Sorry for the late update, I wanted to form the story more before I posted it officially, and now, here it is!
Previously on 'The Side-Effects', Bruce convinces Tony to test a cure-all drug, but when Tony starts having weird side-effects, the team begin to get worried...
Bruce had made very little progress on a cure, and had spent the last few hours staring into space. He didn't want to fall asleep in case Tony woke up and needed something.
Around midnight, Pepper came in, she had just returned from the board meeting that had gone on longer than expected, and she was very worried about Tony.
"Oh, Bruce is he okay? What happened?" She cupped Tony's chin with her hand and gave a frantic glance at the tired physicist behind her.
"He's fine as far as I can tell. Just sleeping now. It was all my mistake though, Pepper." Bruce tried to take the blame off of Tony, he knew how Pepper always blamed him with everything. "I gave him an experimental drug and he's been experiencing a lot of unforeseen side-effects."
"Bruce, how could you! You know how much Tony does to his body already, you're probably killing him now. Oh dear. How long has he been sleeping? Are you sure we shouldn't keep him awake? What if he goes into a coma?" Pepper was wringing her hands and working herself into a little panic attack.
"Pepper, Pepper. Calm down, he's fine, he fell asleep around eight. I have JARVIS monitoring his vitals, we'll know immediately if anything happens. You should get some sleep, the board meeting probably wore you out. I promise to get you if anything happens." Bruce stood and patted Peppers shoulder, reassuring her. She nodded and took a deep breathe. With one last glance at Tony, she walked quietly out of the room.
Bruce's shoulders sagged and he sunk back into his chair. Rubbing his temple, he decided he needed some air. There was a balcony one floor up that he liked to meditate in, and he convinced himself that Tony was fine and nothing would happen if he just went up there for a moment. Of course then his brain thought of everything that could go wrong, so he eventually decided to roll Tony up with him.
The elevator was a tight squeeze with Bruce and the unconscious man in the rolling chair. The only sound was that of soft snores coming from both of the men. Bruce had fallen asleep standing up in the elevator. When the doors dinged open, a funny sight could be seen, one man with short slightly curly hair leaning on the back wall, one hand still resting on the back of a rolling chair in front of him. In the rolling chair, slumped and now snoring quite loudly was a man with a sharp goatee and sticky-uppy hair. The doors dinged shut and all remained silent for the rest of the night.
Steve woke early for his morning run. He got dressed in his civilian workout clothes and headed to the kitchen to grab a granola bar before he left. Clint was sitting on one of the bar stools when Steve entered the room and seemed to be concentrating very hard on a drawing.
"Drawing something for Natasha?" Steve said, grabbing his granola bar and already heading to the elevator.
"Yeah, you'll see in a second." Clint didn't even look at Steve, and Steve thought he caught a look of mischief in the Hawk's eye.
"I'll be back in an hour." He turned around as the elevator arrived and nearly died of shock when the doors opened. Bruce had slumped to the floor along with Tony, and they were both a snoring tangle of limbs in the small confines of the elevator.
Steve forced his jaw shut and quickly reached into the elevator to press the 'keep doors open' button. Then he proceeded to untangle the mass of men from the floor. Bruce quickly woke up once he had been laid out on the floor in front of the elevator and immediately became ashamed when Steve told him the situation.
"I didn't mean to fall asleep! I was going up to get some air and I was worried Tony wasn't safe alone…" Bruce trailed off when he noticed that the scientist in question wasn't waking up, but continued to snore on the ground. Clint was also on the ground, curled up with silent laughter. Steve glanced at the drawing on the counter and found a very nice rendition of the elevator scene. Bruce would probably never live it down if that drawing ever made it to the copy machine.
"It's okay, nobody got hurt so we're fine. I'll go put Tony in his bed, it doesn't look very good to leave him on the floor." Steve comforted Bruce before picking up the unconscious Tony and carrying him to his room down the hall. When he had finished, he finally left for his morning run, with a promise from Bruce for updates.
Bruce was drinking a cup of decaf coffee when he heard thumps coming from Tony's room down the hall. He and Clint (who had been finishing his picture) jumped up and ran to the room. They found Tony wobbling out of bed and attempting to get to the bathroom.
"Tony, are you okay? How do you feel?" Bruce and Clint were by his side instantly and helped him support himself.
