Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

The rhythmic words weren't comforting anymore, they were necessary, Steve was certain he would subconsciously stop breathing without them.

His eyes were trained on the tube that came down from the IV in his arm, the warm red liquid being drained from his body made him feel even more weak and lethargic than he had before. At first he had tried to tear it out, multiple times, but they always replaced it and in the end it just left him with scars dotting the inside of his arm.

He couldn't even lift his arm to rip it out now if he tried, his almost certainly broken ribs wouldn't allow him to move more than a little, and his weary body seemed to forbid even that. Every time his body healed itself, they damaged him again, not even the serum could keep up with them. He didn't feel like moving anymore, and so he simply laid still, repeating the words in his head to remind him to breathe and watching as the life was drained from him.

It was surprising, he thought, that he was even still alive. He hadn't expected to be, he had expected to go to sleep the night before and simply never wake up again, but it seemed that it wasn't going to be quite that easy, his super soldier body wouldn't allow him to give up, and maybe somewhere in the depths of his mind, his own stubbornness wouldn't allow it.

He wondered if when his body finally did give out if anyone would ever know, if the outside world would be told of his death or if they would pretend as if it didn't happen. He wondered if Sharron Carter would ever find out and wished that he could have spoken to her one last time.

Steve Rogers had a growing list of regrets, and always waiting too late where a relationship was involved was one of them. He hadn't known Sharron very well, but he didn't miss the fact that she went out of her way to help him, and he would have liked to have known her better.

His thoughts then drifted to the Avengers, and he wondered if they would ever know. In a way he hoped they didn't, he could only imagine that Sam might blame himself since he seemed to feel responsible for Steve being brought in to begin with. Natasha might have some amount of guilt, but she had helped them get away from Tony's team, she had little to regret.

Tony, how would he feel about the entire ordeal? Would he think that he had delivered Steve to his death, or did the man hate him enough that he no longer cared?

A stab of mental anguish shot through him at the thought, he had tried to put the situation to the back of his mind. He couldn't afford to dwell on something that would break him, but now in his weakest moments he no longer had the strength to push it away, and the thoughts and emotions that came with it began to hit him hard.

He tried to fight it back, tried to be as strong as people believed he was, as he wanted to be, but it was a futile effort. Sobs began to slowly pour out from him, racking his damaged body and causing farther pain.

Bucky was dead, Steve now forced himself to acknowledge that it was the most likely outcome to the situation.

Tony hated him, loathed him, had bluntly ignored him when he had tried to hint what was going on and he hadn't actually been able to say anything.

If he had, Ross wouldn't have let any of them leave the Raft alive, he was sure of that. Tony was without his Iron Man suit and there would have been no way for him to fight his way free if something had of gone wrong, and Steve knew that it would have. Ross had threatened him before he had brought him out to meet with the inventor.

If you say too much, you can guarantee Stark won't get what he's here for. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he won't get out of here at all.

When Steve realized that Tony was there for the team and Ross was actually going to let him take them, he couldn't do anything but hint and hope that the genius realized what he was getting at. However, it was clear that his hatred towards Captain America had thwarted his ability to connect the dots.

Then, there was always the possibility that he had connected the dots and he just hadn't cared. It was also possible that the first day he had brought him here he had heard him call out and had ignored him.

Another sob wracked Steve's body and he bit down on his lip. No, he would give Tony the benefit of the doubt, because he wasn't that type of man. Tony was a good person, he wouldn't leave someone else suffering, no matter his distaste for them.

Or maybe you're just awful enough it was justified, his own mind taunted.

"Please stop," he murmured to the air groggily, he couldn't take his own mind attacking him too. "Please stop, I can't deal with this, I can't do this anymore."

Everything hurt, his mind was slowly swimming away from him and he was beginning to lose all since of consciousness that he had, but he welcomed the sensation with open arms if he meant escaping his current situation.

"Cap?"

The synthetic sounding voice cut through the fog and Steve struggled to open his eyes, it seemed familiar but for some reason he couldn't place it.

The friendly nickname indicated it was someone that he knew, either that or perhaps it was one of the scientists trying to taunt him again, but why did the voice sound so strange? Was it because of the strange feeling in his head? He felt like he was drowning, was he drowning?

With his vision unfocused and his mind unclear, Steve was unable to recognize whoever had spoken to him before his mind finally slipped away from him and he blacked out.

Tony Stark stepped forward in his Iron Man suit, staring in disbelief.

They had managed to selectively EMP the electronic security in the facility, and Clint and Natasha had used their training to take out the guards to get them this far. They had had no problems getting in, and Tony was about to celebrate when Clint called back to the team that he had found the room Cap was being held in.

However when he moved to the front and stepped into the room, he found a sight that caused his heart to plummet to his feet and a gasp to catch in his throat, nearly strangling him.

"Please stop, I can't deal with this, I can't do this anymore," an alarming sob tore out from Steve, and Tony froze for a moment.

The heartfelt sentence, had it been directed at Tony? He didn't think so, it seemed like the man was staring blankly into space and talking to no one at all.

"Cap?" Tony gasped out, moving over to him instantly.

The super soldier looked awful, to put it very lightly. His face was sunken in and he was ridiculously thin, as if they truly hadn't been feeding him anything more than enough to get by. Sweat dotted his forehead and his hair seemed glued down by it, and his skin was so pale Tony was sure a piece of paper had more color, with the exception of the massive bruises that dotted a big majority of his skin.

The colors ranged, from healing to fairly new, and Tony felt his blood began to boil. Why in the world had they done this, what purpose could it have possibly served?

