Present day / Long Island.
Natasha watched as Tony stood at the edge of the hole. Long Island. She wanted Tony to remember. Wanted him to know. Wanted him back.
Tony stared into it, and Steve just stood at his side.
"What's down there?" Steve asked with a rather passive gesture. "Is this where you fell?"
"No," Tony spoke softly. "No, this is where I was ambushed." He turned his head slowly, Clint at Natasha's side as he tensed. "You're… Real good, aren't you?"
Steve's brows knitted together. This was confusing, but it began to add up. On the car journey over here, Tony was eerily quiet, Clint stuck at Natasha's side and all of them seemingly wished Steve were somewhere else.
"You know I didn't want this. You did this." She spoke with her own mask breaking. She looked guilty.
"….You did this?" Steve gestured to Tony, after all those months, Natasha visiting – she was in on it the whole time? "You did this to Tony!?"
"Steve-" Natasha began but Steve didn't want to hear it.
"He's been gone from us for months! God damn months, Natasha! There was a chance he might not come back! Why would you even do this to him!?" Steve was seething with rage. His eyes switched to Clint, who looked ready to break out and attack. "You too!? I thought you were our friends!"
"Steve." Tony's voice came. He tilted his head to the super soldier at his side, a lopsided smile falling across his face. For the first time in a long time… Tony was Tony. "This was kind of my fault."
Sail
XV
Revelations 2/2
When Tony awoke, his fingers twitched, tensed. His vision blurred beyond that of the norm, eyes shifting in and out of focus. The room was dark, like the typical mafia movies with some chump getting interrogated. Typical, really. Spies never did move on from the James Bond era.
"Mr. Stark," a voice whispered from the blurred out edges of his vision. "We took the liberty of removing your suit."
Tony kept quiet. His mouth was dry, as if someone had put a mountain of salt in it and shoved it down his throat. He coughed in response. That meant Stark blueprints were back on the Black Market. He was going to have the fire some people.
"Stark, do you understand the trouble you're in?" Tony's head turned, the dark coat and smell of leather filled his sight and sense of smell.
"Fury."
"You took our files. You had the God damn courage to plant a virus and take our damned plans."
Tony tilted his head back, shutting his eyes and grinning from ear to ear. This felt good, getting under his skin like that.
"Super soldier program? Did you learn nothing from Banner yet?" Tony's voice was scratchy. But he damn well made sure to lace the snarky tone and overconfidence.
"That was classified."
"I'm aware."
Fury moved to Tony's side, his gloved fingers stretching onto what Tony guessed was a plain metal chair arms. He opened his eyes, gazing into the bright white one of Fury's. Boy did he look mad.
"Now, because you took our information, we want it back." He spoke carefully, filled his words with venom. "We'll torture you, Stark. Or you can be good, hand it over and we can pretend this never happened."
"Do you think this is my first rodeo?" Tony smiled sweetly to him. "Go to hell."
"Well son," Fury leaned back, dusting his hands as if he touched something unclean. "After you."
Present day / Long Island.
"What the hell is going on!?" Steve couldn't keep his voice down. From dead ends to dead ends to this one in which he was the only person standing there didn't know what had happened, how things had unfolded.
"Remember when we first met? I wound up putting a virus in their system. Well, part of it stayed there." Tony kept his eyes on Natasha, whose eyes were wet. Steve would have cared about that if he wasn't so confused and angry. "I spied on the spies. Because I hate secrets. I watched their plans develop." He paused, eyes narrowing. "A new super soldier program."
Steve looked at Tony and then back to Natasha, who sighed shakily. Clint looked like he was ready to defend her to the death. - Completely on edge.
"Thor said it," Natasha spoke lowly. "We need to be ready for a new form of war."
"Naturally, I hated the idea." Tony shrugged almost, his head tilting to the side and back to Steve. "We give everyone shiny new toys and idiots who don't know how to control them wind up hurting more than they save. So I deleted their files."
"Only you didn't," Clint spoke for the first time. His eyes trained on Tony. "You kept them. We knew you made a copy."
"I did," Tony admitted. He lowered his eyes and then lifted them a second later. "I needed something in the future to bargain with if SHIELD never gave me help when I needed it."
"You didn't trust us," Natasha looked like she was ready to cry. Frankly, that scared Steve somewhat. There was still more to this story.
"Of course I didn't. You're spies." He paused and moved his hand to his head. "They had a damned elaborate plan. They set up an explosion, drugged me and Natasha handed me over. Like a good girl."
"Tony—" She began.
"But what she didn't realize was what they would do to me next." Tony moved forwards, stepping between the super soldier and both spies in the creaky, worn out building. "They took me in. And that's when things get a little blurry." He paused, looking at Natasha. "Go ahead. Tell Steve what they did."
She moved her hands to her face, wiped her eyes and then looked down to her hands. These were real. There was no fooling right now.
