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Tony was forever throwing himself into the line of fire. The downside was, he would never let the team know. He supposed that it all began back at the invasion, when he decided to risk his life to save humanity by flying a nuclear bomb into space.
It was easiest to spot when the Wonder Twins needed saving; they’d end up fighting side by side, or back to back, and they wouldn’t see something coming. Or maybe they did, and they just liked to mess with Tony’s head.
Hulk was a different matter, the Big Guy didn’t need protecting per se, but in the moments before and after transforming; Bruce Banner certainly did. The good doctor was very vulnerable in those moments, and Tony would be damned if one of his few friends got hurt.
Thor, or Pointbreak, as Tony had taken to calling him, rarely needed help. But there were those few moments of Asgardian stupidity where he made a mistake, or didn’t understand Midgardian technology. You can only teach someone like Thor so much. The guy just didn’t get science.
And lastly, there was Captain America. Mr. Patriotic. He just tried to take on too much by himself, and that, Tony could respect. He was trying to protect them. But that meant that he left himself in some pretty idiotic positions. Tony was all too happy to pull his ass out of the fire. The serum didn’t make him invincible, after all.
So this was how Tony ended up in the workshop at stupid o’clock in the morning, while it was still dark out, trying to tend to a huge electro-related burn that spread up his arm and down his side. His reactor was smoking slightly, and his chest ached from the lower percentage of reactor usage. The whole team had just gotten in from a mission that almost went horribly wrong. Dr. Doom had decided to start tinkering with his Doom Bots, giving them the ability to fire deadly blasts of concentrated electricity. Fortunately, it was still ridiculously easy to take them down. Until one aimed at Natasha and Clint.
Tony remembered gritting his teeth as the blast hit him, and for a moment, it shorted his suit’s circuits. Another blast had followed too soon, and it had burnt with a fiery vengeance as it shot up his outstretched arm. Luckily, JARVIS had managed to take over while his systems righted themselves, so he was able to hit back twice as hard, and the Bot basically disintegrated.
Dum-E and You hadn’t stopped whirling around him since he’d walked into the workshop. JARVIS had quickly gotten the partly-charred suit off of him, and had almost forcefully suggested that he lay down while Dum-E grabbed one of his spare Arc Reactors. He half-listened to JARVIS’ diagnosis of his current health. This wasn’t something they could just slap a band-aid on, he was lucky he still had use of his arm. If the second blast had been any sooner… Well, it wasn’t something he wanted to think about. The plus side to growing up the way he did, and with his intense love of engineering, Tony was actually ambidextrous. Dum-E rolled over to him with a Reactor in his grasp, he patted the small bot on the head, and took his mechanical heart from his claws. He quickly removed the old Reactor, gasping in pain as the shrapnel embedded in his body started to move. He heard footsteps, and deciding there was nothing he could do about the situation, moved to put the new Reactor in.
“Yo, Tony! Bruce is cooking, we were wondering if you were coming up…” Clint’s eyes widened as they glanced over Tony’s form. “Stairs…”
The billionaire sighed from where he was sat, one hand limp by his side, the other pushing a new Arc Reactor into place. In his hurry to get out of the suit, he’d forgotten to close the door.
Trying to stay casual, despite his current state, Tony replied, keeping his voice as level as possible. “Sure, Birdie, I’ll be up in a moment.”
“What the hell happened?” Clint yelled as he rushed over to the genius as he twisted the Reactor into place, giving it a solid pat.
“It’s nothing,” Tony waved the archer off with a grunt. “Just a flesh wound.”
Clint took the man’s burnt hand in his own. “Nothing my ass,” he grumbled.
One half of the Wonder Twins gently turned over Tony’s scorched limb, taking in the extensive damage with serious eyes.
“JARVIS, can you get Bruce down here? And Natasha too,” Clint requested, glaring at the streaks of red and black that adorned Tony’s side.
“Dr. Banner and Miss Natasha have been notified,” JARVIS said over the many speakers in the lab.
“Now, now, Birdie, is there any need for that?” Tony whined.
The elevator pinged on the other side of the still open door, and Bruce and Natasha came running out.
“JARVIS said you’d been hur- Oh my god, Tony!” Bruce exclaimed with a horrified look on his face.
The doctor immediately jumped into action, grabbing the first aid kit that Tony kept in the lab for mishaps, and pulled out a tube of burn ointment, and a roll of gauze. He carefully took Clint’s place holding the burnt arm while Natasha and Clint watched, a frown etched on each of their faces. Bruce ran his fingers over Tony’s hand, assessing the worst of the damage.
