If They Knew All About You

My Father Made That Shield

(author's note: I generally hate chapters that are this short, but this one is a very short one for the following reason: Just to be on the safe side I wanted to keep this separate and add a trigger warning for suicidal thoughts during a near-death experience. If this might trigger you, please skip this chapter. I will put a short summary of everything you need to know in the beginning note of the next chapter.)

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There were moments when time just seemed to stand still for him. Only him. When everything around him was unfolding and he couldn't do a single thing to stop it. Maybe everyone had those kinds of moments in extreme situations. Maybe it was a thing. Maybe it just wasn't talked about because very few people experienced situations of severe stress in the frequency that Tony did. His life had been full of them, even when he was young. As a Stark, as a young kid born with that name, he had grown up with the explicit danger of what someone could do to him or his mother for the sake of money or influence. Extorting weapons or demanding new technology blueprints. The constant danger, the precautions, the limitations on where he could go, when and with whom.

Money could buy you bodyguards. High walls. Strong doors. A certain sense of security.

But no real security. He had learned that the hard way. He had learned how fickle that feeling was when his son was born. He had always been so careful, surrounded Aiden with all the protection he could, kept him with people he trusted and then the unthinkable happened.

That had been the worst day of his life, without a doubt. But not the last disaster that he would experience. Those were a lot harder to rank though. How could anyone measure the pain between seeing your best friend fall to his certain death in the armor you build to protect him? Was that better or worse than not being able to save the love of your life from falling into a big pit of flames to her certain death? Was that more painful than the physical pain of open-heart surgery in the middle of the desert without proper anesthesia or being waterboarded? So many shitty things had happened to him over the years that it had become hard to even list them all.

Rhodey was up there though. Seeing his best friend shot out of the sky, his armor that was meant to protect him only dead weight pulling him to the ground. And Tony hadn't been fast enough. His suit had been no help at all.

There had been a certain freedom he gained by becoming Iron Man, when he became so strong that nobody could harm him. Well, not nobody. There were still plenty of people that could harm him and not just by proxy. Case in point. His current state.

The silence around him was deafening. There were only his heartbeat, a distinct ringing in his ears and his labored breathing that echoed off the walls of the bunker. Tony was lying on his back, sprawled out on the cold concrete floor somewhere in Siberia.

Again and again, the memories from the raft drifted up to the forefront of his mind. Not just some holding cells in a military complex or even somewhere underground. A fucking underwater prison. What kind of maniac would even come up with that? Cells lined not just with bulletproof glass but titanium bars to keep in monsters. Wanda wrapped in a straight jacket, a collar around her neck to suppress her powers. He had tried to protect them from exactly that, but they'd known better. Steve had known better.

Steve fucking Rogers. Mr. "sometimes-my-team-mates-don't-tell-me-things". For months, years, Tony had financed his joy rides to Hydra bunkers. Pathetically, he had thought they were trying to rid the world of a terror group when really they were just in search of Rogers' mind-warped BFF. Fucking killing-machine assassin. And damn Steve Rogers who didn't have the decency to tell him that his parents had not fallen victim to a road accident. No, they had been assassinated by Hydra. By the Winter Soldier. And Captain America had known all this time. Had played the morally superior altar boy while the man's best friend had murdered his mother. Had murdered Howard Stark, the original Captain America fanboy.

But Steve had always known better and the others had trusted him more than they had Tony. So now they were trapped under tons of Atlantic Ocean water and he was alone, trapped inside his own creation in the middle of nowhere, with nobody coming to get him. Nobody who even knew that he had gone to Siberia.

They had lost, all of them. In every measurable metric.

Tony had managed to crawl further into the bunker, reached the shield that Rogers had dropped before he and Barnes had made their escape.

That shield doesn't belong to you.

You don't deserve it.

My father made that shield.

The last of the suit's emergency power had run out and left him stranded just there next to it. There was a manual release but he didn't dare press it. The breastplates of his suit were bulged in around the arc, had pierced his skin. If he would open up the suit, the metal would dislodge and he would probably bleed freely. He took a few shallow breaths, couldn't really move his neck to look down at the suit but his gauntlet covered fingers had come away covered in blood. There was no pain though, only stiffness in his face and neck, the ringing in his ears and a dull throbbing but mostly numbness in his left leg. No pain and a comfortable warmth that radiated from his torso when he should be freezing, screaming in pain. He was vaguely aware that he was passing in and out of consciousness, but there was no telling for how long he was out of it at a time. No way to tell if he had been lying there for minutes or hours. Every now and again a strong wave of nausea would hit him and every time it made his mind come back online. He would force himself to breathe through it, to suppress the feeling but it only multiplied the stars dancing in front of his eyes as well as the ringing in his ears.

He couldn't move his body, including his head. If he couldn't fight that feeling, if he would throw up, he might suffocate on his own vomit, which would make for a pretty unattractive corpse. It would only be a matter of time though. His strength was giving out. Chances were that he wouldn't get out of there alive. His helmet was crushed. There was no way for him to contact anyone. Even if FRIDAY's emergency protocol had been activated by the destruction of the arc, who was left to even get him? His team was in an underwater prison and even if they hadn't been they'd be on the run with Rogers. Vision was still out there but after everything, after what had happened in Leipzig and with his android status he'd have to wait for approval to come out. With all the Avengers gone and Rhodey, god... Rhodey. Tony closed his eyes tried for deep breaths to calm himself.

Vision would have to go through Ross. If Ross actually green-lit the operation, he'd also green light an investigation into what brought Tony out there in the first place and then they'd probably put him in a cell right next to his teammates. If he even lived to see that.

Maybe the release button wasn't the worst option. He'd pass out and that'd be that. No pain, no agony. He was already past that, shock numbing his system. He'd just pass. And maybe... maybe people were right and he'd go on. See his parents, maybe... maybe he'd see Aiden again. He took another breath, just as shallow as the one before. Maybe it would be better like this.

He wouldn't leave many people behind who'd mourn him after all. Pepper. Possibly Rhodey. Maybe Happy. He'd like to think Peter would be sad. The kid would be back on his own then. Tony never thought to put a contingency plan in place for him. Well, his ego had always been a monster on its own. But he should have thought of this happening. With everything he had lived through this end would not come as a surprise to anyone. He had promised he'd keep Peter safe. Now, well... Now, he might be out of time to do that.

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(author's note: thanks for reading and the kind comments, guys!)