A/N: Thanks for the reviews!
The wind, bringing with it the sharp salty scent of the Atlantic Ocean, caressed his face, played with his hair.
Before it had flown away, the helicopter had left Tony and the two kidnappers – still dressed in their paramedic uniforms with the name tags of "Gregory" and "Henson" attached to their chests – on a clearing in the middle of nowhere where a photographer and five goons – wearing skintight wetsuits, holding rifles, armed to the teeth – had been waiting for them. There had been some greetings along the lines of "hail to The Scorpion" and "may Her venom never be diluted" whilst Tony, shirtless and without shoes and barely holding himself upright due to the lingering effects of the scorpion's venom, had been handcuffed and manhandled onto his knees with several rifles pointed at his head.
The photographer, a middle-aged man with a bushy red beard and a potbelly, had then taken photos of Tony from various angles, muttering to himself about "poor lighting" and "getting better contrast" and Tony had given the camera his brightest smile, making an offhand comment about how they needn't have gone through all the trouble for a simple photoshoot because he was always ready and willing to pose. That had earned him a bloody nose which, according to the photographer, was "just what was needed" because it had given the photos "a satisfyingly dramatic effect".
The group was now walking along the desolate shore, the roar of waves accompanying their silent march. It was early morning, the Sun had barely risen, and Tony's movements were still clumsy and slow and his sock-clad feet were unsteady on the slippery ground. It all came to the point that he had to lean against Henson, a small blonde man with square glasses, lest he didn't fall over, much to the displeasure of Henson who was quick to pull a pair of transparent rubber gloves out of the front pocket of his paramedic uniform and put them on.
"I can't do this," Henson – or whatever his real name might have been – hissed at Gregory who towered over all the other men, his considerably large body casting a shadow on Tony in an ominous manner. "You know I hate to be touched by strangers, especially if they have not been purified by The Scorpion."
"Don't start about the germs again," Gregory grumbled in his deep voice. "It's all in your head anyway."
"It's a phobia," Henson argued. "It's a legit thing – there was even an article about it on Buzzfeed."
"Yes," grunted Gregory, "but you don't have that phobia."
"I spend most of my time shaking people's hands," put in Tony, unable to hold his tongue. "So many hands to shake, you wouldn't believe it. As a result, I'm covered in germs from head to toe, really, and I might be carrying something fatal – I probably am, come to think of it – so you should do the wise thing and let me go before you catch it too. You know what, I'll even throw in a hand soap recommendation, if you pinky swear that you won't shoot me."
Perhaps the shove shouldn't have been all that unexpected, all things considered, but it still took Tony off guard. He fell onto the ground, barely managing to protect his face with his cuffed hands. The force behind the push had been such that it caused him to glide on the muck on his front for at least a yard, and no sooner had he come to a halt – gagging and spitting, trying to get rid off the loose mud that had managed to find its way into his mouth and nostrils – than a large boot stepped heavily onto his bare back between his shoulder blades, forcing all air out of him, pressing him deeper into the mud, forcing him to stay still on his stomach.
"I'm so not recommending you any soaps," gasped Tony. "Your loss."
The cold metal barrel of a rifle came to rest against his neck and Tony froze where he was, his pulse quickening.
"I don't respond well to jokes," spoke Gregory, sounding almost bored. "I have no sense of humor."
"None whatsoever," agreed Henson jovially. "He would be the perfect example of a stereotypical German – no sense of humor, always on time, and if he could, he would get married with rules and structure – except that he's not German. Born and raised in Miami, as it happens."
"Good for you, buddy," managed Tony from his uncomfortable position. "And just so you know, I'm not joking when I tell you that this," he would have gestured between them had his hands had enough room to move, "this whole kidnapping thing that's going on here, this won't end well for any one of you."
"I don't have any sense of humor, but even I find that funny," against his claim, Gregory didn't sound amused at all. "And it's you for whom this won't end well: you're in some deep shit."
"Deep mud," corrected Tony, shivering, because, yes, the mud was cold and he was only wearing his Brioni trousers, known more for being stylish and expensive than for being any good for crawling in mud. "What's your address, by the way? Because you'll be paying my laundry bill."
"Now, now," said Henson. "No need to involve any costly laundry services when we have a good ocean right next to us, boys, don't you think?"
There was a moment of silence and then, as if Gregory had been given a wordless sign, the boot on Tony's back disappeared and Tony was being pulled up by the hair by Gregory. It hurt and he gritted his teeth, but refused to make a sound. His arms were quickly grasped by two of the goons who then picked him up and, with the help of two other men who took a hold of Tony's kicking legs, carried him into the ocean.