“You aren’t going to be able to use this hand much, Tony, it’s badly damaged. What were you doing?” Bruce asked, an accusing tone in his voice.
“I was shot by one of Doom’s stupid Bots, that’s what!” Tony exclaimed, flinching at the fellow scientist’s touch.
“Tony.” Bruce said quietly. “What happened?”
Tony’s eyes flicked guiltily to the two special agents in the room. “They were going to get hit.”
“And you stopped it from happening? Like you protect me when I’m transforming?” Bruce queried, spreading the ointment over Tony’s hand and arm.
Tony looked shocked. “You know about that?”
“I’m observant, Tony, you know that. It did take me a while to notice though. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
“Wait,” Natasha chimed in. “You put yourself in front of us?”
“Tony, how could you be so stupid? What if the blast had hit your Reactor head on?” Clint cried.
“I couldn’t just let you both be hit! You’d have died!” Tony gestured to his burnt flesh. “Do you see this? If it wasn’t for the suit, I’d be dead, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen to you. My sensors picked up the charging electricity from the Bot. I did the calculations, I didn’t have time to either shut it down or get in its way, I chose the latter, and I always will.”
As he finished talking, Tony’s brown eyes clenched closed and he let out a pained hiss, his uninjured hand coming up to grab at Bruce’s arm, halting the scientist from continuing. His olive-toned skin paled significantly, and Bruce studied his form in concern.
“Sorry, moved wrong,” Tony said with his press-smile.
“You aren’t fooling me, mister,” Bruce said, quickly wrapping a bandage around the Engineer’s red-toned arm.
Natasha came forward as Bruce moved Tony’s arm to lie across his middle, the Arc Reactor casting a bright blue glow on the white of his bandages. She stood over the injured Billionaire with a small frown etched onto her face. Tony pressed himself back into the reclined chair he was on, hissing as Bruce started in on his patchy side. The burns were bright. Like someone had stripped him of the first couple layers of his skin. He refocused on the assassin staring down at him. She didn’t look pleased.
“Anthony Stark. This needs to stop. You are as much a part of the team as the rest of us. If you are injured, you tell us, you do not try to deal with it by yourself. If you are in danger, you tell us, so we can help you. If we are in danger, it falls to everyone, and not just you, to ensure that we are all as safe as possible during a mission.”
“Nat’s right, Tones,” Clint chipped in from where he stood, seemingly watching over the whole scene. “You can count on us, y’know?”
“Gah!” Tony gasped as Bruce rubbed over a particularly bad burn. “I know, I know I can, it’s not that…”
“Hush, Tony. Deep breaths,” Bruce advised, his brow furrowing.
Tony grit his teeth against the pain, flinching as Bruce tapped a large piece of medical pad over the worst of his burns. Meaning it covered a fair portion of his ribs and hip.
Seeing the discomfort he was in, Natasha lightly petted the genius’ hair, waiting for Tony’s breathing to even back out.
“I know I can count on you,” he grit out. “But you are all mine to protect. People on a small list of things worth giving my body and life for. If I can’t save the people I care about, what am I worth?”
Bruce’s face fell, eyes tearing up somewhat. “Tony, you are worth everything. You don’t need to break yourself to keep us safe. Please, you need to look after yourself.”
Clint cleared his throat, seeing Tony’s posture relax under Natasha’s ministrations. “C’mon, let’s get him upstairs. It’s safer there, and the whole team was thinking about a movie night. It was a tough mission.”
Clint took it upon himself to shoulder Tony over to the elevator, the injured man leaning on him heavily the entire way after he and Bruce had carefully shifted him off of the chair. Natasha led the small party, going to sit on the far end of one sofa in the living room, and patting her thighs as soon as she was seated. Clint got the gist and gently lay Tony down on the soft cushions, leaving his head in Natasha’s lap. She began stroking his hair again, and watched as the pained lines in his face slowly disappeared.
One by one, the rest of the team found their spaces. Clint sat in front of the soft near Tony’s head, staying close and ready to jump into action should anything happen. Bruce took the other side of the sofa, concerned over any pain that Tony may be in, and wanting to keep a close eye on him. Steve took one of the armchairs, in a position to see the whole room. And finally, Thor took up his usual place on the rub, laying on his side, hammer nearby. JARVIS had informed them of what had happened, but the first step was to get Tony to sleep so he could heal. They’d talk later.
Bruce quietly asked JARVIS to play the movie the rest of their team had lined up. Tony needed to feel safe to sleep and heal. And then yes, they would talk. He watched his best friend take deep, but unsteady breaths, vowing to ensure his full recovery.