"They tortured you." She said with an almost pained tone. "They dunked you. Made you relive what it was like for you in Afghanistan. They offered you protection for your silence."
She paused, her eyes lifting back up to Tony. "But then you just… Stopped moving and talking one day. Started banging your head on the walls. Scratched at yourself."
"That's where it got more complex." Tony shifted his head to Steve. "I needed to tell someone. But I couldn't. So I created the Schrodinger's cat theory. I pushed myself so deep into my mind…" He paused, grin disappearing as he dropped his head. "I thought I could break out of it once they thought they'd mentally killed me. But… I wound up…. Being stuck with me. That wasn't so great."
Self-loathing was unbecoming of most people. But no body hated Tony Stark more than Tony Stark. He watched himself create his own unique torturer. The pig. Himself. He watched Pepper have sex, watching how he saw himself back when he was with her. How disgusting it made him feel that he was touching her.
How his issues with his father was brought up. He mentally destroyed himself too much that he broke down. He was tortured by his own life. After all, all he could do inside his own mind was think.
"I broke myself. I wasn't mentally strong enough to keep myself hidden." Tony paused, dropping his eyes to his feet for a brief second. "I knew that the only person who could wake me up was me. I left mental breadcrumbs before I went to sleep."
"Sleep?" Steve repeated. This made no damn sense. "What do you mean?"
"I put myself in the box to hide myself, Steve. But inside that box is every nightmare, every remorse and regret I had. In order to not relive them and kill myself, I went to sleep." He didn't expect Steve to understand. "My plan backfired, and so did theirs."
"I tried to stop it," Natasha said, stepping forwards. "They didn't tell me you'd be tortured like that, Tony."
"I know," Tony repeated with a whisper. "I also know that you wanted me to find this out, even after laying breadcrumbs of your own."
"What breadcrumbs?" Steve asked annoyed. He hated complex and overthought situations. Especially because he was the only damned person who didn't know what was going on.
"I was being monitored. In case you, Steve, asked about the investigation. Which you did. We had to play a part. It went as far as me having to arrest Pepper and falsify a call on the phone to Clint." She paused, breath catching in her throat. Long Island was the only place where SHIELD couldn't follow, not with Steve there.
"But… Wait. Tony was found wondering around Central Park." Steve rubbed his temples, trying to piece this all together. "You guys just—"
"We let him go. We thought we broke him, so we let him go," Clint explained for a moment. "SHIELD played a whole investigation, silenced the press and waited for Tony to be fixed to plan their next move."
"I'm a wildcard," Tony almost grinned proudly at that. "They couldn't control me. Hell, I couldn't even control me."
"So… SHIELD tried to buy your silence with protection on some idiotic reasoning of trust… You needed to tell someone so you backed yourself up mentally and that backfired causing you to go into a mental comatose… And then… SHIELD didn't want to admit their fault in this stupid plan, dropped you off in Central, then tried to bring you back all whilst hiding behind the mask of innocence?" Steve paused, moving his hand to his face. This world was too much - Too fast and complex. Why wasn't anything black and white?
"Pretty much. And your guilt," Tony proceeded looking at Natasha, digging his hands into is pockets. "Is what made you want me to come here; to remember." Natasha nodded; Clint relaxed, but only a little. "You wanted to bring me back as some sort of idiotic redemption."
"I have enough blood on my hands, Tony." Natasha looked at him, her eyes welling up again. "I'm sorry this happened, for what it's worth."
"Now here comes the aftermath," Tony kicked around, walking back to Steve who stood absolutely bewildered. This friend stabbing a friend in the back whilst both backfiring their counters just made every cell in his head hurt. "I'm staying with Steve. You know, Natasha, Clint, you're going to be in a lot of trouble for making me remember this much."
"Yeah," Natasha smiled towards them. "I'll take it. I owe you, Tony."
"And I stick by my guns." Tony's hand lifted, placing it on Steve's shoulder. "Only a super soldier can decide what happens to his race. He's the first and only known of his kind, right?"
Natasha's head lowered, before she hired her head again, smiling at the both of them. "It's good to have you back, Tony."
"It's good to be back," he retorted simply. He moved his hand over to his chin. "Good to know my friends looked after me when I was out." He turned his head to Steve, a smile on his face. "Good to know that I wasn't alone."
"We'll fix this," Steve said, looking at the two spies. "Because we have to."
"You heard him," Tony beamed. "The Star-Spangled man has a plan."
Steve would probably never trust Natasha or Clint or SHIELD in the same way again, but Tony was back. They couldn't take five steps back now. They had to finish this. Find peace for Tony, the super soldier program and try and pull the team back together.
Because those were his friends.
"We're going to sort this out with SHIELD my way," Steve said bitterly. "Then we'll sort out every other detail. And Tony? You're not moving out of my sight."
"Aye, aye, Cap."