Chapter Text
A moonlit evening seemed perfect within the confines of the Avengers HQ. A party brewed, loud and boisterous within the halls of Stark’s tower.
Yes, it was a wonderful evening. Natasha held herself in the usual manner, or at least as much as she could with a glass in her hand and a silly grin upon her lips. She’d cast her gaze over towards Banner every moment or so, once or twice to catch him staring right back from behind his own glass of brandy.
Seated beside her on the couch was none other than the thunder God himself, Thor, enjoying a large mug of whatever strange Aesir liqueur he’d managed to procure for such an event. The ever busy Jane hung loosely against his chest, her eyes just barely scraping around at the guests.
Barton and Rogers exchanged minor glances on the off occasion; perhaps both casting eyes towards the illustrious young woman that lingered against the railing. The sweet sounds of glasses clinking, people laughing and just having a good time gave an easy atmosphere. . . At least for the time being.
Tony Stark kept his mind busy, though he could have been drowning his thoughts in liquor or women, his mind was definitely elsewhere. He’d lean against the railing along the outer balcony, tablet in hand, with his fingers working furiously along the holographic screen.
A quick touch-up here, and there, and saved for another nights use. On to the next project.
Two months since there had last been any real action to account for. Save for the Fantastic Four dropping by a couple of weeks prior with news of Victor von Doom. Something having to do with a meteor? Bah.
Tony shook his head with fingers running through his messy hair. His fingers shook as he held the little machine in his ever tightening grip. Thoughts kept forcing their way through the festivities. That would be until a large hand firmly slammed down against his shoulder and a half-drunken boisterous laugh rang out.
“Ah! Tony, my friend! Why dost thou not join us in merry-making and drinks? The Lady Potts has come!”
Not only had this nearly caused the already distracted man to jump and nearly throw his little device halfway across the city, but it also roused his attention towards the appearance of his recent ex-girlfriend, yet faithful, he supposed he’d still have to call her his Boss seeing as how she seemed more in control of Stark Industries than he’d ever been.
Stark slowly removed the large hand from his shoulder, shrugging away from the larger man. He again clasped the object against his chest, staring blankly into the soft hazel gaze of the other. He shook his head.
Rejecting an offer to see Pepper was one thing, but for he, Tony Stark, king of drinking and merry-making (self-proclaimed) to reject the notion of drinking for the evening? It was almost unheard of.
Thor looked at him as concerned as he could through his drunken stupor.
“No drinks? Friend, that does not sound like the Stark we all know! Now come! Drinks are to be had!”
The large blond man ignored Tony’s second refusal and pulled him along into the building. Tony sighed, a heavily exaggerated groan as he kept the little device planted firmly against his chest. This was the only thing keeping him sane for the moment. Unsurprisingly, Pepper had been the one to plan this little party, as more so a way to encourage more people to invest in Stark Industries… or a blatant excuse to just get everyone together once again.
Either way it worked. Not in Tony’s favour, however. The philanthropist had actually disapproved of it for once in his life. He needed time to get his mind straight. But knowing how the rest of the Avengers would be after their little group had managed to save the world yet again, he had no choice but to let it slide. At least he was granted some time to himself.
Some. Not much, but some.
So here they all were, twenty minutes later with Tony trying to look busy in his fancy suit and shoes with his rather colourful socks showing. How professional. His eyes barely left the glowing device. That was until Natasha walked over to him, took it, and ever so casually threw it elsewhere. The gorgeous red head placed a hand on her hip and looked down at him.
Stark’s only response was his hands held out in a “what do you want from me” sort of gesture.
“Tony.” She spoke slowly, though she kept her distance, a safe distance from the newly annoyed man, her gaze pierced through very soul.
“Please don’t take my soul, I just wanted to finish some-“
“No more of this, Tony!” She snapped. “Relax. Have fun for once. You’re always going on about being stuck doing hard work, so for once, just enjoy it!” She had gripped him on either side of his shoulders, earning a half-hearted smirk from him.
