Chapter 6
The wind rushed in behind Tony, kicking up a layer of dust around his ankles. He suppressed a shudder and hurried to close the doors with a grunt, then groped the wall to his left until he found the metal lever. The lights flickered overhead ominously with a groan as his old home lit up around him.
Tony shook off the excess rainwater and shrugged out of his backpack and hoodie, carefully setting them down onto one of the familiar cots. He blinked away the wetness from his eyelashes and settled against the edge of the metal table in the corner of the room, pulling out his phone. He was grateful that he'd had enough foresight to design a waterproof case.
"J, shoot Pepper a note letting her know I'll be out of contact for a bit. There are some loose ends I need to tie up."
"Of course, Sir," JARVIS' disembodied voice responded in the familiar British accent. "Although, may I ask after your health, Sir? Your current readings are far higher than normal parameters dictate. Do you require assistance?"
Tony couldn't help the small, strangled noise that escaped the back of his throat. "No, not yet. I need some time to think first to come up with a game plan. If I need help, I'll let you know. Until then, J, I need you to keep your ear to the ground for me. Deal?"
If Tony didn't know any better, he'd have thought the AI had sighed in something resembling resignation before replying with, "Of course, Sir."
His gaze swept over the warehouse, and Tony swallowed thickly against the surge of memories crawling up his throat and ran his fingers over the cool, familiar surface of the table he, Bucky, and Steve used to plan out their 'missions.'
He was helpless against the onslaught, especially surrounded by pieces of the one place he ever felt safe, where he felt at home. The boarded windows on the west wall looked different from what he remembered. Considering his first robot and father's cane were missing, Tony assumed someone had broken in to clean up behind him after his forceful return to Howard.
Tony had closed himself off from feelings and reminiscing the best he could after "The Incident", putting as much effort as possible into avoiding any, and all, thoughts about his three months in Brooklyn. However, his curiosity got the best of him eventually. Before Rhodey's intervention at the end of his freshman year, Tony had broken down after a heavy night of drinking and looked up Steve and Bucky on the internet. He wanted to feel something, needed to see how they were doing after betraying him so completely. Were they happy? Healthy? Or were they as torn up about their actions as Tony was? Did they regret stabbing him in the back?
Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, for Tony, the two boys were almost entirely off the grid due to their lack of social media presence. His failure led to Tony sobbing his heart out in the safety of his bathtub, avoiding Rhodey for as long as possible because Tony didn't want him to know how fucked up he was.
He just wanted answers, goddamnit. Tony wanted - no, needed to know how his best friend and his…his person could have handed him over to Howard on a silver platter. Had he done something to earn their ire? It wouldn't surprise him if that were the case, but the problem was that he just didn't know. He had felt blindsided when the men came for him in that hotel room in Brooklyn. If Tony was being honest, he still felt blindsided by it all.
Even thirteen years later, Tony could still remember the feeling of Steve's lips on his, the elation and thrill of finally hearing his person say that he loved him back. Tony thought that kiss was the beginning of forever.
How utterly wrong he was.
Two years later, Tony built up enough courage to try again once he knew Steve and Bucky enlisted in the army. He was sober this time and filled with trepidation as he hacked into the military's registration database. There weren't any pictures, but Tony's breath caught when he finally found their names. Bucky must have been working Steve hard to get him fit enough for the military to accept him because he was much too thin back when Tony knew him.
Or, thought he knew him.
Tony grimaced as he remembered periodically checking in on Steve and Bucky's service record over the next few years. The two boys were integrated into the 107th and did exceptionally well during their deployments. However, Tony never had any idea how to feel when he read about their progress.
People described their grief and anger as a living flame, flaring higher and more dangerous over time until it eventually sputtered out without the appropriate fuel. Yet, Tony only felt like he was drowning, like all the air had been ripped from his lungs. Like he was thrust beneath the surface and being held down until he lost all sense of direction and hope.
His stomach curled and tightened painfully whenever he reflected too much on the duo that shredded his heart, and to his dismay, he just couldn't seem to let them go, no matter how hard he tried.
His conflicting feelings only broadened further when the media began their coverage of the anticipated gang war in New York between the Howling Commandos and Hydra. Most of the news outlets believed that Hydra was essentially a terrorist organization and needed to be brought to heel. Tony didn't necessarily disagree, but he certainly wasn't supporting their adversaries either. He had despised The Commandos from the moment Steve and Bucky turned him over to Howard, but that didn't mean that he wanted their families to die as a punishment.
