Tony woke with a pounding head and blurred vision, and absolutely no idea where he was. When his vision cleared though, his watch and sunglasses were missing and he found himself on some unforgiving concrete flooring. Every bone and muscle in his body was protesting having to lay on a hard surface that he probably hadn't even been on for more than ten minutes.
A quick look around his concrete prison revealed that he was alone and that was what made his heart clench. He was with Stephen when (Tony assumed) they were drugged and grabbed on their way to a charity gala, and his husband was nowhere to be seen. It was unlikely that they only took the engineer. Even dumbass kidnappers would know to use the sorcerer against him. It wasn't exactly a secret that they were married. Tony just really hoped that Peter was still safe at home.
Shit, he fell deep into the parenting hole. Here he was, being held hostage for some asinine reason, and he was worrying about Peter. That wasn't bad but he felt that unless he had evidence that the teen was in danger, he should be worrying more about himself and Stephen. Definitely Stephen. He didn't care about himself right now. He needed to know where the sorcerer was and if he was okay.
He found out about ten minutes later that the doctor was not okay. The door to his windowless room slammed open and Stephen was thrown in where he fell to the ground in a bloody heap. The door was closed before Tony could get a look at their captors, so he turned his focus back onto his bleeding husband.
"Fuck."
That single word was an enormous understatement for their situation. When Tony managed to crawl over to the motionless sorcerer, he felt bile rise in his throat when he saw the man's injuries. Stephen was undoubtedly tortured for either information he didn't have or even just because he was married to the billionaire, and that thought made Tony swallow back his body's second attempt to vomit.
He tears open the doctor's bloodied shirt to find the worst of the injuries and he shrugs off his blazer to apply pressure to worst of what looked to be stab wounds. It definitely wasn't the only way Stephen was tortured. There were burn marks everywhere he could see skin, his hair was wet, and there were lash marks-
"Oh baby...I'm so sorry, and it's going to suck, but I really need you to wake up." Tony says as he lightly slaps Stephen's cheek. Thankfully, the sorcerer does wake up but the engineer's heart breaks when he comes to with a whimper. "I know. I know. I need you to focus your magic on your wounds and heal yourself. That's a thing right?"
"Don't..." Stephen mumbles incoherently. "...sleep..."
"No. No! No sleeping! You will not wake up! You're bleeding too much!" Tony panics until Stephen weakly reaches up and grabs his bicep.
"Tony. Don't let me sleep." He chokes out. "Not...not until I...heal myself."
Tony nods and watches carefully over the next (what felt like) hour as the worst of Stephen's wounds close, only having to lightly smack the sorcerer back to attention twice. When Stephen finally finished, and vocalized the fact, Tony gently pulls him toward the far wall and sits against it, letting Stephen lay his head in his lap. The sorcerer fell asleep in seconds.
In the midst of Tony's panic, he didn't fail to notice that Stephen was tech free as well. He really wanted to know if the sorcerer knew what was going on, but he didn't have the heart to ask him anything when he was in so much pain. Something Tony would fight to never let happen again. If their captors came back thinking they could just take Stephen again, they had another thing coming.
Tony sat there for a long time. He couldn't say how long, since there were no windows to show if it was night or day, hell, he didn't even know if it was still the same day they were taken. He may very well have been out for twenty-four hours and their captors got sick of waiting and took Stephen while he was unconscious. He was getting tired again but he wouldn't sleep. Not when Stephen was vulnerable.
It was hard anyway because the concrete floor and wall were hurting his ass and digging into his back. There would be no sleep for him
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Peter wanted to yell at his spider senses because he knew something was wrong. Tony and Stephen never came home from the party or whatever it was they went to and for once, Peter wished his parents had shoved him into a three piece suit and made him go with them. They hadn't called or texted with a change of plans, something they always did, so the teen's worry was through the roof. It actually took him a good hour to even think about telling the team and tracking his parents after he woke up that morning and found their bed empty. He asked FRIDAY if they had gone somewhere, but the AI stated they never came home.
So now the team was sitting silently in the living room while both FRIDAY and Victor tracked their corresponding humans, and Peter alternated between pacing and sitting to bite his thumb. The biting was quickly stopped by Bucky who would pull his hand away whenever Peter's fingers inched toward the teen's mouth and the former sergeant ignored the glares directed at him. So the vigilante stuck to pacing until FRIDAY finally spoke up.
"I managed to track Boss and the doctor approximately ten miles from town but then something interfered with the equipment."
"Look for any bunkers or warehouses near where you lost the signal." Rhodey orders.
"Sending satellite images to the tablet now." FRIDAY responds.
Rhodey picks up Tony's tablet from the coffee table before Peter can, and pulls up a hologram of the pictures. "These are all legitimate bases for SHIELD and...wait..." The colonel zooms in on a group of trees to show a well hidden part of a building. "FRIDAY...is that building still abandoned?"
