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Tony
It's a relief to finally pull over, though the bad energy follows me like a cloud. Steve won't look at me. I pretend that I don't want to look at him, either, but there's not much else to see; we've stopped in the middle of nowhere with only trees and assorted wildlife to keep us company.
"Doesn't look much like a facility to me. Is it so top-secret that I can't even see it?" I say.
Sam points into the woods. "We're walking the rest of the way. I've routed a path that should avoid any tripwires. You all know your positions, right?" He waits for our nods and one-word confirmations, before turning and beckoning for us to follow. "Good. Lets move out."
I fall in after Rhodey, and I think Steve's behind me. I try to ignore the burning feeling in my stomach, and the tightness in my chest. This is fine.
It's a long walk. None of us offer to break the silence, not even Scott—and my apprehensions are only solidified when we crest the hill. The facility is a massive brick of a building. Flat, expansive and rectangular, built mostly of steel with very few openings beyond a couple tiny inlaid windows. Most of the traffic seems localized on opposite sides of the building, where operatives are coming and going in single-file lines. It's a bottleneck, tough to get into under normal circumstances, and the only element playing into our favor is that of surprise.
Lets hope our luck doesn't run out.
It's Scott that goes first. He shrinks out of sight and leaves us to wait with bated breath for his cue, as if we weren't tense enough already. Eventually, his voice crackles over our earpieces.
"I'm in. Shutting down security."
"Waiting for your signal," Natasha replies.
I tap my chest and allow my nano-tech suit to encompass me. At one point it might have felt like an embrace from an old friend. Today, it's prison.
"Are you ready?" Steve says under his breath. He's standing by my side, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, still not meeting my eyes. Tense. Shield forward. A soldier, ready to fight.
This isn't the fight I care about. What I wouldn't give to take him aside, lay it all on the line, apologize and hear him say it back—instead, I'm left with unanswered questions and no time for answers. Do you still see a future in me?
"Nope," I say, and close my helmet.
Scott's voice returns, this time accompanied by labored breathing. "All set. I think."
"You think?" Rhodey says.
"Their system's tight. I can only hope I pulled the right plug."
"It's gonna have to be good enough." Natasha brandishes her pistol and cocks it. "I'm going in. Cover me." She doesn't wait for a response before sliding down the hill towards the side of the facility.
Sam gives a long, low whistle. That's our signal—no turning back now.
Steve and Rhodey charge to the left, Sam takes the right, and I fly to the top of the tree line to get a better vantage point. Red lights flash from the small windows, one of which Natasha has already blown open with her gun. An alarm shrieks in protest— It seems Scott's apprehension was warranted.
I can see Rhodey controlling the flow of guards, who have started flooding out the door like homeless ants. Steve is making quick work of anyone that gets through Rhodey's fire— He already has one on the ground, and another knocked backwards with a shield to the chest. My breath hitches. Steve fights like a deadly ballerina, hyper focused and graceful, allowing nothing to deter him from his goal. And god, his ass looks so good in those pants.
A flash of blue fills my visor. I've barely registered it before I'm spiraling out of position, knocked aside by a sudden force on my right shoulder.
I scramble to regain control, grasping at branches that snap in my hands, barely managing to swing my legs underneath me before hitting the forest floor. The thrusters counteract my inertia, awarding me a short moment to assess the damage. There's a strip of exposed skin on my shoulder, little more than a surface wound, but nothing like a scratch—this was a burn. The nanites re-form around the strip of tender flesh.
No time to question it. I re-engage and hover between the trees, taking care to stay hidden this time while I scan the perimeter. Three hatches have opened up in the roof of the facility, revealing long-barreled guns of some sort all pointing straight in my direction— most likely energy beams, possibly heat seeking.
"Alright. Robots," I say, rolling my neck. "I can do robots."
I rocket out of the trees, weaving between their fresh barrage of beams, and send a couple of my own in retaliation. The middle gun explodes on impact. Satisfying.
The left gun adjusts its aim and fires. In a moment of over-confidence and raging adrenaline, I duck out of the way of one beam and directly into the other's line of fire, allowing a stray beam to carve into the small of my back. I yelp and fall to the side, flipping around just in time to send another pulsar blast towards the offending target—boom— and then the other. I skid to a halt on the roof.
My breathing is labored, my knees feel like jelly, my lower back is screaming is pain. The only plus side to a laser wound is the instant cauterization, but man does it hurt like a bitch.
"Tony, what are you doing? You were supposed to fall in behind me," Sam's voice crackles through my headset.
"I'm...Roof, I'm on the roof," I pant. I brace myself on my knees. "They have energy beams. Big guns, lasers. The kind that cuts through your suit like butter."
"Noted. Now get your ass down here, there's a swarm of them—" He cuts off, followed by the sound of grunting, the clank of metal against metal.
My stomach turns. I don't have time to think about it. Or anything. I shut my helmet once more, aim down at the smoldering remains of the nearest gun, and blast it until the wreckage falls away in a plume of smoke. I leap through the opening feet-first.