As it was, James Rogers' body was found several weeks later, nearly unrecognizable, effectively ending one of the bloodiest gang wars in New York's history with Hydra on top.
Tony had emptied his stomach contents into the nearest toilet once he hacked into the NYPD's servers and saw the photo and failed, once again, to understand his sudden grief. Losing Jarvis had been devastating, and he never wanted to wish that pain upon his greatest enemies, even if he had no love for James Rogers. Surprisingly, the reminder of his loss ended up being the catalyst for Tony to begin working on his more intelligent AI, JARVIS.
Distantly, he wondered what Steve would come back home to after he left the army. Would he rebuild The Commandos and bring them back to their former glory if it was even possible?
That feeling of turmoil and disarray only seeped further into his bones when he checked in eight years after their initial enlistment to find that their records had changed from "active" to "missing in action."
Tony's breath caught as he remembered his night with Rhodey following the news. His knees had given out on him, and his best friend was the only thing keeping him from searching for answers at the bottom of a bottle. Rhodey was the only person (besides JARVIS, but he doesn't technically count) who knew about "The Incident" and how important answers were to Tony. So, combined with JARVIS' larger-than-life hacking abilities, Rhodey used his military contacts to dig deeper into the army's report.
Seventy-two hours later, on October 17th, 2016, they discovered that Steve Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes officially declared "killed in action."
Tony didn't leave his apartment for three days. That was all the time he allowed himself to mourn for the boys he never truly knew. Tony blocked out his memory of those three days, just as he did with Howard's reaction following "The Incident". He recognized that he wouldn't be able to process the pain in a healthy manner, so his brain protected him the only way it knew how.
But now, here he stood, three years later, in the same warehouse that served as his home for three months, fostered a friendship and a relationship that Tony cherished and adored until it was all ripped away from him. All these feelings he had bottled up and shoved down for years to keep going through life were creeping back up. The memories flooded behind his eyelids, and Tony pinched the bridge of his nose to the point of pain to stop the influx before it suffocated him.
A sudden noise tore Tony away from his reminiscing, and he looked up sharply. Two men had managed to push their way into the warehouse without detection through the unlocked doors, and Tony cursed himself for being so careless.
They certainly weren't old enough to be the men from the Manor, but Tony didn't trust that they weren't here to finish off the remaining Stark heir. The white man with short-cropped hair was outfitted in black kevlar, though with his sleeves cut off at the shoulder. He had a quiver strapped to his back and a bow slung over his shoulder. The other man was dark-skinned and dressed more casually, wearing black jeans and a grey t-shirt with a navy-blue army jacket. His fingers splayed over a Glock holstered to his belt.
Tony stared at the men, wide-eyed and mind frantic, as he tried to think of ways to defend himself. He spotted a loose pipe a few feet away and took a hesitant step forward. That was the exact wrong thing to do, apparently, because the next second, the man without sleeves maneuvered his bow from around his shoulder and notched an arrow trained between Tony's eyes quicker than he could process.
"Fuck."
The dark-skinned man raised an unimpressed eyebrow and cocked his gun. "I'm not sure if you know this, but you're trespassing." He paused, looking back towards the door with a furrow between his brow. "How'd you even get in here? That padlock's been on the doors for years now."
Tony remained silent, his gaze locked onto the weapon pointed at his forehead.
"The man asked you a question," the archer drawled, obviously enjoying the power he held over Tony. Douchebag. "What are you doing in our warehouse?"
That got his attention. Tony frowned and looked between the men. "Your warehouse?" This building belonged to The Commandos back while Tony was in Brooklyn. After they fell, he assumed the government repossessed the property or didn't care enough to tear it down. If that wasn't the case, who had taken ownership of it?
"The Avengers," the man holding the gun clarified with a hint of a smirk.
A flash of anger roared within his chest, and his fingers curled into white-knuckles fists. The Avengers were an up and coming gang that had gained power and popularity over the last three years. They specialized in blackmail and hits so efficient, and untraceable, that the NYPD has no evidence to pursue the persons of interest.
Their leader, an enigmatic man, only known as The Captain, had successfully carved out a name for himself in the Burrows without even showing his face. The media had gone nuts when The Captain took credit for the ruthless and bloody killing of Joann Schmidt, the notoriously unkillable leader of Hydra, effectively dismantling the rival gang from the inside out.
Even more terrifying than a man in the shadows was The Captain's attack dog, The Winter Soldier. The stark black mask and goggles, always covering his face, reminded Tony of the Dread Doctors' horror stories, but The Soldier's metal arm was by far his most prominent feature. Tony had seen enough gruesome news articles displaying The Winter Soldier's kills.