"Yes Colonel. No one has bought it yet."
"That's our best bet. We'll take the Quinjet."
"Alright. Everybody suit up. Bruce stay here in case they might need medical attention." Steve orders and Bruce nods before leaving to stand-by in med-bay.
Rhodey turns to Peter when the teen's suit covers him. "Peter-"
"You can't leave me behind!" Peter blurts.
"I know kid. I just want you to promise that if I tell you to leave...then you leave. Alright? I'm responsible for you right now." Rhodey says calmly.
"Yeah...okay. I promise. I swear." The teen agrees and the colonel claps him on the shoulder.
"Good. Let's go get our idiots."
Their captors really were stupid enough to try to take Stephen away again, and Tony lost it. The moment the sorcerer was forcibly pulled from him, the engineer jumped to his feet and punched the man who held the sorcerer. He barely had enough time to stop his husband's imminent fall to the harsh ground and set him against the wall before the other men were swarming him and he was fighting again. When (not if, he told himself) they got out of here, Tony was going to thank Happy and Rhodey for forcing him to train with them (and eventually Clint and Natasha) so he didn't rely on his Iron Man armor.
Unfortunately his training only went so far when he was surrounded by four mini-hulks that were barely fazed when he hit them. Tony was pretty sure he was hurting himself more than them and the only reason the first guy dropped Stephen was probably because he was surprised Tony fought back. It was all short-lived when one of the men yanked Tony into a very tight chokehold and another grabbed the half-conscious sorcerer off the floor and held a knife up to him.
"Are you kidding me?!" Tony shouts. "Haven't you done enough to him? What is this about anyway? Money? Information?"
"Revenge." The billionaire's captor growls into his ear before pulling out a gun and shooting Stephen.
Tony yells out in alarm when blue eyes start to dull when the man holding the sorcerer throws him to the ground, and he freezes back up when the gun is turned on him.
"Revenge for those your weapons have killed or maimed." His captor continues. "So we will make you watch us slowly kill those you care about. Now that your husband is at death's door, we'll be going after your kid next."
The engineer fights to get out of the man's grasp. "Let me go!"
"No, Stark. You're going to stand here an watch him die."
Tony's anxiety went through the roof. One of his worst nightmares was coming true and there was nothing he could do. He couldn't call for his suit, or the team since he didn't have any of his tech, he wasn't strong enough to fight off the other men, and he had never felt so helpless in his life. Not even in Afghanistan. At least there he had a chance.
The screeching of metal breaks Tony out if his trance and the door to the room flies open to reveal a very angry Spiderman. White lenses look at Tony briefly and then turn to the dying sorcerer on the ground...and instantly turn black with red in the center. Instant kill mode. Peter was going to go against his personal standards for his own revenge. Tony couldn't let that happen.
"No! Humans! They're humans! You kill them then you're just lowering yourself to their level!"
Tony had never been so relieved to see white lenses come back. He was even more relieved when the vigilante turned his attention on the men in the room after webbing the gun out of the hand of Tony's captor, and knocked them all out. Peter's mask falls from his face, and both he and Tony rush to Stephen's side where Peter covers the sorcerer's gunshot wound with a compression web. Stephen was breathing heavily and when he coughed, some blood speckled the floor.
"E-Exit...wound..." Stephen gasps out.
Tony turns his husband onto his side as carefully as possible and almost sobs when he doesn't find one. Stephen couldn't heal himself if the bullet was still inside him.
The engineer turns him back to his regular position and gently cups his face. "We'll get you out of here. So you better stay awake."
Peter nods and holds back the threatening tears. "The others are here. We brought the Quinjet. I told them where we are so they're on their way."
"Peter..." Stephen whispers as he reaches up and pulls the boy's head down to his chest.
"You'll be okay Mum...please be okay..." Peter cries into the doctor's chest until Stephen's grip loosens and he looks up with red eyes to find blue eyes closing. "No!"
"Stephen! Stay awake!" Tony yells frantically.
The rest of the team arrive just as Stephen's hand falls to the ground and his eyes close, and Bucky rushes forward to pull the distressed teen away from the sorcerer. While he and Rhodey fight to keep Tony and Peter in their arms, Wanda and Steve move the unresponsive doctor out of the room and to the Quinjet. When Stephen was out of sight, the teen cried out his emotional pain that even Bucky got misty-eyed as he continued to hold the struggling boy back.
"He can't die! HE CAN'T DIE!"
Tony and Rhodey exit the master bedroom and the billionaire shudders as he rubs his hand over his mouth, and his best friend leads him into the living room where the rest of the team was waiting. Stephen was rushed to the med-bay where Bruce and a few other doctors were waiting, and since Peter was still frantic, Rhodey had to sedate him. It was the only way to calm the boy down. He would have made himself sick if they let him wait for news about the sorcerer. Tony was barely hanging on as it was.
