Chapter Text
They say hindsight is always 20/20, and in that moment, he felt the full weight of what that truly meant hit him dead in the chest.
It was so excruciatingly obvious, but no one had realized just how slippery a slope they had been treading until they found themselves in an aching pile at the bottom, panicked and addled with no other choice but to limp their way back home and lick their wounds with one seat on the jet left empty.
They had skimmed over every red flag that warned them of the chaos they had unknowingly submitted themselves to, drunk on the taste of victory of a battle not yet won. They were heedless and arrogant and so stupidly ignorant that they had been their own downfall, and it was the best of them who suffered because of it.
It had been a setup.
A HYDRA base settled on the east coast of Russia, wedged somewhere between Alaska and Japan. It was reportedly small and undermanned, an easy win; until they were forced to split up. They were heading in all different directions in order to cover the most ground and take out as much as they could as fast as possible, but the enemies fell too easily, and the alarms sounded, the exits to every room becoming sheathed in thick layers of metal in less than an instant.
“—Mr. Stark? What’s going on?—”
And Peter was left alone, surrounded with far too many HYDRA agents to fight off on his own, and the team could do nothing but listen and scrape fruitlessly at the walls containing them as the boy struggled, taking more hits than he could throw, every pained whimper and murmur of fear a painful reminder of their fatal mistake.
“—There are too many, Mr. Stark! I-I can’t do this on my own, they-they’re everywhere! What do I do, Mr. Stark? I-I don’t know what to do! Mr. Stark? Tony!— ”
He went down with a scream that rang through Tony’s head like a broken record, tormenting him every second of every day that he didn’t have his kid in his arms—and he had no doubt that it would linger in the nightmares of the others on the team as well.
His comm fizzled out into static after that, and by the time they had broken themselves free, he was long gone- leaving them surrounded by nothing but stale air and corpses that refused to die by any other hands but their own.
They searched for hours, their efforts dying down with the sun. The kid was nowhere to be found, all power to his suit and the tracker inside had been cut, and there was nothing but endless and infuriating snowy mountains for miles upon miles. There was nothing left they could do for Peter in that wasteland of white, yet taking off in the quinjet felt so betraying and backstabbing that it hurt.
Peter was gone, but when that tricked-out base grew smaller and smaller as they flew away, Tony couldn’t help but feel like they had left him behind.
He turned his face to the sky and blinked back heartbroken tears, the stars that he used to gaze upon so fondly now only taunting him with the memories of nights spent curled up on the roof with Peter tucked into his side, smiling brightly as he pointed out constellations and planets with a joy that couldn’t help but bleed into everyone around him.
Now he just felt empty, and it hurt. It hurt like hell.
-=÷=-
“So, what? You’re telling me we have nothing?”
Tony’s voice reverberated throughout the otherwise silent room, raw with desperation. He was loud and brash, angry to anyone who didn’t know him any better—those who did could hear the pleading in his words.
Every face around him was solemn, the aura around them swollen and heavy with guilt. It was no secret that Peter was the baby of the team, the little ray of sunshine that everyone had grown attached to. Losing him had left an aching hollow within them all, but it paled in comparison to the shredded mess that Tony had become.
The man’s eyes were wide and shaking as he scanned the room, dark circles bruising his undereyes and standing out harshly against his sickly pale skin. His hair and clothes were disheveled, coffee staining the sleeves of his shirt and offering a little more fervour to the shake in his hands. Peter was the glue that held Tony Stark together, and the man was quickly crumbling without him.
Steve met his eyes, a look of pure sorrow and remorse creasing his face.
“I’m so sorry, Tony. We’ll get him home. It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet, we’ll find him.”
The man opened his mouth as if he wanted to reply, his jaw stuttering for a moment before he was closing it with a sigh that sounded closer to a whimper. He dug his hands in his hair and stood up from the table, pacing for a few moments with a haunted mist in his eyes.
“What if we don’t? Then what?” His voice broke under the pressure. “What if we never find him?”
For a few seconds there was only fraught silence, until Steve replied with a look of steel and his voice unwavering.
“That’s simply not an option.”
–=○O○=–
The voices that broke through the fog in his head were astute and detached, a drastic change from the soft whispers and hair strokes he usually woke up to.
His consciousness came in waves, pushing and pulling behind his eyes, his ears ringing and head beginning to throb. The first thing he felt was confusion, which quickly settled into cold hard dread in his gut. Something certainly wasn’t right, but it was something his swimming head couldn’t quite yet grasp.
