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The day was clear but cold, and a freezing wind blew through the streets of Washington DC. Tony drew his heavy coat closer around him as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. His security team surrounded him, and he let them lead him to the armoured car. He felt simultaneously wired and exhausted.He’d been exhausted since Siberia. He tried not to think about it.It had only been three weeks. Rhodey was still trapped in a hospital bed, Vision was in Europe, and Tony had spent the past week taking meetings right and left, with Senators, UN representatives, and agents of global law enforcement agencies.Prior to that, he’d been in a hospital bed of his own, while his ribs healed. But as soon as he could stand it, he’d forced himself back to work, even though it’d meant meeting after meeting.The security team had been Pepper’s idea. He hadn’t travelled with one in years, but she’d begged him, and in a fit of worn-out indifference, he’d agreed. Tony didn’t really know what anyone thought a security team could do if his ex-teammates decided to attack him again, but he let them shadow him anyway. He still scanned the streets himself; still wore a gauntlet on his wrist, kept to all his usual security protocols.The sting in his neck, just above the collar of his coat, came from behind him.He stumbled. He tried to raise his hand to his neck, but couldn’t. The security agent on his left grasped his shoulder, but Tony could barely feel it. They were shouting, alarmed. “Executive down!” one of them yelled. “Go, go!”Tony’s vision became a disjointed jumble as he was half-dragged, half-carried across the pavement, unable to control the direction of his gaze. He saw sidewalk, the car, his own feet; he heard gunshots and screams. He was back in Afghanistan, only this time he couldn’t move. He heard something fizz and crackle with high voltage electricity, and then there was another sting, his right shoulder this time.Time slowed even further. They’d leaned him against the car, and he realised in a distant way that he should be fighting, he should call the suit. But the whole world was slow as molasses. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even feel afraid.The security agent in front of him – Tony knew him, but couldn’t prise his name from his slow, slow brain – was yelling about something. He grabbed Tony’s shoulders, but it was like he were on the other side of thick glass. Tony couldn't understand a word. He couldn’t react. His heartbeat was steady, and he felt no adrenaline.The agent let him go, and yelled something else. Tony’s head had dropped so he could see his own arm. He stared at his hand and willed it to make a fist, so he could use the forearm weapon he had on, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t move even a finger.He tried to focus, tried to speak, but everything was so slow and difficult. Abruptly, he wanted to sleep.Distantly, he heard more gunshots. The man in front of him jerked, then fell, catching Tony’s shoulder and bringing him awkwardly down to fall on his back on the pavement. Tony could hear more yelling, and then something exploded, but the noise and sound seemed far away. He stared past all of it to the sky, pale and blue beyond the buildings around him. His heartbeat was strong and steady like a metronome, but every breath took aeons to leave his lungs.The last thing he remembered was someone leaning over him. A woman, blonde. Then, past her, a helicopter casting a dark shadow as it descended towards them.***Consciousness returned very gradually. Tony’s whole body fought it every step of the way; his limbs were like lead, his eyelids refused to open, his head ached. There were also some painful spots on his forearms that rang a very distant alarm bell. He felt on the verge of sinking back down.When he finally surfaced fully, he found he was lying on thin mattress with a hard surface underneath it. The air was unfamiliar and very cold. Tony managed to squint his eyes open, only for harsh overhead lights to invade his vision and set his head throbbing.Through the disorientation, he suddenly remembered the darts, the horrifying immobility, and the explosion. He’d been abducted.Adrenaline flooded through him this time – adrenaline and fury – and he sat up abruptly only for his entire body to cringe with pain. His head and neck throbbed sharply, and his vision blacked out. He groaned; the sound echoed around him.He cradled his aching head, eyes squeezed shut against the light. Pain sparked up and down the sides of his ribcage, and down his arms, but he took short, careful breaths, and eventually the agony ebbed away. He squinted against the bright light and the pain in his head, grimacing as his vision adjusted.When he managed to look around, he found he was in a goddamn jail cell. “Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he snarled.It was the classic, clichéd set-up; three walls of breeze block, one of evenly-spaced metal bars, with barred door that locked on the outside. The floor was concrete, and he’d been lying on a metal bunk with a thin mattress. There was even a goddamn seatless toilet in the corner.“Oh, you bastards,” he breathed. Clint’s jeers from behind the cell bars at the Raft filled his mind, and the unfairness of it all hit him like a truck. “It wasn’t my goddamn fault, you assholes!” he yelled.They’d taken the gauntlet he’d been wearing, and his watch. His shoes and belt were missing, his overcoat was gone, and so was the jacket from his three-piece suit. Even his pants pockets were empty.This must have been what Natasha meant, when she warned him to watch his back.He clenched his hands, only to feel sparks of pain up and down his arms. He pulled back his torn shirtsleeves to find bandages; he unwrapped the gauze, and stared in growing rage at the stitched cuts. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. They’d taken out his implants.He couldn’t call the suit.Tony studied the cell again, and this time he noticed the camera, black under a protective plastic dome, up in the top corner of his cell. The little red light was on, and it pointed right at him.He clenched his jaw in irritation, and put his bare feet on the freezing cold floor. Keeping one hand on the cold wall, he stood up. His head spun, but the pain stayed within manageable levels. He shuffled carefully over to the bars.He’d already noticed the empty cell opposite his own, but now he discovered another to the right, making a u-shape. To the left, a corridor reached towards a bulky, sealed door. He pressed his face to the bars to try and see anything else, but that seemed to be it; that seemed to be the whole cell block. He wondered where the hell he was; the place seemed dated, and unused, and the locks on the cells were solid and not electronic.The cell opposite had a small, wire-glassed window up high in one corner, letting in just enough light to tell Tony it was daytime. There was no rustling, no shuffling, no breathing. No other prisoners, this time. He was alone.When he listened, he could hear distant, indistinct sounds. There was a car engine revving, growing louder and then softer, perhaps as it drove past whatever building this was. He couldn’t hear any people. He wondered who was watching him on the security cameras. He wondered if it was Clint, and whether he was enjoying it.His head spun with vertigo, and abruptly he felt like he might pass out. He staggered back to the bunk and sat down, cradling head in his hands. He was thirsty, and he’d used up all his energy walking across the cell.His chest ached. Cautiously, he checked his torso, running a careful hand down one side of his ribcage then the other, trying to feel for breaks and weaknesses. His synthetic sternum had survived the fight with Steve mostly intact, but the pressure and repeated impact of the shield had radiated through his ribcage and cracked real bone at the point of connection between the synthetic and organic tissue. It’d felt like a halo of pain around the edges of his chest, but it’d mostly healed since the fight. Now, everything felt incredibly tender, but nothing seemed broken.He took stock. The tranquilisers had given him a hideous headache, but he didn’t feel nauseous or like he’d been poisoned. He could breathe, he wasn’t vomiting. He could also move, and panic so whatever horrible paralytic they’d given him had clearly worn off.It’d been enough to completely incapacitate him, though, suits and all, and anxiety surged in his chest as he wondered what the hell it was. He remembered his inability to panic, and the lack of adrenaline during the abduction; the implants hadn’t registered any change in his autonomic functions, and hadn’t called the suit when he was unable to do it himself. There was nothing on the market that could immobilize someone like that, they would have had to develop it just for him. Who, though? Steve was an international goddamn fugitive; how had he found a chemist so quickly?Which of Tony’s enemies had he teamed up with?He wondered what they were going to do with him. Leave him in the jail cell to rot? To starve to death? Or did they want him for something?He supposed he wouldn’t find out until someone came to see him. Restless, he got to his feet to try to pace the cell again. The pressure in his head throbbed, then subsided, and he carefully went to the cell door again.His mind started ticking over, considering the information he had and trying to predict what they were going to do with him.He wasn’t blindfolded, so they clearly didn’t care if he knew it was them. This place – this cell, this building – seemed permanent, established. Someone had planned for this; they’d brought him here expecting to imprison him. They had to have some kind of long-term goal in mind.The way the op had gone down – fast, violent and very public – told him they were either trying to make a statement, or they didn’t much care about the long-term consequences. His memories were fuzzy, but he was fairly certain they’d killed his security team, blown something up, and taken him out on a chopper. Whatever they wanted, they’d apparently been willing to completely destroy any chance they’d had of returning to the US legally.For a moment, Tony let frustration wash over him. It just felt like such a waste.A memory itched vaguely in the back of his mind. Something during the abduction. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something had been out-of-place.With a frown, Tony paced around the cell again, easing movement back into his muscles and carefully studying every square inch of the space again. He listened to the sounds coming through the walls and ceiling, trying to hear patterns or specifics in case it could give him a clue about where the fuck he was.Then he sat back against the wall and let his anger simmer as he pretended to relax again. He didn’t want his ex-teammates to think he was afraid. He’d wait for them to come and gloat, to show their faces, and tell him what they wanted.Then he’d make them regret it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
His jailers left him alone in the cell for hours. His anger and frustration didn’t wane, but he made a show of relaxing on the bunk. Sometimes he paced, but the whole time he made sure to give every impression that he was just waiting patiently for something to happen.Finally, his patience was rewarded, and there was a screech of metal-on-metal as the cell block door swung open. Tony got slowly to his feet and crossed his arms, bracing himself for Steve’s grave, righteous face.But first through the door was a blonde woman he’d never seen before. She was tall, broad-shouldered, and built like a fighter. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense style, her face was free of make-up, and while she wore street clothes - boots, jeans, a plain henley, and holstered pistols under her arms - something about her screamed military.Abruptly, Tony remembered that he had seen her before; she’d been there during the abduction. She was the out-of-place thing; a face with no known connection to the team.Four guards followed her, and arrayed themselves around her when she positioned herself in front of Tony’s cell to study him.Tony stared back at her, and her guards. No Steve, no Clint, no-one he recognised. The woman drew his eyes like gravity, though. Something about her body language and subtle confidence made him sure she was the leader here.“So this is the invincible Iron Man,” she said eventually, looking him over from head to toe. She had the gall to look unimpressed, which made Tony bristle, but her examination also made him feel weirdly exposed, like she could see all of his insides, everything that made him tick.“Sure, some people call me that,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”“I’m Colonel Marian Lewis,” she replied, still evaluating him with her gaze. “Welcome to my church.”Church? Tony frowned. That didn’t sound right. Quickly, he said, “Gee, thanks, I feel right at home. Enough with the pleasantries, alright? You went to a lot of effort to get me here, so what do you want?”To Tony’s surprise, she said, “You’re going to build something for me.”“Am I.” He studied her and her soldiers critically. He’d been so sure this was about Steve, but Steve would have shown up to argue with him. If Tony had miscalculated, if this wasn’t about Rogers, that opened up a whole range of other possibilities. Organised crime, terrorist cells, remainders of the Ten Rings, or HYDRA. Or, apparently, some kind of church.Who had the manpower, though? Who had the capability to pull off a military operation like that, in a major city?Secretary Ross was definitely a candidate. Since the confrontation in Berlin, Tony had been forced to give testimony to several UN committees, and when he’d described Ross’ management of the situation – like the promise to send a squad with a kill order – he’d seen the ripple of disapproval and condemnation. If they’d already served Ross with notice of his dismissal, or if Ross had thought they were about to…Perhaps Tony should have expected retaliation. Or perhaps this was Ross manufacturing a crisis, to create an opportunity to regain control?“Let me guess,” Tony said to his captors, as an experiment. “Ross couldn’t make it? He’s pulling the strings, right? I know he’s all butt-hurt about getting sidelined, but that’s how it goes when you’re an overreaching asshole.”“General Ross isn’t pulling the strings, Stark,” Lewis said. “I’m not working for anyone.”“Really? Not even the US military, Colonel?” Tony asked pointedly, wondering whether he could believe her. “I’ve still got some contracts with them, you know. If you were even remotely legit, you probably wouldn’t have had to kidnap me.”“This isn’t a military matter,” she said. “It’s not related to your work as Iron Man, either.” She was probably the calmest, most businesslike villain he’d ever come across.“What, then?” Tony asked, mimicking her polite tone.“You’re going to give me the arc reactor,” she began.“Oh, absolutely not,” he interrupted.“You don’t have a choice,” she replied.“Of course I have a choice,” he snapped. “If you want bombs, build them yourself. Or better yet, don’t.” His frustration got the better of him, and he said, “Is that seriously what you brought me here for? Do you have any idea how fucking inconvenient this is? I had shit to do, you know, before you knocked me out and dragged me here.”Infuriatingly, she simply paused, then behaved as though he hadn’t said anything. “I’ll explain your options, shall I?” she said.“Oh, go right ahead,” he said, and crossed his arms. “This should be good.”“As I said, we require your expertise,” she said casually, meeting his eyes. “If you provide your skills and knowledge, you will survive, perhaps even thrive, in our mission.“If you refuse to cooperate, we won’t hesitate to use techniques that will make you more compliant. We’re obeying a higher law than the United States government. This isn’t a military matter, and we’re not operating under the US Army Field Manuals.”A chill went down Tony’s spine.“We can and will hurt you to fulfil our mission, and our souls will be absolved. We can and will refuse you food and water. We can drug you, or we can blind you. We can ensure that your cell remains too cold, and you can’t sleep. There are many things we can do to you that will still leave you with the ability to work or to tell us what we need to know.”Tony tried not to let a single flicker of unease into his expression, but his skin crawled. It felt like the air in his cell had dropped several degrees. His mind whirled; this was going nothing like he’d expected, she wasn’t who he’d expected.“Obviously, Stark, we’d prefer your cooperation,” she added. “Help us complete our mission, and we’ll give you whatever you need to leave here safely.”Tony knew he couldn’t just take her word for it. “But if I don’t, you’ll torture me. Probably even kill me?” he probed, watching her expression.“Yes,” she confirmed, without a visible flicker of unease. “Your death would be one sacrifice among many on the road towards fulfilling our mission.“However, if you assist us and you open yourself to God, there’s no reason he couldn’t welcome even you into His embrace.” Her calm façade was still in place, but Tony thought he could detect signs of genuine belief; a light in her eyes, a touch of reverence in her voice. “We are doing God’s work, Stark. Our mission will save humanity, as part of His Divine Plan.”“Save humanity from what?” he asked carefully.“Themselves. God has shown me that the real war isn’t with other countries, Stark, and it isn’t with aliens.”Beg to differ, Tony thought.“It’s not in the Middle East,” she said, gathering steam. “It’s not about drugs, it’s not between neighbours. The real war isn’t out there, it’s inside all of us. The real war is in people’s souls.“God has shown it to me, again and again,” she promised. “Humanity is weak, jealous and corrupt, and too selfish to realise the potential God has given them. He has become tired of waiting, and He has shown me the way to bring humanity into a state of grace.”“Is that what happened in DC?” Tony asked. “Was that you bringing people to God? How many people did you kill to get to me?”“Very few civilians were harmed,” she said without hesitation. “Your security team had to be killed, of course; all but three of them.”“Three?” Tony said. He wanted to be sick.“Yes, three of them were my people, and part of our glorious mission. They helped me to orchestrate the operation.”“Meaning they led the rest of their team to their deaths,” Tony said. “You call that God’s work?”“Yes, I do,” she confirmed, still so terrifyingly certain. “Every moment of that mission was blessed. We took you in His name, we killed our enemies, and God protected us.”“You protected yourselves!” Tony snapped.At that, she laughed. “We tried to. When we couldn’t, God intervened.”“What does that mean?” he demanded.“We knew about your weapons and tracking devices,” she said. “We knew about your AI. Our men controlled your security. But when we took you, we were pursued sooner than we expected, and we couldn’t escape them until God sent a lightning storm.”“Bullshit,” Tony denied automatically. The weather that day had been freezing but clear, there was no way there’d been a lightning storm.“It’s true,” she said. “There wasn’t meant to be any other air traffic that day, because we sabotaged all the law enforcement aircraft in the area. Two helicopters took off from private airfields in time to follow us, so God sent a lightning storm. It gave us cover, and one of our pursuers was even struck down. Our helicopter was completely unscathed, and we landed safely, with you on board. Without the storm, we might have been captured.”Tony stared at her, disbelieving.“God wanted us to succeed, Stark,” she pointed out. “He wants you to be here, He wants you to tell us everything we need to know. You should allow his will to work through you.”He couldn’t think of a thing to say, and at his continued silence, she eventually turned and left without another word. Her guards followed. The cell block door slammed behind them.The silence they left behind them felt loaded, like an additional threat. Tony’s hands clenched into fists, but he took care to breathe evenly, controlling his reaction in front of the cameras.His mind raced, and he paced away from the bars. He tried to tell himself it could all be a lie, a cover so that he would think he’d been abducted by a cult, and if he escaped he couldn’t turn on his real abductors.But the simplest explanation was definitely that he’d been abducted by a cult. He had to come up with a plan; he had to escape from this place.As he tried to focus, though, he kept thinking about the lightning storm. He didn’t even know if she’d been telling him the truth, but it bothered him. There had been no signs of a storm in the DC skies – not a natural one. It should have been impossible.But he remembered a rapidly-darkening sky over New York. He remembered the way Thor had bottle-necked the portal that day, pulling a lightning storm out of thin air.Tony’s stomach cramped up. Logically, he knew Thor was gone. Logically he knew Thor would never work with these people. But logically wasn't working; the tell-tale signs of panic started to rise in his chest. He began to feel sick, shaky, and his heart-rate accelerated. He backed up until his knees hit the metal edge of the bunk, and he sat down unsteadily.
He was going to die. Thor was working with them, he’d helped them. He’d turned on him, just like the others. What had Tony done, or not done? Had Steve convinced him? Was all of this to punish him some more, for Siberia? Had his friends really done this to him?
No matter how much he told himself to calm down, his vision still started to darken at the edges. Pain crackled along the edges of his broken ribcage, and he pressed a trembling hand over his heart. He folded himself back into the corner, pulling his knees up, trying to make himself into a smaller target.
He was going to die. This cult would kill him and he would never see Pepper or Rhodey or Happy or the kid again. He hadn’t been fast enough, or strong enough, he hadn’t finished his defense systems. The world was unprotected, and when whatever was coming finally arrived, everyone was going to die. Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, the kid. He’d failed. His bots would be alone, FRIDAY would be alone. Tony was going to die and his team had killed him.
