J for Jump Part 2

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"Dammit, Anthony!" The man's moustache sat proudly in his stern upper lip, and his hair was combed back neatly without as much as a single hair out of place. The only sign of instability on his whole visage was the anger that shone in his dark brown irises. The bridge of Howard Stark's nose was pinched between his thumb and index finger on his right hand while his left hand sat sternly in his waistcoat pocket. Looking back at him with larger, more innocent versions of the same eyes, six year old Tony Stark sat on the floor of the bathroom pinching his own nose – not out of frustration like his father, but to staunch the crimson flow that trickled so readily down his pale and quivering chin.

"Papa, I'm sorry but-"

"No, Anthony. No 'buts', no 'I'm sorry'. I told you to handle this crap with the other boys, didn't I? I gave you a job to do, and you couldn't do it. I don't have time to come to your rescue over every little thing, Tony!"

"Papa, there's three of them and they're so much bigger I couldn't even run aw-"

"DON'T." Howard's hand left his disappointed brow and shot out almost as if to deflect his son's next words. "Do not even try to tell me you ran away. Don't do it, son. We don't run away from fights." Howard crouched next to his boy, but not to give him comfort, only to stare him down. "Would Steve Rogers run from a fight?" Tony shook his head and tried to sniffle, but ended coughing on a little bit of blood that ran back down his sinuses.

"That's right. No. Even if there was more of them, or they were stronger, Captain America would never run from a fight." He jabbed a calloused pointer finger into Tony's forehead. "We Starks have natural weapons – we have our brains. If you can't fight your way out – if you aren't strong enough - you need to think your way out."

Tony only nodded, exchanging his soiled red tissue for a clean wad of toilet paper.

"Yes, Papa."

Howard Stark seemed to soften for a moment. He brought his hand up and gave a rough but paternal ruffle to his son's unruly brown curls. Howard sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Someday, Tony, you will be glad that I didn't swoop in and save you. In the end, son, you can only ever rely on yourself. That's the whole of it."

Tony's eyes were glued to the Greek tile on the bathroom floor, but had he been looking up into his father's gaze, he would have seen a tired man with a tumultuous expression. Pride and sorrow mixed in with the refined facade of dignity and control. Howard was hurting for his son.

The moment passed all too soon.

"Alright, boy. Let's get you cleaned up. Go find your mother – go on." He squeezed Tony's shoulder and pushed him off towards the downstairs kitchens where Maria would be overseeing preparations for Sunday dinner.

"And Anthony?" Howard called after him. Tony turned to face his father at the top of the stairs.

"I expect that internal combustion schematic completed and left on my desk in the study before you go to bed tonight."

Tony gave a small but genuine smile, squeezing tighter on his bruised and battered nose. "It will be, Dad."

"Good. Now, off you go."

"Wi' b', Dad…'promise…."

"Tony? Tony, talk to me, please! Barton – radio ahead to SHIELD medical, we're only twenty minutes out – tell them to prep two intensive care units."

"I….'promise…like…Cap'n…m'ica…be bra'….don'…run 'way…"

"Tony, Tony please you're not making any sense." Steve Rogers was cradling the man's head, suit helmet laying discarded at the floor of the quinjet that Hawkeye was pushing to extraordinary speeds.

Tony's face was a mess, and according to the basic x-rays JARVIS had taken in the quinjet, his left femur was bruised as well as a complete dislocation of his right elbow and shoulder. He had extensive damage to his orbital bones as well as a fractured left cheekbone. His body was riddled with gashes where crumpled suit spikes were slicing through skin and shallow muscle. He looked like he had just gone a round with half a dozen prize fighters.

Tony groaned again, muttering incoherently. Steve was going crazy with worry. Watching his teammate collapse like a sack of flour was painful on a good day – on this day, it had sent him over the edge. The soldier had been in hysterics loading Tony onto the plane, half of his time spent shouting in anger and the other half had him running his fingers through the engineer's bloody hairline begging him to wake up and tell them he was alright.

As if on cue, Tony's bloodshot eyes seemed to roll out of the top of his head and settle hazily on Steve's face, blinking out of sync. Steve recognized that Tony wasn't all there, and sucked in a shaky breath.

"Dammit, Stark! I told you to not mess up, didn't I?" Steve was hoping against hope that Tony was finally coming to, but Stark seemed completely lost. "I gave you an order, Tony! And you couldn't even follow something as simple as don't make any mistakes."