"Water torture, that's so last decade," Tony managed, more scared than he was letting on, before he was submerged in the cold water.
There was no air and he missed breathing instantly. There was nothing but suffocation and the sound of roaring water and the water that felt freezing on his already shivering body and the strong hands that held him underwater, refusing to let go off his trashing body. He was screaming in his head, swearing at the bastards who had taken him from his home. He held his breath, fighting off panic, fighting off the memories of Afghanistan, straining his lungs – straining, straining, straining – but soon there was nothing left to hold in and he watched as the last of the bubbles left his mouth, and then he was drowning, he was drowning, he tasted salty water, it was in his mouth-
And in the next instant, sunlight warm on his skin and oxygen – precious, lovely, wonderful oxygen – all around him and he took a lungful after a lungful of it, greedily, desperately, coughing.
The men hauled him out of the water and dropped him unceremoniously onto his knees on the mucky ground where he wheezed and tried to steady his breathing.
The kidnappers were trying to scare him, that much was obvious, but Tony wondered if his impromptu swim had nevertheless been more about trying to shut down any potential technology – including trackers – he might have still had on him than about giving him a lesson. Even though Henson and Gregory had stripped him off his possessions while he had laid there in the chopper, paralyzed and unable to do anything about it, even though they had scanned him and cut all Stark-tech enhancements out of his skin with scalpels, even though they had taken his hand device, his watch, all his rings that contained things even futurists would have called "futuristic" and even his belt, and had left him with only his underwear, trousers and socks, dumbing all his other things into the ocean, their concerns were still justifiable – he was Tony Stark, after all, and this was hardly the worst situation he had found himself in.
He hoped.
"Remind me-" Tony gasped when he could finally talk again, "Remind me to book a session with my therapist. It will be a refreshing change to talk to him about something other than superhero-related problems for once, because, seriously, now that I've been forced to see your junks underwater in those skintight wetsuits, I'm traumatized. I might never recover."
His trust issues and alcohol dependency were among the main topics during his sessions with Doctor Holmberg, but it wasn't like he would tell that to his kidnappers. Not that they were now even listening to him.
"Hold his face up a little more," directed the photographer, his red mustache waggling along with his enthusiasm, and Tony's head was pulled forcibly back by one of the goons. "I've got so many good shots of him already and we haven't yet even reached the base."
"I've always been photogenic," Tony let out a weak cough.
"If you keep on annoying us, you won't be for long," said Gregory, adjusting his grip on his rifle. "Some of us are just looking for an excuse to punch your face in."
"Only some of you?" Tony tsked, shaking his head. "Sounds like I need to improve my routine."
The punch in the face made his nose bleed again.
"Tough audience," he muttered sourly at his shoeless feet, as Henson ordered the group to start moving again.
For the rest of the short trek Tony kept his mouth firmly shut because every time he opened it, his nose kept bleeding into his mouth. There was an metallic taste in his mouth and, based on the photographer walking backwards in front of him and the constant clicking sound of the camera, he had to look quite "dramatic" with his drenched appearance, with blood on his face, his body bare and muddy with cuts here and there, his quality trousers torn and spoilt (his tailor would have gotten a heart attack had he known).
They seemed to be heading towards an abandoned house by the shore – the only building in sight – but Tony suspected that the run-down building was more of a disguise for their final destination than their destination itself, their destination being the headquarters, the hiding place of "The Salivating Scorpions" as his kidnappers apparently called themselves. Tony nevertheless studied the building and its surroundings carefully, memorizing all the details in case he could find a way to contact FRIDAY and have her try to locate them by the description, as little as there was to go by.
Back in the day the house might have been a home to a family, but now its roof had partially collapsed under its own weight and what remained of the white paint was falling off. Several windows were broken, on one window the remains of curtains were fluttering like a sad memory of the happier times the house perhaps had seen in its time. The yard was uncared-for, the flagpole covered with a thick layer of something green and yellow the ocean must have been throwing at it for years.
Tony took it all in with a bit of a glance here, another there, but what really caught his attention was the stone well that stood stoutly between the house and the flagpole, partially hidden from his view by some kind of a bush – plants weren't really Tony's area of expertise. Plants might not have been his thing, but engineering certainly was. Tony could well spot a holding structure when he saw one and, therefore, even from the distant, he could tell that the stone well didn't fit in with the rest of the property. Sure, there had been an attempt to make it look as if it, too, was in poor condition, but when you looked past the few loose rocks and the cracking layer of mortar someone had recently applied there for show, there was the undeniably solid structure, the perfect proportions, the work of relatively good engineering.
The well, Tony decided, was their destination. There was likely some kind of an underground compound – or a prison for him – built under it and that's where they were heading to.
