L for Lies: Part 2


THANK YOU FOR EVERYONE'S WELL WISHES

The whole "no screen" thing has been a hard thing to come back from. Sorry this took longer than I was expecting.

YOU MAKE ME SO HAPPY.

FINALLY, for those of you who were a tad confused, Tony was NOT paralyzed – severe blood loss or trauma in the abdominal region often leaves to the sensation of paralysis, as in there wasn't enough blood reaching the outer limbs, so the nerves begin shutting down. TONY STARK IS NOT PARALYZED IN MY FIC….yet. We still haven't gotten to P, so who knows what the fuck I'll do to him…

ANYWAY, CONTINUING:


As the Quinjet roared through open air space, Steve Rogers sat at its helm. His eyes were glued to the California coastline growing larger and larger as the aircraft was pushed to its limits. They had made the hour flight in about thirty five minutes – Steve had seen to that.

They didn't bother trying to call in public paramedics. Steve knew Tony would only hurt himself trying to get away from them. Stark was damaged enough as It was, and he needed people he trusted.

Steve swiveled in his copilot's seat, leaving Natasha to prepare for landing. "Touch down in two," was all he said to the passengers. A SHIELD medical unit waited, prepped and assembled in the rear of the quinjet, as well as Bruce Banner. Each person nodded silently and strapped themselves in tightly. No time would be wasted on a graceful landing.

As the quinjet approached the Malibu County, Steve took a moment to brace himself. He knew that it was very possible that Tony was already dead – he had looked absolutely terrible when he'd half staggered, half flown off in the Arizona desert.

Steve cringed. He should have held onto him tighter, knocked him out, and strapped him to a medical board when he'd had the chance– damn Tony's pride.

He'd sounded so raw on the phone. Scared. He'd sounded like a frightened child. The soldier couldn't help but picture him. Alone. His face white as a sheet. His dark eyes wide with fear and fever.

It hurt Steve's heart.

The whole team had this nasty habit of forgetting just how fragile Tony is. It's easy to regard a man as indestructible when he walks through fire without flinching in a shiny metal suit. It's easy to forget that he's a vulnerable human being underneath all that armor. He can get hurt. He can die. Tony Stark may be Iron Man, but he is not an iron man.

Steve steeled his gaze once more. He could just make out the silhouette of the Malibu House; they would be landing in a matter of seconds.

Steve hadn't been one much for praying – not since 1945, anyway. He'd let his relationship with God sit on the back burner; there just didn't seem to be any room left for it in these modern days. But Steve watched the Malibu House growing larger as they approached, and he felt the landing gear initiate with a rumble that felt almost biblical. As he stood at the base of the Quinjet, muscles flexing and heart racing, preparing to sprint with all his might into what could be a devastating situation, he found himself bargaining with God.

All he asked was for Tony to be alive. If Tony could live, Steve would do anything. He would help Tony instead of hinder him. He would listen to him more. He would protect him better. He would be the friend Tony deserved. He would do anything.

Tony just needed to be alive.

A sudden wave of fear washed over the soldier's body, making his muscles tense and his mouth run immediately dry. He clamped his eyelids down and took deep, steadying breaths. As the docking bay door began to open, images of what he might find whirled behind in his brain, taunting him. This was the ultimate Schrodinger's cat paradox: Tony is neither dead nor alive until Steve opens those stupidly expensive front doors on that stupidly expensive Malibu beach house and finds out for sure.

Steve opened his eyes with a last inhale and watched the docking bay door come to rest on the ground. His feet were moving before his brain gave them the command.

He ground his teeth and burst through the main entrance, security bolts be damned.

Fuck Schrodinger.


Natasha was on Steve's right hand flank, though she doubted that the Captain even remembered that she was there. The past 12 hours had been complete chaos.

Thor and Coulson had remained in Arizona to do containment. The beast had forgone its invisibility shield when the missile had exploded, scaring it and blowing it backwards a good fifty feet. From there, it had fled the town as fast as it could, wandering into the desert. With an open airspace and battlefield away from collateral damage and civilians, SHIELD had unloaded its arsenal, including the Hulk. Twenty minutes later, and all that was left to do was cleanup.

Barton had been strapped to a medivac as soon as Tony had laid him at the paramedics' feet. He was stabilized and loaded into a chopper before Natasha could do any more than clutch at his limp hand. Clint's skin was ashen and covered in dust, save for the crimson patchwork stitched into the side of his skull. The nasty head wound had everyone worried, as well as his wheezing breaths. There were a few burns speckling his face and shoulders, but God…it could have been so much worse.

By the time Natasha had turned around, Tony was flying away and Steve looked like someone had slapped him hard across the face.

