A/N- 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.
Tony has his heart restarted with a car battery in this which is very crude and not medically advisable at all... so it goes without saying DO NOT try this at home!
Answers to your reviews :)
Afedrigo- Thank you :)
Genderqueerwriter- Ooo! There is more than that to come... Thanks! :D
Icecatfire- Oh yes they truly will!
LightNote19- I wont don't worry :)
The Avengers find themselves back in the part of the cave where the Ten Rings store their hostages, they like Yinsen are unnerved by Tony's pallor and eerily glassy eyes that suggests he isn't as far away from death as they thought.
Forgoing the usual practice of waiting for Stark to speak, the Doctor moves.
Moving from the bench he has been hovering by to crouch in front of Tony.
Tony's eyes track him, but otherwise he is still, grey faced and gasping wetly for breath. Although, his eyes are glazed over in pain they can see an awareness there that seemed to be absent when the terrorists first brought him back.
'So, this isn't confusion, or shock.'
Pressing fingers to his wrist provides the answer.
Stark's heart is hammering, fluttering as fast as he would expect a mouses too. To make things worse the closer proximity means Yinsen is able to notice the faint smell of burning skin wafting from Tony's chest.
'They have really done it this time. Electrocution too… I don't know if I'll be able to save him.
'Stark's heart is giving out… that's got to be ventricular tachycardia. I have to act now.'
He needs a defibrillator. A car battery is all kinds of wrong for cardioversion, but it's all he's got. He just has to pray it won't cook Stark's heart.
Yinsen pulls his shirt off, lowers Tony onto the ground and rolls him onto his side.
Bruce crosses his arms tightly, knowing how dangerous this is. Car batteries are not suited to the delicate systems of the heart. This could cause even more damage.
"This is going to hurt."
Briefly turning off the battery he quickly disconnects the right wire, moving aside the soaked gauze to place it just under his left shoulder blade.
Natasha lays a comforting hand on Bruce's shoulder. "It'll work. We know he survives." Despite her confident words, Bruce notes how tense her hand is and how tight it grips.
Yinsen doesn't look into Stark's wide panicked eyes, he know's if he does he will lose his nerve and Stark can't afford for that to happen.
Making sure the wire doesn't touch the burns, he flips the battery back on.
Zzzt.
Stark's back arches, he briefly convulses with a strangled cry before falling back limp.
"Did it work?" Peter's hushed anxious question raises the tension even more, they wait with baited breath for the answer.
Rhodey cringes from the now disturbingly familiar tang of burnt skin coming from his best friend. The smell is loathsome and it makes him want to empty what is in his stomach.
Yinsen quickly reconnects the wire before he checks Stark's pulse. It's a little erratic, a sign of continuing arrhythmia, but otherwise steady. He breaths a sigh of relief, they had gotten lucky. But the damage had likely been done and cardioversion with a car battery would not have helped in the long run.
Everyone is visibly relieved, but Bruce is still concerned, his mind still trying to work out how Tony is going to fix his heart. 'Surely even he can't build the arc reactor in a cave?'
Yinsen uses Tony's unconsciousness to check the burns healing progress on his back. They appear like rope burns now, the charred skin beginning to peel away with the bandages, without proper burn treatment they're not healing well as he'd like but at least there is no sign of infection.
Hissing in sympathy, Yinsen winces when he sees faint yellow bruises the shape of hands twisting around his back from where they had been holding him down; in some parts the burns healing has been set back by their careless treatment too.
Some of the burn blisters have popped and are secreting pus that he wipes away with warm water.
He wastes no time in taking off the rest of the old water logged bandages and notices that more of the stitching has torn, this time on his chest as well as his arms so he goes for his needle and thread.
He's not looking forward to telling Stark about the problem with his heart.
The crushing ache in his chest has somehow grown worse and his back feels like it is on fire again. Tony can feel his heart thumping, but at least it isn't the erratic fluttering that left him dizzy and barely able to breathe.
It'd felt like he'd been paralyzed for all he could move. He isn't sure what had caused it, but it was an experience he hopes never to repeat. But judging from the way he can feel his heart beating, he isn't going to be that lucky.
Getting his body to move and even open his eyes is a slow, draining task. His body feels heavy like he is moving through quicksand.
