Yay! It's time for a new chapter. I think you'll like this one. I'll see you at the end.


"Loki! What did you do?!" shouted Thor as everyone looked at the unconscious man before them.

"Oh, nothing. Just a simple spell I can assure you. Although, it's impossible to reverse." Stated Loki and Thor grabbed him by the throat.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

"I removed his masks. The man you thought of as Anthony Stark doesn't exist. And once you figure that out your empire will fall. As for his appearance, well, maybe now he'll act his age." Snarked Loki.

Thor ended up punching him so hard that he was knocked out right after the god had finished talking. Everybody else was just in shock. None of them really knew what Loki meant about removing Tony's masks. Well, Natasha had an inkling but nothing concrete. The one thing they did know was that they had to get Tony back to the tower and to medical before the media vultures arrived.

Steve was quick to pick Tony up and get him on the jet while everyone else followed. The whole ride back was silent. Nobody really had anything to say. They knew their new mission. The second the jet touched down back at the tower Thor was escorting the now barely conscious Loki down to the Hulk cage while everyone else filed into medical.

Steve gently deposited Tony on a bed and took a step back to allow Bruce to work. Bruce was quick to get Tony hooked up to various machines that told him various things. Everything was moving smoothly until Bruce rolled up Tony's left sleeve to get to the veins in his arm to insert an IV line.

Steve was the first one to notice that something was very wrong. There were some bandages on Tony's arm that covered him up to his elbow. They looked new. Steve suggested to Bruce that he should remove them to see what kind of injury it was. Bruce agreed and slowly cut away the bandages.

Everyone was in shock over what they uncovered. All along Tony's forearm were cuts. Some new and some old. It was haunting to look at. Clint and Nat just looked on in horror while Bruce set about cleaning and bandaging everything. Steve, well, Steve just felt guilty.

Steve was well aware that he hadn't been the best to Tony since the team had formed. He'd looked at the man expecting to see Howard and was frustrated when he got the smart-mouthed genius currently passed out in front of him. He and Tony constantly butted heads and Tony hardly ever participated in any team bonding. He was always down in his lab. And when he did come up he was always tired and in a bad mood.

Now come to think of it, maybe Tony was tired because he just didn't have the time to sleep. There was always some new thing for the team, for SHIELD, or for SI. And that was when the guilt really set in for Steve. If he'd been a better leader and had paid any amount of attention to his teammates, he would have seen how lonely Tony must have been feeling. He would have seen how exhausted he was. He would have been about to do something before they got to this point.

But they were here now and Steve knew he would do anything to fix this.

After about an hour of sitting and waiting, Tony began to stir. He was quiet at first. Nobody heard him but Steve due to his enhanced hearing. Everyone was at the man's side in seconds to make sure that he was alright and that the Tony in front of them was really their Tony. When Tony slowly blinked open his eyes, Steve was the first to speak up.

"You took quite the hit out there Tony. You feeling alright?"

Tony frowned at the fact that Steve had just called him Tony and not Stark but brushed it off. Maybe Steve was just concerned and had a momentary lapse in judgment.

"My head hurts quite a bit, same with my arm. And my bones ache." Tony's eye's widened. That was not at all what he wanted to say. He was just going to lie but he found that he just couldn't.

"That's not what I was going to say. Guys… what happened? I remember Loki hit me with some sort of spell and that's about it." Asked Tony and all the others looked at him with a mixture of relief and concern.

"Well, at least we have confirmation that he kept all his memories." Muttered Natasha but Tony still heard her.

"What the hell happened to me?"

"Tony's it's better you see for yourself." Grimaced Bruce as he walked over to Tony with a small hand mirror.

Tony took the mirror in hand and gasped the second he saw his face. It was his face looking back at him, but it was also a face he hadn't seen in a very long time. He looked like he was 18 again. Tony touched his face where his iconic facial hair used to be. He hadn't figured out how to actually trim nice facial hair until he was around 25 so at 18 he'd just shaved everything off. Tony just sat there in shock for a second until he tore his eyes away from his face to look at the rest of his body.

Tony could already tell that he was shorter then he had been. He hadn't hit his last growth-spirt until he was 21, so Tony knew he was sitting around 5 foot 6 inches without his lifts on. He was already the smallest guy on the team without the lifts and this just made his even shorter. But what was throwing Tony off the most was his arm. Well, his left arm to be exact. He'd hit a bit of a low point the past couple of days and all he hoped for was that the other's hadn't seen what he'd done.

Tony looked down at his arm to see if things had changed and his heart sunk when he saw that the bandages had been changed. That was when he began to panic. His breathing sped up and his hands became very shaky as he tried in vain to calm down. It didn't work. Nothing Tony tried ever worked. But, to be fair, Tony had never really gotten to the point of finding healthy coping mechanisms.