I'm dropped onto a control panel—or, rather, what's left of a control panel— and send a few operatives scrambling backwards. Their panicked retreat doesn't last long, though, before they pull out handguns and start firing. Their bullets ricochet off my suit and blow out the overhead light, plunging us into darkness broken only by the glowing computer screens circling the room. A small window of opportunity.
I grab the nearest operatives wrist and wrench it, sending a bullet through his colleagues chest, and swing my other fist into his jaw. He goes limp and crumples to the floor.
I don't have time to admire my handiwork before I'm jumped from behind. My attacker wraps their arms around my neck and squeezes with all their might, and all I can do is engage my thrusters, sending both of us rocketing backwards. I try to ignore the ungodly crunch that resonates through my head as their body makes contact with the wall. There's no time. There's no room for weakness. Regrets have to come later.
I outstretch my repulsars and send out blasts all around the room, not much caring where they land. My vision is starting to blur, head spinning like a top while I'm frozen in place. I keep shooting until someone's voice crackles again in my ear.
My knees hit the ground with a clank, and then the room falls morbidly silent. No operatives are left standing. They're strewn about the room in a haphazard fashion, and even in the dim light I can see dark patches of blood steadily pooling from their wounds. I'm reminded, bitterly, of the dreams. Of lying in the middle of the battlegrounds, watching my friends get picked off one-by-one, and lying there until something—or someone— wakes me up.
In this case, it's Sam's voice that drags me back to reality. "Tony, do you copy?"
"What?"
"I need backup in the east wing. Can you get here?"
"Yeah, I...yeah. Working on it."
I stumble to my feet. The room pitches. I feel drunk. No...no, being drunk would be better than this.
Steve's voice cuts through the static. "Nat, status report. How are those files looking?"
"Slow going," Natasha replies. "It's not even a quarter of the way downloaded. You're gonna have to buy me more time."
"Can you make it go faster?" I say.
"What do you want me to do, kick it?"
"Tony, I need you over here now," Sam snaps.
"Right, sorry dear."
The control room exits onto a metal catwalk, spanning the length of the expansive room I now find myself looking out onto. This room alone must take up a majority of the facility; it's massive, with a vaulted roof supported by hefty concrete pillars. It looks to be their assembly room, if the conveyor belts and various types of machinery are any indication, but most of the equipment is covered in tarps. There's no one in sight.
I can hear muffled commotion from either side of the building, intermingling with the blaring alarm, which doesn't help to orient me. I know Sam's in the east wing, but my head is too scrambled for that to mean anything. All I have now is left or right. I choose right. I suppose it's up to fate if I've chosen correctly.
I storm the catwalk, metal on metal reverberating throughout the corridor. My vision is clouded with images of Thanos's army, of all the people I wasn't able to save— it's like all my worst memories are fighting to take the helm of my downward spiral. Everything is congealing into a single, constant sense of existential dread, and my adrenaline is far too high to stop. I'm a tank without a driver. Or, maybe, a tank driver going through a manic episode. Neither is preferable.
The sounds are getting louder, and the pressure in my skull is heightening to an alarming degree.
I bust through a door at the end of the corridor and stumble into what looks like a storage area, filled with metal shipping containers and about fifteen operatives engaged in combat with Sam. They don't notice when I enter, though it seems they have other priorities; one of them yells something indiscernible, and runs for the back door with the others soon in tow. Sam sends a few final shots their way before dropping down from his flight and staring after them, obviously as confused as I am.
"After all that? Seriously?" I pant, and Sam shoots me a look.
"Something's wrong here, Tony. There's got to be a reason for them to retreat like that. Did you see anything on your way over?"
"I don't know, a hallway?"
"You're funny, man. You know this is serious, right?"
"This place is practically a ghost town outside of that control room, Sam," I say. "I guess it's possible there's less of them than we thought."
Sam chews on this for a second. "Or..."
"Or they're evacuating."
Sam meets my eyes, and the moment of recognition is mutual. "Maybe we're not stalling them... they were stalling us. God fucking damn it. Steve, update, now."
A pause, static, a dull thud. My heart catches in my throat, only relaxing when Steve's voice cuts through the noise once again. "They're scattering," he says. He's out of breath, too. "Something happened, they all just... stopped fighting. Something's not right, Sam, you all should get out of there."
"Nat, what's that fucking download at?"
"Halfway. You think it jumped to 100% in a few minutes?"
"We have to evacuate, now. I think they're gonna blow this place to kingdom come before we can get the chance to. Scott, do you copy?"
No response.
"Scott?" Sam repeats, louder and more insistent this time. The panic is spreading; it's not localized to me anymore, it's palpable in the air. "Scott, you son of a bitch, can you hear us?"
Silence.
The ground rumbles.
"Shit," I say under my breath. "That can't be good."
"Get Scott," Sam says, pointing towards the door. "Get him the fuck out of here. I'll take Natasha. Steve, Rhodes, clear the area. Get as far away as possible."