“—subject is unresponsive to both visual and auditory stimuli, remained in unconscious state throughout application of pain stimulus—”
“—suspected grade three concussion due to blunt force trauma, extended period of unconsciousness—”
“—superficial abrasions and contusions depicting signs of healing at a remarkably rapid pace, let’s get a blood count—"
The words drifted through one ear and out the other, only aggravating the full ache in his head. His entire being was buzzing with anxiety, screaming for him to back away from the hands and gloved fingers poking and prodding his prone form, but sand filled his limbs, making them fuzzy and heavy and hesitant to move. He could only lazily toss his head to the side, trying and failing to dislodge the people touching him.
Before he could back away, there was a deft hand thumbing his eye open, flooding his vision with nauseating shapes and swirls of colour before it all gave way to bright white agony.
“—proper pupillary constriction in response to light stimulus, reaction indicates probable vision enhancement—”
He moaned in pain, pressing his head back onto the hard metal surface he was laid out upon. His heart thrummed in his chest and he pulled more fervently on his limbs only to be met with stiff cuffs biting into his wrists, upper arms, thighs and ankles.
The growing panic within him spiked to an unbearable high.
His eyes flew open, lightning bolts of pain shooting through them as the light came rushing in. He thrashed with all of his might against the restraints, the scream he unintentionally let out muffled by something firm lodged in his mouth and surrounding the lower portion of his face.
“—subject is steadily regaining awareness, resisting against the bonds—”
“—should we sedate it?— ”
“—no, subject 1103 must remain conscious in order to ensure accurate observations—”
“—administering first dose of succinylcholine—”
His thoughts were running through sludge, coming to him slowly and muddy, any rational decision easily overpowered by absolute hysteria. Everything around him was nothing more than splotchy watercolour, leaving him dizzy and overwhelmed and absolutely terrified.
He could remember nothing apart from the present, and he had no escape from the pain and the light and the unwelcome touch, his struggles only rewarding him with bruises. His body was as jumbled and confused as his head was, every sense and feeling and intuition irreparably scrambled, allowing him no certainty apart from pain.
He doesn’t recall ever being this scared before, even if every memory was nothing more than a flash of images and a brief feeling of warmth at that point. He found himself overcome with the childish urge to be held, curled up in Tony’s arms with fingers gently gliding though his hair, arms around him and words of comfort soothing any and all of his worries. He ached for the security and love and assurance but all he felt was cold, scared, and hurt.
It was torture beyond anything he had ever experienced.
There were more hands poking at him, pushing down against his arm just above the crook of his elbow, latex catching against his already overstimulated skin. His lungs were frozen in his chest, tears he hadn’t realized he’d been shedding gliding out of the side of his eyes and running down his temples.
A prick and a rush of cold later, the hands were gone and the voices weren’t as loud, he almost let himself relax slightly.
That is, until he did begin to relax, but not by choice.
He immediately tried to tense up, an instinctive urge to curl up and protect himself only subdued by the metal he was bound with. His heart stuttered along with his breathing, body trembling with the force of trying to move as a tingling warmth spread over him, a contrastingly cold sweat shining on his skin.
He could only sob as his body melted against his will, muffled screams of torment escaping him as he thrashed weakly until he could do nothing but lay there, still and exposed and unable to do so much as whimper. His face grew slack. He viewed the blurry world through half-lidded eyes as all of his puppet strings were severed and he was left at the complete mercy of unsought contact and disembodied voices.
A shiver slithered down his spine but didn’t show on the body that now served as his prison.
He could sense every movement around him, every slight disturbance in the air and touch assaulting his skin, every burst of adrenaline rushing through him offering no false strength or courage, every footstep and every breath and every heartbeat layering over one another until it was one big roar that sounded as if it billowed out from the gates hell.
The panic never faltered and it ran through his veins like acid—burning him up from the inside before it was too acute to even register and his overloaded body went blissfully numb.
The infernal cacophony fizzled out into white noise, his mind collapsing into itself in a feeble attempt to protect itself from whatever agony was sure to come; glued to consciousness without even the meager succor of sleep as respite.
He was confused and exhausted and so, so alone.
He wanted to be held and coddled and hugged and god damnit he wanted Tony, no matter how childish the longing may be.
Now he just felt empty, and it hurt. It hurt like hell.
“—test subject 1103 prepped for biopsy, commencing procedure with preliminary incisions—”
And he could do nothing but breathe and wait.