With Tony MIA and half the team loaded into the medical hangar with Barton, priorities had to be set. The Avengers had a man down, right in front of them. If Tony didn't want to be found, and he was okay enough to fly home, then he had to take the back burner.

The state hospital had been very accommodating. Luckily, it had been a slow day for traumatic injuries; so except for a few car accident victims, the group had the east wing of the hospital to themselves.

Barton was hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes, pushed through an uncountable amount of hallways and sent for a million tests. Natasha wasn't usually one to hyperbolize, but when you're sitting in a pale green hospital lobby waiting to hear whether or not your lover is going to live….well, let's just it felt like a lifetime. She was sure the nurses felt the same after more than one round of Russian fury was unleashed upon the hospital staff.

By 3 o'clock in the morning, Barton was settled into his room, fast asleep, drugged up, and on the mend. One broken collarbone, a pretty nasty concussion, a collapsed lung, and a scattering of second degree burns.

He'd had worse.

Natasha didn't remember falling asleep in the hospital room, but when she woke up, her friends were at her side and a blanket was draped over her shoulders. Though she was awake, she didn't stir. She was enjoying the peace and quiet, Barton's hand clutched warmly and tightly in hers. She would let this moment drag on for a few moments longer.

But a rustling across from her brought her back to reality, and without making a noise, her eyes were open and her body was alert. Romanoff's gaze locked on Steve. His face was gaunt with unrest and anxiety. He was fidgeting in his seat, glancing impatiently at the clock above the door. She watched him carefully remove his cell phone from his pocket and dial a number.

He was calling Tony, no doubt. He hadn't stopped trying to reach their renegade Robocop for the past 12 hours. She had watched him bring the phone up to his ear, a silent prayer ghosting at his lips. He wasn't expecting anyone to pick up. She wasn't expecting it either.

So, you can imagine everyone's surprise (and poor, tired Bruce's near heart attack) when Steve bolted upright, sending his cheap wooden hospital chair to the far corner of the room, and started shouting.

"TONY? IS THAT YOU? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

Well, obviously, he wasn't.

So now, flash to the present, and Natasha was watching Steve sprint like an enraged rhinoceros, bursting down the front door and plowing into Tony's personal Barbie Dream House.

She only hoped for all their sakes that the Engineer hadn't picked up the phone too late.


"Sir?"

"…."

"Sir, your teammates are here. Captain Rogers has come to get you. I cannot speak to them, per protocol, but I have given them bypass access to the whole house. Everything is unlocked."

There was a crash. The front door seemed to explode into the living room, shattering a glass coffee table and sending splinters onto the white shag carpet.

"Captain Rogers was unaware of that, it seems."

Silence. No movement. No air stirring.

"They are currently in the living room, Sir. I expect them to reach the bedroom in less than fifteen seconds."

There was no response – not even a cheeky retort about Rogers and his old man hips making it up the three flights of stairs. Nothing.

"….Sir?"

The small camera on DUM-E zoomed in on his creator's face, feeding directly in JARVIS' systems. Their master was completely pale. If they were lucky, a haggard, labored breath came every few times a minute. His eyes had started out clamped shut in pain, even in his unconsciousness, but as time dragged on, his body has relaxed, pain forgotten or just…nonexistent. He was shutting down. Tony was dying. And JARVIS was being forced to watch. He might just be a creation – a machine incapable of genuine thought or feeling…but it always felt genuine. He always felt real.

JARVIS didn't waste time on speculation of his own humanity, he didn't see the point – but he could if he wanted to. That had been programmed into him. Existential thought was a choice provided to him by his creator - because Tony Stark, for all his flaws and rough edges, valued humanity to such an extent that he spent years allowing a system to feel like it belonged in a world of emotional and intuitive thought. JARVIS may just be a robot, but he was Sir's robot. And he could feel.

And what he was feeling at this moment was grief.

If ever an Artificial Intelligence System could sound close to tears, it was right now.

"Sir-" he began, and then stopped himself…

"…Anthony….?"

The silence of the room was overwhelming. Meanwhile, the footsteps outside the door drew nearer and nearer.

"Please don't die…"

JARVIS listened in complete desperation as Tony took one last shaky, strangled breath…and then there was nothing. Too soon, the AI watched the display on the wall flat line. All of his creator's vitals, which had been dropping since the moment he'd left Arizona, were just suddenly at zero.

Zero.

JARVIS' whole being ran on ones and zeros. Never before had he hated the number zero.

Zero was a cruel number.