"I think I'm gonna need to-" His speech was slurred and he stopped at the end to swallow some bile that had risen to his mouth. "Bathroom."
Bruce and Clint got the message and half-carried half-dragged the scientist to the toilet, where he made some ungodly sounds and basically emptied his stomach. Bruce was spouting constant apologies, and Clint had found a camera to better document the event, much to Tony's humiliation.
When Tony was finally able to stand without falling over, they moved out to the main area and found Natasha standing at the counter, mug in hand.
"Ready to explain?" Her voice was removed of emotion, as per the usual, although Bruce thought he could detect a hint of curiosity beneath the steely gaze.
"Steve, do you mind, I'm going to get Tony down to my lab and run some tests. Thanks." Bruce led Tony into the elevator after receiving a nod from Steve. Tony was being uncharacteristically quiet at the moment, and Bruce pressed the button in the elevator at least three times before the door closed.
Tony sat down in the all-too-familiar chair near Bruce's work desk and remained quiet. Bruce began to organize his notes and prepared to ask Tony all of the questions to see what kind of antidote was in order.
"I didn't think so." Tony started to mumble, staring at a point in mid-air in front of him. "No, that's not right, work through that again JARVIS." Bruce turned from his position and stared at Tony. It appeared the scientist was having a hallucination.
"Sir, I have not received an equation to run through." The actual voice of the AI piped up at the weak command from it's master.
"JARVIS, ignore him, he's having a hallucination, he probably think's he's in the lab working on something." Bruce quieted the AI, then moved in front of Tony. "Tony, can you hear me?"
"Let's pull up another project, maybe the new Mark eighteen?" Tony made no signal that he could see or hear Bruce. Bruce tried again.
"TONY, listen to me! I need you to snap out of it." He added a shake to the man's shoulders, but no more response was made than the last time. Bruce gave up, he might as well time the length of the hallucination and let it play itself out.
Three hours later, Tony blinked and looked around him. The lab lights had dimmed and a sleeping physicist was resting with head on arms at the nearby desk. Tony's head felt clear, and although he felt awfully sore for some reason, he decided he needed something to drink. He got up and smirked at the sleeping form on the desk, Bruce owed him big time for making him miss a day of life in the lab.
Tony waved to the crowd as he passed out of the doors to the elevator, putting on his winning smile and descending the red-carpeted stairs to the waiting limo. He was about to step into the limo when his Iron Man suit descended from the sky and opened for him to get in. He flew up to hover in the sky and look down at his adoring fans. The air was knocked out of him as a rocket slammed into his chest and exploded, coating his body and the suit in boiling hot metal. He let out a bloodcurdling scream as pure agony raced over his burning skin.
"TONY, Tony, you're having a nightmare, snap out of it!" Steve was shaking him by the shoulders and Tony's eyes shot open in panic. He sat straight up and blinked, finally focusing on reality. The pain had faded into a dull ache throughout his body, it had felt so real though.
"Tony, can you tell me what you just experienced?" Bruce had called Steve, Clint, and Natasha down when Tony had started calling out and writhing in his sleep.
"I just- it hurt, I was… When the-" Tony couldn't seem to concentrate, his frame seemed truly rattled and his eyes kept darting around as though something would come out to bite him at any moment.
"Just start from the beginning, do you remember coming down here yesterday after you woke up?" Bruce spoke in a soothing voice, the same voice he used to comfort the sick children he had been trying to save with the vaccine.
"Yeah, yeah I remember that. We got into the elevator, then I sat in this chair and you were going through papers, and then…then I, I was in my lab. I was just working on stuff, and JARVIS wasn't talking, and I blacked out and then I was at an event, and I was in the suit and I was-" He stopped short, suddenly remembering what had happened with too much detail in his mind. The dull ache of pain had started to swell once more, focusing it's heat on the arc reactor.
"Tony, you need to tell us everything that happened. We need to know if we should call in SHIELD on this." Steve stepped into his Captain role and played it well. He knew Tony would cooperate since the scientist never wanted SHIELD in on anything they were doing.
"Okay, I just, need a moment." Tony stood up and barged through the concern of his friends and into the bathroom at the opposite end of the lab. He shut the door and leaned on the wall for support. He looked in the mirror and was confronted with a gaunt and pale version of his own visage. He rubbed back his hair and attempted to make himself look as though nothing could phase him.
