Warnings: Nothing much yet. Allusions toward potential abuse.
No beta, as usual, so I apologize in advance for any glaring mistakes.
There was something wrong with Tony Stark. Normally Clint and Natasha would toss around jests that there had always been something wrong with Stark, and under normal circumstances Bruce and Steve would exchange wry grins and agree. (Thor had never understood the finer points of sarcasm, and would inquire as to the man's deficiencies. He was never given an answer.)
This time, no one joked. They just watched the surveillance footage grimly, watching as Virginia "Pepper" Potts spoke quietly with the patient in the medical wing, attempting to draw him into deeper conversation. Natasha stood guard just inside the door, quietly monitoring the situation from within while everyone else observed from without.
Upon waking, Tony had not reacted particularly well to any of the Avengers. Neither had he reacted well to the arc reactor embedded in his chest. He had, in fact, panicked at the technology, seeking out Bruce (who he had mistaken for a medical doctor—his doctor) and demanding to know what it was.
Rogers had suggested amnesia, so they investigated that angle. It was like nothing Bruce had ever seen. Memory loss occurred for any number of reasons. Injury. Psychological trauma. Alzheimer's. Never had he seen anyone simply lose years off their life while eating pizza. The alcohol had not even come into play. True, he had been on a business trip for the past week, but he had given no hint as to anything sinister happening to him. There were only complaints about the lacking internet access and ensuing boredom. Even then, the onset was too late and too abrupt.
"He doesn't know her either," Clint muttered. "Not to rain on your parade, Captain, but I'm pretty sure this isn't how amnesia works."
"Why would Captain Rogers' theory be so incorrect?" Thor inquired, a low thread of anxiety running through his voice as he considered their friend on the monitors. "Anthony does not remember us. That is a symptom of this amnesia, is it not?"
"It's a possible theory," Bruce murmured. He had set up multiple blood tests in the lab and was waiting for the results to come back while poring over Tony's medical chart in attempt to find some discrepancy that would explain the man's sudden confusion. He pulled out his phone and shot off a detailed text to Natasha. "The human brain is full of uncharted territory. It is, quite literally, an unsolved mystery. We have learned a lot, but oftentimes we just can't explain why it does what it does."
"I knew a guy who nearly had his brains blown out," Clint offered. "Total amnesia. He had to relearn how to do everything—including walking and using the can. Used to be fluent in four languages. Now he can barely get through the basics of English."
Steve winced. Bruce glanced at him but said nothing. As their leader, Rogers was taking this hard. Ever since their first near-disastrous mission together, the Captain had been protective of all of them in various ways. Tony was a special case, and Bruce blamed it on his near-death experience and Steve's inability to think the billionaire capable of taking care of himself outside of the Iron Man armor. (While sometimes that was true, even Bruce had to admit that Steve sometimes went overboard with his protective streak.)
"Sometimes the human mind can wipe out years of memories," Bruce explained rather than pander to Steve's guilty conscience. There really was no way any of them could have predicted this. Even if they had, they had no way of knowing how they could have prevented it. "Sometimes just certain events. Often it creates a personality change—which we're seeing here."
The personality change was what had struck them hardest. Their Stark was brash and sharp-tongued, almost completely shameless and desperately refusing to show a fear of anything. The man speaking to Pepper now was quiet and wary. He cringed when anyone tried to touch him and showed absolutely no interest in any of the items Pepper had brought him—his own technology, with which he was rarely long separated.
"What is it that makes Captain Rogers' theory unsound?" Thor inquired.
Bruce looked up at the monitor and considering the man huddled on the hospital bed. Tony was upright now, which was a good thing, but he was positioned defensively, all but crouching on the mattress, ready to flee. Natasha had joined Pepper beside his bed and was holding out her phone. Tony's eyes flicked over the tech, but he quickly turned away, looking up at the woman warily. Natasha lowered the phone and glanced up at the camera, offering a minute head shake.
"I just had Natasha show him a simple mathematical equation," Bruce murmured. "He can't solve it."
Clint looked at him sharply.
"Even if he regressed back to childhood, Tony had prodigal level math skills," Bruce continued. "From what I understand, he was able to do advanced mathematics when most children were figuring out that one plus one equaled two. He should have been able to solve that problem."
Now even Steve was watching him.
"What are you suggesting, Doctor?"
"I want to consult with Natasha on this, but we may be looking at a fugue state," Bruce said uneasily. "It's another way the brain copes with trauma. People have been known to lose years of their lives. Putting it in simple, not entirely accurate terms, it's like another personality takes charge while the person retreats into his own psyche. I just don't understand what could have brought this on."
"As traumatic as dinner with us can be, Stark has been through much worse and come out fine for it," Clint agreed. "What do you think we should do?"
