slowly glancing up at then two men in front of him. They weren't the ones he had left at the door and looked a lot more threatening than anyone else he had encountered in this facility so far.
If he let go of the gun now, they'd undoubtedly kill him and hook Tony back up to the machines. The only way to prevent this was using Tony himself.
I'm so sorry, Clint thought. Suddenly, he desperately hoped that Tony didn't notice what happened around him.
With a swift movement, he raised the gun - not aiming at the men, but Tony, the muzzle clanking against the glass of the reactor cover with a metallic thud.
"You either want Stark's knowledge or this thing here," he stated with fake calmness. "You come one step closer, I'm gonna put a bullet right through the reactor and you're not getting either of those."