A/N - Warnings for, non-consensual surgery and body modification, torture and burning.
Чертовы жопы - bloody assholes
No copyright infringement intended...
All Movie Scenes used here belong to Marvel Studios and their respective owners, I'm not out to profit from this work.
I made it purely for enjoyment purposes.
They have not time to recover or process what they saw before, with a flash of gold, they're shoved straight into a new nightmare worthy scene. Familiar sounding, choked, tortured screams echo through the dimly lit cave.
Ghost pain smacks them all, apart from Spider Man, like a hammer, tearing through their rib cage and parting it unnaturally wide, they can't draw breath properly, they couldn't breathe.
'Hurts! Breathe - I can't breathe. Help!
'HELP ME! I can't breathe!
'What? Fuck! Stop! NO! STOP! Get Off Me! GET IT OUT! OUT! OUT!'
Everyone apart from Peter doubles over and claws at their chests as a burning pain the shape of a hand tears through their chests before the feeling dissipates when gold flashes across their eyes.
"What the hell is going on?" Clint gasps on the floor, sounding shell shocked and still unable to get up.
"Mr Stark!" The distraught teen surges forward but Vision grabs him and holds him in place. "What the fuck are you doing?" Peter starts frantically clawing at Vision's hand, "I have to save him! Let me go! I'll save you, Mr Stark!"
The android's eyes shimmer with unshed tears as he watches the man he considers his grandfather writhe and scream against the hands and the ties of the evil men. "Spider Man… we can't do anything. I wish I could."
They can barely see Tony, surrounded by dirty men holding him down with malicious glee as he screams and thrashes against their hands and the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
When the bespecktecled man acting like a doctor moves away, they all get a glimpse of the deep cuts littering his entire chest and some in his abdomen and his straining arms bleeding sluggishly from large gashes, before their eyes move to the deep dark red blood dribbling sluggishly from the unnaturally, obscenely huge hole.
A hole that they can see right through Tony's chest to his sternum split in two and held open, right down to his heart which is fluttering wildly in his chest like a trapped butterfly.
Incensed, by the sight, Thor crackles with lightning as he vows to torture their souls in Helheim for hurting his friend in such a barbaric way.
Peter stills in Vision's arms at seeing the valves of his mentors blood caked heart struggle wildly to keep beating as the terrorists hold down his spastically twitching limbs.
The teen doubles over and retches at the sight. Vision tries to keep him upright but Peter drops to the floor and sobs. "TONY!"
Rhodey wasn't fairing much better, his back shakes as he sobs heartily into his hands, "oh god! Oh god!" Sam moves to comfort him, taking the stricken man away from the scene and hugs him. However, Sam's assurances that Tony wasn't there anymore didn't seem to be helping.
Wanda stares in abject horror. She registers the blood, the way his chest is wedged open and his heart visible between his lungs and her mind goes blank.
Meanwhile the Hulk rebelles heartily against the Being's magic in Bruce's head, deeply upset by seeing his only friend be tortured.
'TIN MAN HURT! HULK PROTECT PUNY FRIEND FROM BAD MEN! HULK SMASH BAD MEN!'
Bruce finds himself crying along with the Hulk, "T-they operated on him while he was awake…o-oh my god Tony…"
The operation is nearing an end. They're wiring his sternum back together but then they bolt a piece of metal to the two halves, before the doctor mounts a large round device onto it and begins stitching his chest up around it.
Disgusted and appalled, Steve turns green and looks away only to find himself faced with a scarily blank looking Bucky.
He feels an upsurge of worry for his friend as his face scarily reminds him of how he'd looked under Hydra programming.
"Buck-"
Bucky - no he is pretty sure it is Winter now, ruthlessly and suddenly surges forward pushing past a dazed Wanda who violently flinches.
He lunges at the men operating on Tony to lash out wildly with his metal arm, becoming more and more angered when his arm goes through the men he lashed out at.
A pale, grey faced Natasha, flings out an arm to stop him from trying to restrain Bucky. "Don't be stupid, Steve. He's not going to stop. If he has to hurt you to keep going for those men in the state he's in he will. We need to get out of here."
Tony's screaming stops when the Doctor presses a soaked cloth to his face and the scene warps around them to form the mindscape once more.
Wildly turning his head and body around, Winter pauses mid punch when the men and Tony disappear. "WHERE DID THEY GO?"