Tony couldn’t breathe. Pain arced down his left arm, and his heart thumped so loudly he was sure the entire world could hear it. It felt like his lungs were full of knots. He clenched his hands into fists, but his body shivered with distress and his guts burned with fear. His skin crawled; his muscles felt like they were trying to shift and change places under his skin.The walls closed in, and dark spots intruded on his vision. His mind dissolved into nothing but panic as he pictured over and over again how they would kill him.An eternity of time passed before he could force his body to take a single, controlled deep breath. He exhaled just as slowly, then closed his eyes and dragged his hands up to press the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.He took another deep breath, focusing on the feeling of his lungs expanding in his chest, and counted. He counted again on the exhale, trying to clear his mind of all thoughts. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, digging in with his fingernails just for a change of sensation, even though it made the skin on the back of his neck tighten unpleasantly.He took another deep breath, then another, forcing the air deep into his lungs until he felt lightheaded. He opened his eyes and stared at his own hands, made his fists clench and unclench with his counted breaths. He remembered another technique, and curled his bare toes under his feet, digging them in against the fabric of the mattress, for a change of sensation.His whole body still trembled, he was cold and clammy, and he still felt sure he would die. But he kept breathing, and tried to focus on the feel of his fingers clenching, and the pressure in the muscles of his feet. Eventually, as the symptoms slowly began to subside. They didn’t disappear, anxiety crawled down his spine and through his guts, but he began to feel functional again.Despite the fact that they could probably see him on camera, no-one came in response to his distress. The privacy was something to thank them for, he supposed. Then it occurred to him that if the cameras were networked, they could be broadcasting him live all over the Internet. There was always a chance of that, these days. The whole universe could have just watched him have a panic attack.Fuck it, he decided, regaining a little of his anger. Live broadcast meant FRIDAY would track these motherfuckers down like it was child’s play. Tony should wish they were that stupid.He let his anger propel him up off the bunk, and he paced the cell restlessly. His left arm still trembled, and his legs were unnervingly wobbly, but he ignored it.He would survive this. No matter what it took, he would get free.In the short term, he wished he could get warm. His bare feet were freezing, and cold always made his mindset worse. He wondered how long it’d been. Assholes had taken his watch, and the tiny window across in the other cell only told him it was dark out.He couldn’t believe he’d probably been abducted by a cult. God’s plan, seriously.He needed a real plan, and failing that, he needed information, fast. He needed to know what he was up against, if he was going to get the fuck out before Pepper had time to get really upset with him.As if in response to his thoughts, there was a clang just outside the cell block door, and then it opened with a screech like fingernails on a chalkboard. Panic crawled up his spine again, but he kept his game-face in place for whoever his new visitor was.Three men stepped through the door, one after the other, and Tony’s stomach sank in disappointment.“Morrison.” Tony said, banking his rage under a calm, appropriate-for-the-public facade. “I guess Stark Industries needs to do a better job on its background checks.”Morrison, in the lead, inclined his head in a nod. “Mr Stark.” He’d changed out of the plain black suit he’d worn when he’d been the head of the security team that’d gone with Tony to Washington.Tony recognised the other men, too; Hanson and Walters, although he couldn’t remember their first names. They were all wearing what seemed to be the uniform around here. Jeans or fatigues, boots, t-shirts and flannels, jackets with lots of practical pockets. Lewis’s guards had been similarly dressed.Tony watched them all warily, remembering what he’d read of their personnel reports. Ex- army, private security, no red flags. Morrison was mid-forties, and Hanson and Walters were slightly younger. Pepper, Hill and Happy had all signed off, and they’d all seemed totally normal.Now, they carried rifles, handguns, two-way radios, and they’d fucking kidnapped him. Morrison seemed to be in charge of the other two, who were apparently on guard duty. Morrison didn’t have a rifle; he was carrying a cardboard box instead.As he got close to Tony’s cell, and the other two took up position with their eyes on him and their backs to the cell opposite, Tony said angrily, “So this is a pretty crappy surprise, I gotta say. Not a big fan of being lied to. What are your real names?”“We gave you our real names. Most people call me Hank instead of Henry, though,” Morrison said, and Tony noticed something off. In Washington, Morrison had been the uptight type, unsmiling, with brusque answers to Tony’s questions. Now, his whole body seemed relaxed, and he spoke slower, almost with a slur. “It’s good to meet you properly, Mr Stark,” he added.“Yeah? You met me weeks ago, along with the rest of your team, remember them?” Tony said, as he shot a quick look at the other two. There was a vacancy in their eyes that hadn’t been there before, and their postures were far looser than they had been. Were they all drugged?“Yes, of course I remember them, Mr Stark,” Morrison said calmly, with a half-smile.“You remember leading them to their deaths?” Tony asked. It got their attention; even Hanson and Walters had lost just a little of that vacant look.There had been nine people on Tony’s security detail, and seven on the street with him when he was attacked. According to Colonel Lewis, the other four had been murdered.“They trusted you, you know. The people on that team trusted you to lead them, but you just let them die,” Tony said bitterly. “It’s funny, it seemed like you were friends, all of you. You were a team.”His words rang in his own ears, and he fought down some more nausea. He felt foolish, too; this wasn’t personal. The two situations were clearly nothing alike.“They were nonbelievers,” Morrison said simply, as though that in any way explained or excused the murder of four people.Walters and Hanson had been silent, but with Morrison’s statement, Walter’s posture became slightly less relaxed. He was staring at Tony like if he wasn’t so stoned he’d be glaring.Tony kept an eye on him, but spoke to Morrison.“They were your team,” he said pointedly. “Chang, and Bettermore. Williams, I’m sure his girlfriend’s gonna be really understanding.” They’d all overheard the loved-up phone calls. “What about Dyers and her baby girl? That was her mom you got killed.” The more he remembered about them, the angrier he got.“They died in the service of God’s plan,” Morrison said harshly. “They were an acceptable sacrifice.”For a moment, Tony felt angrier than he’d ever been. Then Morrison abruptly knelt down at Tony’s feet, and Tony jerked back, repulsed.Morrison was just setting the box on the floor. He crouched next to it and began unpacking. “Our mission is going to save so many. I can’t waste my regret on them,” he added.“I won’t waste my regret on you, then,” Tony replied, genuinely disgusted.Walters twitched forwards, and Tony looked up to find him glaring in a strangely unfocused way. He didn’t say anything, so Tony just stared warily back at him.Morrison didn’t pay any attention to his subordinates. He pulled a rolled-up blanket from the box and reached in through the cell bars to place it on the concrete floor. Then he reached back in the box and pulled out a pair of thick grey socks and some laceless canvas sneakers.“TOMS? Seriously?” Tony grimaced, staring at the shoes as Morrison put them through the bars.“One for one, Mr Stark," Morrison said placidly.Tony glared, turned his back and paced away as far as he could. He walked a circuit of the cell, frowning, while Morrison added a few bottles of water, a book, and what looked like MREs to the pile.“God’s plan,” he muttered. “Was cutting me open part of God’s plan?” he asked, turning to show Morrison his bandaged forearm. “What the hell did you do with my implants?”“Dropped them out of the chopper into the Potomac,” Morrison said evenly. "Oh, that reminds me,” He muttered, and pulled some packets of gauze and some antiseptic ointment out of the box and put them through the bars. “You’ll have to care for the cuts yourself.” Then he said, “We flew upriver for a while, so your watch, your shoes, and the weapon on your forearm all went into the water, too.”It was a blow to know his tracking devices had been discarded so quickly – he’d be that much harder for FRIDAY to find – but he didn’t let it show. “They'll find you anyway, you know that, right?” Tony said, allowing some pity into his voice.That actually got a reaction; Morrison snorted derisively. “Let them.”“You suicidal?” Tony asked.“No, Mr Stark,” he said, sitting up to face Tony. “I have faith. God will protect us. We’re doing his work, and he wants us to succeed.” He was clearly still drugged, still too relaxed, but the depth of his conviction was clear.“You can’t seriously believe that,” Tony replied angrily. Faith was one thing, but the kind that drew people into murder and kamikaze attacks? “Rejoin the real world, Morrison. Your entire operation is going to come crashing down. God doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it.”Morrison gave him another pitying look but didn’t respond. He placed one last item through the bars – a twin-pack of toilet paper – and then without another word, he stood and headed for the cell block door. His minions followed, and the three of them filed out.The cell block door slammed behind them.Tony paced a few more times, around and around in his cell, angry but also distracted by how strangely Morrison had behaved. He was still shaky from his earlier panic attack, so after a while he sat on the bunk again.He had to get warm. The cold reminded him of Afghanistan, and now Siberia. He hated to take what these assholes had given him, but better that than stay cold.He got up and went over to the pile of things Morrison had left. As well as everything else, Morrison had added a pile of dark fabric at some point, which turned out to be a wool military sweater. It was black with shoulder and elbow patches, and Tony pulled it on resentfully over his white shirt. It was heavy and warm, and big enough that the sleeves came down over his fingers.Then he knelt and took up the bottle of water, swallowing a few careful mouthfuls. For a second, it felt good on his dry throat, but then it made the air he breathed in even colder. He shivered, put the water down with shaking hands and breathed carefully and deliberately for a few moments. He refused to think about Colonel Lewis’s threats to keep him cold; he refused to think about Siberia, or winter in the caves in Afghanistan.The socks were wool too, and a little loose. The shoes fit perfectly, but Tony decided not to let that creep him out too much. The book turned out to be a copy of the Bible.Tony picked up the water bottle, MRE and blanket, kicked the wrapped toilet roll over towards the toilet, left the rest where it was, and retreated to his corner. He wrapped the blanket around himself for extra warmth.After he’d huddled for a while, heat finally began to seep back into his limbs. He managed another shaky mouthful of water then studied the MRE warily. He knew he should force himself to eat, and this looked like a real US Army MRE - the branding and stamped codes looked official. Then he found ‘US Government Property, Commercial resale is unlawful’ printed down one side. It could be another sign of official military involvement, but Colonel Lewis and her crew could easily have stolen them.Tony waited impatiently for the MRE to cook, then looked grimly at the walls of his cell as he chewed, barely tasting the food. He was exhausted and wrung out, but his mind was working again.He tried to think about the facts again, about the information he had so far. What did he know?He’d been abducted by a religious group with deep ties to the military and an as-yet unknown plan from God that apparently involved the arc reactor. It could be a bomb, a virus, or some kind of weapon, but they needed him for it, for building or for information.It also seemed more and more unlikely that Steve and the others were involved in this. Tony was reluctant to assume he knew anything about how Steve Rogers would behave in any given situation anymore, but the more he thought through the whole scenario, trying to be objective about all the angles and variables, the more certain he became that if Steve had decided to punish Tony for the conflict over Barnes, he wouldn’t get someone like Colonel Lewis to do it for him, and he would’ve fronted up to Tony’s cell in person by now to accuse him of things.It didn’t really make Tony feel better - the Steve-related knot in his stomach hadn’t untwisted in weeks - but he forced himself to move on and focus on the facts again.He couldn’t discount Ross’s involvement. He might not be running things, but they had far too much information about Tony, and they had to have gotten it from somewhere. Unless Ross actually showed up, though, all Tony could do was keep an eye out for signs of his influence and then launch an investigation later, after he’d escaped. Better to keep his energy focused on the problems in front of him.During his escape, there had been a storm. Tony felt his panic simmer again, at the idea that Thor could have turned on him, but he managed to control it and keep thinking. Three possibilities: Thor was working with these freaks for some as-yet unknown reason, the storm and lightning had been a coincidence that’d accidentally reinforced their conviction that they had God in their corner, or Lewis was lying about the storm. But again, unless Thor actually showed up or the storm became important, it wasn’t relevant now.Tony considered the fact that they’d dumped all of his trackers very close to the site of his abduction, and what that could mean for his rescue. He decided there was still a chance that FRIDAY could find him, especially if the Vision had been able to get back from Europe quickly, but if all of Tony’s redundancy of tracking devices had been ditched when Morrison said they'd been ditched, it was probably going to take a while.The thought of spending any length of time in this cell under the Colonel’s thumb made his skin crawl. He told himself it was just like Afghanistan; he had to be patient, to pretend to comply, and either find a way to escape, build a way to escape, or get a message out to his friends. He just had to stay alive long enough. At least they wanted him for something, so they probably wouldn’t kill him too quickly.Sighing, Tony piled up the wrappers and packaging of his finished meal, and put the trash by the cell door. Sadly, the MRE’s spoon was too flimsy to be made into a functioning lock pick.He paced the length of the cell, studying the walls, the corners, the joints and fittings.Hours passed. Tony waited, pacing, trying not to be driven mad by the cold and quiet, thinking of all the things he could do to escape. No-one came in.Abruptly the lights flicked off, except for one still on over by the main door. Tony bristled - were they giving him a fucking bedtime? Seriously?But he tempered his fury, went back to the bunk, and wrapped the blanket a little bit tighter around himself. He glared out into the dark, mind ticking over with information and plans.He could play the game, he could pretend to cooperate. He could fool them, and then, right when they least expected it, he’d make the regret they ever even met him.
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Tony held his hands over his face, but the shield slammed down on his chestplate instead. He stared up at Steve as the man he’d thought was his friend raised the shield and slammed it back down, again and again. It smashed into the chestplate like a sledgehammer, crushing his ribs.
The arc reactor’s steady light stuttered, then went out. The chestplate shattered and fell apart, disintegrating into pieces of useless metal and wires that tumbled away from Tony’s body. The arc reactor was gone, leaving a gaping hole in Tony’s chest, exposing his red insides to the freezing air of the Siberian bunker.
Then the shrapnel started to grow, blossoming out of Tony’s heart like a sharp, deadly flower, framed by the jagged bones of his broken ribs. Steve watched with a satisfied nod as shards of hot metal spiked upwards, and then he got up and left Tony there.
Tony stared down at his own heart as it struggled to beat, as pieces of shrapnel sliced through muscle and ventricle like so many scalpels. His lungs strained for air, struggling to expand around their metal invaders, and Tony got colder and colder.
Then blood started to flow out of him, pouring red over his skin and up into his mouth, drowning him, and Tony coughed, then woke, still coughing and frantic to free himself from the tangled blankets. His chest heaved - he grabbed at the front of his shirt, fingers scrabbling to free his heart from shrapnel.But his chest was fine; his skin was scarred but intact. There was no arc reactor there anymore. No shield, no armor, no Steve. No shrapnel, just scar tissue.Present reality rushed in, and Tony remembered where he was - when he was. He’d stretched out on the bunk during the night, and he must have fallen asleep. He pressed his hands over his eyes and deliberately slowed his breathing, biting back the urge to cry out in frustration and fury.Then he quickly checked the cell around him, checked the hallway. But no, he was still alone. The cell block was empty, apart from him. He exhaled slowly.The cell block’s main lights were still off, but hallway light was still on, so it wasn’t totally dark. The tiny window in the cell opposite showed darkness outside. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping - he hadn’t even meant to fall asleep at all - and he wouldn’t sleep again.His throat clicked as he swallowed, so he sat up and drank some water. The air in the cell was cold and still, everything was silent, no cars, no voices. He wondered what time it was - early morning? Late at night?He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to clear his mind and regulate his breathing. Grief felt heavy in his chest, but at least dreaming about Steve made a break from the nightmares he’d been having about his mother, trapped in the car, begging, as Barnes crushed her throat.The fluorescent lights above him flickered on. Tony opened his eyes, on alert, and the door screeched open.Colonel Lewis came in alone this time. Tony watched her warily as she walked closer.“Good morning, Stark,” she said politely, as she stopped on the other side of the bars.Tony stared at her, realizing she’d probably watched him on the cameras, watched his nightmare. His guts twisted at the invasion of privacy.He realised she was actually waiting for him to respond. “Hi, I guess,” he said, making sure it dripped with sarcasm.“You seemed to wake violently. Do you have nightmares often?”“Not really any of your business,” Tony muttered.“Does it affect the quality of your work?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.Tony eyed her. “Not usually,” he admitted.“Good,” she nodded. She folded her arms and studied him, making no attempt to disguise her scrutiny.Tony put up with it for as long as he could, then said casually, “So, arc reactors, huh? What exactly are you trying to do with them?”Her scrutiny intensified, but then she seemed to come to a decision. She paced in front of his cell a little, and said, “God wants us to make a miracle.”“Well then, I can see why you needed me,” he quipped. “I make miracles every day.”She gave him an unimpressed look. “A real miracle, Stark. Not a metaphor.”“Excuse you, all of my miracles are totally real,” he muttered, then said, “What kind of miracle are you looking for, specifically?”Colonel Lewis paused, studying him again like she was assessing his worth, then asked, “What do you know about angels?”Tony waited a beat, but she appeared to be totally serious. Dozens of flippant remarks sprang to mind, but he managed to keep it to, “Uh, what?”“Angels, Stark,” she said impatiently. “God’s first children, his army. What do you know about them?”“They get to be top of the Christmas tree?” Tony said, raising an eyebrow. In his head, he added, they’re lightweight, because they don’t exist.Her eyes narrowed a little, but she refused to let him rile her. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by your ignorance. Very few humans are permitted to have contact with the divine, and certainly someone like you would never be admitted to God’s grace in your current state.” Tony fought the urge to roll his eyes. She added calmly, “I’ve seen them, however, and God has shown me how to use their light.”He managed to keep his expression under control and said, “And what does that mean, exactly?”She had a knowing, smug sort of look on her face as she said, “It means that you’re going to help us build a miracle that harnesses their power.”“Angel power?” Tony confirmed. He felt like the words didn’t even belong in his mouth. This had to be a joke, or a nightmare. He was about to wake up again, right?“Yes,” she said, and her conviction and faith shone out as she added, “Science and God’s grace can blend to create a moment that will change the human race forever.”Tony tried not to let his reaction to that show on his face. Information, he needed information, and for that, he needed her to talk. “Okay…so tell me about it. You want to build an arc reactor, but what do you want it to do?”She shook her head. “We’ve already built an arc reactor, Stark. We need you to finish it for us. Then, it will power our holy device.”Tony frowned. Six months earlier, two techs from the Malibu site, formerly on the arc reactor project. One disappeared, and the other was found dead. Pepper’d warned him one of the many groups opposed to arc reactor tech might be escalating, but then nothing else happened, no-one claimed credit and the cops hadn’t found any leads.“Did you kill them? The scientists in California?” he asked, watching the Colonel closely.“Yes,” she confirmed. She seemed a little surprised that he’d put it together. “After an interrogation. They didn’t have the information we needed, but the second one admitted there were gaps in the designs, that you’d kept information about some of the components a secret even from your own scientists. That’s when we knew we needed you.”Tony clenched his teeth and looked away. Guilt flooded through him; that took the body count up by two more people, all to get to him.The Colonel noticed his expression, because she said, “It’s God’s plan, Stark. Everything we do is to fulfill His mission.”“Even kill people,” Tony clarified.“Yes, when God requires it,” she said, showing no remorse.Tony swallowed down bile. “And now you think I’ll just build you a bomb?”“Our holy device is not a bomb,” she said, sounding impatient that she had to tell him again. “Our device will save the world, save humanity.”“I don’t build weapons anymore,” Tony said. He felt cold all over.