Steve made it up the three ridiculously ornate and over-engineered suspended flights of stairs before reaching the shut door to the master bedroom. DUM-E stood just outside the suite, whizzing and whirring, flagging them down and gesturing wildly with his clawed actuator to the door. Steve took that as enough of an invite to enter without knocking.

The soldier refrained from kicking this door down, but he opened it just as roughly as he had the front entrance. Despite every intention he had to run into the room and throw Tony over his shoulders, he entered and immediately found his feet glued to the floor.

Natasha barreled into his back, his sudden halt taking her completely by surprise.

"Hey, Jesus – Steve, why are you st-"

"Tash?" The man's voice was the size of an ant. His body was frozen. His eyes were wide.

"Steve?" The Russian was blocked from the room by his frame in the doorway, and she couldn't help the fear that was rising in his throat at the possibilities of what he was seeing.

"…Natasha…Is he…?" he sucked in a breath. "…He's…?"

The question went unfinished.

Still in the hall, Natasha blinked, stunned, and gave her head a denying shake as her feet took small steps backwards.

Steve's arms lay limp at his sides and he almost swayed back and forth in the air before his legs completely gave out. Without so much as a sound, he dropped to the floor, landing hard on his knees, but not flinching once. Natasha was immediately pushing past him and ran to see for herself.

Tony couldn't be gone. Tony had been fine just a few hours ago. Tony had just saved Clint. Tony had to be ok. Tony had to be alive. Tony was family. Tony was-

Tony was dead.

Natasha was standing at the foot of his bed, her beautiful slender fingers fisting the fabric at the engineer's motionless feet. She didn't want to believe…

He was white. Not "untanned". Not "Pale". Not "like a sheet".

He was white. Almost translucent. See through. His skin looked like a wax coat, a delicate shine of cold and drying sweat layered his whole torso. The room had a copper tang to it that assaulted Natasha's senses and settled on her tongue, immediately making her feel sick and she had to restrain herself from bring a hand up to her mouth.

This woman was an assassin – a Russian spy. Nobody had seen more death than her.

But not like this. Not a friend. Not the man who had been a friend and brother.

His hair was slicked back with sweat and fever. His chest was riddled with obscene bruising. His fingernails and lips were almost purple – he had struggled in the end. He suffocated, amongst everything else. The thought made her inhale sharply, which just drew more of the blood smell into her mouth, which just made her want to gag again.

"Steve, we..." She closed her eyes for a moment and let a single tear escape her disciplined façade. She would not be ashamed to cry for Tony Stark.

"Cap, he needs to be moved. We can't leave him here."

Steve said nothing. Natasha turned back to make sure he had heard her. The look on his face shattered everything that was left of her heart.

Steve had known great sadness all his life. Between his family life, his best friend, his era…he had lost a lot. But she had never seen such destruction on his face. Natasha silently concluded that this must be like losing Bucky all over again – and it had to hurt even more the second time around.

Steve seemed to snap out of it, and brought his eyes up to meet hers. His blues met her greens, and she had to turn away because she couldn't take it. He was a child again. His gaze was one of confusion. Confusion and pain.

Steve couldn't bring himself to breathe quite just yet. It seemed almost unfair in his head that he should get to breathe when Tony doesn't have that chance. Tony's last breaths on this world has already been taken. But that was before Steve had gotten there to stop them from being the last.

Tony had been alone. The thought hit Steve in the gut, and his eyes closed and his head fell backwards in a pained despair. Still on his knees, he must have looked like a holy statue – body, tired and crumpled, with his eyes closed and face turned to the heavens for answers…for help.

"Natasha?" He croaked out, swallowing at the lump in his throat. "We aren't leaving him. W-we aren't giving up."

"Steve, he's gone….Tony's gone."

Steve rose shakily to his feet. "Yah, he is." He sniffed, squaring his shoulders and blinking past his tears. "But he's been gone before a-and we always f-find a way to bring him back home, Nat." He strode across the room in two steps, throwing the covers off of Tony's legs and cradling the engineer's lifeless body to his own chest.

"Steve, don't…please…you're just making it w-"

"You can either help me bring him back or you can stop talking." Natasha cast her eyes to the ground. There was no point in arguing and she knew it.

Steve moved as gently as he could to get a good grip on the fallen hero. He grimaced at the way the smaller man's bones seemed to grind together. Tony was in terrible shape….had been in terrible shape…which is why he was dead.

Clenching his jaw, Steve rose from the bedside, scooping up Tony with him. Without another word to a silent Natasha, he left the room, DUM-E hot on his heels. Natasha and Steve were back in the living room just as the SHIELD medics finished preparing the gurney for transport back into the Quinjet.

