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"Iron Man, report!"Steve could still feel the reverberations from the explosion halfway across town where Tony had been running interference with a few rogue drones. The unease that had settled in his stomach from the outset of the call to assemble grew, bolstered by the steady thrum of wrong wrong wrong seeping into his system with every beat of his heart as dread took root."Iron Man, report! JARVIS, what's going on?""I'm afraid I have lost contact with the Iron Man armor," JARVIS answered over the comm. "I am attempting to reestablish communication."If asked, Steve couldn't explain why his hackles had been up since the start of the attack; why he was coiled tight and primed to decimate any and everything that dared to harm his pack, his family. While the drones were annoying and the operatives excellent at terrifying bystanders and destroying property, there was no logical reason for him to have such a visceral reaction to what was, really, a pretty standard altercation with Hydra."Does anyone have eyes on Iron Man?"Not that anything about Hydra was standard, as far as Steve was concerned. Hydra. That was at the top of the very long list of Things That Don't Meet Steve's Expectations of the Future. He felt a twinge of hysteria at the thought of that list; Tony had started it as a joke (or maybe not, Tony had a hell of a poker face) and stuck it to the refrigerator door in the common floor kitchen.The original list had been silly more than anything, full of items that Tony claimed Steve kept complaining about like processed food and reality TV, and a couple of items that he thinks Tony tried to play off as a joke but really thought Steve found disappointing — the worst of which was Tony himself. Steve had casually crossed Tony's name off of the list and replaced it with "a distinct lack of flying cars," and no one ever said a word about it.The comm line crackled and faded in and out for a moment, ratcheting Steve's nerves up even higher (because Tony made all of their gear personally, and Tony's tech simply does not do such things), before he was able to parse Clint's response." — everything south of 65th street has gone dark and I don't — too much smoke but — last saw him over 61st and Madison heading west over Central Park tailing three bogies. The explosion came from the southeast end by the pond and I'm moving in to confirm. I'll let you know when I have visual." Clint's voice was harsh and clipped over the telltale twang-thwap-whoosh of his grappling arrows, a tell in his veneer of calm that communicated his worry to anyone who knew him well enough."Copy that, Hawkeye," Steve said, turning on his heel to change course and knocking the handful of Hydra who tried to bar his path on their asses with a well-aimed throw of the shield. "Coulson, what's the perimeter status?"
"42nd and below is secure and we're pushing forward to flush the hostiles out but they seem to be heading north now and trying to scatter. Whatever just happened was likely the main event of this whole exercise."
To Steve's dismay the other Avengers had immediately taken to adding items to the List, and despite the levity of most of its contents, Things That Don't Meet Steve's Expectations of the Future became a comprehensive chart of all things good and bad that had served as stumbling blocks in Steve's transition to living in the twenty-first century. Once it had become clear the List (which now covered three-quarters of the refrigerator door) wasn't going anywhere Steve started tacking on additions of his own.He still remembered the funny look on Tony's face when he had added "organizations using Captain America in their propaganda for causes I don't support," and "omega rights, lack thereof," the afternoon he'd stumbled across a protest outside of an omega health clinic. The protesters belonged to some sort of church judging from the biblical quotes a number of the signs displayed. Worse by far, however, were the signs bearing Steve's own face alongside declarations that omegas should know their place, referencing back to traditional values that had been outdated even in the forties.Steve might have lost his temper when the journalist covering the protest shoved a microphone in his face to get his opinion on the matter, and judging from the fallout and the way FOX News preceded to drag him through the mud until the public relations teams put a stop to it he hadn't responded the way they'd thought he would. He was still prone to breaking whatever he was holding any time he saw Sean Hannity on the television. "The media" was already number six on the List but Steve had gone back and underlined it on principle.He vaulted over an overturned taxi and pounded north towards the southeast end of Central Park. A wave of Hydra operatives flooded into the street to block his path and Steve charged forward with a shout, his shield singing as it whipped through the air.Truth be told he'd been more weary than surprised when he learned that Hydra had survived in the wake of World War II, metastasizing across the globe and digging claws into every corner of power like the most aggressive of cancers. If history had taught Steve anything it was that men seldom learned from their mistakes and that facts are only facts insomuch as those who are in power, the victors, write the history books.He caught the shield on the rebound and barreled forward, incapacitating three more men and dismantling another drone. He only made two more blocks before he was caught by another influx of hostiles.Wrong wrong wrong, intoned a voice at the back of his mind, chipping away at his calm and underscoring the seconds since he had last heard Tony sassing at him before cutting out.Wrong wrong wrong, tolling like a bell and fraying his nerves as he took out the opposition with practiced methodical motions that were more reflex than strategy. The Hulk roared somewhere in the distance and he caught a flash of red hair in his periphery as he fought forward towards the epicenter of the destruction, and it settled something in him a bit, knowing where the others were. Tony would have teased him for it.
Counting your ducklings again, Cap?
Steve and Natasha advanced another block before being overwhelmed again, and it gnawed at his focus. He couldn't pinpoint the variant, the catalyzing factor giving his adrenaline a hard-line to his heart, alerting him on a primal level that something about this fight was wrong. It was the same goons, the same weapons, and it was far from the first time Hydra had hit multiple points in the city to stretch the Avengers thin, but this felt different. Calculated in a way it hadn't been before.
Wrong.
The thready background of gunfire and the detonation of Clint's incendiary arrows played an odd echo over the comm as Steve neared Central Park southeast, punctuated by Clint swearing and snarling in growing volume.It had taken a full week after the fallout at SHIELD for Hydra to be placed on the list of Things That Don't Meet Steve's Expectations of the Future. Penned in beneath the obnoxious calligraphic header in thick red marker, it unseated "the Dodgers in L.A." from the number one position. After a moment of hesitation, "the Winter Soldier" went beside it before Steve scrubbed it out, a stark, unsightly red blemish that he stormed away from yet still brooded over for the rest of the night.When he found his way back to the common floor kitchen early the next morning he had stalled at the fridge, his hand gripping tight at the handle as he stared at the refrigerator door. The angry red splotch had been whited out from the List, and beside it was taped a single piece of graph paper. In Tony's careful, angular hand it was headed Things That Will Exceed Steve's Expectations of the Future and listed three items: "the Avengers," "James Buchanan Barnes," and "BARF" (Steve still hasn't gotten an adequate explanation of what BARF even is).After what felt like hours but was really only minutes Steve and Natasha broke through the barrage of hostiles (and there were so many of them, twice as many as when the whole mess started, wrong) just as Clint swung past over their heads and rappelled down a nearby building. There was a moment between heartbeats that stretched, long and impossible and wrong in which everything was quiet and still, and Steve knew. In that moment Steve knew what was at the southeast corner of Central Park, saw it as clearly as though he'd planned the strategy himself.Hydra had drawn the Avengers away from each other and put on a show, lured Tony across town out of sight. The rest was just a distraction, one that had done its job well. The Hydra operatives that had waylaid them now scattered even as SHIELD moved in to contain them.Bait and switch.The ruse was so simple, and Steve was so very, very stupid to have not seen it.Maybe he'd grown complacent. Maybe it was arrogance. His own history should have taught him better, after all.The point of impact was visible from the street, a muddy crater in the manicured stretch of grass near the pond. Small bits of metal in gold and red were scattered like shrapnel in outline of Iron Man's tumbled trajectory. Clint reached the edge of churned earth first and swore and Steve's heart sank. Clint turned an abrupt about-face and tore off for higher ground, hailing Phil on the comm as he ran past them in a flurry of movement.Steve stumbled to a halt at the edge of the crater, his boots catching on stones and broken tree branches and muddling the trampled boot prints Hydra had left behind. There, in the torn earth, the Mark 42 lay in pieces, an exoskeleton shed and abandoned, an empty husk.Natasha dropped into the hole and crouched low over a patch of bloody earth and plucked out something small and too symmetrical to not be man-made. She held her hand up to the light and brushed the object clean, her face a flat mask.Steve only recognized the sensors for the prehensile armor because Bruce had thrown such a fit when he'd walked in on Tony implanting them in himself at three in the morning (the argument had been epic, and Tony had pouted during the entire lab safety presentation that had followed).Natasha emerged from the crater, blood smeared on her gloves around a handful of sensors just as Phil reported the remains of some sort of magnetic pulse device on the roof of an office building on 57th street.
"All of the surveillance in the area is down."
"JARVIS?" Steve croaked."I am monitoring all traffic and security feeds outside of the blackout umbrella but I have not yet detected any Hydra transports or suspicious activity," JARVIS replied. He sounded distinctly unhappy."I thought . . . I thought Tony safeguarded the armor against EMP devices," Steve said helplessly, staring at the broken shell at the bottom of the hole."He did," Phil said, his agitation palpable. "Some of this tech looks alien. I need Banner, now. Thor, can you corral the Hulk?""Our foes have scattered like the cowards they are, and I wish to give chase," Thor said, his voice a deep well of anger, "but I shall retrieve Hulk and bring him to you first."
"We need captives alive for questioning, they're fond of outfitting operatives with cyanide capsules."

"Already taken care of."

"JARVIS, I need Nick Fury on the line."

"Shit, someone needs to call Pepper before this is blasted all over the news."

"And Rhodes."

"I'll try to see if Sam is available to come down from DC to assist."
The stream of voices began to run together, static in Steve's ears. He should be doing something. He knew that, but he couldn't move, cold and numb and terrified like he was back on ice. His eyes locked on the mangled face plate half buried in the soil, eyes dark and fathomless.Tony was gone.
You should have seen this coming.
Steve's breaths came fast and thin, standing there before the remains thrown carelessly at the bottom of the muddy hole like bones in a shallow grave. Why hadn't he yet learned that Hydra was determined to take everything from him? How could he have ever let his guard down?Tony was gone.Why hadn't he seen this coming?  
To be continued.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Coulson, you'd better not be doing what I think you're doing."
Fury's words were both sharp and exasperated, already in full-on dressing down mode from the moment Phil connected the call.He hadn't bothered with the pretense of privacy and had routed the call through the party line. Nick knew it, Phil was sure. He didn't get that I'm the Motherfucking Director tone in his voice when talking to him nowadays unless there was a full audience in assembly, and Nick was indeed loud enough on the comm speaker that everyone could hear him over the hum of the quinjet engines, evidenced by Clint's snort from the cockpit and the mulish set of Steve's jaw where he paced at the rear."I don't know what you're talking about, Sir.""The hell you don't!" Fury snapped. "You are not cleared for this mission. Get your asses back here right now, or so help me — ""Sir,"
" — you can't go running off half-cocked on the first damn piece of intel! We have people for this shit, Coulson, and right now you are not one of them."
"Sir,"
"You're compromised, Agent. You all are."
Phil took a breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and silently counted to ten.
Three weeks.
"With all due respect, Sir, there's nothing you can say or do short of shooting us out of the sky and containing three of your best agents, Captain America, a Norse god, and the Hulk. Not to mention Falcon and War Machine waiting on standby back at the Tower with a highly agitated Pepper Potts.""I still can't believe we won that argument," Bruce mumbled under his breath, checking over the medical supplies for the fifth time and twitching like an agitated cat. Phil couldn't really believe it either.Rhodes hadn't handled the news Tony had been taken by Hydra with any sort of grace or composure. Far removed from the level-headed voice of reason he was used to dealing with — an alpha who was generally patient and by-the-book and often best at reining in Tony's more harebrained ideas and self-destructive tendencies — Rhodes had stormed into the Tower two weeks ago (AWOL, no less) prepared to tear across the continent with guns blazing, he and Steve at each others throats from the word "go" arguing about strategy and logistics and who did and didn't have Tony's best interests at heart.It had been a very trying two weeks.Thor, oddly enough, had proven to be the perfect buffer. He'd planted himself like a tree between the two snarling men before matters could get out of hand, never succumbing to the miasma of rage brewing in the atmosphere like any other alpha would. Not that Thor was just any other alpha, Phil supposed.Whatever the reason, Thor's presence was a godsend (pun not intended) in the days that followed if only because with his intervention the caveman behavior never left the Tower, and War Machine and Captain America coming to blows out in public would have been an absolute PR nightmare.That was, in fact, the reason Rhodes capitulated to staying at the Tower as home-base security and back-up during the rescue operation, bolstered by Pepper's decisive declaration, for the sake of my sanity, Jim, the few scraps of it I have left, that she could not deal with the media fallout of him going on a rampage and having some stupid alpha pissing contest with Steve. Also, Pepper was terrifying. Particularly when at the end of her own rope and not afraid to fight dirty.Do you want Tony to make another of those ridiculous My Little Knothead scrapbooks? Pepper had asked Rhodes, who'd gone ashen. Do you? Because you know he will. Trashy tabloid articles, unflattering photos, captions, glitter, the whole nine yards. He's only just stopped mocking you over the Viastone incident, and that happened ten years ago.He needed to remember to look into that once all of this was over. The glee on Clint's face at the mere mention of the scrapbooks had been nothing short of effervescent."That a threat, Phil?" Nick asked, dry as the Sahara. He could picture the exact downward tilt of Fury's lips and the disparaging arch of his brow as he meted out the full brunt of his unimpressed glare with just one eye. A skill Nick had mastered the same day he put on the eye-patch."Depends on how dangerous you think Miss Potts is with a team of lawyers, a pair of stilettos, and a grudge," he replied, a genial smile twitching up the corners of his mouth."So short answer is, yes, that's a threat," Natasha said, cutting off whatever Nick was going to say. She punctuated the sentiment with the forceful scrape of a blade across whetstone from where she sat sharpening her collection of knives with unnerving fervor. Natasha claimed she found the activity calming, although it tended to have the opposite effect on anyone else who witnessed it.A potent silence followed, and even then Fury sounded utterly fed up. He was glaring at the phone with the intensity of one trying to start a fire with his mind, Phil would bet money on it. Hell, he'd bet his replacement set of mint Captain America trading cards Tony had given him as a Hooray You're Not Dead and Fury's a Manipulative Asshat gift. It seemed appropriate given the circumstances."The intel is good, Nick," Phil pressed. "We've been tracking on our own channels alongside SHIELD's and there's no other explanation for the strange chatter from this facility. It's more damning by the hour and all signs point to something big about to go down, with Stark at the center. We've mapped out the base, we've tracked the personnel shifts, and we have infiltration and extraction protocols outlined to a tee. Stark's there and we're not giving Hydra the chance to relocate him or bring their plans to fruition while waiting for you to approve a strike team. You know what Hydra is capable of."The atmosphere in the quinjet, already strained, soured at the reminder. Everyone shifted, agitated, the quiet simmering rage that had consumed them all in the ensuing weeks since Tony's kidnapping just there beneath the surface like a living, breathing thing. Steve stalled in his pacing and stared hard at the rear doors will dull eyes, unmoving but for the tick in his clenched jaw, all of his muscles wound tight.Three weeks. Tony had been held captive by Hydra for three weeks now. No ransom, no demands, no big fiery explosions or international incidents. Circumstances which boded very bad things, which Fury damn well knew.