It worried Tony that his kidnappers were making no efforts to prevent him from taking in the details of his surroundings. It was as if they didn't care if he knew where their hiding place was and that likely implied either that they weren't planning on letting him leave their destination alive or that they expected him to use the information somehow for their gain. It was, of course, also possible that they wouldn't stay here for long or that they were, for some reason, trying to give Tony the impression that this was their hiding place, while in truth it was somewhere else.
In any case, there was no way it wasn't intentional – these were, after all, the same people who had managed to abduct him from his own bedroom, right from under the nose of FRIDAY, Rhodes and Vision. They were intelligent, they were organized, they were dangerous.
Perhaps, Tony mused, it was all about an elaborate plan to try and lure Steve out of hiding, straight into their waiting arms: perhaps they would let Tony figure out a way to contact his friends – Steve, they would assume – and then expect Tony to give Steve all the information he could so Steve would do his best to march right into the trap. If that was the case, Tony decided, they had another thing coming because Tony didn't do betrayal, closely acquainted though he was with it, and he would rather have his corpse rot with this uncared-for property than give the kidnappers anything they could use against his former friends.
Because his former friends might now hate him, might not give a shit about what would happen to him, and he might hate them in return, but that didn't mean…
It didn't mean…
The point was, Tony didn't want Steve to just go and die. Not because he cared, no no, but because… Well, just because. It wasn't like he needed to justify himself to anyone, he was Tony Stark, after all.
Now that Tony was fairly certain where they were taking him, it also became obvious to him that he needed to act and he needed to act fast because once they would get him in the well, it would be all that more difficult for him to get out and escape. His best chance at escape was right now.
Tony considered the situation: He was outmatched, no question about it, and even if he managed to outrun all his eight kidnappers (which was unrealistic to even think about, shoes or no shoes, scorpion venom or no scorpion venom), where would he run? There was the Atlantic Ocean on one side and vast areas of nothing but open potato fields on the other. There would be bullets fired at him but no cover, and while the kidnappers wouldn't shoot to kill, they would aim for his legs and then they would catch him and then he'd be injured as well as abducted.
He considered the possibility of taking cover in the rundown house, but before he managed to form but half a plan, Henson came to a stop, stopping the rest of the group with a raised hand.
Looking Tony up and down, Henson said, "Better tie him up. I reckon he's already planning his escape and The Salivating Scorpions do not take any chances."
Tony did put up a fight when they reached for him, but it was just one more or less disorientated man against a strong group, and even though he did manage to get a few punches and well-aimed kicks in, the kidnappers had the upper hand from the start. They tied him up with duct tape from armpits to ankles and even taped his cursing mouth shut, and by the time they were finished, Tony was almost as helpless and unable to move as he had been when the scorpion's venom had temporarily paralyzed him.
One of the men hoisted him over his shoulder, handing his rifle to Gregory whose lip Tony had managed to split, and so they continued on.
They came to a halt when they reached the stone well, proving Tony's earlier assumption of their destination. Tony was lowered onto the ground and two of the goons moved the cover of the well aside, revealing in process a deep, dark vertical tunnel that seemed to go on forever. There were barely noticeable steps on the walls of the well, barely more than slightly protruding pieces of rocks or slight cracks, just big enough for someone to place their foot in – inconspicuous, if you didn't know to look for them.
"Right," said Henson. "DT, JN – you go down first as we planned."
Gregory and one of the goons, a muscular guy with a bald head that shone in the morning sunlight, didn't need to be told twice. They went into the well and climbed down in an accustomed manner like climbing down wells was something they did daily – for all Tony knew, that was exactly what they did. While they disappeared into the darkness, a harness was put on Tony and a few minutes later he was being lowered into the well.
Gregory and the other guy – DT and JN as Henson had called them – were waiting for Tony at the bottom of the well, pointing at him with a flashlight. That deep down, the air was cool and dank and there was a powerful smell of earth all around them, the torch the only source of light. Despite of the circumstances, Tony was actually glad to get the harness off, squishing and uncomfortable as it was.
They waited in the torch light for the other kidnappers to climb down which they did, one by one, and as soon as they were all accounted for, Tony was hoisted up onto a shoulder yet again and they moved forward into a hallway Tony hadn't noticed before due to the darkness.
"Now," Henson said softly, "we must go greet The Scorpion."
"Hail to The Scorpion," the others whispered and the whisper seemed to echo in the darkness. "May Her venom never be diluted."
"May Her venom never be diluted," repeated Henson. "When the prisoner has been purified, the questioning shall begin."
Tony tried to convince himself that the shiver that ran down his spine was due to the cold.
A/N: If you're still reading, please let me know so I have a reason to keep on writing. :)
