When Tony comes to, he, Natasha, Clint, and Steve are in a shipping container and already in route to some undisclosed location. Wherever they're going, for whatever reason, Tony knows nothing good can come out of it. His armor is missing, and not only does that make him feel naked, but it ticks him off, too. That is his suit and his way to protect himself and his team.
Tony and the two assassins are bound hand and foot, Clint and Natasha more thoroughly than Tony. Though when he struggles against the rope and tape and (what are they, paranoid?) handcuffs on his wrists, he finds the bad guys hadn't been slacking off when they'd contained him, either. Steve, their own super soldier, is literally dripping with chains. Despite his efforts, they aren't breaking. He can't get free.
As soon as they reach the bad guys' compound—and it is a compound; Tony can't help but scoff at how cliché it is—they pull Steve away from them. Tony fights the men, so do Natasha and Clint, but there's little they can do trussed up as they are. Tony doesn't know where Thor and Bruce are—last he saw during the battle, they were happily smashing away at the psycho of the week's drone/robot failures. According to one of the smirking guards, the demigod and Hulk are being contained in another part of the building.
"I can say hello to them if you'd like," he says, fingering the gun in his holster with a smile that tells Tony exactly what he means. Tony snarls, wishing he still had the suit on. Or that he had the use of his hands so he could punch the moron.
When they are shoved into their cell, Tony can't help but make a crack or two or five over the lack of light and what it must mean for funding if they can't even afford more than a single dim light bulb in their cell. Honestly, he's not sure what he's saying; his mouth just runs sometimes. What he does know is that his remarks are scathing and insulting and that Clint finds them somewhat amusing, if his snort is anything to go by.
"Enjoy the show," the guard Tony really wants to punch says with a wink. Tony turns his back on him, even as he puzzles over the words.
Natasha and Clint immediately set to work untying each other as soon as the door closes and they're left alone. Tony's attention is focused on their, quite frankly, awesome teamwork for a long moment, until the pane of glass on the wall across from him grabs his attention. He starts forward to look through it, adjusting his stride with the leg irons, to study the large room on the other side of what he assumes is a one-way mirror. The walls are white, unlike the dark grey of their cell, and there's a long metal table and a chair that looks like it's bolted to the floor. It's the cart full of knives and other assorted tools that catches his attention, however. The guard's words are starting to make sense in a sick way.
"Uh…guys?" he gestures for them to come over.
"This isn't good," Clint says as he comes to stand by Tony's side. Tony cocks an eyebrow at him before the archer spins him around to untie what he can. There's little they can do about their handcuffs besides move their hands in front of them, or the chains around their ankles; at least until one of them finds something to pick the locks with. "I don't like this," he continues.
"Join the club," Tony mutters.
"What did you do to my team?" Steve's voice comes out of a little speaker above the glass. When Tony turns back, the lights have been turned on next door, and Steve is being dragged into the room with the cart full of knives. And Tony means literally dragged, because the Captain's still covered in chains. He's struggling tooth and nail, but the six guards surrounding him have the upper hand with the Captain contained as he is. Tony bangs angrily on the window at the sight only to fall to his knees in agony. Giving an unsteady curse, he cradles his hand to him.
"What happened?" Natasha asks, and Tony turns his hand so she can see the blisters already forming on his fist.
He has to clear his throat and take a few deep breaths before he can answer. Despite that, his voice still has a slight shake. "Unless you want a perm, I'd suggest not touching that."
"The hell?" Clint asks as they watch the men shove Steve into the chair and secure him. "Cap? CAP!" he yells.
When Steve fails to react, Tony says, "The room's soundproofed. We can hear him; he can't hear us; we can't knock on the mirror. I'm going to take a page out of Legolas' book here and state the obvious again. This isn't good."
Their captors want information, of course. And it's nothing that Tony knows about, despite his many hacks into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s servers. It's nothing that Clint and Natasha know either, Tony can tell, when they both look at each other with the faintest trace of confusion on their faces.
They use everything they can against Steve—their fists, a metal pipe, pliers, knives, a whip. Electricity. Waterboarding.
Livid, Clint and Tony pace the cell while Natasha simply stands still, a frozen statue that won't look away from their leader. Steve barely flinches, and Tony's respect—which he'd already given the Captain after the battle in New York and that's only developed on their other missions and during their downtime—grows even more. He's proud of how sarcastic Steve is in the face of the men and their questions. Though in saying "flinches," he means Steve is no nearer to giving them the information they want, not…not that he hasn't… It's taken a lot of effort, but they've managed to make him scream. They are making him scream, and Tony silently promises with each yell to return the favor to them as soon as he, Clint, and Natasha get free.
Steve is back in the chair now. He's folded over, arms bulging as he fights to break free. He hasn't stopped struggling this whole time, even when he's been barely conscious. They ask him again, and Steve, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath from the last session, gasps, "Do what…you want to me. I won't tell you…anything."
So they pull Clint into the room, chain him to the wall. They use their knives on him, but they don't even try to interrogate him. There's something wrong with the situation, Tony can feel it. Somehow they know Steve is the only one who has this information, and as such, hurting Clint is an effort to make Steve talk.
The Captain still won't tell them what they want to know, though. His expression is hard, set in lines of anger and defiance. It's his eyes that tell the rest of the story. Fastened on Clint the whole time he's being hurt, they apologize. And when Clint throws his head back in a silent cry, they promise revenge to their captors and comforting strength to Barton.
Natasha's next, but they stop shortly after they start to torture her when she laughs at them. Tony thinks that wounds Steve more—her reaction—than if they'd continued to hurt her. Steve's ridiculously protective of them, and he mourns what Natasha has faced in her past.