“We both know that’s not true,” she said pointedly.The words hung in the air between them. Tony just stared at her.“I have things to do. Think on what I’ve said,” she advised him. “Think about your soul, Stark. Think about the world you’d like to leave for future generations. What we’re doing here will change things for the better. The possibilities are extraordinary.”Tony said nothing and watched with wide eyes as she left.****“Got the time?” Tony asked. Morrison was back, bringing two MREs, a toothbrush and a change of clothes – jeans, a flannel shirt and undershirt, warmer than the remains of his suit. Tony was circling in his cell, pacing as his mind raced.Morrison checked his watch. “It’s just after eight AM.” The Colonel’s visit had been one, maybe two hours earlier.“What time was it when you brought all that stuff yesterday?” Tony said.“Around nine,” Morrison said. He wasn’t slurring anymore, but he was still unnaturally calm and relaxed.“Right,” Tony said, and watched as Walters carried a portable radiator past his cell and into the cell to his right. He couldn’t see, but he heard something switch on. Walters came out of the cell and locked it behind him, keeping the electronics well out of Tony’s reach.For a moment, Tony considered striking up a conversation, to probe Morrison’s dedication and see if there was a weakness he could exploit. But Morrison had been high-ranking military before he’d switched to private security, and protecting Tony had been one of his first jobs. He’d clearly burned his entire career for this cult, just to help them get to Tony.No, if Tony could find any kind of ally here, it wouldn’t be Morrison.***That afternoon the cell block door screeched open again. The block had warmed up considerably; the radiator was powerful, it seemed, and eased most of the biting cold out of the air. Tony had been pacing, planning his escape, and when the door opened he plastered a bored expression on his face and shoved his hands in his pockets.Morrison appeared, flanked by Hanson and two other guards. “Mr Stark,” he announced, “It’s time for church.”“Church? Seriously?” he said reflexively, then added, “I suppose I don’t have a choice.”“You should feel honored,” Morrison said. “Outsiders don’t usually get to receive revelation.” They unlocked the cell door as he said this, and then Hanson held up a pair of handcuffs. Tony bit his tongue, to hold in a jab about what an honor it was to be imprisoned.At least church meant getting out of the cell. It meant new information, like building layouts and possibly even exit routes. It could mean learning more about exactly what flavor of crazy these people were.“Let’s go,” Morrison said. They let him out of the cell and they walked him towards the cell block door.Tony fought hard against the urge to run. He wanted to escape so badly he could taste it. But he was all too aware of all the things he didn’t yet know. The size of the building, how many of the Colonel’s followers were out there, where the fuck this place even was. He had to be smart; he had pretend to cooperate until he got out into an open space, big enough to fight in.This wasn’t the moment, so he let them fall in behind him, he let Morrison walk ahead and Hanson at his side, and he ruthlessly suppressed any hint that he wanted to start fighting his way out.“So church, huh? You guys don’t just go on Sundays?” Tony said, projecting cooperation even as he quickly scoped out the cell block door – reinforced with steel – and the guard station – video surveillance equipment, two sets of headphones on the desk. They had audio on him, then, as well as cameras.“We go to church whenever Colonel Lewis offers us Revelation,” Morrison told him.This time, Tony heard the capital letter, and wondered what the strange emphasis on it meant. It also occurred to him to wonder whether ‘church’ was really going to be church or if it was some kind of horrible euphemism.They led him down a long featureless corridor, keeping him boxed in. The corridor opened out into a dingy lobby, with an elevator bank on one side and double doors on the other, and Tony’s heart sank. Six more guards waited for them, all heavily armed, some with what looked like dart guns. He could still fight them, and they wore so many weapons he’d be sure to grab at least one before he was overpowered, but he knew all it’d get him was drugged unconscious again.He clenched his jaw, let them surround him in again, and walked with them past the elevators and into a fire exit. They went up a small flight of stairs and through a fire door, and suddenly Tony was outside.He squinted against the brightness of the icy winter sunlight and shivered in the cold air. The sky overhead was clear blue, but there was a layer of snow on the ground. He glanced around, trying to get an idea of the size of the operation, only to take a longer look as he realized how much trouble he was in.This was no minor camp of weirdos. The building he’d just left was brick and overlooked the rest of the compound from the upper part of a steep hillside. The compound swept down the hill, with other buildings at intervals between the trees and muddy wheel tracks crisscrossing through it. There were jeeps and 4x4s parked alongside various buildings.High cyclone fencing topped with razor wire surrounded it all. Tony couldn’t see any gates, and he could tell he’d need equipment to scale the fences. Even getting to the fence could be a problem, since there were rudimentary guard towers equipped with searchlights at several points along the boundary.The forest beyond the compound was thick and uncleared. Tony didn’t know much about forestry but if forced to guess, he would have put his location somewhere in the northern United States, possibly Canada. The forested hill swept down to meet a dark lake, which looked iced over. Beyond the lake there was another forested shore, and then honest-to-god mountains in the distance. He couldn’t see any distant signs of civilisation.Strangely, the whole compound was almost deserted. There were signs of recent activity everywhere - abandoned tools, pick-up trucks half-full of materials and equipment – but no people. Tony caught a little movement, as guards patrolled around a large shed-like structure at the bottom of the hill, and he wondered about the extra cyclone fencing and razor wire.“What do you think, Mr Stark?” Morrison asked. “We’ve worked hard on this place.”He had to clear his throat before he could speak, but he managed to sound sarcastic when he said, “Oh yeah, it looks great. Bit cold for my tastes, the TOMS aren’t really gonna cut it long-term,” he added, with a casual gesture towards his feet, but his guards had already taken him by the elbows to lead him out into the snow, onto a muddy path leading uphill.The only building higher up than Tony’s prison was the church.***The white church stood high on the hill, facing out so it watched over the entire compound. Built of brick, its steeple was silhouetted against the dark forest behind it, and although it looked beautiful against the forest and sky, it appeared ominous to Tony.His guards led him through the main doors, and Morrison followed him in. Tony noticed the minions didn't disarm themselves; apparently high-powered rifles were accepted at this house of worship.Inside, the air was warm and close. The pews were full, and Tony's guess would put the congregation at well over a hundred people. They had been shuffling and muttering among themselves, but when the church door closed behind Tony, everyone craned to look at him and a hush fell.He immediately straightened and put his chin up, relaxing his expression and hoping he looked unruffled. His guards encouraged him up the main aisle, and as he walked he studied the people as much as they studied him.They all looked very normal. No uniforms, just jeans, camo, warm jackets. No weird clothes or haircuts. Most of them were young, in their twenties or very early thirties, but he spotted a couple of grey heads of hair. A lot of them had that military smell; something about the posture, and the tilt of the jaw. His quick scan of the crowd revealed no children.Tony's guards brought him right to the front, to the first pew, and sat him down on the aisle. Morrison sat right next to him. Tony glanced back at the doors as he casually rearranged his handcuffs. There were now over a hundred armed people between him and freedom. This was also not his moment.When he faced front again and looked up, he noticed how bare the church was. There was a big cross of carved wood, and there was a white cloth draped on the plain stone altar just under it, but there were no other decorations. The windows were all clear glass. Tony was no expert on church, but wasn't there supposed to be more stuff? Cups and candles, and gold things? Flowers?He frowned, looking around again, but at that moment, Colonel Lewis came from a door to one side of the altar. At first sight of her, he could practically feel the congregation snapping to attention.She paused before she addressed the crowd. She was dressed normally, no robes or vestments, and her hands were empty. Her eyes were solemn as she looked around at everyone and said, “Welcome, brothers and sisters.”“We are welcome,” the congregation answered, and Tony almost jumped out of his skin at the unexpected swell of noise.“These are important days for us,” Lewis went on. “As you know, the last trumpet promised in Corinthians has already sounded. The final battle has been fought to a draw, and we are left with what remains."“The human race has been spiralling into chaos for a long time. Everywhere there is division, and corruption, and injustice. We’ve all seen it.” The congregation murmured its agreement, but she didn’t slow. “We’ve seen it on the news, on the internet, around every corner.“I know I've seen the opposite as well," she went on. "I've seen moments of breathtaking bravery and selflessness. I've been brought to tears by the love and nobility I've witnessed. I’ve seen the face of God when humans are at their most desperate, at their most loving and unselfish. But these moments are few and far between. Too often, the human soul struggles to find the path.“But we are not lost, not yet. God has shown us how to restore ourselves. He has shown us the way.”“He has shown us the way,” the congregation responded.“Even now,” she went on, “He gives us the tools to restore the human soul to righteousness and peace, and to make ourselves better than we’ve ever been. We can change the tide, we can give our people the gift of faith and certainty. God wills it.”“God wills it!” they all said.“Today, we are all imperfect and weak. We are restless and hopeless, full of pain, and fear, and doubt. We are divided, and frightened, and ashamed. But it’s how we were made. And now God has shown us how to make ourselves better. He has shown us how to remake the human race in a single day.”"Once the weakness is burned away, our souls will be bright and clean and pure. No one will be outcast anymore, no one will be hurt and despised, and you, brothers and sisters, will be known as the ones who saved all of us.” Her promises, worked on the crowd, and Tony could almost feel the longing and hope reflected back at her. “The human race will become better. Humanity will enter a new age of righteousness and peace. We will finally become what God wants us to be.”“It will be a miracle.”Her final words rang in Tony's ears. She held the crowd in the palm of her hand, and Tony could understand why. Her voice was beautiful and resonant; her expression was captivating. She was magnetic, and persuasive – everything a cult leader should be.She paused for a moment, letting the message sink in for her followers, then said, "Now, my friends, my brothers and sisters, prepare yourselves for revelation. Prepare your hearts to receive God's blessings."She lowered her head in prayer, holding her hands out in appeal, and the entire congregation seemed to hold their breath in anticipation. Tony prepared himself to sit through whatever group prayer was about to happen.Suddenly the temperature dropped. Pressure built until Tony’s ears wanted to pop, and then Lewis raised her head and opened her eyes. Tony gasped in shock – her eyes emitted a bright, yellow-white light.As he watched, the light flowed outwards, radiating down through her throat and chest and into her body, making her skin glow from within. It started emanating from her body into the air until she disappeared from view. The wave of light gained speed and fullness as it swept across the floor towards the congregation, who waited in ecstatic silence.Tony leapt to his feet, determined to run.He made it all of three steps before Morrison tackled him to the floor. Tony fought back, shoving onto his side and elbowing Morrison in the gut, but Morrison overpowered him, and pinned Tony down on his back on the floor of the church, one arm across his throat in a controlled choke hold. No matter how Tony struggled, he couldn’t get free.His fear spiked again, but then he felt something at the tips of his fingers, just barely in reach…Then the wave of light flooded over them, and it was painless. Tony’s senses were overcome, and his panic and rage was suddenly swept away by an overwhelming sensation of comfort, warmth, and joy.***In the aftermath of his attendance at church, Tony lay on the bunk in his cell. He felt calm, suffused with an alien sensation of peace and stillness. He hadn’t felt so relaxed in years, or possibly ever. His whole brain felt drenched in warmth and endorphins, and was uncharacteristically placid and slow-moving. All his anger, fear and exhaustion had been swept away.He wondered idly whether Colonel Lewis was a mutant, or whether she had some kind of metahuman ability like Wanda. Whatever she’d done to him, it was powerful. He felt loved. He wondered if this was what had been wrong with Morrison the previous day – if this was the wave he’d been riding that’d made him so zoned out.Tony didn’t feel bad about the pen he’d managed to steal from Morrison during their struggle, though. It’d fallen practically into his hand right before the wave of light hit them, and he’d had the necessary seconds to shove it into his sleeve, trapping it between the shirt cuff and his skin. Somehow, in his hypnotised state, he’d managed to decide not to let them find it on him. He’d tucked it carefully into the front of his pants during the walk downhill.Now, though, he didn’t even really want to use it. He felt too relaxed, too pacified, too willing to ride the wave of calm into whatever came next. He hid the pen between the mattress and the wall, figuring he’d think about it later.The pacifying calm lasted for over twenty-four hours, until early the next evening. He slept, he barely paced, he could barely think. And the whole time, he didn’t notice even a niggle of fear.But when it wore off, his anxiety and anger swelled abruptly. By the time Morrison delivered an evening MRE, Tony felt the full weight of horror at what they’d done to him. They’d manipulated his brain; he hated it when people did that. He felt more violated than he had when they’d kidnapped him.Did they have some kind of device? Had there been some kind of drug released into the atmosphere? Or was it her? What abilities could she have, to influence so many people at once?Tony did his best to hide his disgust from Morrison and the others. He considered the pen, still hidden between the mattress and the wall. Should he wait until he knew more about the compound, or should he just get out of the cell and fight his way through the soldiers? Surely he could find a truck or something once he was out, and get the hell away from Colonel Lewis before she could do it again.His skin was still crawling hours later, and every time he closed his eyes he saw that bright white light, felt that horrifyingly calm happiness. Well past midnight, he made a snap decision.Carefully, he retrieved the pen from its hiding place and sat up with the blanket draped over his shoulders. He stared into space, hoping it just looked like sleeplessness; meanwhile in his lap, covered by the blanket, his fingers worked at the pen, picking it apart for pieces to use on the cell’s lock.Suddenly he heard wolves.For a mad instant, he thought it was alarms, that they’d made him and they were about to come streaming in to kill him for stealing a pen. Then he realised it was howling, long, mournful howls filtering in from the darkness outside, like the sound of his nightmares made real.The noise was loud enough to set his hair on end, arousing some kind of dormant, biological urge to flee from predators. He had no idea whether the animals were inside the compound’s fences or not. He felt surrounded, like they were hunting him and he wouldn’t be able to escape.After a tense moment, though, he got control of himself and began to work on the pen again. If there were wolves loose inside the compound, he’d deal with it once he got out of the cell block. Until then, there were fences, thick walls and iron bars between him and the animals.Eventually he had two workable tools from the pen’s fragments. Pretending to ignore the camera up in the corner of the cell, he got up with the blanket still draped over his shoulders and paced the cell. Then he shuffled over to the door. He leaned on the bars, pressing his head as far as he could, as though he was looking at the light above the cell block door.Meanwhile, one of his hands dropped to the lock and traced the keyhole, getting acquainted.He dropped his other hand down to the lock – he couldn’t pick a lock single-handedly, which was something he really should work on – but he worked fast and tried to angle his body to block the camera from his hands.He almost had it when the lights sputtered on. He worked faster, but the fucking cell block door screeched open.“Drop it, Stark!” yelled the first guard through the door. His rifle was up and pointed at Tony’s chest.“Fuck you!” he yelled back.The lock clunked, successfully picked. The blanket dropped from Tony’s shoulders as he shoved the door open, ready to take on the guard, banking on the fact that they’d be reluctant to kill their prize prisoner.Then a second guard pulled a dart gun from a holster at his hip and shot Tony in the shoulder with a tranquiliser.“Oh, God dammit!” Tony protested. “You people can’t keep me here—“ He lost the words he was about to say as his consciousness lurched. Paralysis set in. The room swam sickeningly around him as he fell to his knees. The floor rose up to meet him.It all happened just like before, on the street in Washington; no adrenalin, no racing heartbeat, no anxiety cramping his stomach. None of his limbs would work, and all he could do was stare at what was in front of him. The last thing he saw were boots, closing in and surrounding him. Then blackness.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The cell block was empty and dark when he woke. He had the same monstrous headache he’d had the first time, compounded by the fact that they’d left him on the fucking floor. His neck ached, his back ached. The ceiling above him was the worst thing he’d ever seen.He was back in his cell. They’d rolled him onto his back and probably dragged him just inside the cell door so they could lock it again. Tony stared at the ceiling and weighed up the idea of remaining where he was against the effort it would take to get up and get to the bunk.Eventually he managed to move his aching body and get up. When he reached the bunk, he found the thin foam mattress was gone, and so was the blanket. He lay down anyway, out of desperation; his head was pounding, he couldn’t stand up without shaking, and the metal bunk was fractionally warmer than the concrete.The pieces of the pen were gone, of course, and so were all the other things he’d had in his cell. The water bottle, the MREs, the shoes, the bandages for his arms. The only things they hadn’t taken away was the sweater he was still wearing, and the toilet paper. It did feel like the heater was still running in the other cell, so he supposed that was a good thing.As he thought over what’d happened, he wanted to kick himself for his stupidity. He should have kept the pen until he knew when the guards changed over; until he had more of a plan than ‘fight his way out in the dark, alone against an armed cult’. He’d wasted the opportunity, and worse, now they were likely to strip-search him anytime he’d had any chance to steal more tools. Goddamnit.At least now he knew that the guards had both the means and the permission to tranquilise him. He also knew they were actually watching the cameras, all night, at all times. They were alert; they would quickly respond to anything he did. If he wanted to try again, he’d need a big distraction.He lay there, headache pounding, cursing his lack of impulse control. He could hear sounds from outside, daytime sounds of cars and people. He waited for Lewis to come, or Morrison, and tell him what they would inflict on him for punishment.But the lights didn’t go on all day, and no-one came. No-one brought food. Tony waited in the dim light, nursing his hangover and thirst.After a while, he forced himself up, to walk movement back into his limbs and test his balance. The hangover progressed like it had before and he began to feel better, if still desperate for water.Eventually the light outside faded, and the cells became dark.Once again, the wolves came out in force, much earlier than they had the night before. They howled all night, and as Tony listened, it felt like the sound invaded him, drawing him out into the dark outside. He tried to ignore it, tried all the breathing exercises he could remember to stay calm. He ended up pacing his cell restlessly, wishing for his armor, wishing he could stop thinking about food, wishing the walls would stop closing in on him.Finally, with one last, long, lonely howl, the sounds died away. In the silence, Tony shivered.The next day, the lights in the cell block went on, and Tony blinked to clear black spots from his vision. The cell block door creaked open and Morrison came in, followed by the usual two guards.He stopped in front of Tony. After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Did you think it would work?”Tony just shrugged. “You didn’t expect me to just wait around for whatever you’ve got planned, did you?”Morrison shook his head. “I hope it was worth it. Colonel Lewis hoped you’d be more cooperative. She’ll visit later, she has a question for you.”Tony bristled. “Can’t wait,” he replied sarcastically.“I suggest you behave,” Morrison advised ominously.Tony spent the day pacing the cell. He felt stretched thin with exhaustion and anger, crawling with nerves, and for some reason he couldn’t stop his brain from imagining what it would be like to be buried alive. They didn’t bring him any food, and his empty stomach didn’t improve his mood.The Colonel didn’t show up until late afternoon.“Morrison said you had a question for me?” he said brusquely, without waiting for any of her bullshit politeness.“Yes, I wanted to know how you were feeling,” she said.After a beat, Tony said, “That’s it? How am I feeling?” He not to sound too incredulous.“You received revelation the other day, Stark. How did it make you feel?” The way she studied him with detached interest reminded him of doctors he’d hated.“Great,” he snapped. “Just awesome. What the hell was it?”