The two medics shot one another sad and knowing glances when they saw Tony's form, but smartly said nothing. Instead, they helped Steve lay Stark down onto the crisp linens of the transport and strapped him in, one taping oxygen over his mouth and the other a pulse-ox monitor to his pressure points. When no readings appeared on the monitor, they looked nervously at the two Avengers but continued on with their work.

The smaller of the two medics straddled the side of the board and hovered his hands over Tony's "Starting Compressions in 3, 2-"

"Stop!" Steve reached out and grabbed the medic's wrist. "His ribs are shattered, you could kill him!"

Natasha crossed her arms. "Steve…Steve's he's already dead."

"Just, just use the shock things, ok?" Steve was flustered, Natasha was mourning, and the medics were visibly terrified.

The smaller one started to stutter. "Of course, M-Mr. Captain America, I should have ch-checked, I am so s-sorry," he started rustling around in his equipment bag, eyeing the superheroes, looking as if he wanted to be anywhere else on this earth.

"Steve," Natasha put a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Let them do their jobs, you're making them nervous. Give them space." Steve shook his head.

"I'll leave when they find me a pulse." And the solider narrowed his eyes at the two medics.

Natasha sighed but waved them on to continue and hurry up.

In moments, the defibrillator pads were on Tony's mangled chest and the medics were counting down.

One shock and Tony's body convulsed, his muscles contracting and spasming. Natasha turned away, but Steve's gaze was unrelenting. He was waiting for Tony to get off the table and start laughing at them for all their worry.

Two shocks, and Tony writhed again. The medics were reading charts and graphs on the instruments, a grim set to their mouths, but they had found their rhythm.

Three shocks, and Steve was watching the oxygen being pumped into Tony's mouth as if it were the most precious thing on earth, needing protection. If any of those medics were to strip that mask off him, they would have hell to pay.

Four shocks, and Steve could swear that the earth had stopped rotating. The air was being sucked from his lungs and his legs were growing weak again. The only dam holding back the panic was the thought of how much Tony would need him when he woke up.

Five shocks, and the smell of sizzling hair was seeping into the quinjet.

Six shocks.

The medics were looking at Steve for permission to stop. Steve spoke his mind in a single look.

Seven shocks.

Eight.

The medics didn't ask permission this time. They stopped.

"Captain Rogers, there was nothing we could do." The medic couldn't look the captain in the face, and quickly went about cleaning up his station as quietly as possible. There was no response from the Avenger.

"Steve?" Natasha was at his side. "Steve…he's gone. We tried our best…but he's…Tony's gone, Rogers."

Tears fell freely from the soldier's stoic face. His mouth contorted, and small guttural hiccups escaped his throat. His chest was constricting, he could feel it. His airway seemed to be seizing and panic built up to a crest of pain so poignant and sharp that he felt like he had been roundhouse kicked in the gut.

"No-hng, n-no!" He sobbed, grimacing and groaning, trying desperately to take deep breaths but finding oxygen elusive. "NO, He's NOT-uhngg. HE'S NOT."

"Steve-"

"NO, NO. I GOT HERE EARLY. I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT. H-HE CAN'T DO THIS TO ME, DAMMIT."

Steve let out a bitter cry and swung out with his fist. He crashed into a pile of supplies and scattered them. It felt good. So good.

He punched a metal crate, feeling nothing but bliss as his knuckles split and the metal dented.

"DAMMIT!" He kicked another box, sending it straight into the wall of the quinjet. The box splintered with a satisfaction.

"STEVE, STOP IT." Natasha had one arm in front of the medics and their patient, and one arm reaching towards the soldier. "You're going to hurt yourself!"

"I DON'T-" smash "-CARE."

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS GODDAMNED JOB. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS GODDAMN PLANE."

He strode over to Tony's lifeless body. "I ONLY EVER CARED ABOUT MY TEAM!" More tears fell, but Steve was too busy screaming. "I ONLY EVER CARED ABOUT MY FRIENDS." He looked down at Stark.

He was angry.

"You…" He tried to breathe. Everything was fuzzy. Everything was red. "YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH!"

And he brought his fist down on Tony's chest. Once. Twice. Three times. All the while, cursing Tony Stark's name to heaven and hell and anyone in between who cared to listen. He screamed and complained, accusing, denying, and threatening. Steve went through every stage of grief and then some.

And when he stopped, the soldier's face was red and tear stained, blotched and destroyed.

But there was something beyond his haze that was catching his attention.

A delicate blip. A small bleep.

Through his stricken cloud of grief and rage, Steve raised his glance to the heart monitor.

He almost fell to the floor.

Tony Stark had a heartbeat.


PART 3 TO COME SOON, PLEASE REVIEW!