“See? How hard could that be?” If she hadn’t been so keen on talking to him, he might have caught the little smile. She slightly turned her head to look back at the others then made her way back. “Just relax.”
Tony stared at her for a moment, his smile fading as he was handed a glass with an iced drink. Ginger sips were the only thing that had kept him silent for that moment.
Thor’s booming laughter could be heard over the commotion of people.
“Ha ha! My friends! Is this not the finest drink?” He raised his mug, a golden liqueur sloshing over the edge onto the table below. Normally, Tony would have said something. But as it were, he was more concentrated on the burning liquid that slipped down his throat.
In another time – Tony might have enjoyed every ounce of his drink, or his friends’ joyful attitudes. But not today. He stood, slowly setting his glass down and turned towards the crowd, surveying them with a strange look.
Agent Barton looked up at him, beaming with a glass held high. Tony passed by them easily, the look he gave one of the women was startling, to say the least.
The air around him seemed to shift to an uneasy aura. Thor suddenly looked up from his drink and laughter over to Tony.
The inventor loomed behind Clint, a look in his eyes that seemed hauntingly familiar as a smirk twisted along his lips.
Instantaneously everything seemed to turn to chaos. Clint lay against the table with a trail of blood pooling down from the back of his head, shards of glass stuck in his hair and near the base of his skull.
Thor had Tony pinned, his hands splayed on either side, fingers still tightly clasped around a broken glass bottle, Tony spat up at the other man, working as hard as he could to get the god off of him.
His eyes glowed a deadly blue colour as he struggled under the gods’ strength.
“Stark!”
Moments passed in an eerie silence as Tony slowly released the bottle and held his hands up above his hands. Gasping slowly and blinking, he shook his head, looking up into the pale blue eyes of Thor.
“Get. Off of me.” He grunted through his teeth.
None of them seemed to know what to do. Natasha’s hand hovered over her gun. Bruce had just managed to choke himself on whatever he had been drinking and was hacking up a lung over it, hunched over. Soon as he regained himself he was knelt next to Clint’s unconscious form.
Several SHIELD members had their guns out and aimed at the duo on the floor. Thor looked up, then back down at Tony and slowly removed himself from the other man’s torso.
“This is unlike you, Stark.” The god spoke lowly, wiping any excess drink from his mouth.
“Yeah, well, you don’t seem to know me very well at all.” The inventor pressed his hand against his chest and pushed him off faster. Brushing off and standing, he fixed his shirt and stared at the others, his glasses having fallen off prior to being knocked over with a rather heavy god on top of him after all. They were retrieved and returned to the bridge of his nose. The arc reactor in his chest seemed to still be glowing properly, yet there was something… unhealthy about its suddenly brighter hue.
He cast his eyes over to the SHIELD agents, still grinning with his hands raised above his head.
“What are you going to do, arrest me?”
Though the commotion had settled a bit, everyone was now fully aware of Tony Stark in the room. That being said, people decided it would be safer to keep a distance from him. Majority just kept staring at him.
An eternity seemed to pass as Tony suddenly shook his head and blinked, rubbing his temples as the hue of the reactor finally faded back to normal. His eyes resumed their natural color.
He lowered his hands, looking about almost as confused as everyone else.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Did I spill something on my shirt?” He immediately looked down at his white shirt but found nothing. Then he looked over.
“Ah…” Head scratched.
Clint was out. Definitely out. It surprised Tony, to say the least, at how deep some of those glass shards were. And how much blood there was.
“We need to get him help.” Bruce’s shaken voice piped up through the silence. “He’s lost a lot of blood to crucial parts of his head, and I’m pretty sure he has a concussion.” Bruce mumbled on about more things while two stronger SHIELD members carried the injured Hawkeye away to safety.
All eyes were on Tony.
What exactly had he just done?
A tingling sensation raced down his spine, and back up to his mind. Something whispered to him. Eerie voices.