“It was the word of God,” she replied, still calm. “I opened myself up to him, and then I shared the revelation with the congregation, including you.”He wanted to sneer in her face, but he restrained himself and paced away from her instead.“Did you feel any ill effects?” she probed. “You slept soundly that night, but what about afterwards? You tried to escape,” she chided.“No shit,” Tony snapped. “You brainwashed me. How do people normally take it?”“They see God, and they are grateful,” she told him with an arched eyebrow. “I wasn’t sure how it would affect someone who wasn’t prepared,” she admitted.“Wow, so you did it anyway?” he said. “If it’d fried my brain, you could’ve kissed your miracle goodbye.”“God wouldn’t allow that to happen,” she said condescendingly.“You sure of that? Even I’ve heard about those mysterious ways of his,” Tony snapped.The silence stretched for a moment, until Lewis said, dangerously quiet, “Do you think you know God better than I do, Stark?”Tension suddenly crackled through the air. Tony narrowed his eyes at her and, sensing the trap, stayed silent.“I can see that you’re rejecting the salvation I’ve offered you. That’s fine, it’s your choice to remain a nonbeliever and suffer in hell when your life is finished,” she said, her eyes flashing with the first anger he’d seen from her. “But do not talk down to me. You might be used to being the smartest man in the room, but your ego means nothing here.“If you can’t be saved, then you’re just a tool. If we break you or you stop working, God will provide us with another. Don’t think for a minute that you’re not completely expendable, is that clear?” she demanded.Tony weighed up his options with a sick feeling in his stomach. The smart thing to do would probably be to beg forgiveness, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words.“Is that clear?” she demanded again.“Sure, it’s clear,” he snapped. “You might wanna re-think the freaky brainwashing, that’s all. Just some advice.”She pulled the dart gun from the holster on her hip and shot him in the chest.“This is my house, Stark,” she told him, as she watched his legs give way. “Until God chooses to raise you above me, do not presume to tell me what to do.”***Once again, Tony woke on the floor with a hideous headache. As he dragged himself back to his bare bunk, this time he wondered about the cumulative effect of the tranquilisers in that damn gun. His heart seemed okay so far, but nerve damage could be a possibility.It’d serve them right if they came in one day to find his cold, stiff corpse, but it galled him to think that if they did, they probably wouldn’t care. Lewis would just call it an act of God and they’d find some other way to finish their little project.But he hadn’t died this time, and he was alone for now, so he used the time to think.The first thing he had to admit was that he’d been stupid again. He should have cooperated, should have flattered her, talked his way out of trouble. He should have compromised. He couldn’t work out what it was about her intense faith that raised his hackles and made him want to start a fight.He had to start being smarter. They’d punish him, he’d act appropriately cowed, and then at some point they’d put their plan into motion and let him work on the arc reactor.And then he’d make them regret it.The daylight outside slowly faded. The radiator stayed on, so Tony stayed warm. Morrison brought a half-empty bottle of water and exactly two slices of Wonder bread, but nothing else. Overnight, Tony paced his bare cell, thinking of ways to escape, ways to sabotage the arc reactor, until he grew too tired, too hungry and light-headed. He lay down on the horrible metal bunk and practiced breathing exercises to stave off the panic crawling around in his guts.The night dragged on, and he couldn’t fall asleep. Afghanistan was behind his eyelids every time he closed his eyes. He was hungry, he couldn’t stop thinking about cheeseburgers and fresh fruit. He also couldn’t stop worrying about Pepper and Rhodey and whether they were safe; whether the world was safe without Iron Man.The next morning, the lights went on. The cell block door opened, and Tony watched warily as Morrison approached the cell bars.“Well, Mr Stark?” he prompted.Tony flicked an eyebrow upwards. “Well what?”Morrison looked down his nose at Tony. “Do you wish to apologise?”Tony clenched his jaw, trying to suppress his immediate reaction.On seeing him hesitate, Morrison grew impatient. “You have no idea what a privilege it is for you to even be here,” he said. “You’ve been honored, and you have no appreciation for it.”Fury flared in Tony, and he said, “Honored? Because you killed people to get to me?” He got up off the bunk. “Because you all abducted me and drugged me and you’re keeping me here, and now she’s ordered you to starve me? I’m sorry, which part of that am I supposed to feel honored by?”“She is the Word of God in human form, walking this earth,” Morrison bellowed. “You should feel grateful to breathe the same air as her.”For a moment, Tony couldn’t back down. Then he swallowed his pride and engaged his common sense. “Look,” he said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Look, I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t mean to offend her. She’s right,” he said, lying through his teeth and hating every second, “I’ve got an ego, you know, I’m used to getting my own way, that’s all.”Morrison glared at him contemptuously, and Tony tried to look a little more apologetic. “It’s hard to be in the cell all the time,” he added, taking a gamble on Morrison being at least slightly reasonable. “You’re keeping me in here against my will. It’s hard to feel particularly privileged.”Morrison’s glare faded a little, but he still insisted, “She’s the reason that humanity will be saved. The very least she deserves from you is your respect.”These people were lunatics, Tony thought, even as he nodded, conciliatory, “Yeah, okay, I’ve got it. I’ll do better.” He kept his body language open and projected contrition. Morrison studied him and frowned – for a moment, he didn’t back down, and Tony thought they might be at an impasse – but then he nodded.Morrison gestured to the minion behind him, who left while Tony attempted to remain calm under Morrison’s irritated scrutiny. Fortunately, the minion returned with two MREs and two full bottles of water.“Don’t eat it all at once or you’ll be sick,” was Morrison’s parting advice, as he and the guards filed out and slammed the door.Tony exhaled a long breath, trying to calm his rage. He plastered on a compliant, grateful look, and took up one of the MREs.Underneath his neutral mask, he was thinking over what he’d learned.For all Lewis’s threats in the beginning, he’d challenged her and received only some unconsciousness and a few days with low food and water. They could have actually hurt him, but they hadn’t even taken the heater away. He supposed they were probably saving the real punishment for him if he refused to cooperate on the miracle.Lucky for them, he had no intention of refusing. And they were going to need his help. The scientists Lewis killed had told her the truth; he’d kept secrets.It was something Stark Industries had been doing since the beginning. His father, paranoid about sabotage and enemy interference during the Cold War, had always kept a few details inside his own head, and made sure certain components couldn’t be reverse-engineered. Blueprints were always made in pieces, never with an entire design in one document, and some of those pieces never circulated beyond a handful of trusted staff. Some of the blueprints were even deliberately misleading, with false parts and specs written in code.Tony had continued the tradition automatically, so the arc reactor design had always been partly obfuscated, even after Obie’s theft. Vanko’s blueprints had been almost complete, but not entirely, and he’d apparently been able to get by without Stark Industries components. Since then, Tony had even gone as far as allowing only his own bots to manufacture some key parts, and some of those parts had self-destructs built in, in case of tampering.At various points, he’d wondered if he was being overly paranoid. Now that it was keeping him alive, and keeping Lewis’s church from building their bomb, he had to acknowledge he’d been right.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next day, Morrison returned outside of the regular meal times with four other guards, and Tony’s shoes.“Church?” Tony assumed.“No, the Colonel wants you to see the lab,” Morrison said, passing the TOMs and a new pair of socks through the bars.“The lab. Intriguing.” Tony feigned nonchalance as he put his shoes and socks on, but he was tense with anticipation. He hadn’t expected to be taken to the lab so quickly after his punishment. Perhaps he’d fooled her, and she thought he was cowed? Or maybe she didn’t care? It didn’t really matter as long as he could get near the arc reactor and work out what he needed to do.When he was ready, Hanson came into the cell and handcuffed him. They brought him out of the building, but this time instead of going uphill to church, they brought him downhill, along a muddy track.Tony looked around avidly, until Hanson nudged him with a rifle and said, “Eyes front, Stark.”Tony bristled, but obeyed. It didn’t matter; he’d already caught sight of the large gates further downhill, partially obscured by trees. He’d also seen the guard tower just next to them, and the soldiers on patrol, but his heartbeat had quickened at just the smallest glimpse of the road out of the compound.The compound was busy with people. Many of them glanced his way then returned to their work. Some were training, others were visibly on guard duty. It looked like there was a drill going on downhill. The overall atmosphere reminded Tony of various military encampments he’d visited.Morrison and the guards led him down then left, turning just before they reached a building surrounded by trees. Where Tony would have expected them to see the line of the security fence, instead he found the compound extended into a densely wooded section behind the jail building. The guards led him along a wide path surrounded by trees, and the fences cut through the forest on either side.Finally they reached another clearing, enclosed by fences. It included a guard tower, and the only other feature was a low concrete building, built into the hill. It was partly covered in snow and had a flattened roof that sent alarm bells through Tony.“Please tell me that’s not a bunker,” he said, slowing his steps.“It’s not, it’s an old missile silo,” Morrison said, which was even worse. Hanson hooked a hand under Tony’s elbow to drag him towards it.“No, I can’t,” he said. Panic swelled up in his throat. He could feel the shield coming down, slamming into his chest. His vision swam, and he could hear his mother’s pleading voice as the Winter Soldier walked around the car towards her.“I’m sorry, can’t?” Morrison sneered. He turned to loom over Tony, and Tony backed away until he bumped into Hanson. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you say can’t.”Tony’s anger and frustration swept him upwards out of the downward spiral of fear, and he latched onto it like a drowning man. He wrenched his gaze from what he couldn’t believe was another fucking missile silo and glared at Morrison’s smug, superior face, because God forbid he be allowed to feel uneasy about returning to a place like the one he’d just almost been killed in.“It’s just that it’s kind of a cliché, that’s all. I mean, how Doctor Evil can you people get?” he snapped. He refused to give them any hint of the real reason for his fear.Morrison puffed up with indignation, but before he could launch into a diatribe, Tony took advantage of Hanson’s loosened grip and ducked out from between them both. He set off towards the silo, determined to get inside before fear could overcome him again.“You coming or not?” he tossed over one shoulder.They caught up with him, and Hanson grabbed him again. “Watch the goods,” Tony muttered. “You break it, you bought it.”“Whatever, Stark,” Hanson sneered. Tony sneered back, but let him lead downhill towards the entrance to the silo.As they drew closer, Tony reassured himself that this one didn’t even look a thing like the one in Siberia. It was much smaller and older, and didn’t have the same forbidding atmosphere as the HYDRA facility. Also, his ex-teammates were manifestly not here.The locks on the external door had been broken, and hadn’t been replaced. There weren’t any other visible security measures, not even cameras – just the guard tower.Once inside, they went down several flights of stairs and through some narrow, claustrophobic passages. They reached a door at the end of a corridor, and a wave of noise hit them as soon as Morrison opened it.The lab was huge. The cult had removed internal walls and even floors, gutting the original multi-level underground space until they had a high, wide lab. Jagged edges of concrete were still visible where once there’d been floors, doors appeared at intervals, opening out into nothing, and the whole space was barely any warmer than outside.Then Tony saw was the arc reactor they’d built. It looked nothing like the reactors he’d built himself – the parts looked DIY, there were wires everywhere – but as his eyes flicked over the familiar design, taking in the details, he could tell it was almost ready. It was smaller than he would have thought, about twelve feet wide and five feet tall. There was a gap for the core housing, and the electromagnetic coils were not in place, but the rest was there and looked functional, if unpolished and weirdly homemade.A few feet off to one side of the reactor, the floor dropped away into the deep, open well of the missile silo. Tony wasn’t sure how far they were from ground level, so he knew the drop could be anywhere from thirty to a hundred feet.Morrison grabbed his elbow. “Come on, they’re waiting.” Tony dragged his eyes away.He let them bring him towards the other end of the lab. As they passed some bulky diagnostic equipment, the Colonel came into view next to two soldier-scientists. They were waiting next to some tall partitions that split the lab space in half.“Stark,” she said calmly.Tony tensed, expecting some kind of threat, but she acted as if nothing had happened. Morrison must have passed on his ‘apology’.“As you can see, we have much to do. I’ve decided it’s time we put you to work.” She turned and gestured at one of the soldiers. “Felix has been leading our project. He’ll help you understand exactly what we’re doing.”One of the workers stepped forwards. Incongruously, he wore the same uniform of jeans, a flannel shirt and boots that the soldiers wore; no white lab coats. Tony glanced around at the rest of the lab to find the same thing, that all the scientists looked exactly like the soldiers.Unlike the soldiers, this worker carried a tablet instead of a rifle. “Mr Stark,” he said, and glanced between him and Lewis with hesitant expression.“Hi. Shall we?” He doubted there was anything they’d been doing that he couldn’t understand with ten minutes and a schematic, but he was willing to feign cooperation.“Show him the device, Felix,” Lewis ordered. Felix nodded, and gestured for Tony to step beyond the room dividers. Another open section of floor came into view, and in the centre of it was the device.Tony hadn’t been sure what to expect, but he’d thought it’d be…larger. Instead, it had about the same diameter as the reactor, and was only about eight feet tall. It sat on a moveable platform surrounded by equipment, and looked very strange.The central part of the device resembled an engine. It had pistons, an input node, two huge intake fans, and a series of power cables snaking away in the general direction of the arc reactor. However, surrounding the central part on three sides were large chambers made from wood, and out of them sprouted three huge exhaust vents.Tony stepped back, puzzled. “This is a really weird machine,” he said, frowning. “What are these chambers made of?” They made the machine look like some kind of wine-making nightmare.“Layers of pine and hawthorn, soaked in Holy Oil,” came Felix’s matter-of-fact reply. At Tony’s perplexed frown, he added, “Materials like metal or plastic don’t hold the substance anywhere near as well, and glass won’t absorb holy oil.”Tony did his best to accept that without comment. “And the middle part? The pistons? Is it an engine?”“Yes, in a way,” Felix confirmed. “Let me explain how the device works. That way, you can give advice about how best to integrate the power from the arc reactor.”Tony, very aware of Lewis’s presence nearby watching his every move, merely nodded.“So,” Felix began, drawing Tony’s attention to the input node. “The vial containing the substance is added here. The pistons power a mechanism that draws the substance down the line at a controlled drip-feed.” He showed Tony the first of several additional valves that controlled the flow of substance towards the wooden chambers.“The last valve is pure silver, and has a direct connection to the arc reactor. There are copper wires strung all across each chamber, and these are connected to the reactor as well. The arc reactor will provide a high-voltage and continuous charge that will electrify the flow as it leaves the last valve. The substance will receive more electricity from the copper wires, and it will be forced to bond with the oxygen particles in the container. The reaction will make it expand exponentially, and the fans in the exhaust vents will draw it up and send it out into the atmosphere.”None of this made any sense to Tony; it all sounded like complete lunacy from a scientific point of view. Outwardly, he kept his expression cooperative and non-threatening to mask an almost-hysterical urge to laugh.“All of this will happen after the device and the reactor have been brought up to ground level,” Felix went on. “There’s a platform in the missile well, and when we’ve finished the build, we’ll load them on and raise them to the surface. We’re working on the hydraulics right now.”“Sure,” Tony said thoughtfully. His mind was racing. There was one thing he was curious to know. “If we can back up a step? What is this substance you keep talking about?”Once again, Felix looked to Lewis for permission.“Angelic grace, Stark,” she said, answering for him. “The substance that will be processed in the device is angelic grace. We’ve acquired a vial to use in the service of this miracle.”Tony struggled to keep his face neutral, but he didn’t think he was successful. Fortunately, she didn’t take his doubt as an insult.“I told you angels are real,” she reminded him. “This machine will transform their grace into a miracle to save the human soul and change humanity forever.”“Right. Yes, you did tell me that,” Tony managed. Then, before he could stop himself, he turned to Lewis and said, “Can I see it? The grace?”Tense silence fell, and all eyes looked to Lewis, who looked at him, considering. “No, not now,” she decided. “Felix, what else do you need to tell Stark, so he can adjust the arc reactor?”Felix hummed thoughtfully. “What’s most vital about the reactor is that the current it produces is strong and stable. Once the process begins, it can’t stop. The valves will ensure the flow of grace is controlled, and rate of expansion will create a continuous flow of grace out into the atmosphere, but once it begins, it has to process the entire substance. There’s no half-measures. We need the entire output so the entire world can be saved, but also, I mean, you can’t store half the grace for later, that would be absurd,” he chuckled.“It would,” Tony agreed, feeling a little strangled. “That’s good to know.”“The machine should be able to keep up with the expansion rate and keep the processed substance moving out into the atmosphere,” Felix went on. “Once it’s vented and it starts to seek out humans, more of the substance will follow, to fill the vacuums it leaves.”“Seek them out?” Tony said, alarmed, looking between Felix and Lewis. “Is it sentient?”“In a way, it will be,” Lewis answered. “It has no mind or animus, but it’ll be drawn to humans.”At Tony’s confused frown, Felix elaborated. “Once the grace has been charged up and diluted with oxygen in the machine, some of its energy will be depleted. It’ll need to adhere to the energy of a human soul instead. And humans, we can’t absorb grace in concentrated form, but once it’s been processed, it’s compatible with human souls. When a soul absorbs grace, it’ll be changed. It will become different, and better.” The look on Felix’s face was hungry and awed at the same time.“Who have you tested this on?” Tony asked, projecting simple curiosity as he braced himself for the answer.Felix and Lewis looked at him in surprise. “It can’t be tested,” Felix said, like it should have been obvious to Tony. “This is angelic grace we’re talking about here, you can’t test it.”“You can’t--But if this whole process is theoretical, how do you know it’s going to work?” Tony said, baffled.“Because God has shown us that it will,” Lewis replied, and her tone refused any possible contradiction.Tony felt torn between confusion and relief. On one level, their lack of scientific method was totally infuriating, but on another, he didn’t dare imagine the strange, horrifying results if they’d actually tested this bizarre, invasive, totally made-up process on a live human.“About the arc reactor,” Tony said, changing the subject. “What are you going to use for a core?”“The new Stark element,” Felix confirmed.Tony sighed. “Did you make it here, or do I need to look into Stark Industries security?”