"D…D't worry…Papa…"

The Captain's eyes got huge. His anger immediately faded.

Howard. He thinks I'm Howard.

"I din'…run 'way…I…"

"Hush, Tony, hush. I know. I'm…I'm sorry." Steve felt like his heart was being squeezed. "I know you didn't run away. You were so brave, Tony." The soldier's lips formed a sad grin. "Reckless, but brave."

"I…used m' head…I thought… m'way out…." And Tony gave a lopsided smile which quickly turned into a moan as he stretched his swollen face. It took only seconds for Tony to slip back into the calm of oblivion, and Steve was almost grateful for it.

"Hawkeye, where are we on those medical units?"

Barton was flipping switches and preparing for landing, his face set in stone and his keen eyes hidden under sunglasses against the bright rays of the sunrise over the northeast American shore.

"SHIELD is prepared to take the casualties." Clint's voice hitched slightly on the last word, and to his left, Thor gave the archer a reassuring nod. The Norseman had flown in the quinjet for once to tend to Natasha while Steve tended to Tony. Halfway over the continent, the Russian had groggily woken up in enough pain that even she had sucked in a breath and let out a small mewl. Steve had injected her with a field dose of morphine and she had fallen back into a less fitful sleep.

Now it was Tony they were most concerned for. The engineer hadn't regained complete consciousness in over an hour, and they could tell by his pallor and his unsteady breathing that his condition was just getting worse. There was no real way to tell how much blood he might be losing – externally and internally. The soft tissue and bone damage was significant, but not life threatening. However, being left untreated for so long in combination with an obvious head injury and a threat of shock…let's just say nobody would be breathing easy until Tony was given the all clear from SHIELD medical.

The Manhattan skyline protruded noisily from the horizon. The glimmering gold of the skyscrapers in the morning light seemed to taunt the Avengers with their cheerful promises of a new day. The two injured comrades in the backseat were hanging by a thread while New York came to life before them, and that thought only had Barton pushing the quinjet faster.

Everyone knows the feeling of a limb falling asleep. When you've been sitting in the same position for too long and your leg starts with the pins and needles? Or when you hold your head in your palm for an extended amount of time and you get that tingling sensation in you pinky finger that feels like the physical embodiment of static noise on the TV?

Tony Stark still remembered the first time his leg fell asleep. He had been four years old, in an expensive cabin in the Adirondacks. His mother was always fond of skiing, and had convinced Howard to take a long weekend for a family vacation.

Tony had grown up in suburbia (when he wasn't in the hustle and bustle of the city, anway), and the woods were a new territory for the young boy. He was fascinated by the perpetual quiet, enthralled by the smell of the air, and captivated by the untouched snows.

But he was terrified of the insects.

The first one he saw when they parked in the drive was a hellish wood spider that had to be about six inches in diameter and faster than a lightning bolt. Tony had almost refused to get out of the car; Howard had to carry him into the cabin - albeit kicking and screaming over his father's shoulder any time the man walked too close to a pine tree.

So when four year old Tony's right leg fell asleep while he was drifting off to dreamland, you can be damned if he didn't start screaming right then and there.

"BUGS! MAMMA, THERE'S BUGSES IN MY BED! THEY'RE CRAWLING UP MY LEGS! MAMMA HELP!" Tears welled in his chocolate eyes and rolled fat and wet down his chubby face as he bolted upright in bed, throwing back his fleece sheets and thick comforter. Tony kicked wildly, lifting up his pants leg on his imported pajamas, searching in vain for the creepy crawly culprits.

"MAMMA, HELP ME PLEASE!"

Maria Stark, a beautiful woman by any standard, had come sprinting into her sons room with her hair amassed in gaudy curlers and a pale fuchsia bathrobe. Her hands, nails a bright blood red per the era's fashion, flailed wildly along the wall of her son's room, desperately searching for the light switch.

"I'm here, mio cucciolo, its ok, what's wrong, are you alright?!" Maria gathered her son into her arms and pressed his head against her warm chest. His sobs of fright turned into hiccups.

"Mamma, I-I thought there were bugses on me. T-They made my legs go tingly a-and they hurted!" He sniffled, running the back of hand across his nose. Maria tsked tsked and grabbed a tissue from the bedside stand. She pressed it gently to his nose.