As Tony continued to panic the team watched on in horror as he began muttering to himself and crying. None of them had ever seen Tony cry before. Tony and crying just wasn't heard of. It didn't take too long for things to get frantic. Tony looked absolutely terrified, both by what had happened and by his own behaviour. It was like every emotion that Tony normally held on the inside was now displayed for the whole world to see.

As Tony's cries got more frantic Steve had had enough. He couldn't just stand there and watch his teammate cry in distress. It was clear that nobody else was going to do anything so Steve did the only thing he could think of. He went over to the bed Tony was on and pulled the now young man into a hug.

Tony practically buried himself in Steve's arms looking for any kind of comfort he could. Just by his actions, Steve could tell that Tony hadn't received any kind of affection if a long time. And that struck Steve as odd. As far as he knew, Tony was still dating Pepper. Sure, he hadn't seen Pepper around the tower in a little while… and now thinking about it Tony had been acting odd since they all moved in almost a year ago. He was standoffish and generally upset, but he seemed to cling to any kind of positive interaction like a dog would a bone. He seemed alright when Pepper was around but looking back on that those instances seemed few and far between. It was almost like Tony and Pepper had broken up.

Maybe Steve had seriously misunderstood what Tony was going through.

Steve shook all the thoughts from his head. He couldn't dwell on anything like that right now. Tony was freaking out and he needed to know that he was safe and alright. So, Steve sat on the bed with Tony in his arms. He rocked slowly side to side while offering whatever reassurances he could. Tony was slowly starting to calm down a bit, but his heart rate was still too high and with the arc reactor in that was dangerous if it was prolonged.

"Cap, I'm going to go prepare a sedative. We can't let this continue of for much longer. I need you to calm him down a little bit more so he won't fight the needle." Instructed Bruce and Steve nodded. He could do that. He could help calm Tony down just a little bit more.

"Hey, hey. Tony. Tony. Anthony! Just focus on my breathing alright?" Tony nodded a bit and Steve noticed that Tony actually seemed to calm a little bit more when he was called Anthony. In any other situation, Steve would have found that cute.

As Bruce approached with the needle, Steve felt Tony tense up. It wasn't completely out of the realm for Tony to be scared of needles. Hell, Steve was a human science experiment and even he hated needles. Steve couldn't fault Tony's behaviour at all. Steve just held him close and made sure that his arm was still for Bruce.

When Bruce stuck the needle into Tony's arm, he whimpered. He honest to god whimpered and it broke everyone's hearts. It took a minute, but soon enough Tony's breathing had evened out and he'd fallen asleep. Steve gently eased Tony down and made sure that he was comfortable on the hospital bed before he stepped back and looked at the other members of his team.

"Um… what the hell was that?" Asked Clint as he looked over at Tony.

"I think that was exactly like Loki said. Loki said that he'd removed his masks. He couldn't lie to us and he couldn't hide his emotions. It's exactly like Loki wanted." Spoke Steve, still a little shaken over what had just happened.

"I'm going to give Pepper and Rhodey a call. They'd know best how to handle Tony." Commented Bruce before he took his leave.

"Steve, the rest of us are going to go wash up and see if Thor is done with Loki. You coming?" asked Natasha and Steve shook his head.

"I'm not leaving him. I know what it's like to wake up alone when everything's changed. I don't want anyone to suffer like it did."

Natasha just nodded her head and walked out of the room leaving Steve and Tony there alone. Steve walked around Tony's bed so that he could sit in the old threadbare brown chair next to the bed. Just sitting there gave Steve time to think. He realized that he hadn't been the nicest person to Tony over the past year. And really, that was actually mostly Steve's fault. He hadn't taken the time to try to get to know the genius like he had the other members of the Avengers. The Tony he'd seen today seemed sweet and confused and more touch-starved then much else.

Speaking of Tony, as Steve took his watch over the young man he noticed things. He noticed how fluffy and curly Tony's hair was. He noticed how much smaller Tony was compared to him. And earlier he'd noticed just how big and doe-eyed Tony's eyes were. Honestly, Steve was attracted to Tony. He'd been somewhat attracted to him even before this all happened. That was one thing Steve actually really liked about being in the future, his bisexuality no longer had to be hidden and he could be with another man if he wanted too. Even if that other man was Tony Stark.

Steve tried to keep all those thoughts out of his head. Now wasn't the time to catch feelings. Now was the time to make things right. Now was the time to give Tony the comfort he'd obviously been seeking. Now was the time to keep their teammate safe and to prove to Loki that this wouldn't end the team, but only make them stronger.

Love could come later.


Hey guys. I hope you liked this one. If you haven't guessed already, I've been prewriting all these chapters so I can upload on a schedule (sort of). That way I don't feel rushed. Now, as for this chapter, you can probably guess that Stony is going to happen pretty soon. I just love protective Steve. He's a sweet bean. Well. I'll see you soon. -Shadows