Hello Internet:
Warning, there's a shit-ton of angst in here.
Secondly, this is going to be a series of one-shots of just how screwed up and awesome the one and only Tony Stark is.
Thirdly, I kinda want to turn this into one of those stories like "oh, the team gets transported into Tony's mind and they see how screwed up and totally not like himself he really is" but I have no idea how to do that in a way that isn't totally ripping off someone else's idea. I need time to figure that out, but in the mean time I just love these one-shots and think they can be units in themselves. Don't correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't care.
And, I think I'll get around to doing that proper story that encompasses angsty one-shots from the entire team, but it just so happens there are a lot more for Tony because he's, like, Tony.
Anyway, enjoy!
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"Sir, Director Fury of S.H.E.I.L.D is on the line." Jarvis's monotone broke in from the blare of music in the lab.
Tony glanced up from where he was fiddling with the hologram of his latest repulsor design. "Oh, and what does old Popeye want? Another contract? Because I swear the firewalls on that guy-"
"Sir, he says you would want to know immediately."
Tony huffed and pushed the hologram away. Director Fury always managed to piss him off, if for no other reason than he was equally as good at keeping secrets as he himself was.
Which meant Tony mistrusted his very existence, and was rather annoyed the man kept calling to talk weapons. He wasn't interested in weapons he wasn't using for his suit, thankyouverymuch. Every single weapon he did make was tracked with so much meticulous care that Tony could list off the top of his head where each one in the world was currently with 97.4% accuracy. Shield didn't like giving up their secrets, but they needed weapons. Tony did weapons, but he did NOT do secrets—at least, not when he wasn't in on them. It was a constant impasse that had given both he and Fury more migraines than they could count.
"Fine, put him through." Tony snapped unhappily.
"Stark."
"What'd you want?" He demanded dismissively. But there was a pause, which immediately struck Tony as extremely odd and incredibly bad. Fury didn't hesitate or mince words—again, another trait he abhorred to admit he shared with the man.
"…we found him."
Tony froze.
Every cell in his being stopped for that one moment.
Then he felt his artificial heart shatter.
0000000 Later 0000000
Who knows how long later he was standing in a lab so secure its very presence was doubted even by the hundreds of agents currently working in the complex. Fury himself was walking them down, Coulson accompanying them with the ever-present agent Hill shadowing silently behind.
He could never know what Fury was thinking, but Coulson at least was relaxed enough to spare him an excited smile after awhile. Even the stoic Hill smiled a bit every time the discovery was mentioned.
Somehow, the chipper mood only made Tony feel more depressed. Angry even.
At the same time he was happy. How the holy hell was that possible? How could he be as excited as a child on Christmas, curious beyond belief, completely dreading and nearly convinced he should just kill himself right there, all at the same time?
His head was spinning, and for a man who could figure out fourteen different higher level quantum physics equations, three hundred pages of code, and four new project designs complete with extensive experimental calculations all simultaneously in his brain without so much as blinking, that was most certainly saying something. He felt sick, he felt like he wanted to cry or yell and slap that goofy smile off Coulson or punch Fury in his good eye and yet all he could decide on was to simply follow, and watch.
"Where?" He asked, surprising even himself with how even his voice came out.
"Just north of the Arctic circle." Coulson answered easily. "Radiation from the old bombs he had on board distorted our readings while searching, but the satellite program you developed for us in seeking out the remaining Starktech was able to compensate and pinpoint it."
Tony almost let out a hysterical laugh, but schooled himself just in time.
So it was his fault?
Well, fault was a strong word, it wasn't fault so much as…
Yes, it was his fault.
He had designed that program to hash out every corner of the earth in which his weapons had landed, so he could either track them and their uses or destroy them as need be. He supposed…in a way… that stupid shield was Starktech too. Vibranium was one of the—if not the—rarest substance on the planet; the only people on earth who'd accumulated more than unusable traces by accident was the Stark family. Tony had used it a couple times in his more special creations, things he'd wanted back immediately once he realized they weren't being used for good, but the program had been set, and then…
It was all his fault.
Not that he wasn't happy, not that it wasn't his program and his funding, not that this wasn't what his father had spent every spare moment of his life trying and failing to do whereas Tony succeeded inadvertently, but it just…
He felt like something inside him was off. He couldn't place it. Contrary to popular belief, while he may have act self-absorbed, but he was actually the most self-aware person on the planet.