"Blow, mio cucciolo." Tony did as he was told.

"Now, let's take a look at these bugs, ok?" She rolled up his pants leg and saw nothing. "Sweetheart, there's nothing here. Were you dreaming, maybe? Did you actually see any bugs?"

"Non, Mamma, but I feel them. I STILL feel hem. My leg is prickly, like when bugses crawls on you and walk all over your skin and stuff." Maria looked puzzled, and then realization hit her. She had to suppress an amused chuckle.

"Oh, my brave boy. There are no bugs! Your little gamba just fell asleep!" Maria's heart ached for her baby, and she calmed him down by rubbing his little shins quickly with her hands, massaging the leg until it came back to life. She watched her sons face go from bereaved to confused to amazed.

"Better, mio cucciolo?"

Tony shrugged his little neck down into his collar, a little giggle twinkled through the air. "Better. Thanks, mamma." She reveled in his gap-filled smile.

"Maria? What's going on? What's wrong with Tony?" Howard could be heard calling groggily from the Master Suite.

"Nothing, Howard. Just a little scare!" She called back, then turned to her son, speaking quietly just to him. "But nothing my brave little Anthony couldn't handle."

Maria pressed a kiss to her son's head.

"I'll be right down the hall if you need me, Tony." She stood, her curvy frame in the doorway and her hand on the light switch. She stood, watching her son already begin to drift back to sleep.

"I'll always be right here."

That was the first time Tony had ever had that sensation, and it had been ages since he'd thought of it.

So, the fact that his brain was dredging up such old memories had to be a testament to what he was feeling now.

Everything was tingling.

Usually, Tony Stark would hear the word "tingling" and immediately make a dirty joke. But he only chose the word because there was no other term so apt to describe what was coming over his body in waves.

He felt like he was floating in static – a lost radio wave traveling lightyears away from the earth amidst transference signals and old radio announcements and satellite broadcasts. Nothing felt tangible, yet he could feel everything at once.

The only thing Tony Stark knew for certain is that he wasn't dead. He couldn't be. The tingling was odd, yes – but underneath it all, there was a thickly masked layer of pain that seemed to be curtained by the pins and needles. In this case, pain was a good thing. Pain meant that he was still inside a body - bruised and battered though it may be.

The static came in tides. Sometimes the pull was stronger, and those moments were scary; those were the times when he couldn't feel the pain at all, but he felt like he was being drained of something, losing…weight…losing a sense of attachment, maybe. That was the only way he could figure to describe it. That feeling happened a lot more often at first, but now the pins and needles seemed to be evacuating, subsiding long enough for the underlying pain to shine through and his broken shell to make itself known.

Tony was an intelligent man – he knew that feeling the hurt was a good thing; but in all of us, there is a selfish side. The side that says we should give in; it's the side that says we should avoid the pain - and everything else that we avoid alongside it be damned.

Give up, it tells us. Give in.

Hide from the hurting, run quickly so it doesn't catch you.

Run away.

But Tony had promised.

Starks don't run away.

"Barton? Barton! I think he's waking up!"

"Lady Natasha, Man of Iron is-"

"Yes, Thor, Thank you, I didn't damage my eyes."

"Nat, he is just trying to be h-"

"So help me god, Clint, if you tell me he's just trying to help one more time, you'll end up in the bed next to me."

"Or we could just share the same b–"

SLAP.

"Will you three please quiet down, Tony's going to hear you all bickering and choose to return to his coma."

"Coma is being a bit melodramatic, Cap, dontcha think?"

"Are you calling me dramatic, Agent Barton?"

"Well, I- no, I just – well maybe a tad bit – it's more of a relative thing-"

"Relative to what, Agent Barton."

"Well, Nat, for example, is never, um, dramatic…"

"Clint, are you saying I'm unemotional?"

"No, baby, just that you never get, um, too…too excited."

Natasha could be heard sucking in a breath.

Tony figured now would be a good time to save the lone archer from the grave he was digging himself.

His throat felt like sandpaper and his face felt like he'd eaten pavement, but he did his best to form words. They were quiet, but they were there nonetheless.

"Maybe, Featherface, because you've never given her much more than about 4 inches to be excited about."

