Can We Be Fixed? (Stony)

Chapter One: Betrayal

Or so some people think.

He has a dark side that not many people know about. He's angry because he has no one to fight for, he's aggressive because he's lost so much in his life; girlfriend, and best friend, who he still blames himself for, and not to mention he's lost someone who he never expected to get close to. He hurt him so badly, but it wasn't his fault. Everyone says it's his fault, but realistically the entirety of the situation does not sorely rest upon his shoulders.

Maybe there was something different he could have done, he didn't stop to think about that possibility for a second, but he was running out of time. Actually, there was no time to simply put a pause to everything and hit rewind, because that only happens in movies, and while his life certainly seemed to play out that way, that's not what it felt like to him.

He had to save his best friend, even if it meant losing the man he had somehow let into his heart, and allowed himself to love. The man who resembled his father, but was so far advanced in his time and so much more intelligent than Howard ever could be. He risked it all to save Bucky, but he lost Tony in the end. That was his third heartbreak.

He stares at the iron bars that go across his cell horizontally past the glass door locking him inside. The cuffs specially designed for him encasing his hands midway up his forearms that cut off his powers so that he couldn't break free, and the electric collar around his neck that hummed so softly, waiting to be activated. Blood trickled down his head from the countless hits he took from the back end of guns, coupled with the bullet holes that haven't healed due to the loss of his powers, his lips cracking and dry, parched from lack of water, and the insatiable gurgling of his stomach from being so hungry. They didn't feed him properly, they didn't give him the water he needed, they just kept hurting him, over and over again, hoping he'd crack. But he never did. He did not shout, nor scream, nor cry, as they kept beating him with their weapons, when they shot him in his shoulders, his legs, when they kept shocking him with the collar around his neck just for fun to hear him scream out in agony.

But he never did.

He endured it; suffered through every pain imaginable, even the ones nobody could see that tainted his heart emotionally, the scars that were left behind from years of loss, and grief, and heartache to heartbreak, he continued to remain strong like the soldier he was. But it didn't mean he never felt it. He simply told himself that maybe he deserved this for what he did to Tony; for not telling him about his parent's, for not signing the accords, for choosing to save Bucky over turning himself in or listening to Tony so they could work this out. But truthfully, that would be taking all the blame, and it wasn't all his fault.

When did he ever have the time to tell Tony about his parent's death while he was still trying to clear Bucky's name? Everybody thought it was Bucky who bombed the Conference Hall in the United Nation, but Steve believed otherwise. How could it be that suddenly Bucky would do something like that when he remembered Steve for a fraction of a second? He knew his best friend was in there somewhere, and he wanted to believe that he didn't do this. Of course, he was right, Bucky didn't do it, but while defending his friend he learned dark secrets that he had to keep to himself.

He never had the time, nor the place to tell Tony and it caused everything to go to shit in Siberia. Where they fought, where he did the most unimaginable thing he has ever come to do. Putting his shield inside Tony's chest, where his Arc Reactor lay. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. Tony wasn't willing to listen to reason, and Steve had made his choice. But he also lost Tony, and that he regrets deeply.

He thought that maybe it was a sign that Tony was ready to talk when he called him from the flip phone he gave him. But alas, it was nothing but a trap.