He scouts the mindscape, noting distantly how Ant Man is having a hard time trying not to throw up at what he has seen like the young Spider but that was not of importance now.
'Where is Stark?
'Stark had been hurt in a similar way to Bucky…
'Open heart surgery without anaesthetic? Disgusting. Despicable. Damn- fucking- inhumane. Those men deserve to die for what they were doing to him.
'Now if only I can find out where they went.'
"WHERE ARE THEY?" He yells, his training tells him that the men had to be here somewhere but they aren't.
'How is that possible?
'I have to save Stark.'
"Buck-" he feels a hand grab his arm and he lashes out wildly , swinging with his metal arm straight into the person's face, despite Bucky's objections, before his arm glows with red light and stills against his will.
'The witch is trying to stop me from helping Stark.
'Hydra witch has to die.'
Growling, he uses his immobilised metal arm to steady himself as he takes out her legs with a roundhouse kick that knocks her off her feet.
The hold on his arm vanishes and he lunges for her.
She blasts him backwards into the desk which gives the others a chance to spring into action.
Thor, Spider Man and Natasha work on calming and restraining Winter as the others go to help Steve and Wanda sprawled over the floor.
Despite Thor, Spider Man and Natasha's best efforts Winter isn't calming and the others stay well back in case he blows up again.
"GET OFF ME!" He writhes against Thor who has pinned down his legs so he can't get up or kick any of the others.
"My comrade what you saw was a past horror that befell, friend Anthony. Unfortunately we cannot be of aid-"
"NO! I CAN'T LET SOMEONE BE TORTURED LIKE BUCKY!"
"It's already happened James." Natasha intones with a saddened expression.
"I NEED TO HELP STARK!"
"Natasha's right," Everyone stills at the familiar voice, one that they had recently heard screaming as if their life depended on it. Their eyes follow Pincushion as he walks over to Bucky and sits cross legged in-between Thor and Spider Man. "I appreciate the sentiment Winter but seriously I'm fine now."
Winter calms but raises a disbelieving eyebrow. "You expect me - anyone - to fucking believe that? Remember what you said to Steve about me when we were trialling BARF?"
"That's different." Pincushion shoots him a sharp glare.
"How is it different?" Winter shoots back, giving him a hard-analytical look that makes him squirm. Pincushion doesn't answer so Steve takes the chance to speak up.
"It isn't. You said that torture changes people permanently and that for me to expect Bucky to be the same as the 1940's version of him was unfair and selfish. You were speaking from experience." Steve's voice becomes softer. "I didn't think that you would have gone through that." Steve speaks up and everyone looks to Tony suddenly very worried.
Resisting the power of Steve's puppy dog eyes now is a lot easier than when he actually was foolish enough to consider the man a friend.
"That was kind of the point and the other me is good at what he does." Tony answers shortly.
Rhodey steps forward. "Tones, I got to know. After we got back why did you say no to actually going to the hospital-"
"Honeybear, I know there was some nasty rumours going around after my 3-month siesta but the only reason I refused was so that no one would find out about the arc. You get that, don't you?"
"What nasty rumours?" Spider Man pipes up.
"Nothing for you to worry about, Spiderling." Pincushion gets to his feet and claps Spider Man on the shoulder. "It's just the press printing rubbish to sell a story. While this interlude was nice… I guess, in a weird way. Red October is fine now so I have to go. I didn't think the Illuminate would be showing this far back." He shoots the Illuminate a questioning look. "From what you told me I thought you were only showing the Civil War fiasco."
"The lack of understanding involving you goes back further than I had thought." The Illuminates face was unreadable but their tone was soft, Pincushion was shocked to hear the sadness in their voice.
"Riiiiight. We are talking about this more later." Pincushion narrows his eyes at the Illuminate before giving a small wave and leaving through the door.
Scott had been staying back trying to settle his queasy stomach before speaking, "That was horrifying, I still might be sick."
"They - He was awake! And they just-" Rhodey keened.
Wanda covers her mouth.
Nat's eye's have a surprisingly wet sheen even as her voice is almost deadpan, "They performed open heart surgery while he was awake and strapped down," but then she snarls "Чертовы жопы!"
"They went in and opened up his chest," Bruce muttered, "They had something to knock him out right there but they just restrained him. He could have died from the shock! But they just wanted to inflict pain, they split his sternum, touched his heart!"
Wanda pukes.
Vision kneels next to her and holds her hair out of her face as he hears Ant Man retching in the background.