“No-one was harmed when we obtained it,” the Colonel offered.Tony would have been informed of theft, especially of arc reactor materials, which meant they’d had another contact inside his company, funnelling materials out somehow and covering it up.He shelved that as another problem he couldn’t currently solve. “Great. Want me to take a look at it, then?”They didn’t; instead, he was sat next to Felix so Felix could show him the blueprints for the device on his tablet. It was criminally boring. Tony wasn’t allowed to touch the tablet himself, even though it wasn’t even networked.He also wasn’t allowed to touch any of the equipment, or the device, and Lewis’s soldiers hovered over his shoulders with their rifles the entire time, watching his hands for contraband. He had to settle for memorizing all the details he needed to furnish his plans for sabotage.After an hour or two of tedium, they took him back to his cell. His mattress, blanket, and bandages had been restored. He ate his evening MRE without tasting it as his mind turned over everything he’d learned.Their device seemed almost finished. According to Felix, some of the copper wires and the silver valves inside the wooden chambers still had to be installed, and they weren’t finished with some of the vents, but Felix had said it was only two more days’ work.Once their device was done, they’d be even more eager to get the reactor completed. Would they let him build the missing components himself? Or would they insist on their workers?He knew the best way to sabotage the reactor would be to introduce cascading failure into the reaction chamber during the first power initialization. The reactor would start, power would build, but then it would all come crashing down again. It would either explode, like the reactor in Malibu, or just stop working. If he got to build the components himself, he could easily overload or choke off the power.He’d prefer overload. An explosion would destroy the reactor, the cult’s little machine, and maybe the whole damn silo, too. If he could introduce conductive materials or make the regulators ineffective, then increase the electrical input and block the power converter when he was ready to blow the place up, the explosion would be just about the right size to burn the silo into an underground crisp.Then he pondered the likelihood that Lewis would want him to be there when they first flipped the switch on their device, and grimaced. Exploded by lunatic cultists wasn’t how he’d planned to die, and he supposed he also didn’t really want to kill any of them. Ideally, he’d get into the silo, begin the reaction, get out, and let it blow when no-one else was there.Maybe the explosion could also work as a distraction, so he could escape the compound?There was still too much he didn’t know – could he get access to the power feed? How much security was there at night? Were the workers in the silo twenty-four-seven, or would it be empty? Would he be able to steal a car to escape in? How would he get through the gates? For a moment, he wished for Yinsen. Surely any plan would be easier with two.Tony paced the cell, energised by the new information, thinking of back-up plans and alternate strategies.Eventually, the lights went off, and he retreated to the bunk to pretend to sleep, plans and strategies devolving into anxious worry as the night grew darker and colder.Then, instead of howling wolves, sirens abruptly blared out into the quiet.Tony jerked upright, and went to the bars. He couldn’t see anything through the distant window in the other cell, but he knew it faced downhill. He couldn’t see any lights, just indistinct darkness, but if he listened hard, he could hear car engines revving.Frustrated, he paced again, ready for whoever would finally open the cell block door and set him free. Vision, Hill, General Ross, hell, at this point he might even welcome Steve goddamn Rogers with open arms.Just as he was starting to wonder what was taking so long, the sirens cut off suddenly, leaving the sound of shouts, and, very distantly, dogs barking.Then it registered that he hadn’t heard any gunfire. No explosions, no helicopters, no jets. With a sinking feeling, he realised that there was no way law enforcement invaded this compound without firing a single shot.He waited anyway, awake and on edge, trying to stave off the crushing disappointment.No-one came.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The following day, Morrison showed up mid-morning with a number of armed guards.Tony eyed their rifles as he watched them open the cell door and casually said, “Kind of a ruckus last night.”“You heard that? You were woken up?” Morrison asked.“Well yeah, it was difficult not to be,” Tony said, without admitting that he hadn’t actually slept at all. “What happened?” he asked, as they handcuffed him.“We had an intruder on the compound,” Morrison said. “One man, and his…dog.”Tony frowned, wondering why someone would bring a dog with them when they broke into a cult.“He made it over the fence down the hill, but he was captured,” Morrison went on, “You don’t need to concern yourself with him.”Tony pitied the poor bastard who’d picked this nest of crazy to break into, but said, “Are we heading back to the lab?”Morrison shook his head as he preceded Tony to the cell block door. “Church, Mr Stark. This morning is for church.”Tony swallowed his immediate panic. Bile rose in his throat, but he managed to swallow the feelings of dread. He told himself his plan depended on cooperating; he had to get the information he needed, he had to get back to the lab, and for that, he needed to stop fighting and let them do this to him again.Outside, it was mid-morning, the sky was grey with clouds, and it was much colder. The air felt like knives in his lungs, and he hunched into his inadequate sweater. His feet in the insufficient shoes were painfully frozen by the time they reached the church door.“You realize that if I die of pneumonia, you won’t get your arc reactor,” he bitched, hurrying into the relative warmth of the church. He shivered as he was made to wait near the door for the soldiers to take off their jackets.“I’ll look into it, Mr Stark,” Morrison said, noncommittal.Tony rolled his eyes.Once again, he was seated right at the front, before the altar. He took deep breaths, hoping it would happen quickly since it had to happen. But Lewis didn’t appear. The congregation didn’t seem impatient, but eventually Tony hissed at Morrison, “What are we waiting for?”Before Morrison could answer, there was a crash at the other end of the church as the doors flew open and slammed against the walls. Tony jerked in surprise and turned to look, and silhouetted in the light from outside was a man sprawled on the ground surrounded by soldiers.The hair on the back of Tony’s neck lifted, and for some reason every nerve in his body went on red alert. The man was wearing jeans, boots and a flannel shirt – similar clothes to the rest of the cult – but Tony knew he had to be the man with the dog, the one Morrison said broke in.The soldiers pulled the man to his feet and began to drag him up the aisle. His hands were bound in front of him at the wrist, but as soon as he got his feet underneath him, he shoved the nearest guard and threw himself backwards at the one behind him. He kicked a third in the kneecap, forcing them to back up and circle him. His eyes were fierce beneath his unkempt hair, and the gag across his mouth pulled back the long, biker-like beard and exposed white teeth in a fierce snarl.Tony watched the scuffle with his heart in his mouth, compelled to do something, until Morrison grabbed his arm and said, “Sit down, Stark.”Tony barely heard him; he hadn’t even realised he’d gotten to his feet. He couldn’t take his eyes off the other prisoner. The guards had finally got him subdued and started dragging him up the aisle again, but he was resisting them every step of the way. His expression was absolutely furious, and he cursed incoherently behind the gag.About halfway, he managed to get his feet on the floor again and dig in, bracing enough to shove backwards. For a moment, the guards were thrown off, but then one of them got behind him while another punched him right in the jaw. The prisoner’s head snapped to one side, but he recovered fast and kicked out at the man in front of him, getting him in the nerve cluster on the inside of his thigh. He shoved his shoulder into the guard behind him but it failed; instead the guard did something Tony couldn’t see that made the prisoner yell in pain.The warning pressure of Morrison’s gun against his spine sent Tony’s skin crawling. “Sit down, Stark,” Morrison said again.Tony felt breathless with terror, but couldn’t obey. He stood there, suspended, unable to look away from the other prisoner.The rest of the congregation was strangely, creepily silent. None of them moved to help, although a few of them looked ready to dive in and beat the prisoner into submission. They all seemed glued to their seats.As the guards wrestled the prisoner closer, Tony could see the bruises on his face, under the dirty blond beard. Why hadn’t they just killed him? Had they brought him to church for revelation, or was Tony about to witness a murder? What could he do?Then the man caught sight of Tony for the first time. His eyes widened in recognition and his struggle faltered.Their eyes met, and Tony felt electrified.For a single sharp, crisp moment, the rest of the world fell away. Tony’s heart raced. It felt like everything clicked into place, like something knotted up inside of him suddenly released. He had to get closer, he had to touch the other man’s skin.But then Morrison’s gun pressed into his throat, into the soft flesh under his chin. Tony’s head was forced up, breaking his eye contact with the other man, and the moment shattered.Reality rushed rudely back in, spiked with adrenalin and freezing panic.“I told you to sit down,” Morrison growled in his ear.For a moment Tony was too stiff with panic to move, but the cold press of the gun against his throat forced him to obey, and he carefully, slowly, took his seat again.As soon as he was facing forwards, he saw Lewis waiting at the altar. Her eyes were on the other prisoner as the guards dragged him into the pew across from Tony.“There now,” she said. “If this disruption is finished?”Tony managed to plaster an innocent, cooperative expression onto his face.Satisfied that they were under control, Lewis began her sermon. Tony stared blindly at the air in front of him, pretending he wasn’t reeling with confusion and fear. His hands shook; he could still feel the spot where Morrison’s gun had dug in, but he resisted the urge to reach up and rub it.He didn’t listen to the sermon this time. The urge to look over at the other prisoner grew stronger and stronger; he felt hyper-aware of him, just barely in his peripheral vision. Every movement the other man made, every slight shift, felt magnetic. Tony felt compelled to look.But in his other peripheral, he could see Morrison still watching him, and so he didn’t dare turn his head. He had no idea what consequences could arise from showing an interest in the other prisoner.Eventually, Morrison relaxed, and turned away. Tony immediately risked a glance at the other man; just a slight turn of his head.The other man was staring openly, right at Tony. His green eyes widened when he saw Tony move.Alarmed, Tony quickly looked away again. He couldn’t work out why his heart beat faster, and his palms started to sweat.Suddenly the congregation shifted around him, and he realised Lewis had brought them to the thing she called Revelation. Tony dreaded it, but also knew that when they bent their heads to pray, he’d finally be free of scrutiny.When she finally gave the signal and they all followed, Tony immediately turned to look at the other man.Their eyes met. The world warped around them, as something strange hummed in the air between them.The other man looked relieved to meet Tony’s eyes, but his teeth clenched on the gag in his mouth, and his cuffed hands were in fists.He felt like the only thing in the world that Tony could see.Suddenly there was brightness from the altar. It broke the spell again, bringing Tony back to reality, but he didn’t bother to turn at watch as whatever Lewis was doing swept towards them. He was too fascinated by the other man’s face – the green of his eyes, the angle of his nose, the curve of his brow.The other man turned, though, showing Tony the curve of his ear and the pale skin of his temple. The wariness on the other man’s face quickly became shock, then panic as the light came closer.His eyes met Tony’s again, but Tony could only shake his head helplessly.Not dissuaded, the other man leapt to his feet. Despite their prayers, his guards didn’t let him get far; they tripped him and held him down. He resisted, shouting behind his gag. Tony would have jerked to his feet, but Morrison had pressed the gun against Tony’s skin again.The other prisoner, buried under the guards, managed to get out long enough to lunge towards Tony. But the light engulfed Tony first, and the other prisoner’s desperate look dissolved into pure, smothering white.***Leaving the church for the outside world after revelation felt like a dream. The air was cold, and sharp in Tony’s lungs when he breathed it in, but he felt like he was floating. He was placid and relaxed, unbothered by the cold, and unresisting as he was led down the hill.The rest of the congregation had gone out first with Lewis, following her in a blissful procession, and they had mostly dispersed across the compound by the time Tony had been allowed to leave. The other prisoner had been brought out behind him. He didn’t fight his guards this time, but let them lead him down the hill without a word.As they approached the jail, Tony noticed that Lewis was waiting at the corner of the jail’s building, staring uphill at them. As he got closer, Tony realised she was staring at the man behind him. Her gaze was strange – intense and hungry, alien to Tony in his calm, warm state. Tony glanced back at the other prisoner, too, only to find the man staring down at his own boots in the muddy snow, too distracted to notice either of them looking at him.Tony turned to look at Lewis again, noting absently that she wasn’t relaxed or blissed out, that revelation didn’t seem to affect her.“Put Mr Bonham in the cells with Stark,” Lewis told the guards.They nodded easily, and their whole procession began moving again.Once in the basement, they took the handcuffs off and left Tony in his cell. He lay down on the bunk – poured himself down onto it, really, his body felt so fluid and relaxed – and stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the warmth.He heard them put the other prisoner in the cell opposite then lock the doors and leave, the cell block door closing with its usual clang.Tony drifted. The calm and ease of revelation had overwhelmed everything, including all those strange feelings he’d had about the other prisoner. Eventually, though, Tony let his head tip to one side so he could see him.The stranger was sitting in the back corner of his bunk, propped up against the wall, legs sprawled easily out in front of him. The guards had left his hands cuffed but taken the gag off his mouth, and he was blinking drowsily at nothing.Tony looked him over, taking in the bruises, the jeans and flannel shirt. His hair looked like it’d grown out, un-styled, and his beard looked like it’d never been trimmed. His clothes were reasonably tidy and clean, though, and he seemed not just broad-shouldered but strong, and not underfed.Now, he also looked comfortable and relaxed, like all his earlier terror and resistance had been washed away.Eventually, he looked up and met Tony’s eyes.Tony grinned at him. “Hi.”Green eyes focused a little, and he gave Tony a loose smile, teeth white beneath his ragged beard. His gaze was heavy-lidded and sleepy. “You’re Tony Stark.” His voice was deep, and rasped a little.Tony offered him a congratulatory eyebrow raise. “Who’re you?” he drawled.“Name’s Dean.”“Dean,” Tony repeated, and felt like he could taste it in his mouth, warm and clean. “Nice to meet you.”That slow smile crept over Dean’s mouth again, and for a long moment he just watched Tony, green eyes intent, blinking slowly. Then he heaved a deep sigh and tilted his head sideways so it rested against the wall. His eyes closed, apparently of their own accord. The corners of his mouth were still tipped up in a fainter, smaller version of that smile.As the green-eyed man fell asleep, Tony went on watching him in calm fascination, unable to tear his eyes away from the line of his eyelids, the deep shadows under his eyes, the brush of his beard against his chest, and the strong lines of his pale, dirty fingers where they lay loose and unmoving in his lap.***Dean slept for the rest of their high with the deep unconsciousness of someone who’d been totally exhausted and couldn’t go on fighting sleep once he’d been forcibly relaxed. Morrison brought Tony an MRE and delivered much the same care package to Dean that he’d offered to Tony – toilet roll, socks, water, blanket – but Dean didn’t wake.Finally, Tony felt the effects of revelation start to wear off. It happened a lot sooner than he expected; he was waiting for Morrison to bring breakfast and idly pacing in his cell when he noticed the first stirrings of unease beneath the layer of calm, warm joy. It’d taken hours longer for his anxiety to make itself felt last time.Tony kept pacing, and as Lewis’s influence wore off more and more, he watched the sleeping man in the other cell, curious to see if it was wearing off for him as well.Sure enough, there were a few twitches in Dean’s limbs, and then Dean’s placid expression became a deep frown. He shifted in his sleep, hands clenching. Tony watched him blink himself awake, watched awareness come back into his eyes. He saw the moment when Dean realised he was imprisoned; his eyes caught on the cell bars in front of him, and he immediately looked around at the walls, the corners, taking in the cell’s dimensions.“Good morning,” Tony said, pitching his voice low.Dean’s head jerked around, and their eyes met across the cells.Once again, Tony felt caught, drawn in. The rest of the world began to grow hazy, but then he jerked his eyes away with a frown. He hadn’t expected that to keep happening once they were away from Lewis’s influence.Meanwhile, Dean demanded, “What the hell is going on?” His voice was hoarse, and he seemed genuinely confused.Tony paced as far away as he could. Thinking quickly, he said, “They’ve left water for you. You can drink it, they haven’t done anything to it.”Ignoring the offer, Dean demanded suspiciously, “What the hell was that? What just happened?”“In the church?” Tony said, keeping his face carefully blank as he turned to face Dean again. “The white light? I don’t know what it is. They call it Revelation, but I don’t know how or why it happens.” He didn’t know why he felt so tangibly drawn to Dean, but if it wasn’t Lewis’ doing, it probably wouldn’t do either of them any favours to let her find out about it.For a moment, Dean looked angry, almost hurt. When Tony widened his eyes meaningfully, Dean’s expression became confused again.“As far as I can tell, it’s not harmful. The effects wear off, you go back to normal,” Tony added, hoping Dean would be smart enough to get it, to go with what Tony was trying to do.“Okay,” Dean said, still frowning, but apparently willing to let the other questions go. “So, uh. How long did I sleep for?” he asked cautiously.Tony made a see-saw gesture with his hand. “Fifteen hours, give or take? I have trouble telling the time down here.” He paced across his cell a little way, pretending to be only vaguely interested in this stranger.Dean stared at him, open-mouthed. “You’re telling me I just slept for fifteen hours?”“Best guess,” Tony said with a casual shrug.Dean seemed to find that difficult to comprehend. “Fifteen hours.”“I’m finding it interesting that the length of your nap is what’s bothering you about all of this,” Tony commented.“Well, I—” Dean rasped, then stopped. Calculation flickered across his face, and he studied at Tony again.Tony crossed his arms and scratched his jaw as he asked, “So how’d they get you?” When he was sure Dean was watching him, Tony idly scratched his ear lobe a little. He made sure the gesture was casual enough that it hopefully wouldn’t be a red flag for the guards watching them on the monitors.Fortunately, Dean had been watching Tony closely, and narrowed his eyes a little.“I’m sorry, are you hard of hearing? I asked you a question,” Tony prompted, then quickly glanced at the camera in the corner of Dean’s cell.Dean’s gaze didn’t move; apparently he was smart enough not to look behind him at the camera. Instead his eyes flickered up to the corner of Tony’s cell, and understanding crossed his face briefly when he saw the camera there. His voice sounded impressively natural when he said, “They caught me when I broke in.”“That was you? The alarms, the shouting?” Tony turned and paced a circuit of his cell, relieved that Dean had understood his signals. “Why the hell would one guy break into a place like this? And why didn’t you bring a SWAT team? Or the Army?”“I didn’t know you were here,” Dean said.“It’s not common knowledge, no. Why did you break in?” Tony asked again, drawing closer to the cell bars to watch Dean’s features.“I’m a journalist,” Dean replied insincerely.Tony made a buzzer sound. “Try again. I don’t believe that for a second. There is literally no whiff of the fourth estate about you, and I know from reporters.”Dean huffed, and while it was a good performance, somehow Tony could tell his irritation was faked. He watched Dean get to his feet, stretching his muscles. “Fine, I’m an investigator. I was asked to look into what’s been going on up here.”After a momentary pause, Tony asked, “And what’s been going on?” He held his breath, hoping Dean wouldn’t be stupid enough to tell him anything Lewis didn’t already know he knew.“Aside from, apparently, freaky white tranquiliser lights? Missing people,” Dean said with a shrug, coming a little closer to the bars. His posture was casual and relaxed, but his eyes were intent on Tony’s face. “Disappearances across the upper US states. Someone tracked a few of them up here but couldn’t get in, so when they told me about it, I came up to have a look.”The news of more disappearances – converted cult members, or more prisoners? – sent a chill through Tony, but he shelved it. “I take it you know where we are, then? I was unconscious when they brought me here.”Dean’s lips quirked in amusement. “Canada. Middle of nowhere, Ontario.”“Canada? Since when did Canada have—“ Tony broke off. Should he tell Dean about the missile silo? That could have consequences, and Tony didn’t want to endanger him.“What?” Dean frowned.“Nothing,” Tony said quickly, and changed tack. “So, you broke in here investigating missing people. Why’d you bring a dog with you?”Dean frowned again, differently. “What?”“They said you broke in with a dog,” Tony explained.Dean blinked in shock, then scowled. “They told you she was a dog?”“Yes?” Tony hazarded. “Is she not a dog?”“No, she’s not a fucking dog! Jesus,” Dean said, with genuine disgust.Confused, Tony kept quiet, watching Dean warily as he paced angrily around his cell. As he waited for Dean’s response, Tony realised he felt almost normal – anxious, frustrated, confused – which meant Lewis’s brainwashing was almost completely gone. He’d felt placid for hours longer, last time. Had he developed a tolerance already? Or had something flushed it from his system somehow?“Look,” Dean finally said, turning to Tony. He hesitated, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “How much do you know about all this, anyway?”Before Tony could ask what ‘all this’ was, something clanged against the cell block door and a moment later it opened.“Good morning,” Lewis said as she entered. Morrison followed behind her, like always. They totally ignored Tony and stood in front of Dean’s cell with their backs to him, but the guards kept a wary, armed eye on Tony, who held up his hands and backed away. He’d have to get more out of Dean later.“Dean Winchester,” Lewis said reverently. “God has given us gifts we did not look for.”The words caused a shift inside Dean, and his expression immediately smoothed out into something totally unreadable. It was like the windows snapped shut and the shutters closed tightly; his whole personality disappeared underneath a tight control. He didn’t tense up, not exactly, but he suddenly seemed very ready to fight. Or flee.“I’m sorry. Who?” Dean said politely.“Please,” Lewis huffed. “We sent your fingerprints to a friend of ours in law enforcement.” Tony saw Dean’s hand twitch, but otherwise he didn’t react. “He confirmed that it’s really you, you don’t need to keep up this façade.” Her voice was warm and friendly, almost welcoming.Unease settled in Tony’s stomach.Dean narrowed his eyes, assessing her. “Look, I don’t know who you think I am—"“We don’t think, Mr Winchester. We know,” Lewis interrupted.Dean’s face remained impressively unreadable, admitting nothing.“I’m Colonel Marian Lewis, United States Marine Corps,” Lewis introduced herself. “This is my second-in-command, Sergeant Hank Morrison. I’m not going to apologize for your treatment so far, but if you hadn’t fought us when we captured you, you would have found a warmer welcome,” she chided.