Written for the following AvengersKink prompt:
"Tony betrayed, Team Angst, Attempted suicide - A while back I read a fic for another fandom in which the main character is imprisoned for his own safety.
So what I want is: A telepathic villain makes threats against the Avengers, specifically Tony. SHIELD and the Avengers decide that Tony is safer not knowing about the threat, because he'd go off on his own and try to fight the villain. SHIELD comes up with the idea to place Tony into a room with protected walls against telepathic attacks, essentially isolation. SHIELD agents do a in-the-middle-of-the-night kidnap thing and Tony doesn't know why this is happening to him. The rest of the Avengers are reluctant but ultimately agree. It won't be anything like Afghanistan, Tony will be getting three meals a day and no one will be hurting him. He'll be fine right?
Tony needs interaction, he needs to ramble and to tinker and to create. He's not only isolated, he doesn't know why he's there and he thinks his team is going to come and get him. But they never show and he starts losing it. So, the only logical thing to do is to hurt himself, so he can get some medical attention, and if he happens to die in the attempt, well, that works too.
He's elated to see the Avengers in the hospital. Until he discovers that they knew. What happens next? Does Tony ever forgive them?
Lots of angst and guilt, happy ending is OPTIONAL!"
Time is very fluid in this story, with multiple flashbacks, time skips, half-truths and skewed perspectives.
Main title and chapter titles come from John Casteen's chilling poem "Night Hunting"
It's the nightmares that always wake him up. Snowy mountainsides and bomb shells, bitter cold and dry rations, screams and crimson on earth.
Steve abandons his room, heading for the gym, just three floors below.
Some nights he catches Natasha or Clint.
Some nights he catches no one.
Tonight, he is surprised to see Tony.
The genius is standing at the front of the pool on the far side of the gym, the area that is rarely illuminated because the gym's regular uses seldom ever go there and it would be a waste of energy to keep the lights on.
Tony must think so too, he's left them off.
Steve approaches, curious. Tony is wearing nothing but swim trunks. They are long and big, a gaudy gold color decorated with Iron Man faces and sound bubbles that attempt to verbalize the sound of Iron Man's repulsors. Steve vaguely recalls that they were a gift from Pepper.
He finds himself scrutinizing the man before him, wondering just how he's been standing there, looking at the water. Steve is no idiot, he's read the files. He knows about it just like he knows about Clint (bonfires) and Natasha (confiment) and Bruce (closed spaces). Thor might be the only one unburdened by such things.
"Isn't it a little past your bedtime, Cap?"
Tony's voice is level, but Steve knows by now that that doesn't mean anything.
He wonders how to respond, what to say, if he should offer encouragement or not.
In the end he thinks about what he would need.
He'd just want someone to be there.
"Just a little," Is all he replies, moving away and to the weights, keeping a discrete eye on Tony, letting the iron equipment clash more often than usual, if only to remind Tony that he is not alone.
The engineer doesn't say anything back, simply resumes his silent vigil over the still water. Steve observes him, cast in the blue glow of the arc reactor and the muted lighting of the pool. He looks at the lean torso and well-muscled arms, thinking of how easy it is to forget that underneath the expensive suits lies a still powerful man, if not on his or Thor's level, then perhaps Clint's.
It must be another half-an-hour before Steve hears the deep, shaky breath, then the splash, turning his head a little to catch a glimpse of Tony determinedly swimming laps.
Tony knows better than to think that he could stay away forever, to think he could run away and never look back.
He's been told before that sometimes there aren't ways out, that sometimes there is nothing he can do.
It's a good thing he's never been good at listening.
He boards the private plane with only a moment's hesitation, falls asleep as they pass arid earth of India, then azure ocean.
He opens his eyes as the beautiful skyline of New York comes into view.
Steve had always hated being on display like this, but Fury had insisted that it would be good publicity, even if it was just him and Tony because Clint and Natasha were off in South Africa and Bruce was always excused by virtue of the Hulk.
Tony is not too far off, no doubt charming everyone there and Steve feels okay because he's done this before.