He knew his faults better than anyone could ever know themselves or know another person. He knew them, and he worked with them.
This was one of his faults, but he had no clue where to go with it—it was one of the only unresolved things left in his world. For all his life he'd been ignoring it in the extremely useless hope that it'd just go away.
Captain freaking America.
Steve Rodgers, as his father would never for a second let him forget, had been a better man than Tony would ever be. Apparently, he still was a better man, seeing as he wasn't entirely dead just yet.
And before he knew it he was there, in a room full of highly amped up scientists trying to tackle the problem in front of them: how to get the world's greatest hero out a huge block of ice without killing him further.
"We got him half out, intending on a proper burial, when they realized he was still alive." Fury said, walking towards the center of all the fuss. Tony didn't want to look, but at the same time he was dying to—and it wasn't like he was about to show weakness in front of the man he mistrusted most in the world. "This is Dr. Kane, he's been in charge so far, but they've hit a snag." He introduced to a haggard looking man, tall and thin but with a fiery determination in his eyes.
"The Captain is alive," He said, jumping right into the task at hand as he greeted Stark with a nod. "His heart is beating at sub-EKG frequency, but spikes in abnormal radiation caused us to look more into it and realize it was still functioning, if not slightly frozen over. The strange radiation is keeping his cells from decaying, but they're not allowing the serum he was injected with to fully heal them. The more we unfreeze, the more damage we fear we're doing, but as it stands we simply just don't know much for sure." He explained quickly.
"Must be the serum," Tony said shortly. This he knew: he could talk all day about science, just not… everything else clouding his head. "It had altered versions of radioactive ions forced into a diatomic state; it probably stayed in his cells and is keeping permafrost from taking over." He recited quickly. At Fury's raised eyebrow he scoffed loudly. "Don't give me that, you know Howard was obsessive over this stuff. That was the main reason he never thought Rodgers was dead." He dropped the information without care, not bothering to give a damn about the significant looks the agents—and scientists— were giving each other.
Yes, he knew a little about the super soldier serum. His father had known quite a lot, but he refused to admit it, too caught up in his belief that only the great Steve Rodgers could handle it. To this day, he remained right, but only because Shield and everyone else was getting involved and turning people into monsters. Only Bruce Banner and his Hulk had ever come close, and in Tony's oh-so-not-quite-humble opinion, Banner had pulled it off better.
Truth be told, from what Tony knew of the serum, if he hadn't been a firm believer in the power of science, he might even say it was a miracle Rodgers hadn't gone green instead. It seemed that was what the serum was actually designed to do, except it had been gentler to the young solider it was tested out on for some unknown reason. Perhaps Howard had known what that reason was and that was why he never spoke about the serum save for the couple drunken rants Tony had been on the receiving end of as his father had babbled about long lost experiments, the serum included.
He'd heard enough to know what to do if he were so ever inclined to try the serum out again. Howard knew exactly what to do but refused to say it aloud in the silent belief no one would ever be good enough to deserve that kind of power except his long lost friend. He remained silent about it even as he was ridiculed for continuing a search everyone had given up on, because he alone knew that the serum had to power to keep Rodgers alive. So, the serum remained secret in the Stark family, but for two very different reasons.
Tony pushed those thoughts aside too. Despite Dr. Kane's wide-eyed, eager look, he wasn't giving out what he knew of the serum, and that was that. So many people had died for it, and he personally had lost… everything, in a way, indirectly because of it. Because of it and the hope it gave, Howard had spent his and Tony's entire life obsessed beyond logic. He hated the thing, hated it with a passion he just wanted to strangle, so… no. The secret of the serum was going to die with him, whenever fate chose that time to be.
"Well… apparently we made a good call in contacting you then. Do you think you can help us get him out?" Dr. Kane asked urgently, deciding the shelf the fact Tony obviously knew more than he was going to openly admit.
As he spoke, it was obvious to Tony—looking at all the people frantically trying to figure out a way to fix this—that the good captain still meant a lot to people. Tony doubted anyone here hadn't been told as a child at some point of the greatness that was Captain America.
Some small part of him wanted to answer 'no'. It wasn't as if the captain would die—he couldn't die, not from frostbite anyway.