“Oh, I’m sure,” Dean huffed, disbelieving. He raised his chin, squared his shoulders.“I’m telling the truth, but I suppose you weren’t to know,” Lewis said. “By the companion you had with you when you arrived, I assume you were here about the dogs?”“Yeah, about that. About the dogs,” Dean began angrily, but Lewis interrupted.“I have to say, I’m surprised. Dean Winchester, here for dogs?”“My motives are none of your goddamn business,” Dean snapped.“So you admit you’re him,” she said with just a hint of triumph. “You are Dean Winchester.”Dean’s jaw clenched as he glared at her, pissed off to be caught out by such a lame trick.“The Righteous Man,” Lewis said softly. She sounded reverent again. “God works in mysterious ways.”Dean glowered. From his cell, Tony watched them with growing confusion.“So, why did you come for the dogs?” Lewis asked eventually, sounding curious.“They’re not dogs,” Dean gritted out.“Werewolves, then,” Lewis allowed.Tony blinked. What?“You’re the greatest hunter who ever lived,” Lewis went on. “Why on earth did you come here for werewolves?”“The greatest—where the hell are you getting your information?” Dean said, with a sort of laughing denial in his voice.“False modesty is unnecessary, Mr Winchester. Why did you try to free them? Given your career and how many werewolves you and your family must have killed, I would have thought you’d agree with what we’re doing here.” Tony couldn’t see her face, but she sounded genuinely confused.Tony thought Dean would be confused, too – killing werewolves? What new strain of delusion was this?But the denials he’d expected never came. Instead, Dean said pointedly, “I might hunt them down when they’re out killing people but I don’t torture them. I don’t imprison them and run experiments. They told me, you know. When I was down by the cages, they told me what you’ve been doing to them,” he accused.Tony stared at Dean, struggling to understand what he was hearing.Lewis didn’t deny Dean’s accusation, and said, “I see. You’ll give them a quick death, but you’re not interested in finding out more?”“No, not really,” Dean agreed.Lewis huffed slightly, then took on a slightly conciliatory tone as she said, “To be frank, it’s not work I have any stomach for either. We needed money to fund our core mission, so we took on the research. Certain parties are interested in whether the dogs can be weaponized, that’s all, and they’re willing to pay for it,” she told him with a light shrug.“You’re trying to weaponize werewolves?” Dean said, genuinely shocked. “Are you out of your damn mind?”“We’re not actually going to do it, of course,” Lewis said impatiently. “The research is a source of cash for us, but we’ll finish our mission long before anyone develops a working theory of weaponization.”Dean looked disgusted.“And the experiments might have a use in the end,” Lewis added thoughtfully. “Once our mission is finished and humanity has been enlightened with grace, perhaps we’ll purge the world of monsters, including your werewolves.”“They’re not my anything,” Dean denied, apparently on reflex. Then something about what she’d said seemed to stop him in his tracks. “Wait, go back. You’re enlightening humanity with what?”Lewis sounded self-righteous as she said, “God wants evolution, Dean. Humans have spent far too long in darkness, angry and weak. Our mission here, our real mission, will bring about a new age for humanity, and God has chosen me to do it.”There was a look on Dean’s face that Tony couldn’t quite parse. “God chose you,” he said slowly.“Yes, just like he once chose you.” Dean grimaced, and then Lewis added, “I think it’s clear that He’s brought you here for a reason.”“Yeah?” Dean said, with a dangerously calm quality to his voice. “What reason is that?”“In time, He’ll show us,” she said. “In the meantime, come with me. I’m going to show you our great work.”The guards raised their rifles, and Morrison opened the door to Dean’s cell. Dean glanced once at Tony, his look unreadable, then let them take him out.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After they left, Tony sat in the oppressive silence of the cell block for a long time, trying to make sense of the conversation he’d just witnessed. Eventually he had to get up and pace, unable to keep still in his restless confusion. Werewolves. What the actual fuck?And Dean had known what Lewis was talking about. He hadn’t been confused, or baffled, the way Tony was. He’d been guarded, he’d tried to lie, but by the end of the conversation it’d been clear that Tony was the only one out of the loop.Not only that, but the Colonel had called him a killer, and he hadn’t denied it. He couldn’t be just a private investigator, unlucky enough to break into the craziest and most secure cult compound in Canada.Maybe he was really military, or some kind of spy? He seemed to understand the bullshit gods-and-monsters aspect of this shitshow better than Tony, anyway. And Tony didn’t know whose side Dean was on, not really. He could have some kind of agenda, he could be a total psycho and good at hiding it.Tony found himself strangely disappointed. Not just because it would have been good to have an ally, either, it was more than that.He did his best to shrug it off. He’d barely even talked to Dean, they’d had one single, heavily-coded conversation. Sure, there was that strange feeling of fascination, of connection and attraction, but that was probably just too much solitary confinement; no wonder he’d latched on to the first non-cult member he’d seen.Tony paced, sat down, then got up to pace again. His mind kept worrying on the whole werewolf thing – could it be a code? Euphemisms for military designations, or maybe CIA ? – and it frustrated him to the point of screaming that he had no tools, no connection to FRIDAY, no way to get any damn information. The questions kept piling up, and he couldn’t get an answer he trusted out of anyone.In an attempt at distraction, he eventually began a cobbled-together exercise routine, with sit-ups and push-ups and whatever he could manage in the cramped space. Once he was sweating and exhausted, he paced again. The questions returned, and time ground on at a glacial pace.After a while, he noticed the lack of food. He still had water, but they hadn’t given him breakfast, and then no-one brought lunch, either. Tony tried asking, looking into the camera to yell at the guards, asking them to at least bring him something to do if they were going to starve him again, but they ignored him.Eventually, he found himself worrying over Dean’s safety. What if they never brought him back to the cells? What if Lewis’s warm reception changed and she had him killed? What if she took him back to church and used her powers to wipe his entire mind? What if, dead or alive, liar or not, Tony never saw him again?Tony paced until his anxiety really threatened to overwhelm him, then he wrapped himself in the blanket and sat back in the corner of the bunk with his knees pulled up, trying to ignore his growling stomach. He forced his mind to recall all the details of the arc reactor, fine-tuning his plans of sabotage.Then at last, the cell block door finally screeched open, only to admit the sound of laughter.Tony froze, then stared in shock as Dean walked in, no longer handcuffed, chuckling. Morrison, who came in just behind him, had also actually cracked a smile.Betrayal felt sharp in Tony’s guts.Dean walked easily into his cell and sprawled casually on his bunk as Morrison locked him in. He carried gloves now, that’d he’d clearly been given to wear out in the cold, and he was wearing a jacket that seemed to fit him so well it could only be his own.Tony couldn’t believe he’d been worried.“Sorry we have to keep you locked up,” Morrison said. He sounded embarrassed, almost bashful.“Hey man, security protocols, I get it. And hell, it’s better than being down in the cages,” Dean said, sitting up again to take off his jacket.“Will you be alright with Mr Stark?” Morrison asked, eyeing Tony.“Why wouldn’t he be?” Tony snapped, insulted. He was the one in danger from all of these assholes, after all.Morrison gave Tony a skeptical look and said to Dean, “He doesn’t know the truth.”Dean smiled easily. “That doesn’t matter.” When Morrison remained doubtful, Dean added, “Maybe I’ll tell him,” with a conspiratorial eyebrow raise.Morrison seemed to like the idea, and they laughed. Tony clenched his teeth against the anger welling up inside him; Dean was in on the joke now, he was in with these people. Tony should have kept his guard up from the beginning.“Someone’ll come and get you for breakfast,” Morrison told Dean, and at Dean’s nod, he left without even a glance in Tony’s direction.Tony’s stomach clenched in hunger when he realised he hadn’t left an MRE.Furious and betrayed, Tony glared balefully at the other prisoner, who lounged unconcerned, apparently well-fed and comfortable. It turned out there was something worse than being locked in the cells alone; being locked in the cells with someone who’d switched sides.When Dean finally met his gaze, Tony felt the oncoming blurriness and quickly looked away. He had no idea what the fuck his brain was doing to him this time, but he wished it would stop.“So, hey, I got quite the tour today,” Dean said companionably. “Thought I would’ve seen you in the lab, working on the machines. What did they have you doing instead?”Tony didn’t answer, just set his jaw and glared at nothing. So much for all Dean’s resistance in the church; one trip to the silo with Lewis and he’d folded like a wet pancake.“Lewis isn’t going to care if you tell me, dude,” Dean added, as if that was the only thing holding Tony back. Tony’s continued angry silence seemed to clue him in that something was wrong, and he sounded concerned when he said, “Seriously, what have you been doing?”“Go fuck yourself,” Tony muttered bitterly.The shift of Dean’s clothes and the silence that followed had an air of surprise that just made Tony angrier. What the fuck did Dean expect? That he could just embrace Tony’s jailers, and Tony would still be friendly?“Now, I’m not sure I deserve that,” Dean drawled, with a note of wariness in his voice.“No? You don’t think so?” Tony replied bitterly.“No, I don’t,” Dean insisted. Then he added insincerely, “All I’m doing is keeping an open mind.”There was something off about his tone, something slightly too friendly, but Tony didn’t care. “An open mind?” he snapped, finally looking at Dean. “They abducted me off the street and they murdered people to do it. Are you the kind of person who’s open to that?”Dean’s eyes were intent on Tony, and they glittered with anger. “I guess I missed that part,” he said, and it sounded like a lie. “I haven’t been watching the news.”“Yeah? Too busy hunting werewolves?” Tony demanded. “I mean, you realise how it sounds, right? All that bullshit from before?” he sneered, voice dripping with disdain and disbelief.“It’s not bullshit,” Dean defended.“Sure it’s not,” Tony snapped, getting to his feet to storm over to the bars. Dean got up and matched him. “I don’t know if it’s some kind of military code, or you’re all from some fucked up government program. Hell, maybe it’s something you all made up just to fuck with me,” he accused. “I don’t really care, because you know what? You all sound fucking crazy.” The words echoed off the cell block walls. Tony’s heart pounded as he glared at Dean, who looked frustrated.Dean had just drawn breath to respond, no doubt more bullshit about open minds, when the cell block door clanged open.“What the hell is going on in here?” Morrison bellowed as he stalked back in. Two guards followed him.“Oh, nothing, I’m just wondering when you’re all going to come back to reality, that’s all,” Tony sneered. He didn’t back away from the bars this time, too high on anger and frustration to care about the guards’ rifles.“Stark, how dare you,” Morrison began.“Oh, I fucking dare, you traitor,” Tony snarled, over Dean’s alarmed protestation that they were just talking.“You should be more careful,” Morrison gritted out, getting close to Tony’s bars. “Have you forgotten what we’ll do to you? I thought you’d learned from last time.”“Guess not,” Tony snapped, riding the adrenaline. “What, you can’t handle a little criticism? A little difference of opinion? Not very secure in your faith, are you?”Morrison pulled the tranquiliser gun from his hip and shot Tony point-blank in the chest.“What the fuck!” Dean protested. “What the hell did you do that for?”Tony didn’t hear Morrison’s response. Once again, the dart delivered its poison quickly, and the world was already spinning. His legs crumpled underneath him and he collapsed sideways ungracefully. Distantly he heard yelling, and then somebody opened the door of his cell. He couldn’t flinch away, though, and instead sank into unconsciousness.***When Tony first began to regain some awareness, he couldn’t process anything other than the pain in his body. The ache in his head was at record levels, far worse than last time, and it blocked out the rest of the world. He wanted water, but couldn’t bring himself to move. He slitted his eyes open. The lights were out, the cell was dark. Eventually he slid back into sleep.When he surfaced again, he could immediately tell that the lights were on. The glow felt like it was stabbing into his brain. Vaguely, he registered that he was lying on his bunk, and felt surprised they hadn’t left him on the floor again.He squinted his eyes open, under the harsh fluorescents, and managed to turn his head to look across the cell. Dean was gone, and the cell block seemed empty. The movement made his neck ache. He let his eyes slide closed, and he thought about raising one arm over his head, to drape across his eyes and block the glare, but his limbs were stone and his muscles were water. His head still throbbed, and all he could do was breathe through it. Dehydration, he diagnosed, on top of those goddamn tranqs.After an indeterminate amount of time, the cell block door suddenly screeched open. The influx of noise ricocheted through Tony’s skull, and nausea swooped in his stomach. He grimaced, but didn’t move.Distantly, he could hear voices and people. They seemed calm. Something clanged loudly against the bars of the cell opposite, and someone laughed. There were footsteps, and then the screech of the cell block door.“You awake?” came Dean’s voice after a moment, strangely gentle and quiet.Tony remembered that he should be angry at this latest in a long line of betrayers, but instead, for some reason, he wanted to weep in relief just knowing that Dean was nearby.He shoved the feelings away, but raised a couple of trembling fingers in acknowledgement, so Dean would know.After a minute, Dean said, “I'm on watch. You can sleep, Stark.”Tony was too tired to argue.***The next time Tony woke, he felt slightly better. The throb in his head had receded far enough for him to be able to think again. The lights were still on, but Dean was gone again.Carefully, Tony sat up. His muscles were stiff, and he felt weak, like he’d had a fever. He stretched a little on the bunk, then remembered they’d moved him. The thought of any of these assholes touching him while he was unconscious made him shudder. He pushed himself to his feet, keeping one hand on the cell block wall to steady himself.His head swam, but he rode it out and stayed upright until the dizziness passed. He took careful steps over to the pile of stuff in the corner and fished out the water bottle. There were a few mouthfuls left, and he drank carefully, sparingly, forcing himself to leave some for later. Then he checked the wounds on his arms and changed his bandages. He seemed to be healing fine, no infection, although he might have scars.There was still nothing to eat.He walked across the cell, and then carefully back. His body realigned as movement returned, and Tony took careful breaths, as he tried to process the fight, the tranquilisers again. For some reason, he thought of the furiously angry look on Dean’s face as Tony went down. He didn’t know what it meant.Shakily, Tony returned to his bunk and lay down again. He covered his eyes against the lights, and breathed long, deep, slow breaths.Once again, the screech of the cell block door jerked him out of his meditative state. Morrison came into the block, followed by Dean, who walked freely but had a grim look on his face.Tony sat up carefully, grateful when his vision didn’t swim. He had no idea what time it was, and he was hungry in a hollow, exhausted way. Would they pile more punishment on top of this?Morrison merely glanced at him, then left. Just starvation, then.“Hey, how are you feeling?” Dean asked from his cell. Tony looked over to find Dean studying him intently.Tony huffed. “Great. Just awesome,” he rasped. He didn’t have the energy to infuse it with as much spite as Dean deserved.“Those tranqs are no joke,” Dean agreed, watching Tony intently. “How’s the headache?”“I feel like shit, okay?” Tony said, annoyed by the sympathy.“Right, of course,” Dean said, all agreement. After a moment, he asked nonchalantly, “Have you given any more thought to our conversation earlier?”It took Tony a moment to formulate a response. “You mean our argument?” he said hoarsely, incredulous. “The one where you tried to convince me werewolves were real?”“Yeah, that. Have you been thinking about it?” Dean said. The casual note in his voice rang completely false. His eyes bored into Tony’s, dark and serious.“No, because I’ve been unconscious,” Tony pointed out. “Also, I don’t know, because you’re all fucking crazy?”“Are you sure?” Dean countered mildly. “What if I’m not? You’ve fought aliens, you met a Norse god. Is it really so hard to believe that there might be more things out there that you don’t know about?”Tony eyed him wearily, too tired to show too much of his disgust. He managed to get up to pace, just so he didn’t have to sit facing Dean anymore. God, this fucking cell, he was just trapped to be talked at.“Is it really so impossible?” Dean pressed. “You really can’t admit that there might be something you don’t know?”Stung, Tony turned around. “There’s plenty of things I don’t know, actually, you asshole,” he began, but stopped when he caught sight of Dean’s expression.Dean didn’t look calculating. He didn’t look insincere, and he didn’t have any of Lewis’s cruel self-righteousness. The layer of seriousness was still there under his careful mask, and the way he tracked Tony’s movements and watched his face made it seem like it mattered if Tony believed him.Some of Tony’s anger faded into confusion, and he met Dean’s eyes again without thinking. The world began to take on those hyperreal colours again, and he yanked his gaze away with a grimace. Dean made a frustrated noise, but Tony ignored it.“Whatever,” Tony snapped dismissively. “Let’s just not talk about it, okay?” he added, as he paced slowly back across the cell again. His left arm started shaking, and he tucked his hands in his pockets to hide it.It didn’t matter, Tony decided. He had to focus on his priorities. He needed to get back into the cult’s good graces, so they’d let him back into the silo. No matter how hungry he got, he had to get better at reining in his anger. He shouldn’t have insulted Morrison, it had probably set him back days.Then the pit of hunger in his belly growled loud enough for Dean to hear.“Was that your stomach? Are you hungry?” Dean asked, with a surprised frown.Tony didn’t answer, just shot him withering look.Dean’s frown deepened. “When’s the last time you ate?” he asked, and Tony’s fists clenched in his pockets. “I’ve been eating in the mess with the others but they bring you food while I’m not here, right?” he asked sharply.“You gotta be kidding me,” Tony muttered resentfully. Louder he said, “Just forget it, it’s fine.”“It’s not fine,” Dean protested, but he shut up when Tony turned to face him again, glaring balefully.“Okay, so it’s not fine,” he snapped. “Your new best friends are starving me again, and I’m not even sure why since it started before I yelled at Morrison and got tranqed. What the fuck do you plan to do about it?”For a second, dark, grim anger flooded Dean’s face; his jaw clenched and he glared at the cell block door.His posture and expression smoothed out a second later, reined in with visual effort. There was still something angry in his eyes as he said calmly, “They shouldn’t be starving you. You might be a prisoner, but they shouldn’t starve you.”“Yeah, well, guess that’s something we agree on,” Tony said, sitting back down on his bunk. He looked up to find Dean watching him again.When he caught Tony’s eyes, Dean deliberately glanced from Tony to the cameras. He let an appealing look cross his face, like he was waiting for Tony to understand something.Tony studied Dean with narrowed eyes. Hunger gnawed in his belly, but hope clawed its way into his mind as it occurred to him that Dean could be trying to tell him he was lying for the cameras. Could it mean he was still on Tony’s side? Could he be protecting the brief alliance they’d formed, hiding it from Tony’s captors?Tony thought back to the church, and Dean’s furious anger as he fought the guards. He’d sneered at how quickly that resistance dissolved when Lewis lured Dean in, but what if Dean had just done the smart thing and pretended to comply?It would be a dangerous risk for Tony to decide to believe that Dean was lying to Lewis, not without more proof than he currently had. But it was tempting.And as Tony eyed Dean warily, curiosity swelled in his mind. Too many things about Dean just didn’t make any sense at all – obviously the whole werewolf thing was number one – but even if he was really lying to Lewis, could Tony trust him? He might be a killer. He was also a wild card; a mystery Tony suddenly wanted very badly to solve.Tony’s stomach growled again, loudly, and Dean twitched. When Tony glanced his way, he was frowning. “I wish I had something to give you,” he said helplessly. “I didn’t think to, like, steal a bread roll or anything.”The mention of it made Tony’s stomach growl again. “Please don’t talk about food,” he huffed. His anger had ebbed, leaving him exhausted, trapped and heartsore.“Is there anything you do want to talk about?” Dean offered.“No,” Tony said shortly, but it was slightly softer, less accusatory.The rest of the night passed quietly. Tony felt Dean’s eyes on him almost constantly, like Dean was studying every inch of him, but for some reason this particular surveillance didn’t feel invasive. When Dean noticed that Tony’s water was almost finished, he rolled his own bottle across the cell block to Tony. Then they had one further conversation, an awkward one about how to maintain a veneer of privacy while using their respective toilets.The lights went out, and Tony lay down on his bunk in the dark, listening to the sound of Dean breathing. His stomach was still knotted with anxiety, but after a while he felt closer to the deliberate calm he’d been working with before Dean was first brought to the cells.Then the wolves began to howl. Tony heard movement from Dean, a shift of material and an indrawn breath.“They’ve been doing that almost every night,” Tony told him quietly. “Not the night you broke in, but a lot.”“Yeah,” Dean replied, unsurprised. Then he asked, “You been sleeping?”Tony snorted. “Sure,” he lied.Dean tsked. “Try to sleep. I’ll keep watch again.”“Great,” Tony muttered, but against all odds, he felt himself relax a little.