"Fine. Just don't come crying to me if this blows up in your faces because I will not take the fall for your stupid-ass heroics."
"Don't worry, Sir," Phil assured, "we'll tell them you threatened us accordingly.""Motherfucker," Nick grumbled, and then louder, "bring our boy home, Coulson.""Will do."The connection dropped and Phil sighed."So . . . begrudging permission. Hooray," Clint shot a grin over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows but the joviality fell flat. "We should be touching down in about ten minutes. JARVIS, skies still clear?""Judging by the lack of fleeing Hydra personnel or defensive measures from the base gunning the quinjet down, I would say yes, Agent Barton," JARVIS said, prim as you please, and it would never stop amazing Phil the amount of snark the AI could dispense. Or maybe not, considering his creator.
"If somehow Sir has been coerced into 'improving' the facility's security and defensive features during his stay, I can assure you they would not bypass the quinjet's cloaking. Rather, having rewired them to initiate a self-destruct sequence or set off a stink bomb in the ventilation system would be the betting man's choice."
Clint cackled and Phil couldn't help the smile that broke across his face, the maudlin tension dispersing all around as the others snorted in laughter, shook their heads, or grinned.The rigidity drained out of Steve's shoulders and the light was back in his eyes when he moved closer to the rest of the pack. The manic energy that had pulled Steve in all directions since the kidnapping had settled, focused and charged like a loaded weapon now that the mission was at hand, a target in sight. It was the calmest Phil had seen him in weeks."Time for final preparations, Avengers," Steve said, and his voice was strong, steady, and very much the Captain.The Pack Alpha."Aye aye, Cap," Clint said as they began to drop altitude. Natasha held the knife she'd been sharpening aloft in inspection. It disappeared a moment later with a flick of her wrist. Thor cracked his knuckles, bouncing on his feet in anticipation, his grin sharp. Bruce stood straight and tall, his eyes flashing green."Let's bring Tony home."-:-Natasha was already winding her way through the sub-levels of the base by the time the blaring of the alarms shut off.It had been nine minutes by her estimation since they'd infiltrated the building, seven since Thor had taken out the communications equipment, and three since the alarm had sounded. Not their best, but certainly not their worst, either. Still, there must have been interference to cause Phil such a delay in commandeering the control room because it was laughable how ill-prepared the staff and how shoddy the security and defenses were.Sloppy, she thought. Clearly whoever had arranged the kidnapping hadn't thought things through. Had Hydra really believed the Avengers wouldn't come for one of their own? Underestimating your opponent was always the first mistake, a lesson she was more than happy to carve into their skin.
"Control room secure."

"Copy that." 
It was nice having Coulson back on the field with them in a physical capacity. Phil performed his role as handler (or as Tony and Clint more accurately described it, Supernanny) of the Avengers with the gravitas and dedication the Initiative deserved, or at least as described on paper. The Avengers Initiative in practice was less the glowing standard of a special ops task force and more a corralled pack of overgrown children with superpowers. To that end, Phil Coulson was possibly the only individual remotely capable of wrangling all of them into some semblance of order, and his deadpan, no-nonsense demeanor and punishments in the form of a metric ton of paperwork were far more effective than they had any right to be.Perhaps more important still, Phil was a gigantic troll. AvengersInTheWild consistently led the rankings on Instagram and Natasha would never understand how he managed to capture even half of the awkward candid shots he posted.At least such skills could also work in the pack's favor. Phil had flatly refused to stay off of the field on this mission, and the team would finish securing the building in no time now with him at the helm of the surveillance systems and primary controls directing the show. It was an old, well-choreographed dance they'd performed many times, and the goal of this mission provided motivation much stronger than past objectives, no matter how much they enjoyed bringing Hydra to their knees.Tony was here somewhere.They'd find their missing packmate and get him out of that hellhole, even if the whole damn building had to come down to do it. With Clint going high and Steve and Natasha on the ground as Phil pulled the strings it was only a matter of a few minutes more, she was certain, and no one was getting past Thor or JARVIS piloting the Mark 41 outside (and if they somehow did they'd soon regret it. Seeing a Code Green up close and personal was not a matter to be taken lightly. Bruce would be so pissed if he was distracted from his duties as field medic — plus everyone knows Tony is Hulk's favorite).Three floors later and more incapacitated staff than she'd bothered to count, however, Natasha had to admit she was starting to feel antsy.Something wasn't right.There was an undercurrent of some strange energy suffusing the building, feeding the urgency of the Hydra operatives as they scrambled, a sense of other that taunted her with the promise of the unexpected and unaccounted for. An off-color thread that begged to be unraveled. It had her hindbrain standing at attention even though she couldn't name the source of her disquiet, a nagging itch at the back of her mind like she'd forgotten something important.She hated the feeling of uncertainty, of taking a misstep, of foreboding anticipation hanging over her head, winding her tighter as she drew closer towards her goal. To say she was agitated — after weeks of worry and fury now compounded by her baser instincts telling her there was much more happening than the pack had ever planned for — was to put it lightly.She pitied anyone who dared get in her way.She descended to the bottom floor and noted a shift in the air, sweet and strange but somehow familiar. Her heart began to beat double-time.She'd had a gut feeling since they arrived at the facility that Tony was being kept in the sub-basement labs, a suspicion she hadn't shared with Steve when they'd split off and the reason she'd volunteered to search the lower levels. Because if Tony was in the labs (and Natasha doubted Hydra had reason to keep Tony anywhere else as the motivations for kidnapping him in the first place comprised a short, focused list) it would be for one of two reasons: to coerce him to work for them, or to use him as a lab rat.Considering that the building would have gone up in a ball of fire weeks ago had Tony been given access to any sort of technology or tools she was inclined to conclude Tony was being used for the latter. Which begged the question, what was Hydra doing to Tony?Nothing Steve needed to see first hand, that much was certain. Natasha didn't relish the prospect of seeing for herself either but Steve had taken the kidnapping harder than anyone, had blamed himself and worried himself sick, pushing the limits of even a super-soldier past the point of exhaustion. Until she knew just what they were dealing with — just what, exactly, she was going to find — she would spare Steve stumbling blindly into the worst of possible outcomes all alone and unprepared. If they were lucky it would be a non-issue. If not, she would bear that burden.She cleared the east end and stalked down the lower west corridor, crossing a disordered squad of soldiers that she dispatched with barely a fight before happening on another around the corner the next hallway over that offered even less of a challenge. As best she could tell operatives were just running about in confusion now, in lost little packs. Losing your communications could do that to a military organization, but good god, didn't they train for situations like this? How the hell had they even organized a successful kidnapping in the first place? This was just insulting.
Tony must be so pissed.
The staff dwindled the further west Natasha went, and she saw more lab coats now than tactical gear, scientists and techs fleeing like they were on fire. A few bolder specimen were trying to pack up equipment and files, and it was cute how they though anyone or anything was going to get out of the building.She could just imagine Tony saying, oh, my sweet summer child, and almost laughed.The strange scent was stronger now, and although it was still odd, a deviation on something recognizable, it was a presence that spelled pack, feeding that feeling of something more, of other. The air was charged here, the edge of a precipice, the precedence of a storm.She was on the right track.Natasha turned a corner onto an empty hallway save for two armed guards posted in front of a door at the very end. She could almost taste their anxiety as she watched them shift on their feet and could imagine the bite of acid in the back of their throats as they questioned their life choices. She felt no sympathy when she dropped both of them with a bullet in the head before they'd even seen her.Her comm chirped."Widow, that end of the building must have a closed security circuit, I can't see anything past the juncture you're standing at," Phil said.Definitely on the right track. "Copy, I'll proceed with caution."She slunk down the hallway, passing a number of abandoned labs filled with overturned equipment and trails of paperwork displaced in the occupants' haste to vacate the premises. Getting out of the way of the firestorm about to descend was, perhaps, the smartest thing any of the facility staff had done since the Avengers had infiltrated the building, and a clear indication that what she was looking for was located in this part of the building.Her steps faltered midway down the hall and she backtracked to stall just in the doorway of a sterile white containment room. Her eyes flashed over the bleak concrete walls, the discolored drain in the center of the floor and the paltry utilities. It was sparse — a cot, a toilet and nothing else — and smelled strongly of bleach, but Natasha would recognize the faint scent that permeated the stale air anywhere. Tony. He'd been held here, in this cold barren room, but not for some time.She hastened down the hallway to the door at the end, the one door Hydra had tried to guard in an evacuated wing with a closed security feed. She maneuvered around the dead soldiers, braced, and kicked in the door.The door gave with a bang and the whine of strained metal. The three scientists inside busy dumping supplies into crates whirled around in shock, eyes wide, faces ashen. They tumbled to the ground before they could even scream, dead in a heap.She swept the room with a cursory glance until, as though drawn by a magnetic force, her eyes landed on Tony, cuffed to a metal table at the center of the room looking worse for wear but breathing, whole, alive. Relief washed over her, settling the feral beast within her until a heartbeat later she caught her breath and registered the pervading stench she hadn't scented in the hallway.Acrid and bitter, the sour, cloying smell of omega in distress laced with fear and pain and the faint tang of blood.Omega in distress.Omega.
Tony.
"Hey, Nat," Tony said, his voice hoarse and thready like he'd been screaming."Tony," she breathed, stunned.Her feet moved of their own accord, closing the distance to the table in a few short steps. It was a monstrosity fit for a mad scientist's lair, gleaming cold in the fluorescent lights, a flat slab of steel on an adjustable base complete with unforgiving metal cuffs at the wrists, ankles, and throat that sported some sort of mechanized lock. She reached out and traced shaking fingers across Tony's sweaty brow.He was half-naked, dressed only in dingy white scrub bottoms. He'd been tortured but not within the last few days, the wounds littering the visible skin all at least a week old. His skin was hot to the touch and covered in a sheen of cold sweat, flushed and pallid in equal turns. She stroked her fingers over his forehead and into his hair. He gazed up at her, his eyes blown and unfocused, red-rimmed and fever-bright.Alive.
Omega.
"All this time and I never knew." The words came out thick, stumbling over each other as they caught in her throat. She pulled in a tremulous, shuddering breath and marveled again at the sweet, indisputable scent woven beneath the notes of pain and suffering. She'd caught the barest traces of it descending through the base and it was so obvious now, just what she'd been smelling. "I should have known."Between one heartbeat and the next caustic anger flared in Natasha's chest, aimed inwards for all of the signs she had missed, for all of the opportunities she had lost, for how completely she had failed at knowing and caring for an integral member of her pack. How could she have not known?Tony choked out a laugh and it was not a happy sound. He flashed the self-deprecating smile she hates so much."You weren't s'posed to know, that's kinda the whole point." He twisted on the table and pulled against the cuffs, vibrating with restless tension, his eyes darting around the room before finding hers once more. "There's a reason Stark Medical is number one in omega health and pharmaceutical products.""That . . . makes an awful lot of sense," she murmured, smoothing Tony's hair back off of his forehead, "and explains a great deal."Flashes of memory flitted across Natasha's mind's eye in staggered procession, tiny hints and clues, intel she hadn't recognized as such; a faint scent passed off as the lingering remnants of a one night stand despite knowing no strangers had been in the Tower; Tony's tendency to leave the room when alphas were snarling and posturing in true neanderthal fashion; statements made speaking out against sexist, outdated legislature and corporate politics despite backlash and the political tide; work binges and business trips that fell on the same few days every three months explained away with bare, vague detail; the way Tony nested and clung and fussed over everyone like a mother hen, providing care and comfort and protection.Moments and behavior so unimportant out of context that formed the blueprint to understanding everything she hadn't before, even the questions she hadn't thought to ask.A key turning in a lock.Tony's eyes clouded over as her mind crashed and rebooted, his brittle smile fading in the ensuing seconds. His tenuous words snapped her from her preoccupation. "'M sorry, I should've — ""No," she said, clear and firm. She cupped Tony's cheek in her hand, his skin slick with sweat and burning hot against hers. "Don't apologize, Antoshka, not for this.""But — "A door hidden behind a towering computer at the far end of the lab — stupid, stupid, how could she have overlooked it — burst open, a heavy-set scientist with an unfortunate comb-over barreling into the room, red-faced and eyes comically wide. The man stumbled over the corpse of one of his comrades and his face twisted with apoplectic fury. Tony jolted against his confines, eyes gone wild with animal fear.The man snarled and charged towards them, spitting in his anger. "You dare, you dare take what belongs to Hydra — "He staggered, his head jerking back with the force of the bullet meeting his skull. He dropped like a rag doll over top one of the other bodies and two more bullets followed, to both assure he was dead and as a pithy attempt to assuage the unfettered rage boiling in Natasha's gut.These parasites were the ones who had dared to take what wasn't theirs, had touched her pack, hurt her family, hers — and she would be paid her pound of flesh in recompense.She was startled from her violent revelry when Tony burst into laughter, strained and skirting the edge of hysteria. His eyes were trained on the body on the ground, at the place where the man's face used to be.Natasha quickly swept the far end of the lab and the office the scientist had entered from before returning to Tony's side, her weapons still in hand, unsettled by the timbre of his persisting laughter. "Tony?"He squeezed his eyes shut and rocked his head side to side on the table, his breath hitching as he giggled. "I told 'em, I fucking told them this would happen, that you'd come, I told them, I . . . "Tony's voice trailed off and his expression twisted, mirth morphing into anguish. His breath hitched again, this time on a sob. His eyes opened and he gazed up at her, wet and unfocused, brimming with fear and hope in equal measure."I told them," he said again, and she had never heard such uncertainty in Tony's voice. "I — you're here? You're really here this time?"Natasha's heart stuttered in her chest. This time?How many times had Tony imagined a rescue only to find it a fever dream? How many times had he awoken to harsh reality, taunts and torment and torture, and convinced himself that no one was coming for him, that he would have to save himself as he'd had to do practically his whole life? Had he really believed the pack would come for him or had it just been a front of false bravado?It was a strange dichotomy, how Natasha ached in the soft, hidden spaces of her heart, and how she burned, fury a blinding and paralyzing