Natasha rolls her eyes at the display. 'You'd think Hydra would train their volunteers to have a stronger stomach.'
Meanwhile Bruce and Rhodey look annoyed and unsympathetic as they ignore her display and turn instead to talk to Spider Man and Thor who had got up from their places once Bucky had calmed.
Steve looks divided between staying with Bucky or going to check on Wanda. He hovered for a moment before moving closer and sitting by Bucky's side.
'Wanda has Vision and Clint near her to offer support, Bucky on the other hand needs me by his side more. He's got to be feeling guilty for Winters actions and for what happened to Tony. It makes me sick to think that Bucky and Tony went through operations like that.'
Clint looks a little queasy watching her but moves to Wanda's other side, "You OK, kid?"
"J-Just a minute." Her voice quakes as she blinks back the tears that sprang to her eyes at how violently she was heaving.
'Stark was injured by his own bomb. With his name on it, he was torn open awake-' That thought was cut off abruptly by another violent, yet thankfully dry, heave.
"I'm fine, thanks for asking!" Yells Scott after a minute. "I'm done puking too." He wipes his mouth with one hand and cringes before muttering surlily. "Assholes."
Sam snorts and places a hand on his shoulder. "Heard that. You alright Tic Tac?"
"What do you think? How can you be fine? Stark just-" he pales once again and waves his hand. "You know what happened. I don't want to think about it ."
"I was in the military, it makes you build up a strong stomach but look, man I hated watching that just as much as you." Sam says and after a moment he makes sure Scott is done being sick before he guides him to his feet. "I don't want to think about what it did to Stark either. Are you ready to rejoin the others? No one will look down on you for being ill Wanda was too-"
Scott snorts as if he doubts the genuity of her being ill whilst he lets Sam guide him back to the others.
"Hey did anyone else see how Stark was with that gun?" Scott shakily quips to distract himself.
"I didn't think he even knew how to correctly hold a pistol let alone proper position and technique for a rifle." Clint responds, impressed. "But he even had proper cheek weld and trigger pull."
"Idiots!" Rhodey sneers, "Tony is a weapons designer! He doesn't just throw some ideas around and let other people make it functional. He's designed hundreds of guns down to every detail. And you can't design or improve something properly if you don't know how it works. Tony tests everything he designs. Did you know know there was a shooting range under the malibu house? And I can't count how many times he would drag me down to the range to test something out with him. We even saw that briefly - Howard and Stane taught him how to shoot when he was a kid - he was probably younger than you Barton! And yeah, he used to test your arrows himself first.
"Let me guess! You think the suit's just a big fancy toy that he wears while it does all the work?" Rhodey continues, "War Machine is one of the most complicated and responsive pieces of tech I've ever flown, and as a military pilot I've flown a hell of a lot of planes! And the full Iron Man suit is way more complicated than mine."
Clint looks decidedly sheepish, as do most of them. Spiderman gives a low whistle while Thor grins.
Steve sighs, "what was even going on there? I read in his file that Tony was kidnapped in Afghanistan but it never really gave much detail of why or how. Who were those people? Why were they attacking a weapons demo?"
Everyone in the room looks at Steve like he's got his head on backwards.
"Aye! I was wondering such things myself." Thor booms, shooting Steve a smile in the process. The God was thankful that Steve asked what he had been wondering about himself.
"I was only ever told details relevant to my missions and I only know bits and pieces. I'm still catching up." Bucky adds.
"I'm glad to hear you're trying James and I wouldn't really expect Thor to understand," Natasha is staring at him with a look Steve can't quite figure out. "But I expected better from you Steve. You've had six years to catch up."
"I looked at what was recommended!" Cap bristles defensively, " the moon landing, some bands, Star Wars-"
"Steve," Bruce hums nervously, but there's an edge to his voice "didn't you look up history? Politics, wars?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D gave me a primer on the basics. There was some trouble in Afghanistan right? That was where Sam lost his partner Riley. I didn't think it was a full on warzone."
Gobsmacked Sam speaks up, "Steve, you mean you didn't know about the war in Afghanistan!"
"More like an invasion by America," Wanda mutters.
"Al-Qaeda attacked us! Nearly three thousand died in the Towers! We needed to take them out!" Rhodey yells to her as he sees Steve once again looking confused, "God Rogers! How do you not now this man! It's only the most prominent terror attack this century! What else don't you know?"