The room went wild. Steve was shaking his head, a deep blush running up his neck as Barton uproariously began defending his penis size – although the relieved and exhausted smile on the archer's face let everyone know he didn't give a damn how many times Tony insulted him. Natasha actually graced the team with a rare laugh, careful not to jostle her collarbone now that SHIELD medical had set her injuries. From his hospital bed, Tony watched Thor point at Clint, then to Tony, then back to Clint, all the while laughter booming from the Asgardian's throat.

Tony's face was so battered, he could hardly keep his eyes open because of the swelling, so he resigned himself to blindness in exchange for listening to his friends go on about the flight home and how many doctor's Steve had pushed against a wall in the first half hour of them landing. Tony made a point to ask Natasha how she was feeling, and though he couldn't see her face, he knew by the minutia change in her tone of voice that she was touched by his concern as well as the love of the rest of her teammates.

Tony Stark decided then and there that this was the best wakeup call he'd ever had.

The first few days back at Stark Tower had seen Thor, Clint, and Steve doting on their two injured teammates. Natasha required nothing more than the occasional nap, which she took quietly without any pomp and circumstance, or the quick cup of tea that she had no problem making herself. Clint would help her with her sling and making sure she didn't have to bend over to pick anything up. That was about the extent of her care.

Then there was Tony.

The swelling in Tony's face went down relatively quickly, and other than a few stitches to his nose and cheek, he looked almost normal again in about eight days. Bruises were fading to yellow and purple, his headaches were going away, and his vision was unobstructed. During that time, Tony did almost nothing but sleep and eat. Steve made sure he took his painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs, and sometimes, he would bring Tony ice to put on his fractured face. The doctors assured them that the bones would knit independently, and there would be no permanent deformities. Even his cheek was only going to scar to a bare minimum.

No, the problems started as soon as Tony was feeling better.

You see, Tony didn't have the energy or the pain tolerance to move head around for the first week. But when he healed, the technician was up and about with a fervor the team had never seen. The only issue was that his dislocated right arm was still healing and completely useless; and for an engineer, there was nothing more aggravating than not being able to work.

For his team, there was nothing more aggravating than having to listen to him complain about not being able to work.

"Steeeeeeeeeeve."

"What is it, Tony?"

"Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve."

"Tony, what do you need?"

"SteeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVE."

"Tony don't do this again, pl-"

"STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"

"…'M bored."

"…."

"Steve?"

"Don't talk to me. Ever. Again."

And then Tony would repeat the same shenanigans to Clint. Then to Thor, who never caught on to the game and would just get more and more frustrated as if the Midgardian had forgotten how to speak. Barton usually locked himself in Natasha's room where Tony dare not venture, Thor would fly out the window rather than be around him, and Steve would run on the treadmill for so long that Tony would just get tired watching him and go take a nap for the both of them.

It was a rough time in the Avengers household.

But things changed at night.

Tony had been having nightmares.

He would get really loud and obnoxious right before bed, casually but too eagerly suggesting that the team stay up for one more episode, one more movie, or one more late night game of cards.

Nobody really caught on until one early morning Tony walked in to the kitchen with dark circles under his eyes and a serious five o'clock shadow. His clothes were messy and sweat stained and his hair was greasy and unkempt.

Steve had been making scrambled eggs, and at that point in the day, they were the only two people awake.

Unthinking, Steve had waved a hand in front of his nose with a joking smile. "Jeez, buddy, when was the last time you took a bath? You smell worse than Barton's cargo shorts!"

He hadn't been expecting what happened next.

"What?" Tony snapped, his eyes almost manic. "You think I don't know how to take a fucking shower? You think I can't do it or something?"

Steve had almost dropped his frying pan on the floor. "Wh-What? Tony why would you- buddy, I wasn't saying-"

"Don't call me fucking buddy, Rogers. I know what you were saying, and you know what? This is a free fuckin' country and I take a shower when I want to, goddammit!" And Tony had turned on his heel and stormed back to his room, slamming the door shut.

That had been the first sign.

The next day, it rained miserably in New York – very uncharacteristically, due to how close it was getting to Christmas, but it had been a warm winter so far. Water cascaded down the all-glass sides of Stark Tower, pounding against the windows and filling the rooms with the rhythmic sound of a storm. The whole team had found it rather peaceful, actually…

Tony didn't come out of his room once.