Tony feels something pricking the sore sensitive skin on his chest and chokes down a scream, half from the pain and half from the terror of being back on that table with his chest splayed open like a frog being dissected. His eyes, barely able to peel open a second ago now launch open to see Yinsen with a needle and thread.
Feeling Stark's primal fear that echoes the emotions from the first surgery, Sam inhales sharply.
'How could I not think that Stark would have PTSD from Afghanistan? Shit man. That flashback already seems eerily similar to what my guys tell me about getting must have gotten help for it though,right?'
Meanwhile Thor straightens in interest. 'Friend Anthony is showing signs of experiencing the haunting - maybe he is truly on his way to becoming a great Berserker warrior, like myself and those of old.'
A flurry of nonsense words from Yinsen manages to soothe down his rising panic and he tells Tony that some of the stitches in his chest and arms have been torn during his latest round of waterboarding.
Some of them are ashamed that they forgot about the injuries he had sustained in the attack due to the other things that they had seen him go though.
He feels every movement of the needle through his skin and it's only Yinsen's voice that keeps him from sinking completely into his nightmares. He clenches his jaw, grimacing, and just barely manages to hold back most of his groans and flinches at each pass of the needle, hating how pathetic he must look to the doctor.
"For goodness sake! Cut yourself some slack!" Peter surprisingly explodes. "You don't look pathetic! I don't think I could have gone through half the things you have here and make freaking Iron Man to somehow explode myself out! So stop putting yourself down. I am sick of it!"
The others stare openly at Spider-Man who appears a little mortified now.
"Hear. Hear." Rhodey claps Peter on the shoulder. "Tell him that when we get out of these memories. I think Tones needs to hear that more than he let's on."
The next session of cleaning and bandaging is as painful as the last, but this time he manages to cling to consciousness. The memory of the painful beating of his heart, the lightheadedness, being unable to draw enough breath was terrifying and he needed to know what had happened, praying it wasn't what he feared.
"Wh't 'appen?"
He slowly sits up on the bed, attempting to curl slightly around his pained chest. He hisses and immediately straightens, his chest and back vehemently protesting the movement.
"You should have stayed still Stark. Your body is trying to heal."
Tony shoots him a glare, "Yeah, 'caus 'ey care 'bout m'health. Jus' tell me wha wuzzat."
Yinsen's mouth thins into a slim line as he helps Tony sit up. "Cardioversion. A crude version at least. You were experiencing ventricular tachycardia; the lower chambers of the heart were beating rapidly and not supplying enough blood. The electric shock helped return it to a normal rhythm. We got lucky really. Cardioversion with the battery could have killed you."
His trembling hand fists his shirt below the magnet.
"Stark, your heart is failing."
'OK. Yep. It's another death sentence.'
"Surely it's not that bad?" Scott asks looking pale.
Steve opens his mouth to answer before closing it. 'Yes it is that bad, I know intimately how dangerous those conditions are, arrhythmia especially since it is one I had myself pre serum.' A few days ago the thought of a rich man like Stark suffering like he had would have been laughable, back in his day chronic illness was only supposed to be suffered by the dregs of society, the poor, the immigrants and the mentally ill. Many people didn't even believe in chronic illness, he'd always been told things like his asthma were merely mental symptoms.
Bruce sighs as he addresses the group. "Ventricular tachycardia and arrhythmia are very dangerous conditions Scott. Yinsen stabilised the tachycardia for now but his heart is still arrhythmic - that is; out of rhythm - which likely means atrial fibrillation, which is a chronic condition usually managed with medication or a heart assist device like a pacemaker. Left untreated it could become fatal and that's without being attached to a car battery that is likely worsening the condition."
Tony is laughing weakly though it lacks all humour and causes a lancing pain in his chest.
Nat winces at the laugh, she knows she's heard it from him before during the Ulton fiasco. She hadn't recognised it for what it was at the time, but now she can feel the hopelessness and depression fuelling it.
"The trauma, the surgery and magnet already damaged your heart. But this is worse and no easy fix. You need a pacemaker or an ICD implanted and I don't have any suitable tools here. And the Ten Rings won't care as long as you refuse to build for them. They will let you die here Stark. Next time I don't think I'll be able to revive you. Stark? Do you hear me?"