And then the fireworks start and Steve didn't have a problem last Fourth of July, but there are good days and there are bad days and today, today he feels his heart start to race as his palms feel clammy and he thinks it's far too hot.
He can smell the smoke, the acrid taste in his mouth, can hear the shells and the staccato beat of gunfire, flares and flashes on dark nights, the rattling breath of the dying and mass graves marking the limitless cruelty of man and–
Tony's hand is on his shoulder, squeezing.
"What do you say we ditch the stiffs and blow this popsicle stand?"
He follows the genius through tall shrubs and bushes, leaving the high-class party behind them.
They stop at the top of a sloping hill and Tony shrugs off his jacket and tosses it on the ground taking a seat, inviting him to do the same.
Steve sits and notices that they're in some sort of clearing and the fireworks are more clearly visible than before, loud and popping but then Tony is rambling, of the combustion reactions and the chemicals and the color combinations, the mechanics behind launching them into the air.
Tony is sitting close, close enough that their shoulders touch and he just keeps talking and Steve sits and looks at the sky and the stars and the fireworks and feels oddly calm.
Official Transcript of Post-Op. Evaluation: EXCERPT 023
Patient: Stark, Anthony E.
Psychiatrist: Dr. Samson, Leonard
Stark: Just tell me Doc. Lay it on me.
Samson: I asked you before if you were certain about the time you were contained. Do you remember that?
Stark: Of course I do. The thing is, my brain says yes and no to that. It's a possible side effect, amnesia. Or, at least that's what the doctors at SHIELD tell me. I know better than to trust myself on this one.
Samson: You believe that you cannot trust yourself?
Stark: Not exactly. What I'm trying to say is that I know the odds. I'm a futurist, I play around with numbers and calculations deriving possibilities and probabilities in seconds. And right now, right here, the odds are that I'm forgetting. You asked me in the beginning to tell you how long I thought I'd been contained. Now I'm asking you the same. Simple.
Samson: [pause] You were contained for a total period of 3 weeks and 2 days. Your captivity in Afghanistan was estimated to be 3 months, 2 weeks and 5 days.
Stark: [pause] Did I ever tell you the story of how I hired Pepper because she caught a math mistake in one of my reports?
When they get to the scene, Steve wants to close to his eyes and pretend that this is all a bad dream.
He can remember the latest transmission, Clint stating that Stark was compromised, the cursing, the noise of it all, Coulson's screams and Clint's supplications.
The warehouse in flames, collapsing in on itself.
Natasha surges ahead of him, shouting Clint's name.
They find the archer a couple of feet to the side, sprawled against knocked-over garbage cans because Iron Man had thrown him through a window when he'd gotten in the way.
Steve is already preparing to rush the building when Natasha uses her thumbs against the pressure points right behind Clint's ears and Clint wakes up like a man who'd been underwater, immediately scrabbling to get up.
His breathing is wheezing and pained but he looks at them with wide eyes, "Coulson, he– Stark was going after me when Coulson interfered."
Clint gets to his feet, almost collapses as Steve turns back and begins to run again but it isn't necessary because a figure, red and gold, steps out, unresponsive body curled in its arms.
Iron Man sets Coulson on the ground slowly, God, the blood, the blood and then the faceplate goes up revealing Tony's face, jaw clenched, brown eyes turbulent with war against something foreign and brutally cruel.
"He's still-"
Tony doesn't finish and among the sirens and the alarms, Clint and Natasha trying to rouse Coulson and the clatter of the armor on the pavement as Tony falls to his knees, Steve can hear him repress a scream as whatever is in his head fights to regain control.
Steve is at his side at once and Tony glances up, looks right at him, eyes wild, resolute and fiercely afraid.
"Do it."
It may have been a final instruction to JARVIS, because a tiny needle slides out from a groove between the armor's shoulder plates, so small anyone without the serum may not have seen it, so small as it slides into the side of Tony's neck and his eyes roll and he's out, saving Steve from having to do it.
It may have been or not. It may have been a plea, a man asking another to stop him, to keep him from further damning himself.
Later, much later, the words will haunt Steve, and he will wonder if he shouldn't have asked for the same thing himself.
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