Tony despised The Avengers even more than he did Hydra or The Commandos. It was silly, really, but Tony always thought The Avengers were the type of gang Steve would have rebuilt The Commandos as if he could have had the chance. But he and Bucky were killed overseas a few months before The Avengers were first mentioned in the news.
Why he even wished for Steve to fulfill his dream was beyond Tony. After what the mafia heir did to him, Tony should wish for everything that Steve ever loved to burst into flames, but he'd never been very good about working through his issues surrounding the two boys. His feelings were still as unfiltered, raw, and confusing as the day Howard's men came for him.
"Hey!" The man with the gun snapped, bringing Tony's wayward attention back to him. "Tell me how you got in. Now."
The anger hadn't ebbed, and Tony never truly moved past his love of playing with fire. While adopting his patented 'Tony Carbonell (Stark)' grin and tucking his hands lazily into his pockets, he relaxed his shoulders. "I don't believe that's any of your business, jackass."
The archer's eyes flashed. "It doesn't seem like you're in any position to refuse a request from an Avenger, asshole. We own this town."
"You're nothing," Tony jeered, managing to look down his nose at them despite being a few inches shorter. "You claim to be Avengers, but you can't even seem to ask the right questions. I wonder what your dear Captain has been teaching you."
The man with the gun tightened his grip and stepped forward. "I wouldn't run your mouth about Cap around Clint if I was you. He's got one hell of a protective streak."
"Sam's not wrong," the archer, Clint, relented with a sharp smile, never once blinking. They were both idiots to give him their names. It meant they didn't truly see him as a threat, which was a mistake they would both live to regret. "If you're so smart, what kind of questions should we be asking, then?"
Tony shrugged carelessly, moving back towards the kitchenette in nonchalance. "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not complete morons, though I have my doubts."
Sam snorted in response, his grip on the gun loosening a fraction.
"So if you're not morons, then one of you must have examined the door before you came barreling in. Which means you would have found the padlock."
He glanced over his shoulder to see both of the men watching him warily. His fingers danced along the dusty countertop, playing an indeterminable beat. "You would have noticed that the lock was rusty but intact. I assume you were able to extrapolate that it was simply unlocked, not broken. What does that mean, boys?"
They were silent in their contemplation, distracted in their thinking and looking back towards the door.
"That you have a key?" Clint hedged a guess, sounding more than a little annoyed.
"No," Tony grinned, wide and far too sharp. "It means that I've been here before." He pulled the drawer open in the blink of an eye and yanked out a set of familiar kitchen knives, throwing them with exact precision so that each of them embedded themselves in the two men's shoulders, causing them to cry out and loosen their hold on their weapons.
Tony shoved forward, knocking the gun out of Sam's hand with a quick uppercut and kicking out to dislodge the arrow from Clint's bow. Once the immediate danger passed, Tony started towards the door at a sprint.
He wasn't expecting for someone - Clint, what a douchebag, to latch onto his ankle and send them both crashing down onto the cracked concrete. Tony grunted when his elbows and knees scraped against the floor, and he twisted over onto his back just in time to see the archer bringing the bow down onto his face.
And then the world went dark.
XX
Steve's fists flew forward in a series of sharp jabs, dull pain and fresh blood seeping from his bandages with each calculated hit until he pushed just a bit harder. He let loose a grunt when the punching bag flew off the chain and clattered heavily onto the floor before rolling a few extra feet away. He paused, sucking in quick breaths and looking down at his hands with a sigh.
Damnit. That was the third bag this month; Nat was going to kill him.
He crouched down to lift the discarded bag over his shoulder and propped it up against the wall for one of the crew members to handle later. Steve didn't necessarily enjoy letting other people pick up after him, but Bucky assured him it was something he would need to get used to. Even after three years leading The Avengers, and the eight years before that commanding the 107th, Steve still found himself floundering when it came to delegating the smaller, menial tasks.
Leadership demands a certain level of trust for the people under you, and unfortunately, trust wasn't part of Steve's repertoire. Ever since his father -
No.
Steve silently snarled and cut that thought off at its inception. He steadfastly refused to think of the man responsible for the destruction of the brightest light in Steve's life, forcing him down a path of darkness.
It still grated on Steve that he hadn't been the one to kill James Rogers, hadn't gotten the chance to watch the life fade from his eyes and ensure the last thing his father saw was Steve's face, reminding him that he'd never forgiven the man for taking Tony Stark away.