At the same time he was over the moon, getting to be the one to finally get that nagging voice in the back of his head that constantly told him he'd never be as great as his father or the hero his father had worshiped to shut up, getting to be the one to save that hero.
At the same time he felt sick.
Of course he could. He already knew the answer to the problem he already knew would present itself if the captain had ever been found after floating for 70 years in a block of ice. He already knew what buttons to press, what calculations to run, what chemicals to call up.
Simple.
He still felt sick.
Finally, he could prevent himself no more, he finally looked at the man that was still half frozen on the lab table, still frozen in uniform with that damn shield resting as if on a pedestal on a nearby table.
He was exactly like the pictures Howard had shown him. He hadn't changed a fraction, he only looked like he was sleeping except for the deep blue color of his skin and the frost clinging to every bit of him. His chest didn't rise, and the monitors showed the barest hint of a pulse that would've meant nothing if it weren't for the fact this was the hero, the one who would always be able to bounce back with a little push…
That little strange something inside of him finally slipped from where it'd been perched precariously and shattered. He could feel himself ripping himself in two, with his own mind.
"Seriously Doc? Give me two minutes," He scoffed in the doctors face and flashing them all a confident smile.
He wondered if the smile reached his eyes, because his words definitely didn't reach his heart.
Without much feeling in his limbs he made a show of waltzing over to the computers and commandeering them from the young lab assistants, typing away as fast as he could while still looking casual. The quicker this was over the quicker he could just run and hide and pretend the world was sane again. Pretend his world was still intact.
Within minutes of furious thought and typing that only served to distract him a little, he started barking orders at the lab rats, none too kindly. He soon had his creation in a syringe and waltzed back over to the frozen hero.
He hadn't moved. Of course he hadn't, he had been waiting and not moving for 70 years for Howard Stark to finally save him, and all he got was the half-ass replacement his son was.
This was the man who he'd lost his childhood to. This was the man his father had compared him to at every turn. No matter the fact he was creating computers by age four, robots by age six, and the world's first artificial intelligence by age nine, he was still not good enough for Howard Stark. Tony had turned into Howard Stark, though far more brilliant, and that only served to anger the older man in his drunken rages, produced by his frustrations with his hopeless search. Tony had been the spitting image of his father, when all Howard had wanted was someone like Captain America to look up to again. Instead, he found a disappointment to look down to in his son.
This was the man his father had chosen over him, the man who Tony knew better than anyone else, against his will.
And oh, how he knew Steve Rodgers wasn't to blame. He knew damn well that no matter how much he hated Howard Stark for doing this to him, for giving him something impossible to live up to, he knew it was not the Captain's fault. The one thing he had learned from his father better than any other lesson in science or robotics, was that Captain America was a hero, and that Tony was not.
Everyone in this room—hell, this country—loved this hero. It was obvious in their eyes the same way their annoyance and impatience with him was as obvious as if it were still his father's face looking back at him at every turn. A suit of iron was a cheap trick compared to the real hero, and everyone knew it. It made every fake word out of his mouth taste like bitter honey.
And just like that he was thirteen again, getting his ass handed to him by a drunk of a father because Howard Stark had just spent 10 months out searching and again failed at bringing his long lost friend home. He was that small twerp who'd gone to college four years too early, that nerd everyone kicked as they passed, just like a rock on a sidewalk, simply because they could.
And so, that something inside him broke just a little more, grinding into dust, only it was ok this time. He already knew he wasn't worth much besides a fat check, and no one with the exception of possibly Pepper would ever care if he just faded away and left them all alone. Depressing as it sounded, he'd gotten used to that feeling a long time ago. These past months of being Iron Man made him forget, just for a little, that he wasn't truly worth a dime. This was just life reminding him that it was still painfully true.
So he might've felt like crying, but Tony Stark doesn't hesitate, especially not when being watched. So he acted on autopilot, numb and blind.
After all, the world needed a real hero again.
He jabbed the syringe into the captain's chest, into his still human heart, not wired and mechanized like his own, and pushed down the release. After a few seconds he pulled it out and took a step back. He turned on his heel, making to leave, almost out the door and gone, but not before hearing the soft sound of someone inhaling slightly in the silent room, and the rapid beeping of a machine announcing a returning heart.