blaze for the animals responsible for this pain, who had reduced Tony, hers, to such a state.She pushed the emotion back, unclenched her fists and kept her expression smooth, locking the fire away until it could be productive, until she could burn the building and everyone in it to inconsequential ash. She wondered if this was how it felt for Bruce, fighting to keep the Hulk at bay.Natasha holstered her gun and cradled Tony's face in her hands, careful, so careful, reassuring herself that he was here, safe, hers, and grounding him with touch, and scent, and the best meager comfort she could give. Glassy brown eyes skittered across her face and it was unnerving to bear witness to this version of Tony, confused and unfocused and unable to string together two sentences in a way Tony Stark should never be."Yes, Tony," she said, soft and urgent, desperate for her words to reach him. "Antoshka, we've come to bring you home.""Oh," he said on a shaky exhale, "That-that's good."She huffed a quiet laugh, unbearably relieved, and pulled away although her fingers lingered, reluctant to let go. She needed to disable the equipment Tony was hooked to, remove the leads and wires and the IV and open the restraints holding him so he wouldn't have to spend a moment longer in that place.She had barely begun to examine the set-up when the machine the IV fed into clicked and whirred, cycling on. An electric blue liquid snaked down the IV and disappeared past the cannula secured on the back of his hand. Before she could do anything, Tony screamed.The sound strangled and caught in his throat and he jerked as though he'd been electrocuted, muscles jumping, his back bowing as far off of the table as the restraints allowed. The blunt metal edges of the cuffs cut into his flesh and the smell of fresh blood tainted the air, heavy on Natasha's tongue."Tony!"She pressed him back down against the table before he could choke himself or injure himself worse than he already had, rigid muscle spasming beneath her hands. She could have sworn his temperature spiked higher but it was difficult to focus on details with Tony's face contorted in agony, his eyes wide and staring, seeing something that wasn't there, something beyond Natasha, beyond that foul room. Tears streaked down his temples into his sweaty hair.He was quiet after the initial burst of sound caught in his throat, but the monitors tracking his vitals cried alarm in his stead, cold and perfunctory as though no one should be concerned Tony was convulsing in pain and dumping enough omega distress pheromones into the room to turn Natasha's stomach.The machine cycled back off after several tense minutes in which she murmured useless reassurances until finally Tony slumped back against the table, trembling and panting, his eyes hazy."Tasha, s'okay," he rasped, of all things trying to comfort her. "'S the drugs." He made an abortive gesture at the IV and winced when the raw flesh of his wrist caught against the edge of the cuff. "It-it burns and I-I can't . . . I . . . " He trailed off and went worriedly silent, looking for all the world as though he'd forgotten he was speaking.That, more than the pervading tang of blood and fear-pain-distress-no suffocating her, got her moving. She cursed herself for allowing a distraction, even one as powerful as Tony's omega presentation, to pull her attention from the mission at hand. She needed to get Tony out of there. Now. Bundle him up in blankets and never let him out of her sight ever again.She made quick work of detaching the various wires and the IV and turned her attention to the cuff restraints as she should have done the moment she'd secured the room.God, she was losing her touch. What was wrong with her? A few omega pheromones and she was fumbling like a baby agent. She's the Black Widow, pride and terror of the Red Room, for fuck's sake. She'd be worried by the blatant evidence that her pack ties have compromised her, but for the first time in a long time Natasha had something that mattered more than herself alone, worth the risk, and couldn't bring herself to care.As in most things, she blamed Clint for her weakness. Impulsive, soft-hearted, questionably-suicidal Clint who had brought her in from the cold instead of taking her out like a good little SHIELD agent as he'd been ordered to all those years ago. From there it had been an inevitable decline, cracks in the walls she'd built and impossible people worming their way past her guard. Coulson's sardonic eyebrow and Fury's eye-roll, Hill's snark and Clint's shit-eating grin, trust in fragments with coffee and tended wounds, inside jokes and banter. Broken toys finding solace in others just as broken.And then Fury went and collected himself a whole pack of strays and had the gall to act surprised, but very much not surprised (she was convinced Nick was determined to be an unhappy, contrary bastard until the day he died just because he can), that together the Avengers somehow fit alongside each other's jagged edges to create something whole.Speaking of. She activated her comm. "I have him."A cacophony of overlapping voices erupted in her ear, everyone talking over each other at once. She rolled her eyes in exasperation at the antics (although she'd have done the same if someone else had found Tony first) and tuned out the demands for sitrep and location as she inspected the locking mechanism on the cuffs.After a minute of fiddling, slurred suggestions from Tony, and Steve's increasingly loud entreaties, the cuff on Tony's right wrist clicked open. Natasha couldn't stop the quiet hiss that slipped through her teeth at the sight of raw bloody skin and dark bruises underneath. Tony mumbled something unintelligible and made no attempt to move or help when she shifted her focus to the next cuff, ticking another two boxes on the There's Something Very Wrong With Tony checklist she'd been tallying in her head. A list growing longer by the second.The rabble from the peanut gallery in her ear wound down to a rumble of discontent at her continued refusal to engage. As she picked at the cuff around Tony's throat with delicate fingers, Bruce's voice, clear and commanding, broke through the white noise. "Widow, what's his status?""Visible injuries are consistent with Hydra's preferred methods of interrogation and motivation. Nothing critical that I can see, and they all appear to be at least a week old with the exception of the wounds sustained from fighting restraints." The cuff around Tony's neck clicked open to display a collar of vivid bruises and inflamed bloody skin matching that of his wrist and Natasha's anger spiked higher. "He's conscious and responsive,""'He' also happens t'be right here," Tony grumbled halfheartedly. Someone laughed, a pure, bright burst of elation at Tony's petulant remark that Natasha felt echoed in her own chest."No signs of head trauma but he's feverish and under the influence of a drug I've never seen before. Intravenous, administered at timed intervals. I'll acquire a sample." The cuff on Tony's left wrist snicked open, faster than the first two.
"The lower floors are clear but hostiles are converging on the main level. Do you need back-up getting to the extraction point?"
Natasha flicked her gaze over Tony who still had yet to move despite his upper body no longer being restrained. He blinked sleepily at her, a silent question in the little frown on his face. Concerned, still, for her rather than for himself, maddening in his sincerity and sheer lack of self-preservation instincts. It worried her how she wanted to destroy everything that had ever harmed this man and shake the stupid out of him at the same time.The cuff on his left ankle clicked open. "Tony won't get far under his own power. I'd prefer we have sufficient cover, but . . . ""Widow?" Coulson prompted, the question sharp at her hesitation because she never hesitated.She licked her lips, mouth gone dry. "There's a complication."A beat of silence."Understatement," Tony mumbled.
"What kind of complication?"
Her fingers stilled against the last restraint. Tony fidgeted, restless or in pain or both, the clean, sweet notes of omega beneath the stench of distress making her hindbrain itch to the point of distraction. Her hands clenched against cold metal and heated skin. The mission would end in disaster if mishandled and she'd already failed Tony so much, in so many ways. She refused to fail him ever again. Failure was not an option."Scorched Earth Protocol."The heavy silence that followed lasted the span of three heartbeats.
"Copy that."

"Understood."

"Aye."
The tight knot of tension in Natasha's chest unwound at the unquestioning acquiescence. She hadn't doubted her team, not really, but the irrational, animal parts of her, the drive to protect hers-pack-family, was difficult to reason with — especially with Tony injured and so vulnerable.In the beginning, those early, fragile days when their ragged little group were still feeling each other out and learning the ways they all fit together, became pack, the Avengers had agreed on a series of contingency plans for scenarios both in and out of battle. They'd all been in enough difficult situations to have learned the value of planning for the worst; it was an inevitability that came with the job title. A question of when, not if, extenuating circumstances would necessitate actions — not always within SHIELD's purview — to ensure the safety of the team and civilians.This was the first invocation of Scorched Earth but every Avenger knew what it required: no outside personnel, no loose ends, raze everything to the ground. Together, they'd see to the containment of hostiles, equipment, and transports, the shut-down of communications, the extraction of vital intel to JARVIS' secure server, and the destruction of the systems and any other physical evidence to ensure nothing would grow from the ashes ever again.A protocol to protect something precious, dangerous, or vulnerable at all costs.Natasha wasn't naïve. Something, somehow, would leak about Tony's presentation if it hadn't yet already. That kind of secret, the kind that could make or break a person, that has a hold on the very foundations of your life, can't stay buried no matter how well protected. It was astonishing it had stayed secret for so long, or even at all. Sooner or later Tony's dirty laundry would be dragged out into the light for the whole damn world to scrutinize. Even with Scorched Earth there were too many variables they couldn't control, not after three weeks. An email, a loose-tongued henchman, a vial of blood; the possibilities were depressingly endless. But scrubbing the base's computers, terminating every operative in the vicinity and torching the facility to the ground, that Natasha, the Avengers, could give to Tony. They could give him time.The cuff on Tony's right ankle unlocked with a begrudging snick. Natasha breathed a silent sigh of relief and moved back up to the head of the table, her sights fixed on bleary brown doe eyes. Unable to help herself, she took Tony's hand in hers and squeezed, reassured when he squeezed back. Not wanting to risk the chance the line wasn't secure she muted her comm."Anything we need to know about before we move you?" She asked, careful to keep her tone neutral. "An injury I can't see?"It was a loaded question, one she'd really rather not ask. A question of how badly do I need to maim these assholes and please don't tell me they touched you, because while Tony didn't reek of alpha musk or sex that was no guarantee nothing had happened, and if it did, it was better she found out now away from sensitive super-soldier ears.He seemed to understand what she wasn't saying. His eyes were steady on hers, more than he'd achieved during their entire exchange thus far. "Jus' the usual 'shut the fuck up and do what I say' bruise collage, and they stopped that after . . . after a couple of weeks."After the suppressants started to wear off, she surmised. The implications of that response to Tony's omega physiology sat heavy in her stomach. More and more she was thankful they hadn't put off the rescue mission waiting around on SHIELD."Then they stuck me in here an' no one but the mad scientists were allowed to come near me, and some of the Hydra brass. Made a point of letting me know 'm way too valuable to just throw to the wolves." He flashed her a smile made of pure plastic.Small mercies, Natasha supposed, that Tony hadn't just been handed over to whatever alphas were on the base when he was discovered, which was the kind of horror story often heard about omegas in captivity situations. But she was certain Hydra's motives for sparing such brutalities and keeping him quarantined from the alpha staff were anything but pure. She'd root out all of the facilities' dirty little secrets as soon as Tony was safe in Bruce's care."Can you stand, Tony?""Uh-huh, yeah."He made no attempt to move."How about we just get you upright first," she said when it became clear he wasn't going anywhere. Another box checked off on her list.Natasha wrapped her hands around Tony's forearms where the skin was relatively clear and eased him upright and around to sit sideways on the table, his lower legs dangling off the side. He swayed and she planted herself between his knees, using her grip on his arms to settle his hands at her waist. After a moment of hesitation, he curled his fingers into the fabric of Natasha's suit, gripping tight.She allowed herself a moment of indulgence and wrapped her arms around Tony's shoulders, tucking her nose in his dirty hair when his forehead dropped to rest against her sternum. The heat of his body against hers and the pheromones rolling off of him soothed Natasha's frayed edges, calmed the animal inside. It was clearer now, the clean, sweet (is that coconut?) notes mingling with the familiar scents of coffee, spice, and metal that she knew so instinctively as Tony. It settled her even though he was still hurt, still shaking, his muscles spasming at odd intervals from strain and whatever the drug in his system was.The scientists dead at her feet had gotten off far too easily. She should have made them suffer. Next time, she promised herself. She pulled back but didn't dissuade Tony from staying curled against her. She unmuted her comm. "Doc, we're ready to head your way."
"I've already got everything prepped."
"Hallways and stairwells in the east wing are still clear as far as I can see," Phil reported. "You shouldn't run into any trouble until you hit the ground floor.""We'll be ready for them. Can anyone meet us for back-up support?""I'm just around the corner," Steve said, out of breath. "I doubled back to meet you, followed the body trail."Natasha opened her mouth to copy but froze when Tony's beautiful, sweet scent hit her again on the inhalation, potent from proximity. The reality of the situation hit her like a bucket of cold water.There was no telling how Steve — unbonded, overprotective, worried out of his skull alpha Steve — might react to an injured omega packmate in acute distress. A packmate he liked to pretend he wasn't head-over-heels for, it was pathetic, who did he think he was fooling?And oh, Jesus, she hadn't even considered how much this was going to fuck with the betting pool. They'd have to start all over from scratch. Damn it."Negative, Cap, I need someone else.""What, why?" Natasha could hear him in the hallway, his boots on the concrete and the echo of his voice a second ahead of the one in her ear. "I'm already here." Steve charged through the broken door a second later and she tensed, falling into a protective stance in front of Tony, her weapons raised.She knew the exact moment Steve scented Tony. He staggered like he'd run into an invisible wall, the shield slipping out of his hand. It hit the floor with an obnoxious clang, the sound rebounding around the room as the shield spun and wobbled to a standstill. They stared at each other in an awkward standoff for almost a full minute, Natasha coiled tight and primed to subdue and Steve gaping like a fish, his eyes fixing to pop out of his skull.The tension broke when Tony burst into a fit of laughter, the sound thready but genuine unlike his laughter before."Oh my god, your face," Tony croaked, laughing so hard he gasped for air."I — Tony?" Steve stammered, a pink flush climbing up his neck as he gawked, his eyes flashing between Natasha's steely glare and what was visible of Tony's face over her shoulder.
"Okay, what the actual fuck is going on? And why do I feel like I'm gonna be the last one to know, seriously, it's so fuckin' unfair."

"Hawkeye, chatter."

"This had better be some earth-shattering revelation, I'm so serious. A primo, top-shelf secret — "

"Hawkeye!"
Natasha blew out a slow breath and lowered her gun. If Steve was going to flip his shit he would've done it already, but she still eyed him warily. She pointedly muted her comm and Steve followed her example with fumbling fingers."Surprise," Tony said in singsong. A beat later his humor died swift and sudden like a switch had flipped. When he spoke again his voice was small. "Please don't kill me."Natasha shushed him with murmured reassurances that he didn't seem to hear, his over-bright eyes wavering in Steve's general direction. Steve whined, wounded and distraught, which was begging for commentary but she didn't have time to waste on playing off Steve's reactions as much as she'd like to.
Later.