Although ripping Joann Schmidt's face off for robbing him of that chance was reward enough, especially after torturing every one of Hydra's dirty secrets out of him, up to and including the reason for Baron Zemo's betrayal so long ago.
And yet, people were still surprised to learn of Steve's vindictive side. When he played the role of The Captain, one that was getting increasingly more difficult to distinguish between blurred lines, people took one look at his sandy blonde hair and steel blue eyes and actually had the gall to dismiss him as a threat.
He ensured they paid for their mistake in blood, which is how the horror story of 'The Captain' began in the first place. Nobody survived after seeing his face.
It was an assumption and tradition which he allowed, for now, for appearances' sake only. Steve was content letting the monster, which lay just under the surface, stir restlessly beneath his skin, armed and ready to strike when the time was right. Until then, Steve used his enemies' underestimation of him to crush them into submission.
The gym door creaked open while Steve untied the wraps around his knuckles, and he raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the intruder.
Pietro Maximoff, one of his newer Avengers along with his twin sister Wanda, was still wary of him. He served alongside a few of the younger recruits as runners and lackeys, though he seemed loyal and dedicated enough to move up in the ranks one day.
"What have I said about disrupting my training sessions, kid?"
Pietro cleared his throat with an abrupt cough. "Sorry, Captain, Falcon and Hawkeye returned from their scouting rounds and, well," he hesitated.
Steve rolled his eyes and pushed off of the wall where he'd been leaning. "Spit it out."
"They caught someone in Building 616."
Steve stilled, a wave of righteous anger flooding his mind. He closed the distance between them in three quick strides. "Excuse me?" He hissed, low and threatening.
Pietro swallowed thickly, his throat clicking with the movements. "They engaged the hostile and came back worse for wear but threw him into Interrogation Room Three."
He forced himself to draw backwards, the distant, familiar voice of reason that encouraged mercy reminding him that Pietro was not the source of his ire. Steve licked his lips before they thinned and straightened his spine. "Thank you, kid," he told Pietro stiffly and then pushed past him down the corridor.
His mind whirled with the sudden frantic desire to destroyburndemolish, and Steve wasn't strong enough to fight it off. After breaking into the old Commandos warehouse to secure Tony's robot and cane when he was taken away so many years ago, it was left empty and abandoned until Steve seized ownership of it after heading up The Avengers. In an effort to preserve what little he could of Tony's memory, Steve declared the warehouse, Building 616, off-limits under punishment of death. If he couldn't step foot inside without crumbling into a thousand pieces from his grief, then nobody else was allowed inside either.
Steve's steps stuttered, and he lashed out at the nearest window, shattering the darkened glass until it fell to his feet. He growled low in his throat and barely felt the fresh blood gathering at his knuckles before setting off towards his destination.
The Avengers within the Compound must have heard about his warpath because he didn't see hide nor hair of anyone else.
Good.
Sam was standing outside of Interrogation 3 when he arrived, blood spattering his grey t-shirt and a bandage wrapped around his shoulder. "Cap," he greeted with a frown.
"What the hell happened?" Steve demanded, his voice still securing the low register which caused his enemies' hairs to stand up on the back of their neck.
"We got a note that one of the motion sensors in Building 616 went off, so Clint and I went down there to check it out. A man, maybe just shy of thirty, had managed to pick the lock and break in. Wouldn't answer any of our questions and got us both with a set of kitchen knives."
Steve's brow furrowed. Why would someone want to get into the warehouse? Everyone knew it had been empty for years; there wasn't anything of value in there. "He's inside?"
Sam nodded and gestured towards the door behind him. "Clint's in there with him."
Steve blew out a silent breath. "Thanks, Sam." The Avenger gave a respectful tilt of his head, and Steve moved toward the door beside Interrogation 3, where he could watch Clint get answers out of the unknown hostile without being observed.
He was wondering what someone could have hoped to accomplish breaking into the warehouse when all of the breath ripped from his lungs in one painful, agonizing blow. Steve sucked in a sharp breath and scrambled towards the door that had just closed behind him, frantic in his need to find - "Falcon!" He barked. Sam spun around with wide, confused eyes.
"Cap?"
"Get me The Winter Soldier, now!"
Sam must have understood the steel in his tone because he didn't hesitate to turn on his heel and take off.
Steve panted from sudden exertion, struggling to find a breath as he pushed back into the room and found his eyes falling on a face he never thought he'd see again.
Tony.
Xx