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He didn’t sleep. Insomnia and frustration had him pacing long before the lights went on. He’d spent the night worrying over Dean’s trustworthiness, and trying not to imagine all the food he’d eat once he’d escaped. He’d also come to regret how long it was taking him to make his escape. He needed to get out of this place; he needed Pepper and Rhodey, he needed to know what was happening at his company.He also wanted to understand all the freaky supernatural shit people kept trying to feed him. It was one thing, he’d decided, to be abducted for the very simple reason of building an arc reactor, or even a bomb. But Lewis’s mind-violating white lights and all the inexplicable crap about mythical creatures were making the situation completely unacceptable. Not to mention all the starvation and tranquilisers.As they waited for their captors to arrive, Dean watched him from the other cell. Tony could practically feel his gaze on his skin. Something about his intense focus still felt weirdly reassuring, and Tony understood that least of all.The cell block door opened with a screech. Dean’s attention immediately switched from Tony to the door, and his expression became casual. Morrison came in with two guards, to let Dean out. He also tossed an MRE into Tony’s cell without a word.Before Tony could do much more than glare, Dean said casually, “What’s up with that, anyway? Why were you letting him starve?”“What do you mean?” Morrison asked, as Tony turned his glare on Dean. If his interference meant no food for Tony for another day, cell bars or not, Tony would kill him.“Nobody’s fed him for like, two days,” Dean said, gesturing to Tony.Morrison looked surprised. “Is that true?” he asked Tony.Warily, Tony said, “Yeah? Obviously?”“Come on, man,” Dean coaxed. “He probably only yelled at you because he was hungry. And surely getting tranqed was punishment enough for that.”And miracle of miracles, Morrison actually laughed. “Yeah? You enjoyed waking up with that headache?”“Ugh,” Dean mugged. “But seriously, he’s gotta eat if you want him to be able to think,” he added, slapping Morrison on the back companionably as they left. The cell block door slammed shut behind them.Tony picked up the MRE. His left hand shook as he opened the package. When it was ready, he forced himself to eat slowly, banking his anger that starving him this time had apparently been a fucking accident.It made it hard not to react when the guards trooped in to take him to the lab. They crowded into the cell to handcuff him, and it took everything he had not to fight them off. But he breathed carefully, gritted his teeth, and reminded himself to be patient.The guards brought Tony across the compound to the missile silo again, and Tony ignored the way fear crawled across his shoulders as they approached the underground structure. Once down the stairs, they led him across the open lab space to Hanson, who waited with Felix and two others.“Stark,” Hanson said in greeting, wary as usual. “Colonel Lewis has decided it’s time for you to get to work. Felix and his team will build the components for you, and you’ll tell them what to do.”Tony eyed the three workers carefully. That was it? He was back in? He decided not to question it, and asked the workers, “Know a lot about reactor fusion technology?”One of the two who wasn’t Felix crossed his arms. “He’s physics, I’m engineering,” he said, pointing a thumb at the third guy.Tony raised an eyebrow. “And that means what, exactly? Did you specialise?”“I’ve been working on missile systems,” Engineering explained.“Electrical engineering, then,” Tony said.“And he’s a squid,” Engineering added, without missing a beat.“Navy, really?” Tony said, his attention on Physics. “Do any time in the Navy Research Lab?”“Not yet,” Physics said.“Well, maybe you’ll get to,” Tony said, hiding his relief. If he gave them incorrect instructions, these two wouldn’t know any better. “What about you?” he asked Felix.“Two years at the ARL, working under Commander Gregson,” Felix replied, an edge of pride in his voice.“Yeah? I’ve heard about the work Gregson’s doing in complex intelligence systems,” Tony said, as his pulse sped up a little. Gregson’s work was about as far from arc reactors as it was possible to get, it was exactly the result he’d been looking for.He should still be careful; he shouldn’t assume they hadn’t studied up on what was public, that they didn’t have even a vague working knowledge of reactor fusion. But this was the first concrete sign that his plans might actually work.He swung back to Hanson and said, “I should be able to teach them what they need to know to build the components. It’ll take about three weeks.”“Three weeks?” Hanson said, taken aback.“Sure, three weeks,” Tony confirmed, pretending like he didn’t know what the problem was.“Why will it take that long?” Hanson demanded.Tony shrugged casually. “I’ve been using robotics to build these components for years. It takes accuracy and precision, and if a human is doing it, they need practice and enough working knowledge of the tech to know what they’re doing. You’ve given me blank slates,” he said, gesturing to Felix and company. “Which is fine, but if I have to explain enough plasma physics to make sure they can build the five components I know you don’t have then, you know, we’ve gotta do it the slow way.”“Five?” Felix said. “I was told there were only two missing components.”Tony smiled thinly, and didn’t comment on the fact that Felix was getting his information from Tony’s murdered scientists. “Well, what can I say? There’s five.”In truth, only three components were missing. There were two that Tony’s scientists were aware of, and a third he’d developed to work with the new Stark element and kept highly secret.The other two components he planned to build would allow him to blow the arc reactor – and the entire silo – straight to hell.“But you don’t think we can build them any quicker than three weeks?” Felix asked, as Hanson frowned.“Probably not,” Tony admitted. He watched Hanson think, making sure to keep his expression neutral. They all had that overconfidence again; none of them seemed to wonder why Tony was cooperating. They probably assumed he was safely under the thumb of God’s plan.“Three weeks is unacceptable,” Hanson decided. “Can you work with them around the clock, to give them the skills they need?”Tony grimaced.“What?” Hanson bit out.Tony held up his hands, placating him. “Nothing, nothing. Around the clock, I can do that, I’m sure it won’t--” He bit off the words, pretending he was hesitant.“It won’t what?” Hanson demanded through clenched teeth.Tony glared at him. “Well, I don’t want to get shot when the hastily-assembled arc reactor doesn’t damn well work, okay? You want it done fast, sure, but this isn’t high school shop class, you can’t half-ass a last minute build and expect it not to fail. You rush the job, the potential for errors goes up, alright? Especially if you’re getting these guys to do it, they’ve never done it before.”“You’ve done it before,” Hanson said, implying he thought that meant it would be easy enough for anyone.Tony plastered on an affronted look. “Yeah, I’ve done it before, it’s my goddamn tech, I know how to do it.”“How long does it take you, compared to them?” he asked.Tony grimaced again, then feigned reluctance as he said, “It’d take me about eight days.”“Eight days? But you can’t teach them to do it any faster than three weeks?” Hanson growled, outraged.“I am actually a genius, you know,” Tony pointed out, annoyed. “I know you and your bosses think I’m a complete waste of space, but I am goddamn Iron Man. When it comes to arc reactors, I know what the fuck I’m doing.”Hanson studied him with narrowed eyes. Tony held his breath and tried not to look annoyed instead of tense. Finally he nodded at Felix. “Show him the reactor. Don’t let him touch anything until I get back.”He stalked out, leaving Tony in the lab with the workers and his guards.“Okay,” Felix said awkwardly, watching him go with worried eyes. “This way, then, I guess.”Tony walked with him over to the arc reactor; Engineering and Physics trailed after them. There were some other workers nearby that Tony nodded at; it took everything to pretend to be calm and reluctant, and not let his anticipation show on his face.The armed guards stayed nearby, rifles at the ready, and they kept their eyes on Tony. The others, though, were less suspicious than Morrison, and let Tony examine the reactor freely. They even let him climb halfway over the empty outer ring, so he could get a good close look at their progress on the inner components. He kept one eye on the guards and found they watched him but didn’t prevent his exploration.The workers were quiet at first, but Tony asked questions, turned on the charm, commented on the work they’d done, praised the quality of their build and even made them laugh. He knew they’d never help him escape, but the more relaxed they were around him, the more latitude he’d have.Meanwhile, Tony calculated how much more complete the reactor needed to be before it could make a big, beautiful explosion. If he built the two sabotage components first while they installed the electromagnetic coils and the core housing, he’d be able to make it blow.Eight days had been an exaggeration; he could’ve built all the components in five. The two components he needed for the explosion would take three, maybe less. If Lewis agreed to let him build them, he’d be able to control it all, and if they gave him enough time in the lab he could escape so much sooner.It took almost two hours for Hanson to return, face like thunder. He stood before Tony with crossed arms as he said, “You’re going to build the components, starting immediately. Make a list of everything you need, and we’ll make sure you have the supplies.”Tony nodded, and made sure to pretend to look apprehensive. Inside, he was shouting with triumph.***Back in the cells that night, Tony couldn’t keep still. He’d been fed three times, he’d been out of the fucking cell, and he’d made progress, finally. Now nervous excitement kept him on his feet, pacing the cell, mind racing with plans.Eventually, Dean said, “Man, could you cut that out? You're making me dizzy.”“Gee, I'm so sorry my ongoing incarceration is annoying for you,” Tony said, still pacing.Dean snorted. Then he said, “How was your day? You were in the labs, right?”“Yes, I was in the labs,” Tony admitted. “And before you ask, yes, they fed me.”Dean nodded his approval, then said, “They told me you’re the one who’ll make the device work, that they’re using your arc reactor?” He sat forwards and put his elbows on his knees, watching Tony closely.“Yeah, they need me to help them finish it.”Dean met his eyes, and Tony felt like he was waiting for something, but Tony didn’t know what he expected.Eventually, Dean asked, “So can you? Are you going to?”“Of course I am,” Tony said warily. “I don’t have a choice.”Dean nodded, looked down. Frustration flickered over his face again, and when he looked up, he quickly glanced from Tony to the cameras before he said, “Well, the Colonel’s got interesting ideas. Her philosophy’s a little different, but if it’s what God wants, maybe we should go with it. Maybe we can even save your soul, too, while she’s saving everyone else.” Nothing about the casual tone of his voice matched the seriousness around his eyebrows.Tony narrowed his own eyes, studying Dean carefully. Lingering suspicion of Dean’s motives warred with his curiosity and the strange instinct he had to trust the other prisoner.Dean’s slightly expectant eyebrow raise made Tony realise he hadn’t responded. “She abducted me,” he managed, aiming for irritation and mild resistance. “She killed multiple people to get to me, and now that she’s got me, she sometimes decides I deserve to be starved. Excuse me if I question her interpretation of the Bible.”Dean snorted. “Dude, have you ever read the Bible?”“No, of course not,” Tony huffed.“Well, no time like the present,” Dean said, and to Tony’s genuine surprise he gestured at the copy that had been sitting, ignored, in a corner of Tony’s cell.“What? No. Seriously?” Tony asked.“Yeah, man, hand it over,” Dean insisted. He made a grabbing motion, and Tony tossed the book between the bars of their cells.To Tony’s surprise, Dean immediately opened it and started flicking purposefully. He stopped at one section, flipped a few pages, and frowned down at the words.“Really? You’re actually reading that?” Tony asked, after a few more moments of silent page-turning.“I’ve read it before,” Dean replied, still frowning down at the pages. His thumb scuffed carelessly across the thin paper as he read.“Of course you have,” Tony muttered.Dean grinned, glancing up. “Not enough science for you?”“Among other things.”“Can’t please everyone.” Suddenly Dean snapped the book shut and got up. He came over to the bars to face Tony and said, “Try Job.”Tony caught the thrown book on reflex. “What?”“Job. Old Testament, between Esther and Psalms. Start at the beginning. Come on, give it a try. You’re bored, right? What can it hurt?”Tony would have dismissed him out of hand, but something about Dean’s overly casual posture and calm expression made it difficult.With a sigh, Tony opened the book and flipped through, looking for the sections Dean had mentioned. He found Job, and read through the first few lines, smoothing the edges of the thin paper with his fingertips.Then he noticed the marks. Thin indentations under different words, like someone could make with their thumbnail.‘Escaped’ was the first underlined word. Then ‘escaped’ again, and a third time, all on the same page. Then, on the other page, ‘shall we not’ was underlined and a question mark was circled with indentation marks.Tony very deliberately didn’t look up at Dean, and took care not to let his expression change.It could be a trap. Lewis could have talked Dean into spying for her. Now that Tony was in the lab, building components, she’d want eyes on him. What better way spy than his fellow prisoner?But all of Tony’s instincts were at war with the idea. Dean had implied he was lying to the cult, and Tony, against all logic, believed him. After all, if Tony hadn’t fucked up his own opportunities, he could have ingratiated himself with them too, and been eating with them and walking the compound instead of starving in a jail cell.And then there was the weight of Dean’s eyes on him, the way it felt reassuring instead of terrifying. Dean was watching over him, constantly. Tony had no idea why, or why he felt so sure that was what was happening, but crazy shit aside, he felt more and more like Dean was a genuine ally.“So what do you think of the story?” Dean asked eventually.“Not sure,” Tony admitted warily, keeping his eyes on the page. “I don’t think I really get the point.”“Well, Job was a wealthy dude. Kids, wives, camels,” Dean was saying, flashing an insincere smile. “God gave, God let the devil take it all away. Job stayed faithful, though, and got it all back in the end. New wives, new kids.”“New camels, too, I bet,” Tony shot back. “And the lesson?” Where was Dean going with this?“Don’t give up,” Dean said, meeting Tony’s. “No matter what happens, no matter how bad it gets, you’ve gotta have faith.”Tony understood every word and he knew it was a promise that had nothing to do with God. He held Dean’s gaze and felt like something inside him was reaching out, like he was about to touch Dean’s skin even though they were ten feet apart and separated by bars.Tony dragged his eyes away and bent his head again to stare at the page, frowning in confusion. He read a different section of words, and frowned for a different reason. “Keep faith even when God makes bets with Satan about you?”Dean snorted. “Yeah, even then,” he said, with genuine bitterness in his voice. “God and Lucifer wanted to see how much Job could take, I guess. They wanted to know if he would still be faithful after he lost everything.”“Kinda messed up, but sure, whatever,” Tony commented as he read on, half his mind trying to parse the unfamiliar language even as the rest of him tried to decide what to do. “So are you asking me if I have faith? Surely the Colonel told you I’m a non-believer,” he said, buying time.“Everybody has faith in something. Family, friends. You, of all people, you gotta have something you believe in,” Dean mused, studying Tony. “You wouldn’t have built that crazy suit if you didn’t.”Something in Tony’s chest twisted painfully.He made a snap decision. “Some of Job’s buddies are really long-winded,” he said. Especially the one who’d said, 'He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success'. Tony had underlined it with his thumbnail. “Find me something else,” he added, as he closed the bible and got up to toss it back through the bars to Dean. Hopefully he’d chosen a clear enough message.Dean caught the book, and as he sat back down on his bunk he said mildly, “Hey pal, that’s the word of God, no such thing as long-winded.”Tony made a show of rolling his eyes, then forced himself not to watch as Dean opened the bible and flipped through it. God, he was stupid. He should not be doing this. He wondered if one day he’d develop some of those self-preservation instincts people kept talking about.Dean gave no reaction to the message; no sign that he was relieved or angry or suspicious. Instead he said, “Maybe Job isn’t for you, maybe you’d like Isaiah?”“What?” Tony said blankly.“It’s good,” Dean persisted. “’Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.’”Tony frowned at him, confused, and said nothing.Dean flipped another page, then looked up and made eye-contact with Tony has he said, “’So do not fear, for I am with you.’”His tone made the hair on Tony’s neck stand on end.“'I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’” Tony knew, again, that this wasn’t about God.“It’s powerful stuff,” Dean added, looking carefully away and shuttering himself. Tony felt a shiver go down his spine as the warmth of Dean’s attention left him.“Sure, I guess it is,” he managed, sounding only slightly strangled. What the hell was happening? It felt like Dean had just offered him everything.“What about the arc reactor?” Dean asked casually, shifting so he leaned back into the corner of his cell with his feet up on the bed.“What about it?” Tony said, feeling a little more on solid ground now that Dean had stopped quoting things.“Can you make it work with the other thing they built? The device?” Dean persisted.“Probably,” Tony shrugged. “There’s factors.”“Factors?” Dean said.“Well, I don’t what the hell ‘angelic grace’ is supposed to be,” Tony admitted. “It’s hard to know how to calibrate the machine or the arc reactor to process a substance I know nothing about. Fitz in the lab wasn’t very specific, and Lewis hasn’t let me even look at it, let alone test it, so I have no idea how it’ll interact with the arc reactor or anything else. Besides, did they show it to you? The machine? It’s like a metal-wood-arc reactor Frankenstein, like something out of a bad B movie.”“Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster,” Dean pointed out. “And I love bad B movies.”“You do?” Tony said, perplexed.“Sure,” Dean said easily. “All of the monsters are plastic, and the good guys always win.”Tony rolled his eyes again. “And all the werewolves have CGI fangs, right?”Dean grinned, amused. He flipped a few more pages in the bible without reading them. His expression grew thoughtful, and he said, “Angelic grace is hard to explain. Angels don’t have souls like humans do, but if they did, that’s what grace would be. It connects them to Heaven, it’s the source of their powers, and it…it makes them what they are,” he said with a helpless hand gesture.“Right, you say that like you’re not going on faith like the rest of them,” Tony quipped, waiting for the underlying message.“I’m not,” Dean said baldly. “I know about angelic grace because I’ve met angels. It’s why Lewis was so excited to see me, apparently word travels.”The solid ground Tony had been standing on abruptly shifted. For a long moment, all he could do was stare.“You think you’ve met angels?” he asked, aiming for a nonchalance he didn’t really feel.“I know I’ve met angels,” Dean replied. “A few years ago the world was ending, and Heaven was…involved. So I met angels. Archangels, too,” he added with an unimpressed look.Tony studied him. Part of him was still waiting for the punchline, for the message behind whatever this code was, but the sense of subterfuge Tony had begun to pick up on was gone. He couldn’t sense any lies right now. But Dean none of Lewis’s fervour, no persuasiveness or evangelical reverence.“Are you serious?” Tony asked.Dean regarded him steadily. Then his expression grew tired, and he looked away. “No, it’s fine,” and Tony could tell that was a lie.Remembering their fight the previous evening, Tony tried not to let his knee-jerk disbelief take over this time. Instead, he thought about it.One possibility was that while Dean believed what he was saying, while he might appear completely sane and rational, perhaps he wasn’t. He could actually be very ill, caught up in delusion in which he was a werewolf hunter who talked to angels.Only it would have to be a shared delusion, because Lewis believed it too, and she didn’t seem the type to take someone else’s connection to God on faith. But she’d heard of Dean, she’d seemed impressed by whatever reputation he had; a reputation connected to werewolves and angels. Maybe she thought he was some kind of visionary? That seemed at odds with Dean’s behaviour so far.Or it could all still be some kind of complicated government program, full of bullshit supernatural codenames. It was a little too X Files conspiracy theory for Tony’s taste, but it wasn’t impossible. Why wouldn’t Dean tell him, at this point, though? Why would he persist in the fiction, rather than explain it? He could use the bible if he had to keep the Colonel on side.Another possibility, of course, was that angels and werewolves might actually exist. Dean had been right the previous evening; aliens existed, and so did magic-wielding Norse gods. Why not angels and werewolves as well? Reality could be far stranger than Tony had thought.Some part of him was still shrieking hysterical denials at just the idea, but another part of him – a rational, logical, curious part of him – wondered if it would be narrow-minded not to consider it?“Will they come for you?” Tony asked Dean. “These angels, I mean. What do they look like? Will they show themselves, since Heaven is on her side in all of this,” he added, remembering the cameras.Dean looked surprised. Then said “They use human vessels when they come to Earth, so mostly they just look like people. And…” He hesitated, his eyes flicking to the cameras and back. “I don’t know if they’ll come here.” After a pause, he added, “They probably trust her to get the job done.”There was something just slightly insincere in Dean’s tone as he said the last phrase, which probably meant the angels didn’t trust the Colonel to do whatever she was doing, but Dean had seemed genuine about the rest, so it didn’t seem like he expected any angels to show up here.Angels. What the fuck? Abruptly, Tony sat down on his bunk. He couldn’t believe he was actually trying to reconcile the existence of angels. Angels, Heaven, God?Surely he was just having a nervous breakdown, or being brainwashed somehow? But if they showed him angelic grace, if there were really werewolves penned up somewhere in the compound…if he had the proof of his own eyes, could he really still deny the possibility?He looked over at Dean. He had so many questions, none of which he wanted to ask while Lewis and her goons were listening in on them.Dean seemed to understand something about Tony’s confusion, and his return glance was mostly a mix of commiseration and regret, like he hadn’t wanted to break the news. “Let it sink in, we can talk more about it later,” he said. Then, with a meaningful look he added, “Let me know if you need any more information, about anything.”The way he stressed the last word suggested an offer that was wider than theology. And of course, the knowledge Dean could get with his freedom of movement, of the compound and how it worked, could be incredibly useful. But could Tony trust him?Before he could ask any more questions, the lights went out. “Good night, then, I guess,” he said dryly.Dean huffed, then let the silence fall between them. Tony listened to the rustle as Dean lay down on his bunk.The lingering existential crisis alone would have been enough to keep Tony from sleeping, but the wolves once again started to howl. He listened absently, thinking about God and angels, and Dean’s lies, and wondering what Dean would tell him if they could speak freely.And if Tony was wrong, how soon would Dean tell the Colonel about his plans? How long would it take for Tony to know that he was being betrayed?The night wore on and Tony’s suspicions rose and fell. At some point, either very late or very early, in the dark he decided that if Dean turned out to be lying, Tony was going to scorch the entire compound to ash and salt the earth. Mental illness was one thing, but if this was a game? If Dean was spearheading some complicated attempt to confuse and disorient Tony, whether it was at the Colonel’s instigation or for some sadistic reason of his own? Tony promised himself that he’d make everyone involved regret it.He was going to escape, with or without Dean’s help, and then he’d show them all what a non-believer was capable of.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next morning, Lewis herself came in with the guards. Tony had a second to realise that there were more soldiers than usual, before three of them were heading for his cell with intent. “Stark, you’re going back to the lab,” Lewis informed him.Tony clenched his jaw. He hadn’t slept, there was a headache pounding between his temples, and his eyes felt like sandpaper. He had to keep a tight grip on his urge to fight back when they unlocked his cell and started to put handcuffs on him.While they were still getting him ready to move, one of Lewis’s remaining guards simply opened Dean’s cell and stepped back, allowing him to walk right out. Tony tried not to feel envious.“Dean, I wonder if you’ll indulge me in a little experiment,” Lewis said, as Dean strolled towards her.Tony immediately tensed, wary of what this could be.“What kind of experiment?” Dean said casually. Tony watched them through the bars. He couldn’t see Dean’s face.“Take my hand,” Lewis said, holding up her bare palm.“Why?” Dean asked guardedly. Tony frowned, suddenly aware of the silence and tension among the soldiers.“Because our bare skin hasn’t touched,” Lewis said, “and I wish to test a theory.”After a moment’s silence, Dean said, “You think we might be soulmates.”Tony inhaled sharply, shocked.“I merely wish to find out whether your presence here is even more significant than we’ve realised,” she said. “God could bless us even more than he already has.”Tony held his breath. Dean’s shoulders hadn’t tensed, but he didn’t immediately move to take her hand. Tony could only imagine him weighing his reluctance against the need to cooperate, to appear pliant while surrounded by soldiers.After another second of hesitation, Dean reached out. Their bare skin touched.Nothing seemed to happen. A flicker of disappointment crossed Lewis’ face, and Tony tried to hide his relief.Then Lewis’ expression returned to self-righteous calm, and she hummed contemplatively. “God must have other plans for us.” She drew her hand back and, as if nothing had happened, she said, “Lieutenant Hailey tells me you’ve been encouraging Stark to read the bible.”Once again, Dean was slow to respond, and Tony could only imagine the look on his face – who the hell just casually tested for soulmates? Tony couldn’t believe what he’d just seen – but he controlled himself and sounded casual when he said, “Yeah, I guess I have.”