Everyone else in the room wonders the same thing, shocked and vaguely horrified by the ignorance of their former leader. And all of them wondering how they'd never noticed.
"Perhaps, my friends you could explain for us?" Thor asks with a polite smile as the team starts haphazardly explaining 9/11; the fall of the Twin Towers and the resulting War on Terror.
A war Iron Man had almost single handedly ended.
The Being wordlessly vanishes the sick after they had concluded their clumsy explanations and begins the next sequence.
Natasha's consciousness floats, drowning in seas of blackness and pain, it feels like her arms have been stabbed and her chest has been torn open – wait Stark's had been.
The remembered muted feeling of the Doctor's hands moving in his chest burns and saps her strength.
'I don't think I've felt this weak or violated since the Red room.'
'What happened to me?'
'Stark?' Natasha tries to open her mouth but it was fruitless, Stark's throat had screamed itself raw, she hears him let out a weak whimpering sound that was an attempt at speech.
'Fucking ow.'
"Stark, can you hear me?" A kindly old man's voice sounds through the ebony sea of pain, confusion and panic. "Try to squeeze my hand."
Feeling the light weight settle in his hand, Natasha feels Tony attempt to move his fingers which seem to be made of lead but pain shoots through his chest and his breath hitches.
He attempts to open his eyes but they are welded shut despite his best efforts to pry them back.
'Stark stop struggling you need to rest.'
"It's only been a day since he had the operation. No, he won't be able to get up yet…" The old man's voice informs someone he can't see.
Tony slowly feels the darkness pull him back under.
'Sorry voice, I could hear you. I'll tell you that if – no WHEN- I get up.'
Natasha feels the weight of the darkness pushing her, chest first, from the forefront of Tony's mind into deep unconsciousness.
His past screams echo in his head and he jolts, gasping for air as his eyes flutter open.
'Oww! Breathing hurts… Have I been shot again? No, this might actually be worse.'
The pain feels distant to them, at the edge of their awareness and just a taste of what Tony is feeling. They feel it like through a fog, the burning pain that goes deep into his chest and flares with every movement. Every breath.
Finding very quickly that the pain in his chest and arms that was previously keeping him from consciousness is now keeping him in it, his eyes flitter around the cave before the uncomfortable feeling in his nose adds itself to the mental list of injuries in his head.
"Eew!" Scott squirms as he watches Tony finally yank the long tube out of his nostril with a squelch. "Man that is disgusting! How deep would that tube go?"
"To his stomach presumably..." Steve mutters, pity for his teammate filling his eyes as he scans across what he can see of Tony's orm, there's bandages on his hands poking out from his jacket and dried blood is splattered across both the bandages and the bed.
That pity only intensifies when they all feel Tony's despair at accidently knocking the water out of his reach then to the floor.
'Why does life hate me? I only want a fucking drink.'
Glancing up at the man humming to himself on the other side of the cave, Tony reaches out a sharking hand for the water jug on the floor, only to be stopped by both the man's voice and something pulling painfully at his chest. His vision whites out for a second.
'Definitely worse than being shot.'
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"The surgeon is Friend Yinsen!" Thor notes.
They are all surprised to see that the man who'd performed the awful surgery was the kindly older man they'd met who had told them about the family he'd lost and whose ghost appeared covered in bullet holes and blood.
Tony's hand wraps around the wires coming from the car battery that go under the bloody bandages.
His hands claw at them rabidly, tearing them open to reveal a metal electromagnetic ring, embedded in his chest and sitting heavily on his sternum.
"Oh my God!" Bruce yells. "The rust on that thing!"
Rhodey blanches, "They had him hooked up to a car battery!"
Everyone is horrified. Tony's chest is mutilated, the drying blood still seeping from between skin and magnet doesn't hide the multitude of stitched and puckered shrapnel wounds covering his chest and bestrewn around his abdomen, or the long vertical incision starting from his collar bone and running down to his solar plexus. And in the middle of the scar sits the large corroded magnet, half buried under his skin, blood caked around the edges, the skin red and raised.
A strong feeling of nausea hits Peter again, he uses all of his strength to swallow down bile at the sight in front of him . Wanda's legs go weak and she grips Vision once more, who himself is wide eyed and trembling. Thor is crackling with lightning as he snarls.
Nat swears violently in Russian as Clint steps back. Scott goes completely green and Steve looks away as Sam shudders.