She should try to rein in her more uncharitable thoughts though, it wasn't entirely fair of her (no matter how entertaining Steve's embarrassment will be later) because as much as Tony's scent had thrown her for a loop, for Steve and his enhanced senses and alpha sensibilities it must have landed like a sucker punch.He hadn't fallen into a rage or turned into a slavering knothead, so there was that. The whole flustered, stammering routine was something she could actually work with. It really was a pity that the surveillance and comm logs for the mission would be destroyed though, it will be much harder to tease him about it all afterwards without hard evidence."I-I don't — how?" Steve asked, his voice two octaves too high.Adorable. Natasha leveled him with a stern glare. "Are you compromised?"Steve stared at Natasha, at Tony's head over her shoulder, back at Natasha. " . . . No?""Then get your ass over here, Rogers." -:-Steve swallowed hard around the lump in his throat and advanced numbly to the steel table at the center of the room — so much like the one he'd found Bucky strapped to a lifetime ago — his movements jerky and mechanical.His hindbrain was going haywire, tripping over itself with conflicting impulses, his ears roaring with the rush of his pulse. The room was saturated in a miasma of fear and pain, blood and bitter omega distress, sour and sickly sweet like the smell of decay. He might not have been able to tolerate it at all if not for the warm, bright (beautiful, impossible) scent beneath it all that smelled like home.That scent spoke to Steve at the most basic primal level, called forth the feelings of security and affection and the drive to protect he ascribed to pack, the warmth, wonder and joy that meant Tony, and the buried longing desire associated with furtive late-night fantasies and the circle of his own fist. He could roll around in that scent, bathe in it, clean and strong, coconut and coffee, metal and motor oil and everything he loved and so impossibly omega.Everything he had ever wanted.Steve shut that train of thought down before it could start.Not the time, not even close to being the time (would it ever be the time?) and so, so inappropriate, god, what was wrong with him? Tony was hurt, and vulnerable, and he'd been missing for three goddamn weeks held in a Hydra science lab that looked like something out of a bad pulp fiction novel from the thirties. He needed to focus on the mission and get Tony out of that hellhole and then, after he was certain Tony was safe and cared for, maybe crawl into a hole to die of embarrassment.Steve didn't know what his face was doing but it couldn't be anything good judging by the twitching corners of Natasha's mouth. Even so, Nat eyed him warily as he approached. He understood perfectly now why she'd tried to warn him away. There were a number of ways an alpha could react to walking into a veritable fog of omega distress, and most of them were . . . undesirable, to say the least. Accounting for the fact that the omega in question is one Steve cares about very much and that he'd been in a state of panic over Tony for a solid three weeks, well. He couldn't muster a shred of insult at Natasha's diligence; he'd have done the same thing were their roles reversed.Natasha slowly shifted aside, keeping one hand firm on Tony's shoulder and the other on her pistol. Steve couldn't stop the wounded sound that punched out of him when he finally got a good look at Tony.Was it too late for rage? Because Steve was going to destroy those Hydra bastards, rip them apart with his bare hands, every last one of them. The mad, idle thought of how he could emboss "Hydra" on the List ran through his head (because Tony would laugh, with crinkling eyes and rosy cheeks and not smell like despair, and Steve suspected Phil would know about embossing).Tony was a mess. His skin was a mottled mass of bruises in a rainbow of colors, half-healed cuts littering his arms and torso in precise patterns and burns circling the radius of the arc reactor. Dark, livid bands of bruising and bleeding, irritated wounds ringed the delicate skin at Tony's wrists ankles and throat, stark and horrifying. As Steve stared, dumbstruck, a thin rivulet of blood chased down the column of Tony's neck and dripped off the ridge of his clavicle, hitting the concrete floor with a soft patter.Tony was looking at him but his eyes were vacant and unfocused and couldn't seem to decide where on Steve's face to land. He was flushed and shivering, fidgeting where he sat. Had the circumstances been different Steve might have found the little frown on Tony's face adorable rather than a knife in the chest, a neon declaration of how utterly useless he was, of how spectacularly he had failed to protect his friend, his packmate. His omega.
No, nope, not yours!
Natasha kicked Steve in the shin and glowered at him, arching her brow. He snapped his mouth shut, realizing he was still gaping like a fool.Get it together, Rogers. He cleared his throat and tried for a smile. "Hey, Shellhead," he said softly, reaching to brush back Tony's disheveled hair but thinking better of it when Natasha narrowed her eyes. He dropped his hand to Tony's shoulder instead and the feel of him, even through the leather of his gloves, was almost overwhelming. Alive and warm and safe, finally. "Let's get you home, okay?"Tony's eyes roved over Steve's face, catching his gaze for but a moment before skirting away. "You're not . . . mad at me?""What?" Steve asked dumbly, thrown by the question. He glanced at Natasha who looked equally confused. "Why on earth would I be mad at you?"Tony darted his gaze between the two of them, eyes over-bright. "'Cause I lied to everyone, and I'm a burden, I'm not — I'm not what anyone wants me to be, it's not enough, I'm not enough, and Stark men are made of iron and I'm not — not — "Steve's head had started shaking "no" before the words finished leaving Tony's mouth, horrified at what he was hearing, how utterly, intrinsically wrong it was and how clearly Tony believed it to be true. That he was bad, a liability, and needed to be anything other than himself.It wasn't the first time he had heard Tony disparage himself, not by a long shot, but this was different. No guile or levity, no careful shuffle of the cards in Tony's hand as he played at testing his perceived dislike by a stranger or satiated the paparazzi's hunger for the caricature of Tony Fucking Stark; this was Tony with no defenses, words falling unchecked and with no regard for the fact that Tony would never say any of it were he in his right mind. Steve's fist clenched on reflex when Howard's parroted mantra spilled out, a clearer condemnation of Howard's failures as a father than any old SSR reports or redacted medical files could ever be.He regretted, and not for the first time, that he'd never punched Howard in the face.Natasha took Tony's face in her hands and forced him to look at her, halting the unfiltered stream of self-recrimination when she pinned him with sharp green eyes. "No. Listen to me, Antoshka," she said, her voice edged in steel but coaxing and gentle and completely out of place in the bowels of a Hydra base. "No one is upset with you, and if anyone dares to say or do anything out of turn I will personally make them regret it, and that's a promise. You had good reason to hide your presentation. You were protecting yourself. You don't have to justify that to anyone. We'll all have to have some candid conversations about how to move forward but we are not and will not be angry that you're an omega."We're pack, Antoshka," she said, pushing her fingers through Tony's hair to scratch over his scalp. Wide brown eyes fell half-lidded. "We belong to each other, chose each other. It wasn't a capitulation or a mistake including you in that equation. You are ours and we are yours and nothing is ever going to change that. Nothing. And no one harms what's mine. Am I understood?"Tony stared at her, something soft and vulnerable on his face. Steve himself was reeling a little in the wake of Natasha's declaration. He'd never heard her speak so candidly about the bond they all share or claim the pack so definitively as hers.He had never doubted her dedication or care, both of which she demonstrated often and in sometimes roundabout ways, but to hear her put it into words was humbling. Natasha preferred to hold herself at arm's length, sharing only what was necessary and leaving trails that led to more questions than answers. The knowledge that caring about anyone is a liability and the self-preservation instincts hard-wired into her from an early age were always foremost in how she conducted herself. The last thing she would ever willingly talk about was feelings.Tony didn't answer, only turned his head to press his cheek into the palm of Natasha's hand which seemed to tell her everything she needed to know. A soft smile was there and gone again as she straightened, all business when she said, "Come now, let's get you on your feet."Tony bobbed his head like a baby bird. He slid off the edge of the table before Natasha's steadying hands could grip his arms and his knees buckled the moment his bare feet hit the cement. Steve jumped forward and caught him with an arm around his waist and hoisted Tony into his arms in a bridal carry. A testament to the sorry state he was in, rather than protest or crack a joke about damsels in distress Tony instead wound an arm around Steve's neck and clung tight to the front of his uniform with a soft whine.Oh, that was . . . that was nice. Steve swallowed thickly, ready to vibrate out of his skin with nerves which was patently ridiculous because this was Tony.Tony, who he regularly hefted over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when he hit thirty-six solid hours in the workshop and refused to go to bed, who he had watched quote Mean Girls with deadpan precision when asked about Justin Hammer during an interview on the news, who he had once found curled around the coffee pot asleep like a cat protecting her kittens, who had decided it was his sacred duty to give Steve and Thor a crash-course in pop culture by dragging the team to a comic convention with everyone in full gear and cackled like a lunatic when they lost the Avengers costume contest.God, Steve loved him.With great caution he hitched Tony up a bit higher in his arms to ensure his hold was secure, distracted more than he wanted to be by the flex of lean muscle and fevered skin against him as he curled protectively around the trembling body in his arms, his hands gripping firm but gentle around the curve of Tony's ribs and thigh. He nearly dropped him a second later when Tony snuffled and turned his head to press his face into his neck with a contented hum, his grip tightening like Steve was a giant teddy bear Tony was hell-bent on cuddling to death.Natasha snorted indelicately and merely smirked when Steve turned on her with wide, betrayed eyes. He might have said something in retaliation (no, really) but was sidetracked from the dressing down of insubordinate packmates when Tony mumbled sleepily and pressed impossibly closer, the drag of his beard and the brush of chapped lips, the fever-heat of his skin and the humid puff of his breath on Steve's throat a demanding distraction.He made the foolish mistake of tipping his chin down to look ("masochist" was probably the word he was looking for) and found his nose buried in Tony's mop of sweaty curls, instantly barraged by a potent hit of beautiful, sweet, happy omega, like sunlight breaking through the clouds.
Oh god.
Steve reared his head back away from the knee-quaking pheromones he wanted to drown in, fighting his damnedest to not stagger and swoon and make a complete goddamn idiot out of himself. Well, worse than he already had because, no, not smooth Rogers, no, no, nope. His face had to be bright red.The look on Nat's face informed him without a shadow of a doubt that she understood his dilemma in vivid detail and wouldn't forget it (or let Steve forget it) any time soon. He was more than a little terrified at the intensity of her stare and the cold smile that promised both humiliation and a world of pain should he happen to harm a hair on Tony's head. What was worse, he couldn't say he'd disagree with Natasha exacting vengeance if he did hurt Tony.He dropped his eyes in a show of submission and cleared his throat. "Could, ah, could you help me with — " he nodded his head at the shield still lying face down on the ground beside one of the dead scientists and could just feel the flush on his face creeping down his neck.Natasha nodded at the meek request and stooped to retrieve the shield, the corners of her mouth still upturned in a smug, satisfied smirk. Together they maneuvered the shield onto the arm supporting Tony's upper body, adjusting Steve's grip and loosening the straps to get the vibranium positioned high enough that it covered Tony's head, neck, and shoulders.Tony endured being jostled about without commentary and elicited only a single soft whine of unhappiness that had Steve's jaw clenching so tight holding back a whine of his own his teeth ached. Tony settled and relaxed considerably when Nat carded her fingers through his hair once more. He burrowed in closer — how can he possibly get closer? — nosing at Steve's neck with a sweet, happy little sigh and more of those mouthwatering pheromones.Rationally, Steve knew that the scent of an alpha, particularly an alpha who was pack, was comforting to an omega in a stressful situation. Steve knew it, his brain was very solid on the knowing of that fact, he knew it for every second Tony burrowed against him like he wanted to climb inside of Steve, but knowing did nothing to quell the shivers and rampant instinctual urges to protect and scent and claim (fucking inappropriate, stop it!) that Tony's heated skin, panting breath and intoxicating scent called forth.Jesus, Steve was screwed.He tried not to quail when Natasha leveled another look at him like he was a specimen under a microscope, and felt the blush creep over his ears until she took pity on him and broke eye contact, deftly unmuting both of their comms. "On the move. ETA seven minutes to the extraction point."
"Copy that, Widow, we'll lay out the welcome mat."
Natasha turned towards the door but paused and changed direction mid-step, darting back over to the machines hooked up to a mess of wires and an IV. Steve watched mystified as she rifled through the compartments at the machine's base, muttering to herself in at least three different languages before humming in triumph and returning to take point. She tucked a pouch of bright blue liquid into her utility belt.For some reason, the sight of that innocuous little pouch raised the hair on the back of his neck, a prickle of unease running across his skin. "For Doc," she said when Steve raised an eyebrow in question. She was out the door before he could think to respond."Head to the north stairway," Phil instructed as they moved down the halls, winding their way through bodies and debris. Even with the eye in the sky Steve was on high alert, hackles up, skating the razor's edge of hyper-vigilance and oh-so aware of the vulnerable omega in his arms. Judging by the tension in Natasha's shoulders and the curl of her lip she wasn't faring much better."Wait," Phil said before they reached the stairwell exit on the landing of the ground floor. "A pack of hostiles right around the corner, nine of them, all armed."Neither of them bearing the patience to play for stealth or subtlety Steve pulled back against the wall where he and Tony would be covered while Natasha kicked the door open with a jarring bang to test the waters. A volley of gunfire immediately followed but it didn't last long, a man hollering over the din calling a halt to the barrage."Cease fire, you imbeciles, if you damage the asset — "The air stuttered in Steve's chest, the words landing like a punch in the gut. His blood ran cold." — will have all of your heads!"
The asset.
A shuddering film reel of images flashed before his eyes.Bucky pinned against a steel table like a frog awaiting dissection, slurred words and pallid skin; Bucky, dead-eyed and robotic and not a lick of recognition in his expression as he leveled a gun at Steve's head; Tony, strapped down, incognizant and barely coherent, wet lashes and needles in bruised flesh; Tony, in the chair that haunted Steve's nightmares, rubber between his teeth and eyes wild; Tony, cold, and empty, and broken; Tony screaming.Oh, god. Just what had they been planning to do to Tony?Natasha snarled and charged out of the stairwell at the operatives before Steve had even finished processing the horrific slideshow of what-ifs cascading in his mind's eye. He opened his mouth to offer a token protest but gave it up as a bad job, crouching low with his back to the wall to ensure Tony was protected, trying to not pay too much attention to the screams and pleading that soon followed. He rested his cheek on the crown of Tony's head and focused on breathing, on coffee, coconut, and motor oil. His.Several minutes later the soundtrack of carnage and human misery subsided to whimpers and then silence. Natasha sauntered back into the stairwell bearing nary a scuff or scratch, a fine smattering of blood across the imperious arch of her brow. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, the expression of affected boredom on her face belied by the banked rage smoldering in her eyes and color high in her cheeks. "Let's go."Steve didn't need to be told twice.Natasha was still spoiling for a fight, vibrating with tension and effusing a smell like brimstone, but her darting glances and the way she stayed close enough to brush against Tony's ankle or knee told him she wouldn't leave them now even if the chance to crack more skulls presented itself. Regardless, the rest of their journey out of the base was uneventful, Phil's careful directions steering them away from the few straggling Hydra operatives still hanging on."Oh, buddy, have I got something for you," Clint laughed darkly, followed by a muted scream over the comm. "I think pest control is a done deal. I'll do a sweep and start on the servers.""I'll be back to assist once we deliver the package," Natasha said, holding a hand up to halt Steve's steps as she surveyed the perimeter outside the northern entrance. Bodies and overturned vehicles littered the rocky terrain, detritus left in the wake of a violent storm. "Thor, are we clear to cross?""Aye, all is quiet here, fair Widow," Thor said, sounding inordinately pleased about it.Even with the assurance of safety and knowing the area was being monitored by JARVIS and Thor's watchful eyes the need to hasten quickly across the open expanse was paramount, setting Steve's teeth on edge. His skin itched, the feeling of exposure a physical irritant. He curled as close around Tony as he could.The relief was heady when they passed through the compound gates, the quinjet a welcome sight nestled back in the tree cover fifty yards away. Bruce was waiting at the top of the ramp, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as he craned his neck to watch their progress. Natasha muted their comms once more and darted up the gangway ahead of Steve. She put a hand on Bruce's arm, saying something too quiet for Steve to catch. Bruce looked perplexed but obeyed Natasha's directive, shooting a glance at the bundle of limbs in Steve's arms while fumbling with the comm in his ear. Satisfied, Natasha nodded and herded Bruce into the jet. Steve followed." — cloak and dagger stuff really necessary? You know JARVIS is keeping the lines secure."