Tony looks up to the Doctor with an almost manic smile, "Yeah, shoulda known death like most things in life, comes in threes."
It is eerie seeing the humorless, hyena like grin on Tony's face, they can feel the slight madness bleeding through behind the depression and can't help but wonder when Tony is going to break.
They only know it'll be soon.
They come for Tony just after he manages to drift into an uneasy sleep, they pull him roughly from the cot, aggravating all the burns as they do so.
"Bastards! Let him fucking rest!" Clint screams in their faces and tries taking a swing at one of them. He and Nat both recognise this method of torture. The were depriving him of sleep along with food and water while physically torturing him. "Sadistic assholes!"
When the thugs shove him to his knees in front of that Tub again, Tony tries his absolute hardest not to cry... the respite wasn't long enough and the pain on his back, his chest and everywhere is becoming too much.
"Build me the Jericho," someone hisses in his ear.
"No," he rasps, although it comes out far too pleading for his liking.
Rhodey tries to claw their hands from his friend before giving up with a desperate yell and Sam pulls him away.
Natasha squats down next to Tony as though to offer comfort though she's not sure if it's more for Tony or herself.
They shove his head down and his world splinters again.
Yinsen's voice echoes in his head from what he had told him earlier. "They will let you die here Stark. Next time I don't think I'll be able to revive you. Do you hear me?"
'You have to break if you want to live.'
Suddenly, the icy water slaps him sharply from his dissociation, reminding him of the agony and no air…
'I can't breathe!
'Just break!
'NO! I can't!'
Peter almost sobs, rubbing at tears under his mask, "Just do it Mr. Stark! Just say yes!"
In his ear, that hissing voice: "Build me the Jericho."
'Oh, God it's so tempting.'
Despite this thought, between hacking up mouthfuls of water, he manages a clear "no."
He's proud and surprised at the strength Tony is showing, but Steve wishes he could stop what is happening.
Again. His vision's gone completely, his heart is trying to shove the magnet out of his chest.
"Build me the Jericho."
He only has the energy to shake his head and swallow a whimper.
Again. "Build me the Jericho."
Again. His world is water, nothing but the dream of air and awareness of his pounding heart.
'It's going to explode in my chest…
'I'm going to die here—'
"Come on Stark," Sam whispers, "everyone breaks. You can't keep going like this."
The voice hisses in his ear, so close that the heat of its breath scorches his skin. "Build me the Jericho!"
"Okay!" the word sounds like it's been torn out of Tony's throat, "I'll build it! Just stop!"
They do.
They heard him.
Once they drop him roughly to the floor for the final time, he focuses on heaving up the lungfuls of water collected in his chest and almost faints in relief.
Although they are relieved the torture has stopped. They think they know what is about happen now.
Regretfully, Steve frowns as he looks to his teammate on the floor. 'I'm sorry Tony. I should have known you would have never double dealt to them willingly… now the emergence of SI weapons in Gulmira makes sense. Tony didn't double deal them. They were tortured out of him.'
He's given an hour to recover before they come again. For a moment when they shove the bag back onto his head he's terrified they're just going to keep torturing him.
'I've said yes! I've said yes! No, no, don't take me again.'
But then he hears them harassing the Doctor as well and that soothes the worst of the panic that they're taking him to the Tub again.
It doesn't help his fluttering heart though.
He focuses on each step and quickly realizes they're not being taken to the torture room. At the back of his mind he counts every step, in case it would be useful to know this journey in the future.
It is proven to be a wise decision when he sees bright light shining through the sack that is then ripped off.
After days inside the dark cave the sun is blinding and burning as he blinks to readjust his eyes.
There's weapons - his weapons - everywhere.
Horrifyingly large stacks of explosives, missiles and guns. All with his name printed on the side. Tony feels like he's stepped into a nightmare but he knows he's already living one.
A hard shove has him almost losing grip on the battery and stumbling into another terrorist who harshly grips him until he's steady and quickly walks away.
Thor growls at the man who pushes him and whacks Mjolnir menacingly against his palm.
He stumbles down into the main part of the camp, registering the dozens of terrorists but mostly eyeing the cache of his weapons.
Weapons that were supposed to protect their soldiers from these people.