Not for a meal, not to see Dummy, not even for the new Doctor Who episode Barton had recorded on the DVR – nothing. Steve knocked several times throughout the day, asking Tony if he was alright, if his arm was hurting him. He'd gotten the same type of snappy reply he'd received yesterday in the kitchen about people leaving him alone and letting him have some space. Steve had let it go as frustration from his pain and not being able to work.

It was two days later, when Tony was sitting slouched over a hot cup of coffee that Steve finally caught on.

The unwashed, overtired engineer had been staring into his mug when Barton had walked in, completely innocent, and put his dirty dish in the sink. The archer had made the mistake of opening up the faucet to fill the sink. Water flowed fast and free into the stainless steel basin.

Tony almost fell of his chair.

The Italian's eyes went crazy, and he shot up, startling both Steve and Clint.

"Tony, you good?" Barton eyed him cautiously.

"Yah-no-I just, I just remembered I left a – a soldering iron on in my, uh, room and I need to – yah- so I'll just be-" And he was gone, limping down the hallway as fast as his bruised and sore muscles would allow.

The two men watched him scurry down to his room like a frightened animal, and Steve looked at Clint in confusion. "What did you do….?"

"Beats me." The archer shrugged and hesitated, concern clouding his brow as he went to finish his dishes.

He shut off the sink, and Steve's eyes went wide. He reached a hand back to clutch the counter lest he fall over from the crushing blow of his own stupidity.

"Oh my god, Barton. The water."

"What…What about it?"

"The Water. Tony won't shower. He was a shut-in during the rainstorm. He can't be in the same room as an open tap. He won't go near running water."

Steve and Clint had both seen a good amount of PTSD in their day, but this was different – this was Tony. This was not something they expected from him – not that he wasn't allowed to be scared, just that…Tony Stark had had many a near death experience, and he'd never seemed emotionally traumatized before this.

"Something happened in the water that Tony isn't telling us," they agreed.

"And we need to know what it is."

"Tony?" Steve lightly knocked on the main door to Tony's bedroom suite. He heard a faint response that sounded like 'enter', but even then, he was hesitant.

Steve entered first, and the rest of the crew followed him, having been informed of the situation minutes before. Together, they'd come up with a rudimentary game plan.

"Tony," Natasha called out quietly. "Tony, we need to talk to you. It's about Freyja…and the waterfall."

From his position in the doorway, and even in the dim light, Steve could see Tony visibly tense. The engineer was laying dejectedly in his bed, covers pulled up to his ears, facing the wall away from his teammates.

"What about her?" His voice was strained.

"Tony…We know you're having problems sleeping. We know that you can't stand the sight of running water, either-" Tony flinched, "but we also know that the only for you to get better is to talk to us."

"Please, Anthony." Even Thor's voice was gentle. "We are your compatriots. You must trust us to support you. Many an Asgardian warrior has faced these dark times where the mind seems to betray you and fear overpowers all else. But please, my brother - even in the most dismal of days, your friends may offer sanctuary."

Steve looked in gratitude at Thor and gazed back upon Tony. The room was silent save for the engineer's strained breaths, and it didn't take a mastermind to tell that Stark was fighting back tears. Natasha made her way to his side of the bed and sat on the edge, careful not to disturb Tony's bandaged arm at his side.

She whispered gently to him in French, a shared language between the two. He whispered back, his voice choked and hoarse. The three men still standing in the doorway were at a loss in the conversation, but after almost ten minutes of start and stop Parisian from the engineer, they were startled when Natasha sucked in a breath. She asked him a question, followed by a long pause. She spoke again. She repeated the question. Finally, Tony muttered what sounded like "oui, oui" and began to slowly rise from his bed. He sniffled loudly and nodded at Natasha, who continued to coo at him tenderly in French, the way a mother would speak to her child.

Slowly, and somewhat painfully for the both of them, she helped him unbutton his filthy shirt and strip him of his shorts. Down to his underwear, she led him into the bathroom and gently sat him on the toilet lid while she continued to reassure him. Slowly, almost as if she were afraid to startle Tony, Natasha turned on the bathroom sink. Tony shut his eyes immediately and took deep breaths, but did not run from the room. Natasha tested the water in the sink to make sure it was comfortably warm, and then gently took his undamaged left hand and slowly placed it under the running water. Tony almost pulled back, speaking rapidly in French, his eyes pleading, but though Natasha did not force, she encouraged him on. Tony wiped at the cold sweat on his forehead but allowed her to continue.