"Indeed, Dr. Banner."
"It's not worth the risk." Natasha rebuked, a clear challenge in her tone.Bruce held up his hands in surrender as he moved into the small alcove that served as the quinjet's medbay. "That's not — I'm just saying we've got this, and you're kind of freaking me out because you're being so weird right now about, about whatever you found that you deemed Scorched Earth."An unstable laugh bubbled up out of Tony's throat and Steve jumped; he'd thought Tony had passed out. "Oh, Brucie, you have no idea,"Bruce and Natasha both turned to stare at them (well, Steve mostly), one bemused and the other fond. Steve felt awkward and too big as he often did in the quinjet as he maneuvered into the medbay to ease Tony down onto the waiting gurney — or tried to. Tony clung to his shoulders and whined in discontent.The primal, base part of Steve's brain that could care less about common sense, reason, or propriety was thrilled at the notion that his omega liked him the best. He was hard-pressed to tell that part of himself to shut up and take a hike as he very much shared in Tony's reluctance to separate.He definitely could have done without the blush returning full force.Natasha was quick to intervene, maneuvering the shield around Tony's head and off of Steve's arm. She had just managed to unhook one set of stubborn fingers when the other shoe finally dropped.Bruce opened his mouth to speak but went very, very still, his nostrils flaring wide. He dropped his chin and stared hard at Tony over the rim of his glasses, his mouth a rictus of aborted speech for almost a full minute before he groaned and slumped back against a small rolling cart, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.". . . Bruce?" Steve hedged. The hand Natasha didn't have curled around Tony's grasping fingers started inching towards her holstered gun."I broke Bruce," Tony whispered, peering wide-eyed at a still groaning Bruce."No, no, it's . . . so many things suddenly make sense," Bruce said, a rough, pained edge to his voice. He slid the hand at his brow down to cover his mouth before letting it drop, eyes blazing and wow, Steve had never seen him so annoyed. "I'm such an idiot."Tony laughed, a delighted giggle and the most Tony reaction he'd displayed since they'd found him. A tendril of the dark, cloying worry wound tight around Steve's chest slipped away at the sound of it, easing the vise around his lungs.Natasha huffed and rolled her eyes. "Believe me, I know the feeling."Bruce was shaking his head, exasperated but so damn fond as he bent to look Tony in the eye. "You don't do anything by half measures, do you?"Tony hummed and finally acquiesced to lifting his head from Steve's shoulder and relinquishing his stranglehold from around his neck, allowing them to lay him out on the gurney proper. He started fidgeting the moment their hands left him, fisting his fingers in the blanket beneath him and darting his eyes about the cabin of the jet, his unease spiking sharply enough to sour the air. Bruce's brow furrowed in concern, and he shook his head minutely at Steve when he moved to reach out and comfort him. Steve swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat and settled his hands on the gurney handrail."I mean, s'not like I was gonna make it easy. It's boring otherwise, right?" The tremors wracking Tony's body were much more obvious now and Steve noticed for the first time just how thin he was, could count each of his ribs and see the sharp ridge of his hipbone. He looked so small and fragile, like a wounded bird and Steve hated it, hated seeing him like that because Tony was none of those things, was, in fact, the strongest person Steve knew."Boring is not a word I think anyone would ever associate with you."Tony grinned, the expression loose around the edges but still brittle."As much as I'd love to stay and watch what promises to be a fascinating exchange," Natasha cut in, "I've got some fires to set." She pulled the bag of bright blue liquid she'd taken from the lab out of her utility belt and handed it to Bruce. "I assume this is something Hydra cooked up themselves. They had the misfortune of getting in my way before I could ask but I'm certain all the information we need is in their system. We'll send you anything that looks relevant."Bruce nodded absently, frowning at the label on the bag, something dangerous stirring in his eyes. "Yeah, that sounds . . . yeah."Tony jerked and flapped an arm in Natasha's direction when she turned to go, looking far more lucid than he had a second ago. "Hey, hey wait, you're torching the place, right? Tell Agent to hit the distress signal when you leave."Natasha pursed her lips in a poor attempt to conceal a smile and arched an eyebrow. "Dare I ask why?""'S amazing how many old buildings like this one have aluminum wiring with lazy-ass shitty connections. The sixties, 'm I right? Electrical nightmare in the wrong circumstances, 's a fucking fire hazard, a tragedy just waiting to happen. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to cross a few connections to ensure combustion's imminent.""They left you near an electrical panel unsupervised?" Bruce asked. He sounded only mildly curious but there was a maniacal gleam in his eyes."And a computer terminal." Tony scoffed like he was insulted which, yeah, all things considered, he should be."Five whole minutes. Isn't there a villain bar where these guys go get drunk and bitch about us? Don't they compare notes? 'S like page one of the Kidnapping Tony Stark Handbook, 'don't let him within ten feet of anything more technologically advanced than a rock.' Jesus, how do they not know this shit by now? Seriously, my Frequently Kidnapped punch card is all punched out, the next one's free — oh, man, d'you think they actually have those? Can I get one? I need one. Or ten, I could've had ten by now, I'm so fuckin' popular. 'S a fact, all the bad guys want me, and I need a for-real vacation, not the 'held at gunpoint' kind of vacation,"Bruce, Steve, and Natasha all stood transfixed, gaping at Tony in varying ranges of horror and disbelief as words kept streaming out of his mouth. Steve stood quite firmly on the "horrified" end of the spectrum."I guess I can make one myself, but 's less cool and they might not honor it and Pep will get all frowny." Big brown eyes rolled Steve's direction, pinned him where he stood. "Yeah, just like that. That's . . . that's a really creepy impression of Pepper's frowny face. How are you doing that? Steve? Why are you all frowny? Steve? Steeeeve?"Steve whimpered, a pathetic, helpless little sound he'd deny to his dying day.The whimper that definitely didn't happen snapped Natasha out of the Tony-babble trance and she pressed her hand over Tony's mouth to silence him. Her face looked strange, pinched and twitching as though she couldn't decide whether the situation was funny or not. "If I promise to tell Coulson to engage the distress signal before we make our getaway will you please stop trying to make Cap's head explode?"Tony's brow scrunched in confusion, his eyes huge and liquid. Steve's insides melted. How the hell does he do that?Whatever Tony said in response was muffled by Nat's hand."No, not literally, Solnyshko, but Steve's been a little sensitive lately and I don't think he can handle casual humor about your illustrious career as a kidnapee.""Hey!" Steve bristled with indignation . . . but also, true. Bruce coughed and turned away to hide his amusement.What the hell was the point of being Pack Alpha if he didn't get any damn respect? He needed to find that hole to go die in already.Either unmoved by or unaware of Steve's wounded pride Tony sighed and seemed to deflate, exhaustion evident in every line on his face and the heavy droop of his eyelids. Natasha uncovered his mouth and patted his cheek before ducking down to brush her lips against his brow, murmuring something in soft Russian. Then she was gone, her voice on the comm requesting sitrep, Clint and Phil rattling off a stream of spy jargon that Steve let fade into the background.Bruce shook his head and set aside the bag labeled OHI-13 EX still clutched in his hands, giving it a dark look that vanished the moment his attention was back on Tony. He wrapped a pressure cuff around Tony's bicep, clipped a pulse oximeter on his right index finger, and attached a handful of various diagnostic nodes at his temple, wrist, and chest. Once everything was in place the medical sensor array activated and started scanning."JARVIS, vitals?" Bruce requested, shining a penlight in Tony's eyes and frowning at the sluggish reaction of his pupils. A screen on the alcove wall lit up and began scrolling a list of statistics. Bruce's eyes darted through it, his brow creasing in growing consternation the further down the screen he read as he ran his hands over Tony's head and neck in careful exploration of injuries. Steve didn't have to know what all the numbers meant to know that most of them weren't good.Tony's core temperature was elevated as was his blood pressure, his respiration accelerated and his heart rate bordering on tachycardia. According to the notes, the documented heart arrhythmia on file couldn't be detected and Steve didn't know what that meant . . . or just how serious the "heart condition" Tony joked about having looked to be in reality."If you're staying can you start a saline drip?"Steve started and tore his eyes from the glaring red numbers to meet Bruce's serious stare. "I — yes, of course." He dug through the pile of supplies sitting off to the side with fumbling fingers and extracted a bag of saline and a package of IV tubing.God, what was he doing? Why was he standing there like an idiot? He should leave, help the others with clean up and completing containment and let Bruce work in peace. But the thought of leaving Tony, of voluntarily walking away, letting him out of his sight for even a minute was unbearable to contemplate. Bruce seemed to understand though if the kind smile he sent his way when their eyes met meant anything. It settled his nerves a bit, and when he reminded himself again that he wasn't completely useless he almost believed it.He hung the saline bag on a nearby hook and opened the sterile packaging. Thanks to Natasha's foresight in leaving the cannula in Tony's hand it was only a matter of seconds to hook up the line and start the drip.Coming into the Initiative the whole team had been given a crash course in the basics of field medicine. The training worked well in a pinch or during dire circumstances but it also fed some of the less healthy habits and ideas the rest of the team had about what constitutes proper medical care. Between trauma, experimentation, and tipping the scale on the special part of "special needs" Steve could concede that almost every Avenger had a complicated relationship with medical professionals and institutions, himself included. But there was a line on what required a simple patch job versus non-negotiable medical intervention, a line that he and half of his pack disagreed about, loudly, on a day-to-day basis.To Tony's vast entertainment Bruce, despite his many, many protests that he's "not that kind of doctor," had insisted with bullheaded stubbornness on fulfilling the role of team medic during emergencies or whenever someone refused to go to medical. Steve still didn't know if it was a stunning demonstration of friendship, the signs of possessive codependency, or the worst sort of enabling that Bruce was working on getting a legitimate MD. But if he never had to bribe a concussed Clint out of the vents by promising to fill out his after-action reports, stop Natasha from setting her own broken bones, or be greeted by the sight of Dummy playing nursemaid to an unconscious Tony with an oily rag and a bottle of industrial cleaner ever again it wouldn't be soon enough.A second screen lit up, displaying a rolling stream of data as it was uploaded to JARVIS' servers. Bruce's eyes scanned lighting fast across the lines of text denoting quantities and intervals, complex designations and ingredients that meant nothing to Steve but had Bruce standing up straight and stiff. He scrolled back up to the top of the data, mouthing the words as he read back through the information. He'd gone ashen, eyes bulging and shifting from warm brown to radioactive green.Steve's heart twisted in his chest. "Bruce?"Bruce ignored him if he'd even heard him at all, just drew in a ragged breath and tore his eyes from the data back to Tony who was twitching on the gurney, eyes half-closed and mouth twisted in a grimace. There was a low whine in the back of Tony's throat Steve didn't think he was conscious of.Bruce pressed his hands over Tony's, stilling them from plucking at the bedding, swallowed, and visibly settled himself into the coiled kind of calm that often preceded a torrent of property damage."Tony, I need you to tell me what Hydra was trying to do with the drugs they were giving you."-:-Tony's eyes flared open at whatever Bruce hadn't managed to hide of his horror in his voice.The weak, wounded whine in Tony's throat stuttered into silence. He looked at him as though from a great distance, eyes clouded by a haze of pain and exhaustion and the chemical cocktail dumped so callously into his system. He managed to hold Bruce's gaze but every so often his eyes flicked over at Steve as though checking he was still there. They skittered away again back to Bruce every time Tony realized what he was doing. Bruce couldn't even begin to wonder what that meant."Tony?" Bruce prompted as the seconds ticked by and all Tony did was shift in discomfort.It was a novelty of sorts to see Tony hesitate given that his normal modus operandi followed the wisdom, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission," and that he lacked a brain-to-mouth filter on the best of days. Bruce could make a number of educated guesses about the answer to his question, however, and all of the reasons Tony would be reluctant to confirm what he had to know Bruce suspected. Bruce didn't want to hear it any more than Tony wanted to say it, but he needed to know he wasn't misreading the evidence.Tony's eyes darted again to Steve, throat clicking when he swallowed. "They wanted . . . was supposed to flush the suppressants out of my system faster," he mumbled, making a face. "Sounded like bullshit for the most part but 's what the superiors wanted to hear.""No, I don't see how they expected dumping more hormones into your system to accomplish that." Bruce frowned at the screen and looked again at the first portion of the OHI-13 EX breakdown, resisting the urge to cluck his tongue like a schoolmarm. "And inhibitors are tricky if you don't know the exact chemical makeup of what you're trying to inhibit. Blood draws would only tell them so much with it already leaving your system. I'm gonna hazard a guess that you weren't particularly helpful on that front.""Oh, I helped them. I gave them the recipe for Viagra. I was embarrassed on their behalf for how long it took 'em to figure it out." The slight smile ticking up the corners of Tony's mouth disappeared when their eyes met once more.Bruce drew in a slow, measured breath, his medical gloves squeaking against the handrail of the gurney where he gripped it. "I would, however, expect to see a near overdose of hormones used to try to manufacture a surge of LH and FSH to trigger estrus, even if the science on the success of such a thing is questionable. Desperate times and desperate measures, I assume. Am I wrong?"Tony grimaced.Steve shifted on his feet, his face pinched in confusion. He looked so young, so breakable, even though Bruce knew damn well Steve had already seen the horrors of war and greed and the very worst humanity has to offer. He wondered if he should send Steve away for this, give him some errand to run so he wouldn't have to hear what Tony would say next, but they couldn't afford the luxury of ignorance. Not if the pack had any hopes of caring for and protecting each other.Besides, Bruce had no doubt there would be information in excess tucked away inside the base, in lab notes and logs, emails and calendars notating the vilest of atrocities as casually as one would a staff meeting or someone's birthday. Even if he avoided Steve hearing the dirty details now the rest of the pack would know soon enough — if the resident spies hadn't figured it out already. Natasha, at least, must have suspicions.Tony's eyes flickered fitfully between them, the air souring. "No, uh, not wrong. They . . . they also wanted to, um, kick-start my heat? They — it, it was super important to the mustache-in-charge that I was in heat by Saturday."Between one moment and the next, it felt as though all of the air had been sucked from the room. Bruce firmed his mouth into a grim line, nodded his head. Even expecting them the reluctant, stuttered words hit like a blow, twisted like a knife between his ribs and stirred the ugly beast at the back of his head. Steve had gone statue-still, white-faced and throat working around words that didn't come, only a wrecked, faltering whine slipping free. A sudden influx of alpha distress nearly overwhelmed the scent of Tony's, mixing into a nauseating cloud. JARVIS, saint that he was, turned on the air filtration system.There was only one reason to want Tony in heat.Rage roiled and rolled beneath his skin, an itching need simmering just beneath the surface, just within reach and as tempting and familiar to fall into as a lover's arms. It would be so easy to escape into the anger and chaos of his greener half but that wasn't what Tony needed from him, not what anyone needed. There would be ample time for a meltdown later but now, now his friend was hurt, and afraid, and had just gone through something awful. There was work to do, work that would not benefit from the antics of a giant green rage monster.Tony was looking at them with those big damn doe eyes like he wanted to apologize, which was wrong on so many levels it made Bruce's head spin and every protective