"Rogers, you with me?" Tony glanced down and noticed the mans eyes were now closed and he bit down hard on his lip. "Steve?" He mumbled, and upon receiving no response he swore loudly, frustration pouring out of him.

"Barton! Get in here!"

Clint moved up behind him, looking down at Steve and narrowing his eyes.

"What did they do to him?"

"I don't know," Tony practically growled, "but we'll find out. Let's get him out of here."

Clint nodded and Tony walked directly to Steve's side, using his repulsers he blasted the buckles to the straps holding Steve down, and he removed the IVs and wires attached to the man. He gently picked him up, carrying him bridal style and offhandedly thinking that Steve should have been awake and lucid enough to be embarrassed about it.

To see the man in such a state left a barbed feeling in his chest, and guilt sprung up to choke him.

He hadn't felt too guilty when Natasha had confronted him about what was likely going on, he felt his actions had been justified despite the fact he might have made a mistake, but now? Looking down on how frail the super soldier looked, Tony wasn't so sure that his actions could be justified.

"Cover me, and let's get out of here," Tony said in a low tone.

Clint agreed, moving along behind the man as the two of them made their way out.

Natasha, who had been standing just outside the door, glanced over at them, and even the naturally neutral looking spy had the decency to allow shock to flood through her eyes.

If Natasha looked shocked, Tony knew that it must be as bad as he believed it was, it wasn't just guilt causing him to magnify the situation. That actually made it that much worse as he worked his way forward, trying to focus on the task at hand and deciding to deal with the situation later.

"Clint, on your left!" Natasha called.

The archer swung around, bow raised, and shot a guard who had been creeping up beside him stealthily. "Looks like they're starting to wake up, we'd better get out of here in a hurry!"

They were met with a few more as they made their way towards the quinjet, Clint and Natasha dispatched most of them easily while Tony focused on guarding Steve.

The fight seemed to be going well until a bullet grazed Clint's arm and he grunted in pain. Tony adjusted Steve, as carefully as he could in a hurry, and blasted the guard across the room aggressively.

"Clint, are you alright?"

"Just a graze, it's fine, go!"

When they made it to the hanger, Sam who had been guarding the quinjet perked up eagerly when they came into his line of sight.

"Did you find-?" His voice trailed off as they got closer.

"Yes, later! Into the jet, we gotta go, now!" Clint insisted. "They know we're here!"

Sam swore and the three of them piled onto the quinjet, Natasha dashed up to the front and sat down in the pilots seat, and like that the team was off.

"I really hope they didn't realize who we were," Clint murmured, pulling the mask he had been using to disguise himself off.

"Hm, an archer, a metal man, an an insanely talented female assassin, no, I'm sure they had no idea," Tony replied sarcastically, "they weren't supposed to see us."

"Oh well?" Clint growled, hissing as he pulled his sleeve up to get a better look at his wound. "Hopefully not enough of them did to actually be sure."

"Hopefully," Tony murmured, looking down at Steve with a frown.

"What did they do?" Sam asked, flabbergasted as he stared at the limp form in Iron Man's arms.

"I don't know," Tony admitted, folding his helmet back and moving to carefully sit the man in a seat so he could strip himself of his armor. "Here, keep him steady, Sam."

Sam stepped over to do so, wincing as he got a better look at the man.

"Did they beat him?"

"I don't know," Tony growled, stepping out of the suit and glancing back as the pieces retreated into a special compartment on the quinjet.

"Why? I thought they were just trying to make super soldiers, were they torturing him too?"

Tony had to bite down on his tongue to keep from snapping at Steve's curious friend. They were fair questions, but not having answers to the same questions that he wondered made him all the more edgy and angry.

"I don't know," Tony spat.

"I'm just asking the air," Sam defended himself, "I don't expect you to have an answer."

Tony threw his hands up and walked towards the back of the quinjet. He knew he was being unreasonable, but dealing with the annoyance and the other emotions that raged through him without lashing out at the cause of the annoyance was impossible for him just now.

He couldn't believe the state they had found the Captain in, it was abhorrent to think that Ross had done this to the man. How unethical can a person be, to completely disregard the fact that Steve was a human and treat him worse than a lab rat? He had known Ross had been desperate, but enough to do this?

Tony knew he himself could be unethical if the ends justified the means, but there was no way he could ever do something like this. It was another image he would never be able to erase from his mind, coming in and finding Rogers looking so weak and wounded.

Destroyed even, for the brief second that he had been conscious, Tony had saw defeat written over all of his features. The man had given up, he was practically waiting for death.

Like he had been in Tony's recent nightmares.

The bile that rose in his throat caused him to lift a hand to his mouth and swallow aggressively, the thought actually made him physically ill. He should have known that Steve was truly in trouble after the last time, he should have known.

He should have known better than to leave the original super soldier with someone like Ross after everything he had done to Banner, Tony had heard all the stories. Why did he believe that he could ever trust the man? Though, realistically, he didn't actually trust him, he just never thought that the man would sink so low.

Tony shouldn't have taken Steve's 'betrayal' so heavily, he should have just left the man after he won the fight instead of getting satisfaction out of bringing him in and out of winning.

You could have saved me, why didn't you do more?

Why did it seem that Tony was doomed to become a self-fulling prophesy of destruction, no matter how hard he tried? The harder he tried, the more things seemed to go wrong.

Taking a breath and grabbing a bottle of water, he sat down and poured a bit of it into his hands, splashing his face and trying to get his mind to calm down and relax.

"This wasn't entirely your fault, Stark, you had no way of knowing," he murmured to himself, shaking his head softly.

If only he could make himself to believe that, maybe then he would feel better.