Hugging herself slightly, Wanda feels his fear and she regrets her actions, knowing miserably that she can't do anything about them now.
Bushy Beard is speaking, but his mind is still too caught up in the shock to translate the words.
"He wants to know what you think." Yinsen's voice brings him back to the present, horror still lurking at the corners of Tony's mind.
"I think you got a lot of my weapons."
'There's far too many for this to be an accident - it has to be a stolen shipment I never heard about.'
Steve curses himself. He knows Obadiah Stane was the one behind the double dealing, but he hadn't believed Tony had been ignorant. 'Fury was right, he really did trust Stane, and he had no clue what the man was doing. But with what S.H.I.E.L.D first told me backed by what the public knew, I thought… I should have listened to Fury not what was in my briefing packets.'
Bushy Beard starts walking around gesturing as he talks and pausing for Yinsen to translate.
"He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile.
"He wants you to make the list of materials.
"He says for you to start working immediately and when you're done, he will set you free."
Bushy beard has his hand out expectantly for a handshake. Tony almost considers refusing again. However he knows he can't take another round of the tub.
'You're pathetic Stark. You should have died before saying yes.'
'No Stark,' Natasha thinks, 'Everyone breaks eventually and better to live and stop them. Make them pay by surviving everything they throw at you.'
He takes the handshake and hates himself more than ever, "No, he won't."
Bruce winces at the self loathing rolling off Tony.
While Vision sighs sadly, intimately familiar with Tony's self hatred from JARVIS' recovered memories.
Yinsen nods his head a little, "No, he won't."
Nodding his head Bushy Beard gives a grin, but Tony is now focusing on the man looking down at them from some rocks, fiddling with a ring. He had to be the man who'd burned him and he was the man who had him drowned repeatedly.
He was clearly the leader.
Tony held the leader's cold menacing stare with one of his own for a moment before deliberately lowering his eyes back to Bushy Beards annoyingly happy face.
Tony is sat in front of the fire back in their cell. Darkness swirls in his mind clouding his thoughts and sapping the little strength left. He's not sure how long he's been sat there, a minute, an hour, a day. He can't bring himself to care.
"I'm sure they are looking for you Stark. They'll never find you in these mountains." Yinsen frowns at Tony and moves to sit opposite him across the fire. "What you just saw…" Yinsen's tone becomes sharper as if he was trying emphasise his point, "that is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?"
"Why should I do anything?"
The defeated tone in Tony's voice stuns them all, once again it is embroiled with self loathing that they had never expected.
"They're gonna kill me, you... Either way, if they don't, I'll probably be dead in a week."
"Well then... this is a very important week for you, isn't it?"
Tony's eyes widened when he looked up from the fire.
'Wait a minute - I could have longer than a week! The Arc if I made it smaller, less bulky included a pacemaker to stabilize the sino-atrial node I would have enough power to keep my heart beating for 50 lifetimes...that would certainly give me enough time to bust myself and Yinsen from this joint… but I would need to go through another surgery.'
"God! No, no,no!" They are immediately shocked by the hysterical, pleading tone Pincushion is using, it was one that they had never heard or thought to associate with Tony before the water torture happened.
He gasps and grabs the magnet stuck out disturbingly from his heavily bleeding chest.
Unimpressed with his other self, Angry Tony raises his voice. "What're you panicking about?! We need thi-"
"I-I can't go through that again! Do you have any idea what this thing will do to our body! I'll never fully heal!" Pincushion stares at Angry, "What if I wake up again? O-oh my God. I'm going to die soon anyway." Pincushion grabs the table before his legs collapse. "Fuck!"
Everyone is confused by Pincushions extreme reaction, not entirely sure what Tony is planning.
While the rest of the team is surprised by the extreme panic Stark is showing Wanda recognises it, intimately.
She remembers feeling it when she invaded Stark's mind in Sokovia. She had used it to make him tear himself apart for the wrongs he had done to her and she had revelled in his pain. In retrospect she could say it was a disgusting thing for her to do. Even at the time she knew it was an abhorrent act but Stark had always been an exception to her. She had felt it was well deserved.
Now she no longer revelled in his pain and anguish - or tried not too, old habits die hard - and she felt sorrow for Pincushion.