Tony's next. He laughs, too, but it doesn't count because of the stupid, effing tears running down his face. Steve meets his gaze head on, blue eyes oh-so-steady. That's when Tony notices the guilt and regret.
This is not Tony's first experience with being kidnapped. It's not his first experience being tortured, either, although it's usually because he has information other people want or skills other people want to utilize. Hello, Afghanistan. The point is, he knows how this works. The most important rule in situations like this is to never give in to the demands of crazy people, terrorists, or kidnappers who can take the most innocuous piece of information or the smallest gadget and wreak havoc with it. No matter what these men threaten or promise, Steve can't tell them what they want to know.
So Tony reassures Steve the only way he can. "You l-listen to m-me," he stammers when they give the cattle prod a moment's rest. "We signed up f-for this." Not exactly true; Tony did not sign up to get tortured by stupid minions or idiotic villains. He did, however, sign up to be a part of this team, of the Avengers, and to his surprise, he's found he won't throw that away for anything. "Don't you feel…feel guilty. Got it, P-Pops?"
They don't like that he's comforting the Captain, and he suffers for it. When he regains consciousness, he's back in the cell and propped carefully in the corner, a small courtesy he doesn't doubt came from his teammates and not their captors. Natasha and Clint are watching the other room—her face blank, his murderous. Tony can't get up yet to see, but he can hear Steve choking and his strangled gasps for air. He slams his hand against the floor in bitter helplessness. He knows what they're doing to him.
There's silence from the room, from Steve then, for too long. Someone who is not their captain begins to count softly. Tony looks up, his wide eyes latched on the two agents.
"Four," Natasha says, voice flat, and a split second later Steve's coughing, his breathing rough. It happens once more before Tony realizes she's keeping track of how many times the Captain's passed out and stopped breathing.
The counting is them giving him CPR.
Tony barely manages to make it to the bucket across the cell before he throws up.
They show Steve pictures after that. He shakes his head at the images and tries to look away, but they won't let him. "No," he says after the fifth one, and his denials grow more desperate with each one he's shown. The man with the photos smirks and tosses them on the floor in front of the Captain. They fan out, and Tony takes a slow, deep breath.
"They're not real," he says quietly, even as the evidence of Bruce's and Thor's death stares up at them in vivid color. "They're not."
They threaten to kill Clint, Natasha, and Tony, too, if Steve won't tell them what they want to know. Eyes wild, Steve begs the men to let the three of them go. When they ask for the information one last time, he stumbles. He stumbles, but he doesn't give in. He can't.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. He looks each of his team members in the eye as the trigger is pulled. When Tony's body falls on top of Natasha's, a neat little hole between his eyes, Steve lets out a deep, shuddering breath and bows his head for one long moment.
It's not real—they're holograms. Damn good ones, down to the blood spatter on the wall, but still. Not real. Steve doesn't…he doesn't know that. He believes they're dead.
Tony and Natasha and Clint are screaming for him, but he can't hear them. They stop calling out to him, stunned, when he lifts his head to the ceiling and howls.
It's a wild sound, a broken sound, and they know. The three of them know.
Steve's not there anymore when their captors next start on him again. His eyes—so full of emotion before (an open book for his teammates, at least) are dead. He doesn't say another word, simply keeps his eyes focused on the floor.
Their rescue is unexpected, but as Thor and the Hulk crash into the room, they are already yelling and pointing to the mirror. The Hulk takes one look through the glass and roars. That, Steve does hear if the jerk of his body is a good indication. He still doesn't look up, though.
He doesn't think it's real.
Even the Hulk smashing through the wall is not enough evidence to fully convince Steve he isn't hallucinating; though it does at least make him look up from the floor for the first time in the last several hours. Their big green rage monster flicks the men who have been hurting their captain aside—they probably won't get up again anytime soon, and Tony only regrets that he won't get the chance to return the hospitality they've shown him and his team—and stands over Steve protectively. The rest of the team follows him into the room, but when Steve finally tears his gaze away from the Hulk to see them, there's still nothing in his expression. No relief, no joy, nothing. His gaze sweeps across the pictures on the floor and from there to the wall, where there's still "evidence" of the executions he witnessed.
They surround him carefully, quickly, and reach for him. Natasha frames his face with her hands and forces him to look at her, and Clint grasps his arm and Tony his shoulder. Thor catches on and grasps his other shoulder, while the Hulk flicks one of their captors again for good measure. He turns back to the Captain and says slowly and painstakingly, "Cap safe. Team safe."
It's enough, then. Steve breaks in another way than he had earlier, his body shuddering with sobs. He stutters, "I'm sorry," and "Forgive me, I couldn't…I wanted to…" and "Thought you were gone—thought you were all gone, thank God, thank God," over and over again. Natasha wipes his tears away and kisses his forehead while Thor snaps Clint's handcuffs so they can work on the metal bands and chains holding Steve to the chair. Tony squeezes Steve's shoulder, and when the man looks up at him, he's wrecked. Tony can see that clearly.
"You can't get rid of us that easily, Cap," Tony says, tilting his chin down. "We're family."
Wrecked and grateful and broken and alive and hopeful.
Coulson's standing in the middle of the Hulk-sized hole, yelling at someone in his earpiece. It's obvious he is irate, but any other emotion is carefully locked away as he watches over each of them. There's a reason for the usually stoic agent's reaction and why their captors knew only Steve held the information they wanted, and Tony's going to get to the bottom of it. He is. Just not right now.
Coulson won't let any of the agents swarming pass by him, giving the team a moment to themselves. It's a mess—the situation's a mess, Steve's a mess. They all are. But they're together, and that's enough.
For right now…that's enough.
I hope you enjoyed the story-I would love to get your feedback, if you have a moment. I have a sequel loosely planned and several other stories that I've started to write for the Avengers. This fandom is awesome and addicting. ;) Thank you for reading!