Bucky just stares, his metal hand clenching with unwanted memories as he forces the soldier down again.
They can feel Tony's panic and terror as he sees what's been done to him. His gasping breaths visible in the cold air of the cave. They feel the throbbing burn of his chest.
'What-what the hell is that? Why is that thing in me?
'It must be there for a reason! It's an electromagnet!
'I don't give a shit! Why do I have a bloody magnet in my chest?! Get it out!
'We need to know what it's for! ASK HIM!'
He opens his mouth and tries to speak but only a very raw gasping sound comes out and he clutches his throat.
'Shit, what doesn't hurt at the moment?'
"It would not be in your best interest to try and speak at the moment, Stark. I will be beginning to make some food and drink shortly. Rest and I will wake you when I am done."
After Yinsen had finished shaving his face, he notices that Tony's dark and incredulous eyes are still glaring at him.
"Or don't. It's your call."
Moving to a small cupboard, the old man takes out a can of beans and up turns it into the pan.
"Since you've ripped off your bandages I'd like to take the opportunity to clean your injuries before rebandaging. And I'll need to check you haven't pulled the stitches in your arms, you got a few nasty gashes from the shrapnel there. A couple almost tore right through. It seems you got lucky though, I don't think there's any damage there that won't heal and better your arms than your face, yeah?"
Rhodey goes almost grey at the realization that if Tony hadn't flung his arms up at the last second there would have been no saving him.
They can all feel the ache and slight trembling in his arms and the multitude of stitches keeping the wounds closed.
Tony stays silent, appearing grim whilst Yinsen checks over the, thankfully unbroken stitches. Then he presses the shard of mirror into one of Tony's hands so he can take a look at his chest wound himself whilst he goes back to check the food on the fire.
Tilting the small mirror at the magnet Tony gathers up his courage and looks away from it to Yinsen. Before finally asking in a raw voice, "What the hell did you do to me?"
"What I did? What I did is to save your life." Yinsen glances at Tony before focusing on stirring the beans over the fire once more." I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there's a lot left, and it's headed into your atrial septum." Something grim settles in Tony's stomach at these words and he places the mirror on the bed, his eyes go darker when they flicker to the glass tube Yinsen picks up. "Here, wanna see? I have a souvenir." The old man lightens his tone but it does nothing to cheer Tony up nor does the rattling of the small glass tube with a hand full of finger nail sized shards of metal inside.
"Take a look." Yinsen throws it at him and Tony catches it, staring grimly at the tube as Yinsen continues to talk. "I've seen many wounds like that in my village. We call them the walking dead."
Tony's gaze drifts to a point where it feels like he is looking right through them, many of them avert their gaze and fidget, uncomfortable with the intense look over his face.
"Because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs-"
'So I am going to be dead. Just slightly later than I expected - great!'
"What is this?" Tony grinds out, directing his gaze now at Yinsen as he tilts his head up at the man.
'I think I know but I want you to tell me. I need you to tell me exactly what you did to me.'
"That is an electromagnet. Hooked up to a car battery. And it's keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart."
Bucky's eyes widen. 'That thing is in his chest and keeps him alive!' He feels bile in his throat as he remembers trying to rip it out. 'I only intended to disable the suit…'
Deeply uncomfortable, Tony rolls his shoulders back that causes a flare of pain as the heavy magnet shifts and zips up his jacket, averting his eyes to stare directly into a very cheap camera. "That's right. Smile! We met once, you know. At a technical conference in Bern."
"Don't remember." Tony glances around the cave, scouting out the other security cameras, whilst Yinsen looks at him and gives a small, light laugh.
"No, you wouldn't. If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't have been able to stand, much less give a lecture on integrated circuits."
"Where are we?" Tony's gaze snaps to the door as terrorists yell in Arabic at them both to get up.
'Being a Polyglot has it's perks… but they've got to think I'm ignorant… hold your cards close to your chest.'
Yinsen's demeanor completely changes, panicked he begins gesturing and hissing for Tony to stand.
"Stand up. Stand up." He grabs Tony's elbow to help him to his feet, "Do as I do. C'mon, put your hands up."
The door is open now and a group of dirty, armed men are walking in. It is the weapons Tony focuses on.
"Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?"
Wanda is shaken by the genuine horror she can feel and hear at his panicked question. 'He really had no idea.'
"Do you understand me? Do as I do."