"But—" Steve starts to argue.
"We don't have time for 'buts', soldier," Sam snaps. "You all have your assignments. Now go."
⋅☆⋅⋅☆⋅⋅☆⋅
I find a human-sized Scott lying on the ground of the equipment room, surrounded by charred fragments of what must must have been some heavy machinery, now little more than an imprint in the tiles. Blood pools from his shoulder. His eyes are closed. He's unresponsive. Shit.
I extract a finger from my suit to press it up against his neck. He's still got a pulse, at least. "Scott, wake up."
No response. I slap his cheek gently, to the same result, and then once more, not so gently. He spasms into consciousness and lets out a shout. "Wh—what's—"
"Shut up, it's me. We gotta get out of here. What happened to you?"
"Tony?" His moment of clarity devolves into a cringe of pain. He clutches his shoulder. "I was hiding. Waiting for my cue from Natasha, when...ah...that assembly station exploded. Just straight up, kaboom!! And here I am. Fuck, this really hurts. My left ear is ringing. Is that normal?"
"Your earpiece is broken," I say. "Take it out and come with me. Things are about to go south real fast."
"Right...okay." He complies, and allows me to wrap his good arm around my shoulders. I support him at the waist.
"Hold on tight," I say. "We're flying out of here."
I engage my thrusters and rocket towards the catwalk. Behind me, I can hear the rest of the machinery starting to explode one-by-one, as if on cue, releasing shock waves that threaten to throw me off course—which isn't hard. I'm already unbalanced by the extra cargo clinging to my side. All I can do is grip Scott tightly and hope we don't hit the ceiling, or hope the ceiling doesn't hit us.
The whole building is shaking, now. Crumbling. Spitting out large chunks of sheetrock and letting loose light fixtures, which crash to the ground below. If I get out of this alive, I'm telling Steve—
That's when something hits me. Something large, solid, heavy, coming down too fast to stop. I'm thrown the rest of the way onto the catwalk, barely managing to toss Scott to the side before I'm crushed into the metal with enough force to knock all the breath out of me, suit or not. There's a nasty crunch, and it doesn't take long at all to figure out it was my leg, not the floor. Agony floods from my ankle to my hip, reverberating in searing waves through my whole body. I know what broken bones feel like. This is worse. I can't move my leg at all, but it continues to be compressed; whatever is pinning me wants to keep going. It wants to take me with it.
I twist my torso as much as I can to get a better look at my captor: a concrete pillar. I grit my teeth until I feel my jaw pop. There's no time for this. I barrage the pillar with blasts from my repulsars, to little effect other than a fresh influx of pain and an ominous groan from the catwalk.
Fuck.
I turn around. "Scott, can you walk?"
He had rolled to safety, and is now watching me with eyes the size of saucers, grasping his blood-soaked shoulder with an equally blood-soaked hand. "I...I don't know. Maybe? But I won't just leave you like—"
"There's no time, just go! Get out of here!"
"But—"
"Get the fuck out!! Now!"
The building rumbles again, a tremor coursing from the depths of their facility. They must be planning to sink the whole place, get rid of all the evidence; including me.
Scott pulls himself to his feet and staggers backwards, steadying himself against the railing. "Tony, I—I gotta help you. Maybe...maybe if I went mega, I could pick up the pillar!"
"What, and bring the whole ceiling down on top of me instead?"
"I..."
I aim a repulsar at him and let it warm up. "Get out of here before I fucking shoot you!"
Scott stares at me, and I recognize the emotions flashing over his face. Pure and utter hopelessness. A desire to help. The ability to do nothing. Slowly, he nods, turns, and staggers down the corridor towards the left entrance.
I watch him recede out of sight and brace myself as another, stronger tremor courses through the catwalk, shifting the pillar slightly and sending a fresh surge of agony up to my hip. It only confirms my suspicions: this building is going to come down on top of me one way or another, and fast.
I tell myself that it's okay. That I'd seen the end before, already stared it down and accepted it. I could do it again. I have to do it again. This is how it ends, for real this time, and I just have to lie here and wait for the inevitable. I should be a pro at this by now. But I'm not.
My skull feels like it's caving in more than the snapped bones and crushed tendons in my leg. My vision is clouding. My breathing is irregular. I know why. It's not the pain.
It's the face I see when I close my eyes, it's the singular person overriding every thought, taking up residence in my heart.
It's the man I see...saw...a future in.
God, I really did see a future in Steve, didn't I?
I curse myself. Of course giving my life up for the sake of humanity was easy, because it didn't matter if I died as long as I took Thanos with me. I was kamikaze. Blinded by revenge. I had nothing to lose. Nothing mattered except killing one person, and as much as I hate to admit it...humanity came second. My death came second.
And now there's something in my life that comes first, and I'm leaving them, for what? Because I wanted to prove something?
I'm full-tilt panicking, and this time, it's not because of death itself.
This time, it's because of what I'm leaving behind.