Even slower than before, Natasha grabbed a clean hand towel from the counter and ran it under the water until it was saturated. She wiped the rag up and down Tony's arm and around his shoulder, then to the back of his neck. She tenderly dabbed around the bruises on his face and down his chest. She cleaned the rag when needed and exchanged the towel every once in a while, but she effectively gave Tony Stark a sponge bath.

The other three team members felt almost like they were intruding on an intimate and vulnerable moment, and had resigned themselves to standing outside the bathroom and simply waited for Natasha to be done. At one point, she had poked her head out and asked them to please throw Tony's clothes and linens into his hamper, have JARVIS start a load of laundry, and put fresh sheets and pillowcases on the bed. Magically, the three of them had figured it out as a team, and though Tony's new blue comforter didn't really go with the fresh olive pillowcases, the bed smelled clean and looked inviting.

Natasha came out, grabbed a fresh pair of boxers, and handed them to Tony, who was practically falling asleep in the bathroom from the stress of the past twenty minutes. She left him alone in the bathroom to save his dignity and put his own underwear on, and when he knocked quietly on the door, Nat took that as the signal that he was decent.

"Tony, êtes-vous prêt?"

"Yah, I'm ready…" Came his hushed reply. The team stood back as he walked out the bathroom. His hair was finally shampooed and combed back. His body was clean and his face was carefully shaved. His freshly starched boxers sat neatly on his hips and he had fuzzy socks on his feet, courtesy of Natasha (though by extension, courtesy of Clint's sock drawer).

"Merci," he kept whispering to Natasha. "Merci."

"Don't mention it," she finally responded in English, and the relief on the three other men's faces at being able to understand something made a smile play on Natasha's lips.

The Russian walked the engineer over to the bed and tucked him into his crisp sheets. His face visibly relaxed as he reveled in the cathartic sensation of being clean.

"If you have another nightmare, Tony, I'm right down the hall," Natasha muttered, stroking the Italian man's hair back from his face. "You are a very brave man, but you don't need to do this alone."

"…'m brave?" a playful smile ghosted Tony's face.

"Yah, you are. Don't let it go to your head, though."

"Promise….I won't…" Tony's eyes were already shut, his breathing already slowing down. He was on the verge of a two week caffeine crash.

"Now go to sleep. You haven't had a good rest in ages. Sleep, Tony."

"But…I…"

"No. Sleep."

"hmmm…'nks, Mamma…." And he was gone.

Natasha almost felt a lump in her throat, but years of training quenched it before it ever had time to come to fruition. Her heart ached for Tony and what he had told her, and she knew that it would take all of them to get him back to where he had been before – but they had made a good start tonight.

"Thirty minutes."

"That's how long you searched for him?" Natasha's green eyes were like ice.

"Yah, give or take. It was a little…fuzzy." Steve rubbed the back of his neck.

"In all that time, where did you look?"

"We checked everywhere we could think of." Barton crossed his arms. "We dove down, we scanned the river banks, we went up and downstream – there was no sign of him. Then, POOF, he just shows up walking on the river bank with a bashed in face."

"He came from the direction of the falls, milady. We had just searched that area nigh ten minutes before, hence the confusion when he simply appeared!" Thor gestured wildly to emphasize the appeared portion of his renderings.

Natasha took a breath. "He was in the falls."

"No, he was walking from the direction of the falls, we just said-"

"No, Steve, I'm telling you what Tony told me. He was in the falls."

The men just looked confused. Natasha, ever blunt, just jumped right to the explanation.

"Freyja struck Tony in mid-fall. He had cut the power to the suit and couldn't pull up. This, we already knew." They all nodded. "What Tony told me was what happened after he woke up from the blow to the face." She coughed lightly. "Apparently, when Tony came to, he was pressed up against the cliff face of the falls, his right arm in the suit completely jammed in between two jagged, weathered rocks. A small edge of the waterfall was pouring over him so hard and so fast, he could hardly find the air to breathe, let alone call out for help."

Thor stood abruptly. "If Anthony lived, is there a chance that Freyja is still alive? This must be dealt with im-"

"Sit." Natasha was stone. Thor sat.