instinct he'd ever tried to deny having rear up, the Hulk's rumble of discontent in the recesses of his mind overwhelming the rush of blood in his ears. My Tony.They had hurt and schemed to assault his Tony.He didn't know what he'd expected. He hadn't quite let himself follow the probabilities to their potential outcomes as the team gathered more and more intel about that particular Hydra base, could not both function and dwell on the accomplishments listed in bullet points on the dossiers about the head scientists or the sadistic proclivities of the general in charge. But the truth was far, far worse, not even on Bruce's radar of Things I'm Not Going to Think About which was a low bar to start with.But wait, there's more, he thought, fighting a wave of hysteria. They weren't finished yet, hadn't even confronted the worst that had been done. How sad was it that the organized rape and breeding of his friend at the hands of a neo-Nazi terrorist group wasn't the worst piece of information laid out in cold, indifferent text on the screen in front of him?Somehow, Bruce's voice was steady, if a little raw, when he forced himself to address the biggest complication of all. "And the rest of it? I've never been as familiar with the ins and outs of the virus as you are but I remember enough from looking over your notes to know that this formula hits a lot of the same markers."His hands still covered Tony's where they lay curled in the blankets. He felt them spasm and tremble, the skin overheated from more than fever or the starts of a faux heat. A glance at the screen of vitals showed Tony's temperature starting to climb.He would give so much to spare Tony from all of this, the pain and dehumanization of having your agency ripped away in the name of some trumped-up idea of progress. The grief of your life being relegated to a science project. Bruce understood better than most the lengths people could be driven to by avarice and pride, uncaring of the damage caused and the lives immutably altered so long as the ends justified the means. No matter whether the ends were morally acceptable to begin with.Bruce could feel the weight of Steve's burning, questioning stare bearing down on him but he only had eyes for Tony, who now wouldn't look at either of them."Why did they give you an Extremis variant, Tony?"Steve reared back and audibly choked, an aborted protest getting tangled in his throat. He staggered like he'd been struck and caught himself against the wall of the medbay. Despair and fury tinged the air now, sharp and bitter, and Bruce had never been so happy to be a beta, that he'd never be as sensitive to the effects of a pheromone cloud. Containing the Hulk would be nothing more than a pipe dream otherwise, an exercise in futility.The echo of ragged breathing in the quinjet and the low murmur of the rest of the pack over the comm were the only sounds to be heard for a few long minutes. The familiar rhythm of voices wasn't as comforting as it would have been under other circumstances.Eventually, Tony spoke. And then couldn't seem to stop."It wasn't part of the original plan, it's not — they didn't want that, didn't want to enhance me or have me fix the formula even after they decided to use it. I'm not surprised they had it? I mean, I always assumed AIM and Hydra had some dealings together since they're both shady as fuck. And I'm not shocked they shot me up because, hello, have you seen their track record? They love playing god, bunch of fuckin' megalomaniacs. The virus — what they gave me — it's, it's not the full shebang, at least I don't think. Because it could, I would be dangerous, more than I am to begin with and I mean, they're stupid, Hydra is so fucking stupid, but even they wouldn't give me literal firepower. I'd go critical mass just to piss them off and take out as many of them with me as I could."It was — they did it — they threw around words like 'resilience' and 'regenerative' and 'healing factor' a lot. I was gonna do great things for Hydra, General Fuckhead got all misty-eyed spewing on about 'the next generation of supersoldier,' a-and I mean, I wasn't ideal — I'm not ideal, I'm the last omega anyone would — but my assets, and my intelligence, and the potential of the offspring when they catch him and he, we — and how many pregnancies could I physically sustain if they didn't give me an upgrade — "The shriek of rending metal interrupted the torrent of disjointed words. Tony flinched back, his mouth closing with a snap. Both he and Bruce stared at Steve and the twisted metal panel in his hand that he'd ripped from the wall, warped and gouged by his fingers like soft wax. There was a wild look on Steve's face Bruce had never seen before, not even after his run-in with the Winter Soldier or when Tony was first taken. He was panting, eyes straining in their sockets and jaw clenched so tightly Bruce could hear his teeth grind.The animal fear on Tony's face was something Bruce had never seen before either, compounded by a swell of anxiety in the air. Rather than drive an agitated alpha over the edge the reaction seemed to do the exact opposite and tempered the emotion threatening to overcome Steve. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, another, and a third, and by all appearances put a lid on his impulses before everything boiled over.It was the only reason Bruce wasn't growling and hovering over Tony like the protective mama bear the others accused him of being when a packmate was scared or injured. It was not enough for him to put down the syringe of tranquilizer he didn't remember picking up."Tony — " Steve started, clearing his throat when his voice cracked. His eyes were wet. He looked devastated when Tony shrank back as he took a step forward. The rapid beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor played a taunting counterpoint to the smell of fear JARVIS couldn't filter out fast enough."Tony, I'm not — I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to — it's — you're okay, I promise you're okay. I'm not upset at you, I just . . ."Steve swallowed hard and lowered his eyes. Astonishment washed over his face when he saw the warped metal panel in his hands. He dropped it like it had burned him and ran trembling hands through his hair, shame rolling off of him in waves, enough for Bruce's nose to wrinkle. Steve took another hesitant step forward, eyes darting to Bruce as though waiting for a rebuke, to be told to leave, and curled his hand over Tony's."I don't know why I'm surprised. How I'm always still surprised by Hydra, t-the things that they do, that Hydra would, would hurt you like that" Steve said, voice wavering. He still looked like he might be sick but his eyes were hardening, brimming with banked fire and steely determination. "Tony, they're never going to hurt you ever again. I promise. I won't let them touch you, I'd rather — I won't let them. None of us will."On the edges of Bruce's consciousness, Hulk rumbled his approval at the sentiment but Bruce wasn't so sure.He had no intentions of letting Hydra within a mile of Tony ever again, but it wasn't that simple. Hydra appeared to have abandoned (at least for now) whatever endeavor had driven them to abduct Tony in the first place in favor of what they could gain from him biologically. They invested the time and the resources to enhance him to better sustain their whims, made plans for how the deed would be done and by whom, and kept everything under the radar.Tony was a commodity and a rare one at that. Hydra wasn't going to let this go.Scorched Earth might buy the team some time but there was no way the pertinent information hadn't been relayed somewhere higher up in the organization. It was only a matter of time before they came after Tony again. All the Avengers could do was prepare for it and face Hydra when they came.Tony had calmed, the heart monitor no longer tripping over itself and the air clear, recognition back in his eyes, but Bruce could see the doubt and resignation on his face as Steve made promises the pack likely couldn't keep no matter how valiantly they'd try. The resignation hurt to see, the easy acceptance of what had to be Tony's worst nightmare come true; that he would never be safe again, that his life was about to fall apart.It wouldn't surprise Bruce if Tony had just been biding his time, waiting his whole life for the rug to be pulled out from under him. Knowing Tony, he likely had contingency plans accounting for the Avenger's support and plans without, on the off chance the team turned him away.Bruce couldn't help but think of the go-bag at the back of his closet, hidden behind a chest of blankets and file boxes filled with old lab notes.The bag was the last remnant of his life before the Avengers when he played a strange amalgam of both predator and prey, never staying anywhere long enough to grow comfortable, always running, always looking over his shoulder. He'd last checked on it almost five months ago — to verify he still had an escape plan and ease the restless itch at the back of his mind, the paranoid animal he despised but had kept him alive for so many years he couldn't bear to ignore it. "Surprise" hadn't quite covered the immediate realization that someone else had gotten to it first.He'd broken out in a cold sweat, a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Someone had found his dirty little secret. He couldn't even bring himself to care about the breach of privacy, too caught up in the fear that his team, his family (and how strange still, to think he even had one) might believe he was planning to leave. That one day he might just disappear.He'd thought about it. Right after the invasion Bruce almost did run, it wasn't a secret. But he hadn't. Even now he couldn't quite explain to himself why he'd stayed. Why he'd followed Tony back to Stark Tower like a lost puppy, drawn into Tony's orbit and unable (unwilling) to fight the force of his gravity. The others had followed after, slotting into place like the components of an equation.Now, he wasn't going anywhere. Bruce knew, with more assurance than he'd felt about anything in years, that he wasn't leaving unless his pack asked him to. But he still needed that go-bag. Security and shame in a bundle of waxed canvas. A crutch. A vestigial limb.All fear that whoever'd found it had gotten the wrong idea vanished the moment he really looked at it.Almost everything had been replaced. There hadn't been much to start with, the bare minimum to get himself out of the country and get by until other arrangements could be made, but now . . . a compact tent and sleeping bag, a space blanket, a fishing kit, outerwear for a variety of terrain and temperatures, a tiny tool kit, a compass and collapsible lantern, MREs, water, a comprehensive first aid and instrument kit, a GPS tracker, a phone with a direct link-up to JARVIS, multiple identities with documentation and corresponding bank cards, cash in five different currencies. A goddamn Hulk stress ball.Tony had questioned neither the hug nor the smack upside the head Bruce bestowed him later that night, only shrugged and said, sorry, not sorry, while they both pretended they weren't a little choked up. Natasha had rolled her eyes and muttered something about men under her breath.Now, seeing that look on Tony's face — a look Bruce knew all too well — he wondered for the first time what Tony's version of a go-bag looked like, what running entailed, and how he was going to stop Tony from trying to do it.Well, if all else failed Hulk could sit on him.
My Tony.
Bruce wasn't certain whether Steve caught the shifting nuances of Tony's expression or recognized the significance, so wrapped up in grounding himself in Tony's presence with furtive touches and desperate eyes, reassuring himself everything would be fine even as he tried to reassure Tony. The visible uncertainty on Tony's face only lasted for a moment before he smiled a tired, broken little smile and said tremulously, "Thanks, Spangles."Even half out of his mind on Hydra's clown-car of a chemical nightmare Tony could drudge up a convincing mask. It was equally ridiculous and terrifying. Steve bought the façade, hook, line, and sinker, a gentle smile washing the grief from his face like a wave across sand. Bruce resisted the urge to shake his head in exasperation and decided to ignore the fact that his packmates were staring longingly into each other's eyes. Now was the time to work, not to debate which eighties power ballad would best reflect the level of schmoop on Steve's face.(It was a long-standing argument around the Tower which song was the most appropriate background for the inevitable photo compilation video of Steve and Tony gazing at each other from afar; the final, dreaded evolution of Phil's Instagram.)Bruce took a breath and did his best to shut down what he could of the unhelpful emotions and thoughts clamoring for attention at the forefront of his mind, centering his focus and switching back to Doctor Mode.
You can do this.
Stop the bleeding, clean, disinfect, bandage. Easy. But he had to pause when he turned to the damage on Tony's throat, a pad of gauze in hand.Huh.He could see the evidence of Extremis at work, subtle though it was. Now that the wounds were no longer being aggravated and reopened over and over again they were finally getting a chance to heal. They already looked a day old. It had nothing on watching Steve's skin stitch itself back together over the course of half an hour but the hue of the bruises had shifted, and there was no fresh blood in sight other than what was smeared on the blankets and Steve's uniform. He hoped Extremis would be equally helpful against illness and infection since he hadn't had a chance to flush the wounds out or apply anything antibacterial before they closed.It's fine, you can do this.They'll have to reevaluate the timeline of events during Tony's internment. Pin down the full extent of the violence and the resulting injuries, when Tony's suppressants had failed, when Hydra had pushed experimental drugs.And god, the drugs, that was a problem and a half. Some side effects he could anticipate but the formula for OHI-13 EX was by and large a wild card and he wouldn't be able to determine anything without full-range scans and blood analysis. The possible complications with the chemical components he recognized were bad enough, but include the frightening probabilities with the ones he didn't know at all and . . . and Bruce was suddenly aware with vivid clarity how very, very out of his depth he was. You're compromised, he heard Fury saying.Yeah, no. He couldn't do this. Tony wasn't about to keel over in the next ten minutes but he needed comprehensive care immediately. Care Bruce wasn't equipped to give."Bruce, what's wrong?" Steve asked, face still pale and drawn but sharp-focused at the hint of trouble. Some of what Bruce was thinking must have shown on his face as he smoothed gauze around Tony's throat.Tony let slip a little fatalistic laugh Bruce somehow refrained from joining in on. What isn't wrong?"This is all a bit outside my expertise. I can get Tony stable enough for transport but he needs medical attention yesterday and I, I can't do it." The words grated in his throat. It rankled having to admit he couldn't care for his Tony, and he could already feel the familiar prickling discomfort at the thought of an outsider putting hands on one of his packmates. "I don't know what the hell to do. He needs a hospital but we can't just — "Tony, who had been uncharacteristically complacent and quiet as Bruce had set to sorting out his injuries, promptly lost his shit the second the word "hospital" came out of his mouth."No!" Tony was upright and thrashing, pure cold terror back on his face and the acrid smell of omega distress overwhelming the small space enough both Bruce and Steve were gagging. "No, no, no no no no no, Brucie, no, you can't, you can't take me to a hospital, you can't, you can't, please, please don't — ""Tony — "" — You can't take me to a hospital, they'll know, they'll know and I-I can't, I won't — " Desperate clinging fingers wrapped vise-like around Bruce's arm and wrenched at the collar of his shirt.For a long, disorienting minute everyone was shouting, Steve and Bruce fighting to wrestle Tony back down on the gurney and Tony insensate to any of their reassurances. Tony was burning hot, an ominous light beginning to glow beneath his skin."Tony, please calm down!"" — Please, they can't know, no one can know, you don't understand — ""Tony, I can't treat you, not by myself! I'm barely able to play doctor for the team right now as it is and I am not proficient in omegan biology, the chemistry of whatever suppressants you use — which don't think we're not talking about that later — or Extremis. We need help, and unless you have any alternatives I don't  — ""Doctor Banner, if I may?" JARVIS interrupted. "Perhaps Miss Potts could be of assistance."All of the tension drained from Tony's body and he slumped against Bruce like a broken marionette. The light show under his skin died down and Bruce's heart rate dropped with it. "Yes, yes, Pepper, please call Pepper," Tony rasped, nodding his head and pressing his feverish face into Bruce's side. Bruce and Steve shared a look over Tony's head.Tony's safety and well-being were the core of JARVIS' protocols but it was fallacious to hinge the intricacies of his relationship with Tony solely on the contents of his base code. JARVIS cared about Tony, as much as any intelligent entity could care for another, and he was ruthless and vindictive in his protection of his creator, more than Bruce thought Tony even realized. If JARVIS was suggesting including another party into the matter it was for a good reason. He would never propose anything that would endanger Tony. Besides, Tony was already in acute distress — it could hardly make things worse — and they needed some kind of a game plan with neither SHIELD medical nor a conventional hospital as viable options."Okay, sure. JARVIS?"
"One moment, please."