"Nothing."
All eyes turned on Rogers, who had just made the unlikely call. Steve tore his eyes from the monitor with obvious reluctance, meeting Bruce's frown wearily. Eight hours of this had made all of them irritable.
"We can't do anything until we have all the facts," Steve said finally. "You said it, Bruce. We're in uncharted waters here. See what Miss Potts and Natasha have to say, and we'll go from there. I'll have Jarvis lock down the Iron Man suits until further notice."
The order left them all feeling a bit ill, but no one protested. It was the call that needed to be made, no matter how any of them felt about it. Bruce just hoped they could figure this out quickly. That person in the hospital bed—that man with Tony's face and the arc reactor implanted in his chest—was not the Tony Stark who had convinced Bruce into remaining within the confines of New York City, the most populous city in the country. That was not the man who could cajole the other guy into submission, for whom the other guy had an inexplicable fondness. Bruce was not sure what he would do if they lost Tony for any length of time.
Natasha was running tests on the man in SHIELD's hospital wing. They were not medical examinations, nor would they stand up to any scientific criticism, but they worked nonetheless.
While not particularly comfortable with normal human interaction, Natasha had always been an excellent actress. She had studied behavioral science and everyday human relations since she was a child, and she was good at blending into new environments using what she observed of the people around her.
This also made her an excellent judge of character. She could spend a day with a person and have a good hold on their moral compass. Another day, and she was able to determine many of their likes, dislikes, and much of their history based on their general interactions with other people.
The only person who had ever given her trouble was, in fact, the man in front of her.
Natasha had taken several months to get a solid hold on Tony Stark's character. Agent Coulson had initially thought the man guilty of treason—sympathies turned during his time in Afghanistan as a result of some sense of Stockholm Syndrome. That opinion had changed after the Obadiah Stane incident. Months later, Natasha thought Stark was recklessly suicidal, until she discovered he was already dying. Then, she mistakenly believed him to be simply reckless.
But Stark always had a plan. No matter his situation, no matter how obnoxious he got, he was always thinking twelve steps ahead, reading opponents, business competitors, or psychopathic villains, and making a seemingly illogical leap. Natasha was finally forced to conclude that the man was just unreasonably smart and horrifically passionate. He threw his entire being into everything he did—work, the Avengers, Iron Man, even personal relationships. It was a wonder he hadn't had a mental breakdown years ago.
Part of her wanted to say that was all this was, but she knew Stark. He was not under any undue stress, certainly nothing that would cause a psychological break. There was a slight possibility that something had happened during his business trip, but Happy had been with him almost the entire time, and an interview with the driver who sometimes doubled as a rather incompetent bodyguard lent further proof that nothing untoward had occurred.
Which put Natasha in an awkward position. Because she was reading this man like a book, and it was confusing. She did not like what she was seeing. Not at all.
Fury had bullied his way into their meetings, no doubt feeling entitled due to their use of SHIELD's medical facilities. If they got through this intact, Natasha was going to have Pepper speak seriously with Stark about having a hospital wing installed in Avengers' Tower. Natasha did not mind Fury too much, but she knew what Stark would feel about him being involved with anything involving the billionaire's health. She also knew both Banner and Rogers were a little wary of any sort of SHIELD involvement since discovering their covert affairs.
"What have you found out?"
Fury started the meeting as he was accustomed to doing. Rogers' eyes narrowed, but he turned to Natasha anyway.
"Potts called Colonel Rhodes," she said to start. "Just in case—he has known Stark longer than anyone else. He should be here tomorrow morning."
"He's still not recognizing anyone?" Rogers asked wearily. Natasha felt bad for him. She had never met anyone so honestly concerned for so many people. Most of all his team. This was hitting him hard.
"No," she agreed.
"Banner says Stark can't do elementary math," Fury said grimly.
"That was elementary?" Natasha arched a brow at Banner, earning a wry smile.
"For him it was."
Rogers leaned over, and Natasha showed him the text Bruce had sent hours earlier. Banner offered an explanation when Rogers shot him a baffled look.
"It's a polynomial—basic algebra. Most kids learn it when they're eleven or twelve. Some later. Tony could have solved that when he was six."
Natasha put the phone down and pulled up a file from the computer display built into the table in front of her. Tapping the screen, she scattered the projection to the other seats. The others immediately bent to read the report.
"These are some of the things I've observed in my conversations with Stark," she said.
"'Hypertension, paranoia, generalized anxiety'," Clint snorted. "That sounds like a normal day."
Natasha glared at him, and he quickly bit his tongue and looked back to the report.