"Here." Natasha says as she hand over his and Stephen's missing tech. "We found them in one of the rooms. They had something built to scramble their signal."
Tony ignores his paranoia about being handed things and takes them. "Thanks Romanov." He mutters.
"He'll be okay." She says.
The engineer blinks back tears. "Will he? I watched him get shot! Bleed out! I watched my kid cry from fear of losing another parent and there was nothing I could do!" He shouts.
"Tones...dont make me put you down too."
Tony scoffs and slumps into an armchair. They all spent the next few hours in complete silence since the mechanic was refusing to respond to any of them. He just wanted to wait for news whether it was bad or good. The fact that Bruce was doing surgery meant Stephen had a chance of surviving, even if it was the slightest one.
Tony would take what he could get.
"Tony."
The billionaire's head snaps up from its resting place in his hands and he finds Bruce standing in front of the elevator. He and the rest of the team stand up as he walks over and the scientist rubs the back of his neck.
"It was touch and go for a while...but he'll be okay. Stephen will be okay." Tony covers his face and nearly collapses from relief as Bruce continues. "Peter saved his life."
"He saved both of our lives-"
"No...Tony...that compression web saved Stephen's life. Without it, he would have died either before leaving the building or enroute. Strange would not have made it to the tower otherwise."
"How long until my wife wakes up?" Tony asks quietly.
"An hour at least."
"Peter should be up soon. I'll go wait for him first then we'll go down to med-bay."
Bruce nods and makes his way back to the elevator to go back down to med-bay and Tony fights through his relieved trembles to walk back to the master bedroom. Tony opens the door and steps through, quietly closing the door behind him and walks over to the bed to sit next to Peter. He only had to wait another twenty minutes for the teen to wake up and doe-like eyes blink up at him.
"You drugged me." Peter mutters accusingly.
"Actually Uncle Rhodey did, but he just wanted to help."
Peter plays with a stray thread on the comforter. "I-Is...is it just us now?" He whispers and Tony could tell he was desperately trying not to cry again so he reassured him with a small smile.
"No baby...Mom is going to be okay. You saved his life with your webs."
Peter looks back at him. "Can we see him?"
"Yeah. We might have to wait a while for him to wake up but we can sit with him if you want."
Peter nods and shuffles after his father once he climbs out of the bed, and Tony says nothing when the teen softly grabs the back of his shirt when they step onto the elevator. It was a simple reassurance for Peter that although Stephen was going to be okay, that Tony was still there and safe. When the elevator opened on the med floor, Tony leads his son into Stephen's room and only falters for half a second when he finds the sorcerer connected to a few more things than he was used to seeing when the team got severely injured. Peter didn't seem to notice the slight hesitation and Tony was grateful. He needed to look strong for Peter.
"Why don't we watch a movie while we wait for him to wake up?"
Peter simply nods and they drag a couple of seats over to Stephen's bed and they sit down to watch Ratatouille. About half an hour into the movie, the two jump when the sorcerer grumbles.
"If any of you cook with the help of a rodent, tell me now."
Tony and Peter jump to their feet, sending their chairs sliding back a couple of inches and they move closer to hover over the occupied bed. Stephen reaches up once again to cup Peter's cheek and smiles softly.
"I'm sorry for scaring you cub."
"You're so grounded." Peter replies with a wet chuckle and Stephen responds in kind.
"He's not the only one you scared asshole."
"Oh right. Myself. How could I forget?"
"You're hurt. I'm going to let that slide." Tony says as he leans down and kisses his husband. "On a scale from one to ten, one being hit by a truck and ten being held in the fiery pits of hell, how do you feel?"
"You don't believe in hell."
"Answer the question."
"Four. Hit by a truck and set on fire."
Peter frowns. "Should we get Bruce?"
Stephen smiles. "No. I'm healing myself as we speak." Both Tony and Peter open their mouths to tell him not to push himself but the sorcerer seemed to know what they were going to say. "Slowly. I won't overdo it. Peter, come cuddle while you can before Bruce comes back."
The teen laughs and carefully climbs on the bed to lay next to the sorcerer and Tony returns to his seat, with Stephen's hand in his. They return their attention to the movie, and Stephen falls asleep ten minutes into the second one when Bruce comes back to check on his patient. He opens his mouth when he finds Peter snuggled into Stephen's side, calmly watching the new movie, but decides to say nothing since the doctor was resting. Having Peter on the bed was probably Stephen's idea anyway. Those two were nearly attached to the hip. This family always found comfort with each other and he wasn't about to stop it.
"Don't you get tired of watching Disney movies and Star Wars?" Bruce asks instead.
Peter let out the most offended gasp in the history of America.