"To answer your question, Thor: No. Freyja is very much dead. Tony was a mere ten feet below where her mortal form had been impaled by the same type of rock outcropping he was jammed between – like stalagmites, but at the bottom of waterfalls. Freyja was completely run through, her blood apparently 'running down the rocks faster than the waterfall ran down the cliff'. Freyja had fallen further into the waterfall stream, and Tony was stuck fast, forced to watch as her body was literally torn apart by the force of the water….and some of it was thrown down onto him."

Steve shuddered, and Clint looked nauseous.

"That explains the aversion to the shower, then." The solider muttered under his breath.

Natasha continued. "He could faintly hear you all calling his name. He tried to call back, but nobody could hear him through the falls – his face was wrecked, JARVIS was offline, and he could hardly get a breath big enough between the sheets of water and…Freyja bits… running over his head. He thought he was going to drown."

"But…How did he…?"

Tash looked at the floor. "You've all seen his right arm."

She let the realization sink in.

"He…he did that to himself?"

"He had no choice." Thor said so quietly they barely heard him.

"He had no choice." Tash reiterated. "He dislocated his arm in every way possible until he could be free. He dropped into the water, swam his way to the shore, and walked half dead until he found you. And honestly," she swallowed slightly, "there were probably a few chunks of Asgardian goddess swimming in there with him that he'll never talk about to anyone."

This time, Barton felt bile in his throat and he held up a hand.

"Okay, sweetheart, I didn't need that imagery. I was swimming in that shit too, ya know."

"Sorry," Tash deadpanned.

Steve just stood up and ran a hand over his face. He was mentally exhausted, and he was hurting for his teammate.

"Dammit, Tony." He muttered more to himself. He turned. "Why didn't he tell us earlier? Why not let us help him."

"You're a grown man," Natasha said. "How excited would you be to tell your team of super soldiers, rage monsters, demigods, and assassins that you were afraid of the shower?"

Steve was silent.

The next morning, Tony actually came into the kitchen a little after 11 am, looking much more rested and even genuinely happy. He was clean and rejuvenated, his face completely healed and his arm nestled safely in its sling. He sat well-tempered and willing to talk about how he was feeling. He had expected Natasha to tell everyone the story, and was even grateful that she had gone over most of the details so that he could be spared reliving them. Each team member was supportive in the best way they knew how, and Tony felt guilty about not talking to them earlier.

"I am sorry I didn't tell you all the truth. I shouldn't have kept it from you – we're a team." He was sincere.

But only for a second.

A mischievous twinkle reassumed its rightful place in the corner of Tony's eye, and he nodded at each member of the team before excusing himself from the table. He sat himself on the living room couch and nonchalantly began flicking through cable channels. The rest of the team, feeling accomplished, dispersed to go about their daily activities.

Clint's phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket.

A new text message from Tony Stark…

"But on the plus side of all this…" the first text read.

…Natasha scrubbed me down in my underwear."

Clint puffed up, his eyes narrowing. "You better watch yourself, Stark." He texted back furiously.

"Go ahead, Barton, punch me. It'll just make my recovery time slower – which only means more sponge baths from your girlfriend."

"Stark, I am warning you."

"Next time, I'll tell her that bras scare me. She'd do anything to make sure I was emotionally stable, don't ya think?"

"TONY STARK, YOU SON OF A BITCH"

"Now, now, Clint-oris, watch your language – that's my mother you were about to insult."

"I know over 63 ways to kill a man with a spoon."

"Speaking of spoons, does Tash prefer little or big?"

Barton was about to respond with a brilliantly crafted string of expletives when a resounding SLAP echoed from the living room, followed by an indignant cry from a Mr. Anthony Edward Stark.

"OW! HEY – WHERE DID YOU EVEN COME FROM?!"

"Just be glad that was your good arm."

"NATASHA I WAS JUST KIDDING I SWEAR!"

Another slap.

Barton just laughed.

I hope you all loved the look into Tony's childhood. I have a really great idea concerning Maria and Howard that I may incorporate into this series or may do a spinoff.

ALSO, for those of you who suggested PTSD for my "P" chapter, I had already picked a P prompt that I liked a little better, so I tried to tie it into this one. Hope you enjoyed the extra care and comfort Tony got in the aftermath!

So this one got pretty long but I really enjoyed it, and it was a great story to come back to. I can't thank you enough for the positive outpouring on this chapter. I was super nervous about Jump Part 1 because it was my first update back. It was the first time I had felt anxious to hear judgement passed on a story, and I wasn't sure how well it would be received. Thank you all for your love!