The line didn't even ring before Pepper's voice filled the space. "What happened? Did you find him? Is Tony okay? Please tell me he's okay."Tony pulled his face from Bruce's side and gazed imploringly at the nearest speaker. "Pepper! Pep, Pepper, Pepperpot — ""Uh . . . yeah, we have him. He's safe." Bruce pried Tony's hands from his shirt and pressed him back down to lay on the gurney. He waited a moment to make sure he was going to stay put before resuming treatment but Tony looked perfectly content to bask in Pepper's rapid-fire questions and babble an unending stream of ridiculous endearments." — Honeybunch, pepperoni to my pizza — ""Oh, thank god," Bruce heard the shuffle of fabric over the line and pictured Pepper sagging in relief. "Tony?"" — Pep in my step, light of my life — "There was a sound that could have been either a laugh or a sob. "Tony, pain in my ass, bane of my existence. I'm so glad you're all right. You are all right?""Well, about that — " Bruce started."Pepper, Pep, you have to save me, please. Please? I-I can't, I can't go, please tell them they can't make me, please, I can't, I can't, I can't."Tony's breath hitched, damning in the abrupt silence and okay, nope, this was worse, this was so much worse, JARVIS was a dirty, dirty liar.
"Can't make you go where?"
Bruce shivered at the dangerous edge to Pepper's voice. He'd heard that particular tone only once before, when she'd cornered the team a week after they'd moved in and had promised, with a deadly smile and no room for misinterpretation, to ruin them in every way imaginable if they hurt Tony. Clint still runs like hell any time he hears the click-click-click of Pepper's heels, a Pavlovian response Natasha's exploited more than once with her own stilettos to hijack control of the television.
"What is he talking about? Someone had better tell me what's going on right now."
Tony's eyes were huge and misty, still gazing hopefully up at the speaker. Steve had hunched in on himself, cowering where he stood as though directly under Pepper's stern glare and staring at Bruce with wide eyes, looking as un-alpha as a six-foot-two super-soldier can.Bruce sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off an oncoming headache. How is this my life? "Tony needs medical attention beyond my capabilities but we can't take him to a medical facility."
"And why the hell not?"
He rolled the words over in his mind for a moment to find a statement both informative and vague on the very, very slim chance the line had been compromised. "Because Tony's been off of his medication for three weeks."A deafening silence followed, broken by a loud clatter over the line. Pepper had either dropped or stumbled into something. There was a shaky inhalation. "He's — ""In withdrawal," Bruce supplied. Guess that answers whether or not she knew about all this. It made sense, knowing Pepper and the role she plays in Tony's life, and being an omega herself put her in a better position to navigate and understand a variety of issues that even the best-intentioned alphas and betas never could. He wondered who else was in the know. Rhodey, most definitely. That would explain a hell of a lot. "Oh my god," Another clatter and a soft thump, another shaky breath. When Pepper spoke again it sounded like she might be crying. "Did . . . did they hurt him? Tony?"Steve's mouth twisted and Bruce thought again of the hormones pumped into Tony's system, the race to force him into heat in a few days time. He thought of the bastardized version of Extremis in Tony's veins. But that wasn't really what Pepper was asking.Something ugly passed over Tony's face and shuttered the light in his eyes. Something that spoke of cold dread, the horror of your own body's betrayal, and the terror of being absolutely helpless. His voice cracked but his words were gentle. "No, Pep, they didn't, not — not that. I promise, they didn't."Of course not, it's only Wednesday, Bruce thought darkly.Pepper sniffled but seemed to have pulled herself together again. "I agree Tony going through 'withdrawal' complicates matters. No hospitals and I don't trust SHIELD any farther than I can throw Fury.""JARVIS implied you could help," Bruce said, taping down the gauze around Tony's wrist and shifting to the foot of the gurney to tend to his ankles. "Well, Tony does have a very discreet, very well-paid GP I can contact, but are we talking regular injuries or alien technology, mind control magic, 'your understanding of reality is fucked' kind of injuries?" From the tone of her voice she already seemed to know, but then again it wasn't a hard guess. The Avengers' track record spoke for itself. Tony laughed, a little hysterical, and Bruce couldn't help a rueful grin of his own. Steve had that constipated look he got when he thought too hard about their ever-evolving definition of "normal" and was edging towards an existential crisis."A little of both. Your, uh, old acquaintance Maya Hansen would be pretty helpful in particular if she wasn't, y'know, dead."Pepper swore. "Please tell me you're not serious? No, of course you are. Okay. That's . . . okay. I need to make some phone calls. I don't think we can do this anywhere but in-house, will that work?""I think the Tower's medical wing should be fine unless I find something alarming when we run tests with the full array or Tony has some catastrophic injury he's managed to hide, which I doubt. His acting isn't really up to snuff right now.""Hey, I'm sneaky, I can hide lots of shit, Banner, 'm excellent at hiding shit," Tony grumbled, sounding all kinds of affronted that Bruce was making light of his ability to distract and deceive. Bruce snorted.The look Steve leveled on Tony at that was incredulous. "That's not . . . why are you implying the ability and inclination to hide catastrophic injuries?" He asked, his voice rising in pitch with every word. "Are you saying you've done it before? When did you hide catastrophic injuries? Why would you do that?!""Why does Tony do anything?"
"That's a question I ask myself every day."
"That's mean, Pep, you're not my favorite anymore.""Oh, no. Whatever will I do? However will I go on?" Pepper asked deadpan."Why are you like this?" Steve asked quietly, to no one in particular.
"Besides, he knows better than to hide if he's dying lest he reneges on the deal we made after the last time. Because you are not, in fact, a cat, Tony, no matter how much of a cat's personality you have, and you're not allowed to drive all of your friends away so you can go die in the crawlspace."
"It was one time, Pepper," Tony whined. He turned puppy eyes on Bruce. "You make one bad omelet and you never hear the end of it."" . . . What does an omelet have to do with anything?"
"Don't ask."
Steve's jaw worked for a moment, his head whipping back and forth between them. "'After the last time?' You were dying? When were you dying? Tony?""Like four years ago, s'not a big deal. Ask Tasha, she knows. She stabbed me in the neck and Agent threatened to tase me."Steve's eyes just about bugged out of his head. "What?!"Yup, there's that headache. They'd gotten way off track. "Pepper?" Bruce prompted, a tad impatient.
"Give me an hour or so and I think I can have our bases covered to get Tony sorted out, and if not, well, we'll deal with it."
"Sounds good. We should be wheels up soon, I think the team's just about finished," Bruce said, and indeed, tuning back into the chatter in his ear the others were performing a final sweep. He smiled a little when Natasha mentioned the distress signal to Phil."Fair warning, if Tony really is 'in withdrawal,' Rhodey's going to be insufferable. I'll try to run interference before you get back.""Oh, fuck, I forgot about Rhodey," Tony said in a hushed voice.There was an ominous creak where Steve's hands gripped the gurney handrail. He looked like he'd sucked on a lemon at the very mention of Rhodes and actually growled.Oh, hell. Not that again. How was this Bruce's life?-:-"I don't suppose he explained why I should engage the distress signal?"Clint grinned. Phil was doing that thing where he tried to sound bureaucratically apathetic but his wry amusement was obvious.
"Oh, something about the sixties, shitty wiring, and how combustion is imminent."
Clint snorted at Nat's prim reply, nudging a body out of his way as he meandered down the hall loosing incendiary arrows into every open doorway he passed. "Damn, now I kind of wish they'd gotten the chance to try to use it before their communications equipment got Thor'd.""Verily," Thor agreed on a laugh, "The Man of Iron makes most amusing use of our foes' technology."Smoke started rolling thick and fast into the hallway so Clint picked up the pace, navigating the carnage like the world's most macabre obstacle course. He awarded himself extra points for acrobatic flair when he vaulted and flipped over a particularly large pile of bodies and rubble (totally Tasha's handiwork) in imitation of Steve's most ridiculous parkour exploits.
"I'm sure we'll still see quite the light show."

"Just minus the screaming."
"But sometimes the screaming's the best part. Remember when the Scientific Duo reprogrammed those stupid fuckin' anti-gravity guns to backfire on those AIM asshats? I still can't believe you didn't let me put that on YouTube, it's the funniest damn thing I've ever seen."
"I still think SHIELD collectively wetting their pants over JARVIS' Skynet impression was funnier."
Okay, yeah, that was definitely in Clint's top three What Happens When You Fuck With Tony Stark moments. That had been quite the week, and he was pretty damn sure Fury would never lie about the fatality of a wounded comrade ever again. "Point. Didn't that bump Tony to the top of Fury's watch-list?""Yes." Natasha sounded proud. "To my knowledge, they still don't have a working plan to neutralize him in the event he goes supervillain."
"Not anymore, no. The plan previously in place used to be included in the information packet granted to Level Five agents and above but they had to scrap it after that particular demonstration."
"I have no idea why anyone was so surprised. I mean, has Fury met Tony? Or JARVIS, for that matter?"
"It's their own fault, I've said for years Tony's file needs to be on paper. God knows what he's altered. Last time I checked he was listed as the sovereign of something called Starkadia, which I assume is what he dubbed his workshop during his last blackout engineering binge. It would explain the scrap metal crowns he and the bots were wearing when Cap dragged him out."
"You are, unfortunately, correct, Agent Romanov," JARVIS said.Clint cackled wildly, swinging himself over the ledge of an observation deck, landing in a crouch on a broken table beside a sparking bank of computers. He shot a time-delay explosive over his shoulder and jogged towards the northern exit. "How the hell did I miss out on seeing that?""Dog Cops marathon and shitty Chinese takeout from the place on Third.""Oof, yeah, tough call."
"It's a shame you were not in attendance, Friend Clint. T'was a most beautiful coronation ceremony."

"Coulson, weren't you appointed Grand Vizier? I saw the medal Butterfingers gave you on your bookshelf."
Phil's long-suffering sigh rattled over the comm. "All right, I'm hitting the damn button. You'd both better be nearing an exit."Aww, someone's embarrassed. Clint had wondered what that thing was. "Sir, yes Sir," he angled a cocky salute at the nearest camera although he doubted Phil was still watching.He rounded a corner towards the exit and spotted Natasha strolling from the opposite direction, a metal crate braced against her hip. They met halfway, loitering in front of the doors.Although she looked as impassive and unruffled as ever (or as much as anyone can wearing an artful array of blood spatter) she was radiating the special brand of coiled fury and cold murderous intent she only displayed when truly worked-up, a pure kind of wrath that sent alphas twice her size running with their metaphorical tails between their legs. It had Clint's hackles up in an instant. Only very, very bad things stirred Nat's emotions into such a froth. He could count on one hand the times he'd seen her like that.He was suddenly one-hundred percent certain he was going to get his wish for a primo, top-shelf secret.He frowned and swept his eyes over her once more as though a clue might jump out at him but he could read nothing from her expression or posture and the crate she carried was unmarked and sealed against prying eyes. There was a funny scent clinging to her beneath the ash and brimstone of her rage. It nagged at him, that scent, just as something had nagged at him the whole damn time he'd been in the building. From the moment he'd infiltrated the facility there'd been something off that he hadn't been at liberty to investigate.She gave him a look, daring him to ask, and just as he opened his mouth to do so Rick Astley blared out of the compound speakers, loud and in surround sound. The wailing of the fire alarms played a discordant sort of back-up to the act.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Clint laughed for a solid three minutes, doubled over and gasping for breath. He would have collapsed and rolled around on the ground if not for the puddle of questionable origins at his feet.He'd collected himself by the time Phil met them, the intro of Never Gonna Give You Up starting up again, the volume a few decibels louder than the first time. Phil had the eye twitch he only got when pushed past the nigh-infinite limits of his tolerance. He held up a hand to waylay the obvious question when Clint and Natasha whirled on him at the same time."Yes, the music video is playing on every functioning monitor."Natasha nodded, unsurprised. "Tony did say he had access to a computer terminal for five minutes.""That'll do it.""And he devoted that time to Rick-rolling Hydra," Clint mused, wiping tears from his eyes, "because of course he did."The building shook, a muffled, tumultuous crash sounding somewhere above them. An explosion, had to be. "Also that," Natasha said. "Think that's our cue."They exited the building to a soundtrack of cheesy-ass music and the rumble of explosions and crumbling mortar, the very walls groaning in complaint. Once outside Clint shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun and whistled.The outer perimeter of the compound looked like an army warehouse had vomited it's inventory across the terrain. Bodies, vehicles, weapons, and crates of supplies lay scattered like the fallout of a tornado, which, actually, was probably exactly what happened, he realized upon reflection. The music was blasting over the outdoor speakers as well as inside and he could see Thor bopping his head in time with the beat, reclining against an overturned tank and watching as the building blew apart and collapsed in on itself with unholy glee. He cheered at a particularly loud explosion that caved the entire east wing.Clint had always loved walking away from a scene with an epic explosion at his back (like a total badass, no matter what Tasha said), but this one was definitely the weirdest. It also might be his favorite.They passed through the perimeter gates and trooped into the treeline towards the quinjet where it waited, half-hidden in shadow. Natasha marched up the ramp like a woman on a mission, dumping the crate she'd described only as "evidence" with open disgust and a kick. She bee-lined to the medbay, pushing past Bruce and his half-hearted protests and glared at Steve who was hovering almost on top of the gurney Clint assumed Tony was laid out on. At least he was pretty sure that was Tony, even though bare toes and a wild twist of dark hair were all he could see from his current vantage point.Yeah, he needed to rectify that and see his erstwhile beta bro right the fuck now. He followed Phil up the ramp and inside until Phil froze five steps into the quinjet proper. Clint walked right into his back. "Phil, what the fuck?"Phil blinked and cocked his head, staring at the huddle of people who were watching both of them with wary curiosity."Huh. That explains a lot."Clint felt him twitch, an agitated little tick. Phil simply stared for a beat longer before he seemed to come back online, straightening his tac vest and moving to stand at the perimeter of the group. His movements were jerky and uncoordinated like an automaton with a short, just enough off-beat, just enough of a hitch in his step to speak to some internal error. His face was trying it's best to stay flat and emotionless but Clint could see his fingers twitching as he edged closer and closer to their injured packmate.Weird. He decided to breeze right past it."So!" He clapped his hands together and put on his most obnoxious smile, shoving his way into the little crowd around the gurney to finally, finally, lay eyes on Tony. "Anyone wanna tell me what the hell's going on, or — " he froze, his backing snapping ramrod straight.Tony looked a mess, covered in bruises and precise, calculated wounds, swathes of bandages wrapped around him like he was trying to make "medical chic" the next hot thing. He was flushed and shaking, big Bambi eyes wet and unfocused, darting around from face to face and to the exit like a paranoid animal. But as much as the visual of Tony's mistreatment was a slap in the face and brought the low simmer of fury in Clint's gut to a full boil it wasn't what slammed his brain to a grinding halt.No, that would be the Eau de Omega wafting off of Tony, all sugar and spice and everything nice, and goddamn, Clint needed to turn in