A terrorist with a large bushy beard begins to speak and Yinsen translates in a carefully measured voice, that restrains any anger and Tony gives no hint that he already understood.
"He says: Welcome Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America. He is honoured. He wants you to build a missile. The Jericho missile that you demonstrated. This one." Yinsen translates as his face looks grim his eyes are carefully looking to Tony to measure his reaction.
However, the emotion in Tony's stare is impossible to place as he looks at the plans the terrorist's spokesman is holding up.
"I refuse."
Their faces morph in terror.
"NO! THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAY!" Clint yells, his widened eyes darting from Tony's stubborn face to the terrorists who tenses and glares at Tony threateningly.
The spokesman's smile drops.
He gestures to two of his men who grab Tony roughly and shove a bag over his head, tearing off his thin jacket in the process.
"Hey! What the hell? Hands off the merchandise-"
Yinsen has no choice but to watch as they drag Stark from the room.
"Last chance Stark. Build me my Jericho." The english words clash with the situation he's in and Tony wishes he could see who it was that was speaking, knowing it wasn't the spokesman who'd lead him here.
Steve can feel the hard ground under Tony's knees and the sweaty hands restraining his shoulders and arms - some of the stitches in his arms tear under the rough grips and Steve can see little patches of blood - as he buries the battery against his chest, the cold air nipping at his exposed torso and a heavy heat from behind him. He can hear footsteps and muttering in various languages - though only the man behind him speaks english - he can barely understand it. Once, he hears clipped but familiar tones of hungarian that might have been comforting to Tony had it come from the woman who had once whispered lullabies in it to him and not this harsh guttural timbre. Steve could tell to Tony it felt like betrayal that the native language of the woman who he loved like his mother was being used this way.
He smells the sweat and stink of the bodies around him, the gunpowder from the weapons they carry and the old musty scent of the burlap sack that obscures his vision.
Tony listens to the crackling of embers and the scrape of a poker prodding amidst flames, smells the smoke and knows what their plan is. Steve hopes with all his heart Tony is wrong.
Gritting his teeth, Steve feels Tony force back his fear to speak in a strong clear voice.
"I'll never roll over for some fake Al-Qaeda! Fuck you!"
'Shut up Stark!' Steve thinks.
'I will not break.'
He refuses to flinch when he feels the first sharp prod of flaming metal. He bites down on his tongue when it digs into his back and begins to drag down.
Steve is stunned when he feels the skin on Tony's back peeling, blistering and burning raw as the terrorist behind him moves the rod in another long diagonal motion across his back. Tony's pain builds in sync with the ache in his chest to a nearly unbearable amount until a gold flash causes the ghost pain to lessen.
He swallows back the instinctive sob that rises to his throat and merely gives a small choked scream in response.
'Thank fuck they can't see me crying.'
He still feels it when the terrorist digs the butt of the metal rod into the underside of Tony's shoulder blade, dragging it in a small torturously slow circular motion. The edge of their tool is sharp but not enough, and the tapered point is forcefully shoved and tugged as it gouges through layers of skin.
Tony barely holds in his screams.
Steve on the other hand is appalled. 'How could they be so inhumane? How could they treat my friend like that?'
That same voice from behind keeps asking, "Build me my Jericho?"
"No." 'Never.'
The burning rod comes and goes. Sometimes it disappears to the sound of the fire flaring, others there's nothing until it reappears in a different spot. They don't hold to a pattern - not one that even Tony's mind can track - the burning touch lightly tracing his skin here, digging there. It moves back and forth across his back, vanishing from one spot only to return to it minutes later. Voices laugh when he jerks under their rough hands, or when a whimper or low keen slips between his lips.
'Weakness.
You cannot break you are made of Iron.'
'Oh Tony… Howard what did you do?' Steve feels pity for Tony rise in his chest and he internally wished that Tony would let himself feel what was happening instead of trying to block it out. 'It'll only come out to bite you later...'
For a few moments there's just rustling and the sound of something poking at the fire again, though it sounds distant to his sluggish senses. Then he feels a different type of pain inside the circles gouged on his back; a sharper, but still burning point digging and carving in small strange movements.
He feels beads of blood run down his back.
'Oh joy, a knife. What the fuck are they carving into me?!'
"Build me my Jericho?"
Steve feels Tony's mouth stretch taut to form the inhuman sounding screams erupting from his mouth before he feels himself be pulled sharply from the memory.