You don’t need them. They’d whisper. You can fight them. Echoes in his mind, twisting his conscience into a tight little knot as his eyes slowly shown the same eerie blue. Guns were raised, and in an instant Tony found himself within the Iron Man suit.
Shots were fired. Everything seemed to blur through his mind. The world around him suddenly went black.
He remembered hearing screaming and explosions, gunshots and Thor yelling.
Then nothing.
----------------------------------------------------
That nothing had been probably the best moment Tony had the entire night. There was just that; nothing. All around him was black. All sounds muffled beyond recognition. There he just floated, weightless and alone. Eyes opened slowly with shallow breaths as he hung there, unmoving, yet alive.
But where was he?
Tony slowly lifted his hand in the dark expanse but felt nothing. Perhaps warm air, but that still counted as nothing. Right?
Right.
At least he could agree with himself for once in this hellish moment. Underneath him, he felt the ground form, soft green grass patched here and there. Every step he took seemed to create more around him, and he kept a straight gait, turning into a slow run then to a full sprint as the world around him suddenly burst with life and light. The whole world becoming that of some strange legend as he moved. He heard music. Harps. Strings. Voices echoed through the now-coming-visible mountain ranges. The land before him became a lush golden forest with trees taller than the highest building in New York. He gazed upwards into their rich hue, almost admirably. His suit had vanished at this point as he made headway in through the path littered with delicate shades of gold and green.
The grove soon turned into a hue unlike any he’d ever seen on Earth, and he’d certainly been to some pretty nice places beforehand, for the trees shone a haunting silvery-blue that shimmered in the sunlight as it cast it’s warm arms down through the canopy. Tony took a deep breath and headed straight on. His legs seemed to move on their own. He ran. Faster and faster until he came to the edge of the magical grove.
A straight drop down where the rivers connected into a waterfall. Something was calling to him down there. He had to get to it.
Find me. The voice called to him. I’m here. It echoed all through the mountains. Had he been conscious to his own mind he’d probably had thought it ludicrous to even think of going down there.
But he was not in the right state.
So he fell. Down, down, down until the water came at him like a concrete floor that swallowed him up in a chilling embrace. The water tugged at his clothes, pulling him down further to the bottom.
Something reached out to him, taking his arm and hoisting him to dry land. Blue eyes met Green, attached to nothing more than a black figure. No notable features except their eyes. They released him and moved away, slowly at first, then hurriedly towards… something. Stark’s eyes followed the figure until they vanished into the base of an old tree.
The inventor made to follow, but found himself trapped. Sinking lower and lower into the muck that now climbed up his legs. It engulfed him.
“Wait! Who are you!?” He managed to cry out before all went dark and silent once again.
---------------------------------------
“…vitals normal…is… awake?”
“What… Tony can’t…”
“…not himself…”
Muffled voices collected around him. A strange sensation pressed against his body, more so his limbs if he had to be sure. Tony was sure that his eyes were open. But even as he moved his head felt like it was under constant pressure, perhaps a volcano would form.
He would have laughed had he not felt his limbs become heavier and heavier the longer he lay where he was. A groan was all he could muster before he felt exhaustion tug at his conscience once again.
Aches. Aches that burned worse than any fire he’d ever touched. Something wasn’t right.
His body convulsed rather fiercely, rejecting whatever they had touched to him. Then he saw light.
Vision returned to him as a cloth was removed from his eyes. The inventor groaned again, this time able to move his head around to get a better look at where he was.
In regards to hospitality, he was in a white room. Typical for hospitals of a sort.
But why was he there?
Up through his stomach and slipped between his lips came the loudest cry of agony he’d possibly let out in such a small room. Now he knew. Eyes scanned up and down his body. Holes riddled everywhere. He’d been shot. Multiple times it seemed. And yet he was not dead.
Nope.
“Okay.” He sputtered. Figuring that he’d been bound to either side of the rails of the hospice bed, he tugged at his binds, which were nothing more than handcuffs at this point, the skin around his wrists were rubbed near raw. Had he been struggling? Probably.