his super-spy card.Earth-shattering revelation: check."Oh, you fucker."Okay, so that wasn't what he meant to say, and he definitely hadn't wanted Tony to shrink back all nervous and wounded, and fuck, his eyes were even bigger and sadder now — "Ow!" Clint yelped, knocked out of the starts of an excellent shame spiral when Nat hit him upside the head. She was glowering at him, which would be pretty fucking scary all on it's own but combined with Bruce's scowl, Steve's disappointed face, and Phil's icy glare he wondered if it'd be safer to just walk home.His nose twitched, the souring of the air around him drawing his attention away from the assorted death-stares to the fucking omega, oh my god, lying there fidgeting like he had ants in his pants and looking anywhere but at Clint."Hey, no, Tones, I didn't mean it like that." Clint took Tony's hand in his and was immediately sidetracked from what he'd wanted to say by the visceral relief that washed over him at the contact. The tension he'd been carrying since finding that empty bloody crater in Central Park melted away like magic as it hit him, with Tony in front of him three-dimensional and tangible, in all the ways it hadn't from verbal confirmation alone: they were whole again.God, he didn't know what they'd have done if they hadn't gotten Tony back.Natasha smacked him again."Fucking ow! What?!" He snapped, glaring at her. Natasha's murder-glare didn't waver, she just made a twirling "go on" gesture with her hand and raised her eyebrows. He deserved a fucking award for resisting the massive eye-roll her dramatics warranted. She'd completely ruined his warm, fuzzy moment . . . although she also kind of had a point. He could almost see a little cartoon rain cloud of insecurity forming over Tony's head."Tony?" Tony's eyes flickered in the general direction of his which was far from reassuring, but he did curl his fingers around Clint's when he squeezed his hand. "Tony, whatever you're thinking, don't, okay? I'm just so freaking annoyed — " he ducked just in time to avoid Nat's hand flying at his head again and this time did roll his eyes. "At myself, Jesus, would you calm the fuck down woman? It's my job to notice stuff, okay, so I think I'm justified to feel both disgusted and hella impressed that you managed to hide this thing that's supposed to be damn un-hide-able from fucking everyone for like thirty years."Clint stiffened, a terrible thought occurring to him. "Wait, you didn't know about this, right? Please tell me you guys didn't know." He looked from face to face and felt vindicated at the heads shaking and the mix of annoyance and bafflement that mirrored his. That was something, at least. He'd have to forfeit all of his street cred if he was the only one who hadn't noticed and Short Sight just didn't have the same ring to it as Hawkeye. They all still lost a shit-ton of observation points though, needed to put their asses back in Espionage 101.Jesus, the logistics of Tony pulling this off blew his mind. Hindsight was a hell of a thing, though. In retrospect all of the signs Tony was an omega had been there if you knew what you were looking for. Stuff that never made sense, mannerisms and weird little habits people chalked up to the eccentricities of a genius, billionaire, superhero.Hell, just viewing him through a different lens Tony looked like an omega, as opposed to the short-statured beta Clint had taken him to be. But Tony's nothing if not a master showman and he had bought the con just like everyone else. He'd never even questioned it, and that was the beauty of that sort of deception, wasn't it? If he'd learned anything from working undercover ops it was that presentation is everything, and people will believe anything if it's said or done with unwavering confidence. It's gotten him access to locations and information he has no right to more times than he could count.Tony shuffled a bit on the gurney in poor parody of his normal nonchalant posture when reading a room, his gaze swinging around over the brooding faces still pinched in disgruntled consternation before finally looking at him, the starts of a little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Most of the tension had dissipated, and a soft swell of happy, happy pheromones drove away the lingering anxiety and distress. His fingers drummed an absent beat across the back of Clint's hand and Clint could just see the cogs spinning in his head, the shift of gears when his mind determined the optimal mode of response a second before he gave a haughty sniff, cocking his brow in imitation of Nat at her most imperious."That's why my hair's so big. It's full of secrets."Clint collapsed against the gurney in a fit of hysterical giggles. Someone groaned, probably Phil, or maybe Bruce who was shaking his head like it pained him. Just when he'd gotten a hold of himself Natasha drolly chimed in, "I hear his hair's insured for ten-thousand dollars," and he fucking lost it all over again."I understood that reference," Steve sighed, and although his usual pride at recognizing pop culture references had given way to self-disgust at having an unnatural familiarity with Mean Girls he was still smiling, soft and fond and ugh, Clint might be disgusted if he wasn't so relieved to see Cap happy again because goddamn, it was like living with a kicked golden retriever puppy when he was upset.A huge explosion rumbled in the distance with an air of finality, the climaxing crescendo of the symphony of destruction and insanity rigged so lovingly by Tony's hands. The ripple of vibrations reached the quinjet just as the faint sounds of Rick Astley's caterwauling died with a whimper, the equipment rattling as the Quinjet shook."Guess combustion really was imminent," Bruce said conversationally. "Yes, a tragedy," Nat said with a solemn little head shake.Tony laughed.A crunching thud from outside had everyone standing at attention, muscles whipcord-taut and hefting various weapons or, in Bruce's case, a syringe. The heavy clunk of boots on the ramp echoed in the ringing silence, mirroring the rapid tattoo of Clint's heartbeat. Everyone sagged when Thor's tawny head came into view. Clint sheathed his arrow with an embarrassed cough."My friends!" Thor boomed, because no matter how many conversations were had with him about "inside voice" the dude only had one volume. "Our mission is complete and Hydra's fortress is no more." He squeezed himself into the medbay which was officially too small to contain everyone but no one seemed inclined to leave. Clint squawked in indignation when he was crammed none too gently between Steve and Thor's bulk."Tony, well met," Thor beamed down at him, his exuberance tempered by relief. He clasped Tony's free hand between both of his. "We were much aggrieved by your absence and it is good to have you back among us. Are you well?"Tony wiggled a bit, looking a little overwhelmed by the mass of people right up in his space. He attempted a shrug, his eyes skating across the congregated pack. "I mean, I've been worse."Steve emitted a tiny little groan of despair, Bruce's eyes flashed a scary shade of green, and Nat growled, which, okay, clearly he'd missed something. Also, "Dude, Tony, that's not reassuring."Tony tsked, dismissive. "'S subjective.""No, Tony, it's really not," Bruce sighed, tugging a hand through his curls so they sat in a riot of disarray on his head."I'm not dying," Tony retorted. As if that was some kind of accomplishment."If dying's the bar you might need to reevaluate your life choices, and that's coming from me, and are you seriously not going to say anything, really?" Clint turned to Thor and punctuated the question with a poke to his massive bicep.Thor's brow scrunched in confusion for a moment before he brightened and turned back to Tony, all smiles. "Of course! I am remiss in congratulating you on a most excellent and entertaining explosion, Friend Tony. Truly, some of your finest work."The rest of the team gaped at Thor in disbelief."Thank you? I aim to please, though mostly myself."An awkward silence followed. Clint broke first."Oh come on, that's it? You don't wanna say anything about the red and gold elephant in the room? Who smells like coconut, by the way, what is up with that?""Clint."Thor's face folded into a frown and he looked around the jet as though he might find an actual elephant. "I'm afraid I don't follow."Clint sputtered in outrage and gestured expansively at Tony, who just looked befuddled."Tony is an omega," Bruce said, a shrewd, calculating slant to his eyes like he'd already figured out exactly what was going on. Hell, he probably had.Thor blinked. "Yes.""Tony's an omega,"  Clint repeated, slow and over-enunciated. "How is that not — "Natasha inhaled sharply, which for her was the equivalent of a soap opera fainting spell. She regarded Thor with wide, reproachful eyes, her voice sharp and accusatory when she said, "You knew.""Yes?"It was instant chaos.Scandalized shouting, barked demands and jostling for position erupted as everyone (well, okay, Bruce just sighed and pulled his glasses off of his nose to clean them on his shirttail and Phil had that face like INPUT ERROR was flashing across his user display in big red letters again) broke into motion, gesticulating wildly with shoves, sharp elbows, and pointing fingers. In the midst of it all Tony bolted upright, eyes like saucers. His mouth flapped soundlessly for almost thirty seconds before he outright screeched, "How in the fuck did you know!?"As though caught in a spotlight the pack's undivided attention zeroed in on Thor, all bickering and accusations forgotten.Thor actually took a step back, his eyebrows up almost to his hairline. He shuffled where he stood and glanced side to side like he hoped a PR rep would materialize with cue cards or Loki might poof onto the scene in overblown drama-queen fashion and distract everyone with his supervillain magic act. When it was clear no forthcoming diversion would deflect the current line of questioning he cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his neck, almost clocking Clint with Mjölnir."Was it a secret?"Tony stared at Thor with his mouth open, twitched, and then proceeded to throw the biggest goddamn hissy-fit Clint had ever seen. It might have been intimidating if Tony didn't have all the impact of a wobbly, bedraggled kitten puffed-up and spitting in the face of a St. Bernard."Oh my fucking — you're asking — was it a secret? Was it a secret? Where the fuck have you been, Thor! What, what planet have you been vacationing on, of fucking course it's a secret, it's the biggest damn secret I ever — how could you not — my entire life it's the only thing that, that I couldn't — and, and I, what did I do wrong? What did I do, what — how did I slip up, how, when — "The more words tumbled out one after the other the more Tony wound himself up, panic polluting the air and stretching his voice high and thin, his breath hitching fast and shallow. Thor held up his hands in front of himself and Clint couldn't tell if it was to calm Tony down or for protection from the wall of neurosis pouring out of his mouth. "My friend, you did not — ""What did I do, what — god, I can't remember. What did I do? Who else did I fuck up around? Who else? I — no, no, no no no no, who else knows, sweet baby science — I — did you tell anyone? Thor? Who did you tell, fuck, who — why would you do that — "As worrisome as Tony throwing himself over the deep end with his runaway train of supposition was, Clint was wildly distracted by the orange glow building beneath Tony's skin. He might have thought he was imagining it if the rest of the team didn't look so very alarmed.What the ever-loving fuck?Bruce, Steve, and Natasha — the only ones not struck stupid by Tony lighting up like a burning charcoal briquette — reached out to him all at once, stroking fingers through his hair, over his shoulders and down the stiff line of his spine. The motion snapped the rest of them out of their stupor but even as Clint and Phil moved to comfort Tony too Thor was faster, gathering him up in his arms in a crushing hug that had Tony's terrified diatribe cutting off with a squeak.Tony held himself taut as a bowstring for all of five seconds before the tension snapped and he sagged against Thor's bulk, reciprocating the hug with a death grip and burying his face in Thor's neck. Everyone shuffled, a little uncertain and a lot on edge. Steve looked particularly put-out, his fingers twitching towards their omega as another alpha comforted him, but didn't do anything to disrupt them. The atmosphere slowly slipped back from the precipice of impending disaster, counted in time by the evening of Tony's panting breath."Tony, please hear me." Thor wrapped a firm hand around the nape of Tony's neck and squeezed. It settled Tony into even more of a boneless pile. "You misunderstand. You did not do anything to give away your secret; I have always known. Perhaps my senses are more finely tuned, or it is an Aesir skill to read such things so clearly, but I have known you are omega from the moment we first met. And although I did not realize it wasn't known by all I have never had reason to converse about such matters with anyone else. I've not betrayed you, you have my most solemn vow."Wait. Son of a bitch. Clint really was the last one to know, which, that was just so insanely unfair. He would lose his absolute shit if it came out Fury knew already too.Tony snuffled and dragged his head up enough to peer at Thor through his messy fringe with wide, vulnerable eyes. "Why didn't you say anything?"Thor scrunched his brow in a frown. "I had no reason to. It matters not.""But — I mean, usually people have some, some pretty strong opinions about omegas and, societal expectations and, uh . . . stuff." Tony said, trying to sound casual and failing spectacularly.Thor's frown darkened. "I do not see why. I've fought with many a fine omega soldier on Asgard and learned much from the wise tutelage of omega advisers and sages, my queen mother among them. You, Tony Stark, are a fierce warrior and a brilliant mind, loyal and generous, a true and worthy friend. I am proud to call you shield brother and pack. Anyone with any sense would be honored to say the same. What has your presentation to do with anything?"He sounded so matter-of-fact, like sexism and presentation imparity didn't exist at all on Asgard. Maybe it didn't. Clint glanced around and took in the surprise echoed on every Avenger's face. The betrayal of being kept in the dark by Thor's omission had faded, replaced by a sort of awe at the realization that to Thor this really wasn't a big deal, that an omega in Tony's position was not just accepted but the norm in the society he was accustomed to.Guess Asgard really is as progressive as Thor says it is, for a bunch of magic space Vikings. Boy were they all in for some uncomfortable discussions about Midgardian history and sociology in the near future.As if prompted by some unspoken signal (although really the look on Tony's face was signal enough) the rest of the team snapped into action, bestowing cautious touches and echoing their own words of reassurance. Tony sat stunned, looking unbearably fragile, watery eyes huge in his face. Tony's astonishment at the pack's display of solidarity twisted something in Clint's chest. Sure, it was Tony's fucking MO to question his own self-worth and the validity of his relationships when all of the smoke and mirrors were gone. It was a defense-mechanism Clint understood intimately, and one Tony employed for good reason. He understood too that Tony's disbelief wasn't born of anything the pack had done wrong but rather the count of them not doing everything right for long enough yet, of not standing the test of time and beating the fact they're not going anywhere into his thick head. The bond between them all was still too shiny and new, too easy to explain away as anything other than genuine.That was getting fixed ASAP. Tony wasn't gonna know what hit him, the poor insecure bastard.Tony bit his lip, looking lost even as he leaned into the affection coming from all sides. A warm scent, heady and sweet swelled around them, smoothing rough edges and ruffled feathers. Tony was clearly still very confused but had a lightness to him that hadn't been there a moment ago."Can we go home now? Please?" Tony asked, darting his eyes around the group and lingering on Cap, who laughed a shaky little laugh.Steve had the dopiest smile on his face, gazing down at Tony like he was the center of the whole damn universe. "Yeah. Let's get you home, Shellhead."Finally, it went unsaid.And just, ugh, gross, those expressions were too fucking sappy to be legal. This moment was perfect fodder for Phil's wildlife photography collection on the mating habits of the emotionally-constipated superhero if Clint had ever seen one. And he'd seen many. For fuck's sake, Phil had to have a whole damn hard drive of Steve and Tony making eyes at each other by now, and — "Oh, fuck me, the betting pool!" Steve's head whipped around to stare at Clint so fast his neck cracked, and Nat kicked him, hard. Phil put a hand to his ear and walked off like he'd gotten a hail on his comm, the goddamn traitor, and Bruce made sharp abort abort abort gestures with his hands which, yup, that was exactly why he didn't participate in stealth operations. Banner was the exact opposite of sneaky."What betting pool?" Steve demanded, and yes, that was one-hundred percent Captain Voice.Walking home it is, Clint decided.   
To be continued.