"'Inability to reason on an adult level'," Bruce murmured. "I would say that's also normal, but this is stretching it. Despite his immaturities, he's functioned in the adult world since he was at least—what? Seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Earlier, if you include his time at MIT," Fury muttered. "Romanov, are you serious about this?"
"Sir, I can't explain it," Natasha shrugged. "I know behavioral patterns when I see them."
"'Displays acute fear of men!'" Fury snarled. "We did an extensive background check on him, Romanov. If I'm not mistaken, you sketched out the initial report! There is no reason for Stark to be afraid of other men!"
"And yet he is," Natasha said flatly. "I am not explaining his behaviors, only stating that he displays them."
"Why would Tony be afraid of men?" Steve asked uneasily. "Could something have happened when he was in Afghanistan?"
"The physical done on Stark when he was brought back from the Middle East was thorough," Fury growled. "We know he didn't tell his interviewer everything, but we also know his injuries were limited to the shrapnel in his chest and the resulting surgeries. They were willing to scare him to get what they wanted, but they needed him functional. They would not have done anything to otherwise damage him."
"He's right," Bruce murmured. Natasha shot him a look that probably seemed more of a glare than an expression of gratitude. Still, she figured he got what she meant. "All together, this is implying a much longer history of abuse. If I were to look at this file, not knowing whose it was, I would actually guess it to belong to an adolescent in an abusive home."
Rogers' fist came down hard on the table. The impact and the sound of glass cracking, combined with the sight of it sheering across the table's surface toward Clint, had all of them jumping. For once, Steve did not look at all embarrassed by his lacking control of his strength. He looked far too angry to be bothered with that.
"Are you suggesting that Howard Stark abused Tony?" he asked, somehow keeping his voice even despite the righteous fury tightening his words. Fury looked uncomfortable, and rightfully so. Natasha kept her mouth shut. They all had their pasts, and she was not one to enjoy dredging up unpleasant childhoods. As far as she was concerned, Tony's childhood—or lack thereof—was his business.
Rogers, however, had been a friend to Tony's father during the second World War, and he was not going to take any aspersions cast on his character well, true or not. Nor was he going to allow this to pass without hearing something on the matter.
"If there was abuse in that household, it wasn't physical," Fury said finally, stiff and uncomfortable.
"That's…" Steve cast about for something to say that would not prompt a response he would dislike. It obviously was not working out for him. "You just sidestepped the question."
"Come on, Cap," Clint grunted. "You've seen him. He's fuckin' starved for attention. You think you get that way by living in a happy household? Stark's got more daddy issues than the rest of us combined."
Natasha actually suspected that Bruce was the winner of that particular award, but she said nothing. This was not the time to be bringing up the past for any of them. It was not even the time to be bringing up Tony's history, since none of it was actually relevant in the here and now.
"Stark was raised by a series of nannies before being shipped off to boarding school," Natasha said abruptly, intent upon bringing an end to this discussion. "The likelihood of parental physical abuse is almost nil because he had very little interaction with his parents. They were not great parenting material, but the one time a nanny was found to have stuck their child, the woman was immediately discharged and permanently barred from the profession. There is nothing in his history to explain the behavior Stark is currently displaying."
Rogers did not look pleased about this information, but he quieted and let the explanations continue.
"The question is: what is causing this behavior?" Fury declared. "Banner, I'm begging you not to give me some shit about multiple personalities."
Bruce sighed and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest tensely.
"As we've already said, there's no reason for it," he said. "I'm sorry, Director, but without more data, I can only give you the what, not the why."
Fury's cheek twitched in a way that had both Natasha and Clint stiffening.
"Fine," the director snapped. "Then Iron Man is officially benched until you do figure it out."
"Pardon me, Director," Rogers said, stern authority rolling off him in near-tangible waves. Natasha did not smirk, but she was amused. "While I appreciate the use of your medical facilities and the discretion that comes with it, that is not your call to make. You do not command this team. I do."
Fury looked rather like he had taken a bite of an apple and discovered half a worm inside.
"Then take my advice—"
"I don't need to," Rogers replied. He rose, along with the rest of the team. "I appreciate your input. We won't be causing you any further problems. As soon as we have him cleared for release, we will be taking Tony and leaving SHIELD headquarters."
It was generally a good idea to keep on Captain America's good side, but that was not the reason they followed him from the conference room. Natasha shared a look with Clint, and stalked out of the room, close on Rogers' heels. Bruce was breathing in carefully measured increments, but he followed as well.
SHIELD was good for many things, all of them would admit. When it came to taking care of one of theirs, they preferred to do it themselves.
Note: So the running theory is that if I keep trying, eventually I'll get Thor's characterization down. Poor, poor Thor. So much love for him and so much fail all at once...