By Design - Stony AU

Chapter 13

Warning: Torture, violence, and death. Also all the X-Men look like their movie adaptations.

Tony felt his chest clench up as he muddled his way back to consciousness. He tried to reach for Steve, to comfort him, but his arms were stuck down at his sides. He tried to roll over but he was bound and... sitting up. He groaned from the ache in his chest. This wasn't ok. Steve needed him. Steve was scared of something and he'd gotten himself... tangled... or...

He shook his head and opened his eyes. It was dark and he was tied to a chair. As his memory seeped back into place, he realized what probably had Steve so worried.

Fuck.

He wriggled against the seat and tried to reach his fingers to his pants pockets, but he could already feel that all his everyday carry toys were gone. His lips pressed back from his teeth in frustration and he threw himself sideways as hard as he could, only to discover that the chair was not only extremely sturdy but bolted to the floor.

He squeezed his eyes closed, both to try and get them clear and to better scold himself into staying calm and working the problem rather than going off in the fit that was building up in his gut. He took a breath and thought of Steve. He brought all his thoughts down to that one still point and thought, felt, as hard as he could, 'I'm ok, kiddo. I'm out here. I'm not gonna die on you. We're gonna be ok'.

He couldn't really tell if it got any further than the inside of his own skull, or whether the pain in his chest had really been Steve, but it did calm him down and clear his head.

"You're a little shit, you know that?" A voice said in the darkness.

Tony summoned up the indomitably flippant little-shit tone he'd perfected by age twelve. The one he could pull out flawlessly whether he'd just been hit in the stomach or called a faggot to his face by a "fan".

"Oh yeah, I've been told. Something to do with being better than you, old man."

Out from the darkness, Obadiah Stane appeared, his face now scarring over from the incident at the Gala. He pulled up a wooden chair, turned it around, and sat on it in front of Tony.

"I never knew what Howard saw in you." He said. "Brains, sure. If you were still focused on weaponry, you'd probably build something more powerful than our current nuclear arsenal. But ever since you were young, you were too idealistic. Never taking into account what your father and I worked so hard to build."

"See, I can't figure out the dynamic here. Are you the jilted older sibling or the evil stepmother in this little scene?"

Instead of a response, Stane stood up and punched Tony in the stomach. Tony let out a long "Hnnnnnnn" as the breath blew out of him. He hadn't gotten his abdominals tightened in time, and something internal had definitely taken a good bit of the impact, sending a wave of dull pain all the way down to his knees and up to his throat. It pulsed and persisted a good twenty count before easing up. Tony sat up and smiled.

"Not the face, huh? We gonna make a ransom video?"

Another punch, but to the jaw. "You know, I never had a problem with who you were interested in. I couldn't give two shits who you had in bed, but I figured, if I could get on Howard's good side, he'd let me run the company instead of you." A kick to the kneecap. "And I never felt guilty, because you always got on my nerves."

Tony made a big deal about moving his jaw around and wincing in pain. He'd managed to close his teeth and go with the strike a little, and really wanted to keep Obie swinging at his head. Everything else was bound and braced and couldn't give any ground. His head at least he could maneuver.