Tony had just splashed some cold water on his face when he heard a loud explosion accompanied by the sound of ripping and shredding metal coming from the opposite side of the door. He grabbed the doorknob and whipped open the door, pain forgotten for a moment. The lab was gone. Along with half of the building, cut in two and still crumpling into a twisted heap on the ground fifty stories below. Tony looked around as the wind whipped at his face, he couldn't place any of the Avengers.
"JARVIS? Are you there?" Tony spoke up, knowing that there were hidden mics in every room of the tower. No response came, and Tony cursed under his breath. A tiny ledge led away to the emergency staircase next to the elevator. Tony began to inch his way out on the ledge, leaning up against the wall so as not to lose his balance. He desperately hoped that he would be spared of the debilitating side effects he had experienced earlier.
A steel beam wooshed as it passed Tony on its speedy descent into the cloud of dust below. Tony was halfway from the bathroom door to the elevator, and next to it, the stairs. Tony paused to rest for a moment in a slightly wider section of the floor. He pulled out his phone, feeling slightly stupid that he hadn't used it earlier. The battery was low, but he decided he had time for one call.
"Hello, yes, I need to speak with Director Fury…. Yes…. This is an emergency…. Okay…." Tony clung to a piece of piping and leaned over the edge while he waited for Fury to answer. The pile of wreckage was becoming clearer as the dust settled.
"What are you calling me for, Stark?" The always-angry-at-something voice of Nick Fury filtered through the small speaker of Tony's dying phone.
"Well, it may have something to do with the fact that MY BUILDING JUST GOT CUT IN HALF!" There was silence on the other line and Tony knew Fury was making his agents report to him about the recent unnoticed catastrophe.
"What do you want me to do about it? There's no sign of any alien contact Stark, this is you and the Avenger's problem. Not SHIELD's. Now go solve it before it stops up traffic, capiche?" Fury wasn't about to come to the aid of superheroes. Tony grunted and was about to reply with a smart remark when the line went dead. He dropped the phone and watched it disappear below before he continued towards the stairs.
The door to the emergency staircase had been bent by the force of the blow it had narrowly missed. Tony grabbed onto the edge and pulled, nearly falling into the abyss when the entire door swung free. He righted himself and pushed his way into the dark stairwell. There were a few flickering lights, but it was otherwise dark. Tony grabbed the railing, mentally rewarding himself for building the Tower with a 360 degree support structure so there was no chance the building would fall over on him.
Tony's goal had been to get to the stairs, but once he was there he had to pause a moment and consider his next move. All of his Iron Man suits had been in the lab, and were resting in a pile of dust below, along with half of JARVIS's servers. It would take a few more minutes for the AI to reboot from the secure location somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Another explosion sent a cloud of dust in through the open doorway and Tony leaned back out to get a glimpse of the source. A large mass was moving about the wreckage below. A small gust of wind cleared the dust enough for Tony to recognize the hulk. The monster seemed to be moving things around and jumping on pieces of wall.
"I guess this is what happens when he doesn't have anyone to fight." Tony thought aloud. Then he wondered if Steve had survived, along with Clint and Natasha.
"Sir, I am back online and currently running damage diagnostics." JARVIS's voice came through a hidden speaker behind Tony and the scientist nearly laughed with relief.
"J, I need you to check for life signs in the pile of stuff down there." He instructed.
"There are four signs of life below. I register Bruce Banner as the Hulk is conscious. Captain Rogers, Barton, and Romanoff remain unconscious underneath the rubble. Sir, I would like to inform you that Miss Potts is on the penthouse floor, she appears to be unharmed."
"Got it. Are there any functional suits for me?" Tony was still staring at the Hulk, tiny from his vantage point. Still searching for the others.
"Sir, there is one suit that remains functional. Shall I send it up to you?" JARVIS was becoming fuzzy as the speaker died.
"Yes, do it now." Tony stepped back onto the ledge, holding on with one hand and leaning forward to position himself correctly for the suit. Another small burst of dust came with the familiar sound of the repulsers flying the unmanned suit to the man perched on the wall. The metal casing enveloped Tony and as the mask closed on his face, the lights came on and he was facing the familiar screen of diagnostics and charts.
Tony used the thrusters and propelled himself up to the penthouse level. His first priority was to find Pepper and make sure she was safe.
Thanks for reading! Please review! What's going to happen?
I love suggestions for what you want to happen in the next chapter, please inspire me!