When his counterpart looks to be on the verge of crying Angry Tony quickly jumps into action.
"Hey," Angry tries for a gentle tone. "Look at me."
"What could you possibly-" when Pincushion looks up at him Angry Tony lightly taps the others head and his eyes turn jet black.
"What the actual fuck?!" Clint bursts out, thoroughly disturbed by Pincushions black eyes, the sight reminds him a lot of the footage he saw from the base where Loki controlled him before his eyes had settled into the Tesseract blue.
However, Pincushions eyes remain fully black, he is seemingly catatonic as dark wisps of smoke begin to trail out of his mouth and chest.
"I knew it." Angry Tony murmurs as he makes a sharp pulling gesture with one of his arms, which persuades the ebony twirls to leave Pincushion completely and gather up in Angry's hands .
He uses all his effort to compress it into a cloud of concentrated smoke resembling a ball.
Vision feels disturbed by the aesthetic likeness to how Wanda's powers looked when she threw him through the compound. He unconsciously shifts a little away from her.
However this was where the similarities ended.
Angry drew his arm back, like he was about to bowl for a Cricket match before he lobs it straight into the sphere.
Once it's absorbed in, Pincushion's eyes return to normal and the blackness recedes back into his pupils.
He unfreezes.
"Hope to say to me... wait what happened? Why don't I feel anything?" Pincushion stares at Angry with great suspicion whilst he straightens. "What did you do?"
'Good question.' Bucky switches his gaze to Angry Tony although he knows exactly what he had done. Winter had tried blocking and suppressing the memories of his trauma at the hands of Hydra in a similar way once the BARF treatment started.
"No thanks for helping me then, just 'what did you do'? Sometimes I wonder why I bother. You are such an ungrateful little twat." Angry sulks and crosses his arms.
Rhodey smothers a snort at the scene. 'Seriously Tones? You are throwing a sulk at yourself. I shouldn't be surprised - this is Tony.'
Fondly frustrated, Pincushion sighs and smiles a little. "Thank you."
"See that wasn't too hard was it? Now let's..." Angry turns back around and goes to move away before Pincushion grabs him.
"You've still got to tell me."
"You're not being let off the hook there!" Clint flashes Angry a suspicious look, "tell us what you did to our friend spiky Stark."
"I just shoved all the horrible shit you were feeling into the sphere, so yes my thank you was well deserved -"
"You did what?!" Pincushion's voice rises several octaves.
"See I knew I shouldn't have told you-"
"It's going to be 10x worse for us when it comes out of the sphere again-"
"If we live that long." Angry cuts Pincushion off, his face hardening into a very cold, angry expression. "Thanks to those fuckers we are likely going to die soon. So yes I just saved us from unnecessary suffering, there is no time to fall apart and I am not going to especially not here. We are Iron and they will never EVER break us!"
Several of them cringe. This was one of the times in the Afghanistan memories where it was again highlighted that Tony had reached his mental and physical breaking point.
Nodding resolutely, Pincushion glances from the sphere back to Angry Tony. "Who said anything about breaking?" Angry Tony opens his mouth but Pincushion barrells onwards, "you're right though. We're gonna need some guts to tell Yinsen he's gonna open me up again…" Pincushion appears grim and his voice goes quiet. "Just hope they have enough knock out juice this time."
"What!" Peter squeaks.
"God, please no," Rhodey moans into his hands.
Bruce pales a little at the memory of the first surgery that was more of a butchery and thinking of Tony having to go through that again. With his injuries at the moment Tony may not even be able to survive the shock of another major surgery, let alone awake. Bruce fears it would make him snap completely.
Angry shoots the sphere a sharp side eyed glare when the smoke inside becomes more active and starts smacking the glass at this statement.
The smoke only calms down when Angry Tony's eyes flash briefly black. Glaring at the sphere, he pauses for a long moment before he speaks up in a somber voice. "Yeah, well I'm sure they learnt from their mistakes last time."
"Don't count on it." Winter murmurs darkly, thinking about how many times Hydra had left him awake while his metal arm was being updated. No matter how painful the updates were.
Glancing briefly to Winter, Steve swallows. 'Oh God Buck… what haven't you told me? I really hope Tony isn't awake again.'