“This is not kinky in the slightest.” He jeered at the nurse in the room. “Can I, er, go?”
The nurse immediately left the room.
“Not on your life, Stark.” Great. Just the man he wanted to see.
A knot formed in his belly as Nick Fury stood in front of his, well, bed prison he supposed.
“Scared I’m going to go Iron Man on your ass?” Hostile, not so subtle, yet not really how he intended to start off this day. Fury didn’t move, but the scowl grew. Success in his book.
“A little birdie told me that you went Iron Man on everyone’s asses a couple of nights ago.” The director folded his hands behind his back, strolling past the bed before turning his eye at him.
“You managed to hospitalize one of our best agents with little more than a vase. You’re lucky no one put a bullet through your damn head.”
“Yet they put a bunch through the rest of me? It was quite nice of them, really.” Bastard.
“Do you understand the circumstances of your current state?” Fury looked angry, but that was nothing new. If he had to guess, Tony would have guessed that he accidentally set off a bomb or at least something worthy of the director personally visiting him. Oh how he wished he were right.
“Not really. I woke up after a wonderful dream of strolling through the woods to find myself riddled with bullet holes and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Why on Earth would I want to know what I did?” He made to move, earning pain through most of his form, a small spot of blood pooling up along his lower abdomen. Generally a violent gesture had he been in control of his situation, he’d probably had tried something. But he was smarter than that, right?
“You mean to tell me you don’t remember putting your little tin can on and destroying half the base, you nearly killed Barton with that first stunt, you’re lucky no one died but I can assure you, Stark Industries will be getting a very large medical bill from SHIELD.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the door. “Just so you know, Stark,” Fury didn’t look back at him, “I don’t recommend talking to Barton any time soon.”
He left.
Tony sat there, upright and bleeding, handcuffed to the bed and confused as all hell.
What exactly had happened that night? A couple of nights ago? Had he been out a long time?
Pain rushed through his head. He felt like he was on fire.
Feeling around, Tony ran his hand along the arc reactor. Almost curiously as it whirred and hummed in a strange way. His heart was racing, that much he knew. Something felt odd.
Pull away. Break free. Come to us.
His vision suddenly shifted and the same pair of eyes loomed in front of him. Unblinking. Beautiful. Tony swallowed at the lump in his throat. Something about these eyes sent his heart racing faster than a jet. It was an uneasy feeling. He ached. And these eyes forced unusual feelings. Perhaps terror or otherwise. He felt so compelled to just… Touch them. His sub-conscious took over as he attempted to reach up towards them, only to be restrained by the cold metal clinking against the iron bars. His wrists ached. Rubbed raw from an apparent struggle. He tugged frantically at his binds until his hands bleed.
After a couple of minutes, and a bit more blood loss, a loud scream was the only thing heard in the room. Tony slammed his head back against the pillow, grinding his teeth. He did not play well with others, and right now he felt like a prisoner. Grazing along the bedding, slowly and unsurely, his fingers curled, tearing at the cloth that covered him. Or he could have if his strength hadn’t failed him.
“Great.” He huffed. He sunk into the bed, his eyes moving slowly back and forth around the room. His senses were fully awake now. Scents flooded his senses. The whole room reeked of medicine and other various smells that hung around hospital rooms. The voices were quieter now. It almost bothered him.
“Let’s see here…” Tony mumbled as he fumbled along the bedding again, unfurling his fingers and clenching his teeth. He yanked once. Then twice. Three times the charm. Okay. This was starting to hurt.
Alright. He groaned internally, this is not working. He closed his eyes again, inhaling slowly. His hand flopped on the bed next to his side.
Trapped. Wonderful. Just how he wanted to spend his day. Tony closed his eyes. Breathing slowly. The pain was starting to ebb away once again.
Just as he was slipping away into unconsciousness, there was a knock on the door, and a lone figure stood in the doorway.
“Hello, Tony.”