Day 11
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The problem about going against Steve Rogers was the sheer improbability for anyone to ever come up on top, even if Steve was HYDRA's bitch. Tony woke up to a brain so cottony it took him one full minute to fully embrace the fact that he'd woken up. Still mortal. His physical form felt so stiff from anaesthesia – unless they whipped him so hard his nervous system was shot – for a split second he thought he was blue and see-through again.
This was real. This was all real.
He was flat on his stomach, facedown, with his head tilted to the side so he wouldn't suffocate. Because that would be too easy, and Steve probably decided he hadn't suffered enough. And the only reason he hadn't chocked himself on pillow stuffing was because Steve was sitting next to his bed, in a plastic chair, his cold eyes boring into Tony's skull.
"Good morning," Steve greeted, and Tony did not even blink. "How are you feeling?" Mere rhetoric, certainly, so he shut his eyes, ignored Steve and willed himself back to sleep, only for an itch to creep up his throat and send him railing into a body-wrecking fit of coughs. Steve flew over with a glass of water and a straw, which Tony gratefully took a sip from. It could be spiked with whatever, his sluggish mind warned him, but honestly? He couldn't care any less. And that, was scarier.
"Easy, Tony."
His back had been mummified, that much he could tell. His every twitch was accompanied by flesh and skin pulling in ways that made his scalp crawl. How extensive was his injury? The bandages covered the base of his neck to the top of his butt. Forget that – he was shaking with the chills, but Steve was stooping over him wearing a thin cotton shirt with a HYDRA logo sewn into his breast pocket. Since when did the cold not bother him anyway?
"Let me check your temperature." Steve's hand was already on Tony's forehead when he asked. He tutted and pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket. Look, Steve had precedents, so it was only natural for Tony to become skittish around unlabelled bottles. He also knew Steve would have no problem pinning him down and shoving things down his throat, so why resist? "You're having a fever, Tony. I sponged you whole night, do you remember? You mumbled in your sleep."
Another wave of iciness washed over him. A slip of the tongue informing HYDRA his subconscious was all Steve needed to win the War. Maybe buried unnaturally deep in the recesses of his not-fully-healed memory was a location of the rebels' hideout, or plans for counterattacks.
"What do you want with me, Steve?" he croaked, and Steve's eyes snapped to him, seemingly hanging onto every word that was spilling from his lips. "I have no use to you. Let me go, for old time sake?"
And Steve laughed. It sounded so foreign. "No use to me?" He popped two pills onto his palm, and shoved them under Tony's nose. Looked like innocuous aspirin, but Tony took them regardless. "Tony, I don't get you. Join me. Work with HYDRA. All the ideals that you used to champion, the things that you did during the War – I know not a day goes by without you thinking it, ever since Ulysses showed up. It worked, Tony! You were right when you said the people – these… simpletons! – can't be trusted with their own minds! Look at what had become of the Avengers! A hollow shell of their former glory, because they can't be trusted to put aside their ego and selfish desires, that we have to step in and set things right. And we are, Tony. One step at a time, we are undoing the corrupt institution – all that bull about 'liberty, justice for all'?"
"You don't mean that, Steve." He was fading, and it was either poor health, or a crushing realisation that Steve Rogers was beyond saving.
"For all the back and forth that we had, we keep coming back to this. This is how things always play out between us, Tony. It's natural selection. It's predestined!"
"It's one hell of a mistake! You made sure I see the errors of my ways, and God, Steve, how many more are supposed to die before you craft your so-called perfect world? And you dare call us egoistical?"
Steve shifted his weight on his heels, and Tony flinched. That did it, he tore open something. Steve's eyes rolled over his back and lingered at one spot, and his features turned grim. "You're bleeding again, Tony. I never meant for this to happen."
"… Fuck you."
"I am not the enemy."
"You are when you took your friends' lives."
"And you didn't?" Fuck HYDRA. Fuck Steve. "You think this doesn't kill me?"
"You know what? If you want to kill me, you better do it right now. Because if I can't save you, I will stop you. And if that means taking you out, I will, Steve. I will. That's a promise. You and I never do tire of this dance, don't we?"
Steve straightened up and dusted his knees. They were done here. Steve was leaving. Tony hiked his body up on an elbow. "I know you all my life, Tony. You'll come around."
"No, never! You son of a –"
"Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Steve!"
And he screamed himself hoarse, threw tantrums in the confinement of his bed space. He swore and cursed and cried until there was nothing else to give, but a prayer, the perverse kind in which he hoped, he wished that Steve would return to normal, and if the price was his own wretched life?
So be it.