“Why?” Lewis frowned curiously.“Why not?” Dean shrugged.“I know you’re essentially trapped down here with him, and I apologise again that we don’t have more room in the barracks. But if you’re bored we can find something else for you to do. Stark’s a non-believer, he’s not here to be saved. You don’t have to waste your time with him.”Tony cursed his inability to see Dean’s face. “I don’t think it’s a waste of time. It can’t hurt to try.”Lewis gave Tony a terrifyingly speculative once-over, as his collection of guards finally brought him out of his cell. She sounded condescending as she said, “I’d be surprised.”Tony clenched his jaw. He wasn’t the one who was crazy enough to expect to have a soulmate.“Maybe you will be, then,” Dean said, sounding amused. “What’s the harm? A few conversations about the bible, a little discussion. It’s not like it’s dangerous for me.”“Very true,” she said, amused, like she and Dean were in on a joke. She gestured, and Tony’s guards nudged him forwards. He could feel Dean’s eyes on his back as they marched him out of the cells.Morrison was waiting in the elevator foyer. He seemed to be in a bad mood, and grunted vaguely at Tony as they led him out of the building.On the walk to the silo, Tony contemplated the little scene he’d witnessed in the cell block. He’d never seen anything like it before. The idea that Lewis would test for a soulmate connection so openly was bizarre.He wasn’t surprised that she believed in them, of course. Almost every religion had beliefs about soulmates – that they were a gift from God, they were a blessing on mankind, they had holy powers – so it made sense that she’d believe in them as part of God’s plan.But to be arrogant enough to test for it? To expect to have a soulmate? Even Tony knew it didn’t work like that.Of course, no-one was exactly sure how it did work; why a vanishingly small population of humans developed a physical, mental and emotional bond with the touch of their bare skin. Tony personally didn’t believe it had anything to do with God – it had to be a biological phenomenon of some kind, a virus, or some kind of physical compatibility that gave people an advanced level of synergy – but it was unarguably rare, unpredictable, and loaded with cultural myth and superstition.The matching marks soulmates received on their skin when they touched for the first time was the least explainable part about it, but he was sure science would catch up at some point.Either way, it went strongly against social norms to touch someone for the express purpose of establishing a soulmate bond. The arrogance of it was breath-taking.He wondered what Dean believed about soulmates. Where would something like that fit into his monsters-and-angels worldview? Maybe he believed they were blessings from God as well?They reached the silo and went inside. Felix greeted them at the door of the lab and said eagerly, “Mr Stark, we’ve set up a workspace for you over here, ready for you to get started.”They led him to a bench space near the reactor, and Tony examined it carefully. “Looks like I have everything I need. You guys had a plasma torch on hand?”“Yeah, we needed it while we were building the device,” Physics told him. He seemed short tempered, more brusque than usual.Tony nodded, plastering on a cooperative look as Morrison leaned in to un-cuff him. “Thanks,” he said. Rubbing his wrists, he turned back to the bench. “Alright, let’s get started.”He sorted through the materials they’d brought him, tense with anticipation. He knew they were watching him closely; not only Morrison and the lab workers, but the armed guards standing nearby. They watched his hands, tracking everything he picked up and making sure he put it down again. They were waiting for him to steal something else.Tony breathed deeply, told himself the scrutiny would ease off as they got comfortable, and thought about the first component he intended to make, the one that would sabotage the primary regulator.“Can you talk us through what you’re doing?” Felix suggested, from right behind Tony’s left shoulder. Engineering and Physics were also hanging over him.“Sure,” he said, pretending to be comfortable with the close scrutiny. With one last glance at a bored-looking Morrison, Tony started to talk, beginning with some total bullshit about power regulators and their importance to the arc reactor design. Then he made up a story about what had happened when he perfected the design of this one, and why he’d left it out of the plans. “Because, I mean, if you’re going to leave something out of the plans, make it something crucial, right? Make it something that will blow the whole thing to hell if it’s not present.”Behind him, Morrison huffed. “No matter what happens to the people building your tech?”Tony glanced at him through narrowed eyes. “Excuse me for trying to make it harder for people to use my tech to build arc reactor-powered bombs.”“Does that happen often?” Felix asked, intrigued.Tony shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”He was lying, of course; beyond Tony’s armors and Vanko’s exoskeleton, arc reactors were surprisingly difficult to effectively weaponize. The components were hard to make without sufficient expertise, and stable materials were hard to get. There were far easier ways to make a bomb. But the conversation was useful misdirection. Tony was hoping to distract them even just a little bit from the part he was building. If any of the soldiers had expertise he didn’t know about, there was a slight chance they might notice something off about the regulator. Fortunately, Tony’s brain and hands could work independently of his mouth, so he could keep the discussion going.When he ran out of things to say about regulators, he mentioned the device, and the angelic grace, and encouraged Felix to explain the process to him again. Eventually, he managed to transition the conversation to a more personal subject; he asked them about their lives, their military service, and finally about what life was like in the compound.Just as Tony was about to steer the conversation around to night time in the lab, Hanson joined them with an urgent message for Morrison. Tony’s anxiety spiked. Had Dean betrayed him already? For a long moment, his entire body felt seized up with anxiety.But nothing happened. They were just close enough for him to overhear them, and it was an update about the security perimeter. Morrison left for a chat with Hanson and some guards who were waiting at ground level, and after some careful deep breaths, Tony took advantage of the opportunity to turn the conversation towards after hours in the silo.Without thinking twice about it, Felix told him the lab was usually shut down by about six pm, when the temperature dropped too far for the heaters in the silo to be effective. All the workers ate a communal meal with the rest of the cult and then attended church before lights out. Tony parlayed this into a harmless dig, asking whether the security guys had to follow the same rules as the smart people. Physics and Engineering laughed, then without thinking they told him about the nightly patrols for security staff, around the perimeter, between the guard towers.He didn’t press his luck. He knew Morrison wouldn’t be long, so Tony quickly diverted them with a question about the age of the compound, and asked if any of them had seen any of the newer silos in the States. By the time Morrison came back, Engineering was asking him whether he thought Peacekeeper missiles would ever make a comeback, and Tony was explaining why his answer was a definitive ‘no’.Again, Tony expected to discover that he’d been betrayed. He waited for the hand on his shoulder, the shouting, the tranq shot. But there was nothing different about the set of Morrison’s shoulders or the line of his mouth, and he didn’t seem to watch Tony any closer than before.The rush of adrenaline made Tony’s hands shake slightly on the components, but he rode it out and kept his breathing steady. Dean hadn’t told them. Not yet.After several hours of work, they brought in some meals and brought Tony away from his bench to eat. The workers ate with him, MREs all around, while Morrison poked around in what Tony had been doing, counting the tools he’d been using and no doubt checking for any missing ones Tony could have hidden in his sleeves.He even picked up the component to study it, but Tony wasn’t concerned; by this point, he’d been able to build enough of the exterior to hide the suspicious-looking parts.In between keeping an eye on Morrison, refusing to exchange his peanut butter for Engineering’s jalapeno cheese, and getting Felix to get him water for his cocoa, Tony took in the rest of the lab around them. He had to be careful; he was all too aware of the scrutiny of his guards. They’d rotated shifts at some point, so a new crew of silent, armed soldiers watched his every move. He tried to make sure his study of the lab seemed casual and purposeless.He could see the device from where they were sitting, and he watched other workers climbing inside the wooden chambers to install the valves and wires Felix had mentioned. Over in the missile well, some of the others seemed to be testing the silo’s hydraulics, raising and lowering a platform they’d apparently installed to house the reactor and device when finished, to raise them to ground level.Eventually, Tony finished trying to eat his genuinely hideous chicken MRE and handed it back, mostly uneaten, to Morrison. “I don’t know what that is, but it’s absolutely disgusting,” he told him.Morrison huffed, amused. “Well, you’re just like the rest of us after all.”By the end of the day, Tony had finished one component and started a second, but his hands were starting to cramp. He threw down his tools and said, “Okay, I’m calling it. I have to finish the rest of this one tomorrow when the sealant hardens, but the first one has probably cooled, and you could install it now if you want.”Morrison gave his permission grudgingly, but Felix looked particularly pleased as they all walked over to the arc reactor. “Impressive work, Mr Stark,” he said.“Thanks,” Tony replied cautiously. “The others will take longer, this one was the simplest.” He wanted to manage expectations, in case he needed a reason to stall later on.They got the component wired in, under Tony’s watchful eyes. Once the reactor was powered up, it was going to boost the initial power intake of the reactor, helping to generate a massive surge. The other component he’d been building would interfere with the heat sinks, and make sure the reactor blew nice and hot.“Alright, let’s get you back to your cell,” Morrison said, and his mood seemed a little softer than it had been.The day outside the silo had turned overcast, and freezing. Tony shivered his way through the snow, too cold to talk. The fucking TOMS on his feet were so incredibly inadequate for the outdoors in this weather.When they reached the end of the path, and the main part of the compound, they found Dean and Hanson waiting, standing just by a parked jeep. Tony’s heartrate accelerated. What was this?“Ah, she gave you permission, then?” Morrison said to Dean, sounding a little surprised. Tony immediately grew nervous.“Yeah, she agreed,” Dean said casually, without looking in Tony’s direction.Morrison glanced at Tony, frowning. To Dean, he said, “If this goes wrong, it’s on you. You know that, right?”Dean nodded. “It won’t go wrong. He needs proof, or he’ll never believe any of this is worth doing.”Tony’s skin crawled. “Proof of what?” He dreaded wherever this was going.“Werewolves,” Dean said evenly. His eyes finally met Tony’s, and there was a warning in them.“What?” Tony said, dismayed.Dean’s gaze remained steady. “Saddle up,” he said, gesturing for Tony to precede him to the jeep. There was a tension in his face that Tony couldn’t parse.Tony hesitated, but with the armed guards behind him and Morrison getting into the driver’s seat, he didn’t see any other choice but to obey.“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Morrison said to Dean, as Dean climbed into the back of the jeep with Tony.“He’s not faithful, Lewis said it herself,” Dean replied with a casual shrug. “Maybe after this he will be.”Tony felt sure it was a half-truth; Dean didn’t want him to believe in the cult’s crazy plan. Whatever this was, it had to be about proving Dean wasn’t crazy, proving that he wasn’t lying about werewolves. Tony couldn’t decide whether or not to be angry about Dean’s insistence, and clenched his fists, tense and wary, as they drove downhill.The compound was humming with activity; there were people and soldiers everywhere, working and training. Tony tried to look around, to make the most of the invaluable opportunity to gather information, but the cult members openly stared back, making him feel exposed. He felt bizarrely grateful for Dean’s presence beside him.The jeep’s destination was the well-guarded building at the bottom of the compound. They pulled up, and as Tony got out a gust of cold wind made him shiver. He limped on frozen feet through the door Dean held open for him.Inside the building, it was dark without the glare of daylight on snow and barely warmer than outside. He followed them down a short corridor – breeze block, no windows – to another locked door. Beyond it was an open, warehouse-like space full of chain-link cages.Inside the cages were more prisoners.The cages were made of sturdy wire fencing, and sized so a person could move around but not stand up. As Tony was led down the central walkway between them, he could see the connectors that electrified each cage, so the prisoner couldn’t touch the locks without getting shocked.Some of the prisoners had been given blankets to lie on, on the floor, and others were on bare concrete. Some were lying down, some sitting, but none of the cages were tall enough for a person to stand. All of them stared at him hungrily, and some were so starved they were practically skeletal.Tony had to hold himself back from wrestling Morrison’s gun away and starting a fight, damn the consequences. Despite what he’d inferred from Dean’s comments, seeing the evidence of it in front of his face was even more horrifying than he’d imagined.Some of the prisoners with more awareness, a bit more energy, seemed to recognize him. One of them, a young man with powerfully scowling face, gave a bitter laugh. “No shit, you’ve got Tony fucking Stark locked up here?” His laugh held an edge of hysteria. “Oh man, you’re in fucking trouble.” Gratifyingly, he seemed to direct this at Morrison.Morrison, the sore loser, bashed the young man’s cage door threateningly, but the young man was undaunted. He laughed again, leaning back on his knees, and then he raised his hands to his mouth and the laugh became a howl.Tony flinched back at the sound and collided with Dean, who steadied him with a hand on Tony’s upper arm. The other prisoners joined in, and the howl grew in volume until it blocked out any other noise in the confined space. It was inhuman, and it made shivers run down Tony’s spine; this was the sound he heard at night, in the dark, magnified by a thousand.The guards yelled futilely over the noise. They bashed on the cage doors with nightsticks, but the prisoners refused to stop. Tony stared at the wolves, drinking in the sight of their strangeness, and they stared hungrily back at him. It felt like they were howling with him, for him.When two of the guards began electrocuting the prisoners with cattle prods, Dean’s hand tightened on Tony’s arm again. The shocks didn’t stop the wolves, though; they thrashed in their cages, faces snarling, howling wildly, caught up in their rebellion. Then Morrison brought out the tranq gun, and shot them methodically, one after the other. The young man who’d begun it was one of the last ones, and after he sank into a crumpled, unconscious heap, the noise finally died away.Tony’s hands trembled in the aftermath, adrenalin flooding his system. The wolves that were still awake retreated resentfully to the back of their cages. Tony felt weirdly like he wanted to thank them, but he didn’t want to make it worse.Dean’s hand grasped his upper arm to draw him forwards, and Tony acknowledged in an undertone, “So. Werewolves.”“Yeah,” Dean said grimly.Tony didn’t even know where to start, but before he could press for more, he was distracted by movement down the row.The guards were opening one of the cages. They had poles that they’d attached to the previously-unnoticed collar Tony suddenly realised each of these prisoners was wearing. The pole kept them at arms-length, kept the prisoner from being able to reach his handlers.The person they brought out was a very tall thin man. Dean stiffened, and his grip on Tony’s arm tightened again. The prisoner met Dean’s eyes with wariness and recognition.“Garth,” Dean said. “I need you to show Stark.”Garth’s eyes flicked to Tony. “You sure?” he asked, doubtful.The guard beside him shoved the cattle prod against his skin. “Of course he’s fucking sure,” he yelled, as Garth jerked.Dean made an aborted step forwards, and his already tense frame seemed to tremble with suppressed anger. “Come on, lieutenant, that’s enough,” he said, with a surprisingly calm tone of voice.Garth breathed heavily when the cattle prod was removed. He seemed to recover quickly. Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and changed into a goddamn werewolf.Tony could barely believe his eyes. Garth still looked mostly like a man, but his eyes, claws, fangs and body hair took on new shapes. He looked like a wolfman out of an old movie.Tony took a step or two closer, and the werewolf watched him suspiciously. The humanity was gone from his eyes, and he didn’t seem to recognise Tony.Tony wanted to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he was real. But as he drew closer, he crossed an invisible line. The werewolf snarled and lunged forwards, swiping his claws in Tony’s direction, only stopped short by his restraints.Tony jerked back, and Dean stepped in front of him protectively. “Garth!” he admonished.Garth glared at Dean balefully, curling his lip, showing his teeth. There was something in his eyes that Tony recognized – hunger. He was starving.“So,” Tony said, almost to himself. “That’s a goddamn werewolf.”Dean didn’t respond, but ordered, “Change back, Garth.”Garth snarled again, but then he eyed the soldiers on either side of him with those yellow-gold eyes, and Tony caught a glimpse of resignation in his expression. He took another deep breath, and within seconds, his strange features had receded and the skinny man looked the way he had when they’d started. He wouldn’t meet Dean’s eyes again, and seemed ashamed as the soldiers shoved him gracelessly back into his cage.“Alright, I think we’re done here,” Morrison said to Dean.Tony let them drag him out. Some of the still-conscious wolves began to howl again as he was shoved past them, and he craned his head to look at them for as long as he could.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Outside, the air was frigid, and the cold drove all other thoughts from his mind. He felt numb, and distant from his own body. He vaguely registered them pulling him from the jeep and bundling him into his cell, but he couldn’t react, he couldn’t think.The cell block door slammed and he was alone. Tony sat on his bunk in the silence. Then all at once, he began to shiver. His breathing sped up, he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, and his heart started beating so hard it was painful.Panic attack, he thought distantly, and shame flooded through him as he watched his limbs tremble, felt his breathing stop and start in time with the waves of fear. He felt like he was watching himself from somewhere deep inside his own head.Remembering the previous attack, he forced himself to peel his feet out of his thin, snow-covered shoes, then shuffled backwards into the corner of the bunk with the blanket wrapped around him. Logically he knew the air around him was warm from the heater still locked into the other cell, but chills raced down his back, and his hands and feet felt frozen.He wasn’t sure how long it lasted – the crawling skin, the panicked breathing, the useless, incomplete clenching of his hands – but eventually he managed to concentrate, to slow his inhalations, to trick his mind into thinking about something other than death and terror.He felt exhausted when it was over. He spotted an MRE they must have left him, and more water, and made himself crawl across the cell to get it even though all he wanted to do was lie down and sleep.Part of him wanted to think about what he’d seen, but every time he remembered it, his vision blurred, his hands shook, and he wanted to throw up. It seemed like such an impossibility, but he’d seen it with his own eyes.So, while he ate, he ignored his surroundings and instead thought about whether or not to buy the 1957 BMW 507 he’d been offered the day before he was abducted. He’d seen pictures, the damn thing was bright blue, but he could always repaint it. Silver, maybe, with a red leather interior. Dark blue might be nice, or even black. Any colour he wanted, once it was his. He thought about the original features, the engine, and the parts he could get to make a few tweaks, a few upgrades.It wasn’t the wolfman that frightened him, he gradually realised. It was what it meant. Dean had been telling him the truth. There was a whole world out there that Tony knew nothing about. He thought he’d been terrified already, by aliens and the imminent threat he knew was lurking beyond the stars. But now there was more, already right here on Earth, hiding in the dark, and Tony’d had no idea it was even there.And there was God. There was Heaven. There was Hell, he realised, and he dropped the MRE on the floor as he thrust shaking hands through his hair and breathed deep, trying to stay calm.When he came back out of it again, he made himself pick up the MRE and eat what hadn’t spilled, which fortunately wasn’t much. Logically he knew he needed the fuel, even though he had to force it down.If it was all true, at least Dean wasn’t lying to him, or experiencing delusions. Unless they were contagious, or they’d all been influenced by something. Tony wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful for the glimmer of hope regarding Dean’s agenda.After a while, Dean and Morrison returned. Tony watched them from some distant place behind his eyes. He felt sure they would just look at him and be able to see the fear that’d shaken him to the core, but at the same time, he was too exhausted to care.Dean didn’t look his way but just went into his cell to sprawl on his bunk like he was very relaxed. Morrison surveyed them both while one of his minions replaced the water in their respective cells. Then he nodded to another minion, who silently brought a pair of heavy duty snow boots and extra socks to Tony’s cell, passing them through the bars.“Thanks,” Tony said to Morrison, feigning friendly calm. No harm in rewarding good behaviour.Morrison just nodded and left. Silence fell. Tony wrapped himself in his blankets again, concentrating on the way his limbs were warming up and the way the sensation pushed the fear a little further away.“Would you prefer not to know?” came Dean’s voice, suddenly, dark and rough. When Tony glanced over, Dean was staring up at the ceiling with a stoic look on his face.“I don’t know yet,” Tony admitted, too honest for their surroundings. He was just in time to see something uncertain and guilty cross Dean’s expression. It made something catch in Tony’s chest.He wanted to tell Dean it was okay, to reassure him that it was alright that he’d pushed this on him. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to lie like that. He didn’t want to expose how freaked out he was, either, not with their jailers watching and listening.Instead, he asked, “So why doesn’t everyone know? About werewolves?”Dean shrugged. “Who’d believe it? Too much science around, these days, no-one believes in magic anymore.”He paused, then added, “Most monsters aren’t stupid, either. Well, some of them are, but not all of them, and a lot of them can pass for human. They hide in plain sight, blend in with the crowd. Easier to hunt the humans if the humans don’t believe in you, because then they won’t take steps to protect themselves,” he said.When Tony didn’t respond immediately, he added, “The monster-to-human ratio in the United States isn’t really that high, anyway. We really, really outnumber them, especially these days. So they hide, to avoid the torches and pitchforks.”Tony tried to let that feel comforting, but then had to point out, “I’ve noticed you keep saying monsters. So it’s not just werewolves?”Dean grimaced. “Yeah, not just werewolves.”Tony digested that for a moment. “And you kill them? You’re, what did she call it, a hunter?” he asked.“Yeah.”“How long have you been a hunter?”“All my life,” Dean admitted. “I’ve been semi-retired the past couple of years, but it’s still. I’m still a hunter.” There was a dark twist to his expression as he added, “You might call it the family business.”“Will they be worried about you? Your family?” Tony asked, before he could think better of it.The look on Dean’s face, even in profile, was terribly lonely. “No, they won’t.”“I’m sorry,” Tony said, feeling the inadequacy of the words. He could only imagine what’d happened to Dean’s family, in a life like that.Dean’s only response to the sympathy was a grimace, so Tony moved on. “So walk me through it. What does a hunter do? How do you hunt down a monster?”Finally, Dean stopped staring at the ceiling and sat up, facing Tony. “Depends on the monster in question,” he said, latching on to what was apparently an easier topic of conversation. “We usually started with news reports. Unexplainable deaths, weird phenomena, reports of animal attacks. We’d drive into town and investigate, you know, find out what’s going on and make it stop. Whatever it took to save people.”Tony noted the past tense, and also the ‘we’, but chose not to ask. “And then sometimes you break into military bases to investigate werewolves?” he prompted.The forgiveness in Tony’s voice seemed to allow Dean to meet his eyes again, as he admitted with a relieved half-smile, “Yeah, occasionally.”The moment held, and Tony could read an apology in Dean’s eyes, as well as a desperation that he recognised. Tony’s stomach flipped and he felt dangerously warm. Internally he cursed himself; now really wasn’t the time for inappropriate attraction.He carefully averted his eyes a little and asked, “Can it be studied? Science has to be able to explain some of this stuff.”Dean shrugged again. “Not really my area. You don’t need to know the biology behind vampires to know they need to be killed, trust me.”“Vampires?” Tony repeated with disbelief.“Yeah,” Dean confirmed, then, taking in Tony’s shocked expression, he tacked on a “Sorry.”“Vampires,” Tony repeated, appalled. “Full on, Twilight-Anne Rice blood-drinking glittery vampires?”“No, man, not quite,” Dean said, amused. “They don’t sparkle, and they can’t read minds. They’ve got teeth that descend out of their gums, and they do like blood, that part is true. But they’re not some romantic, tortured superheroes, okay, that part is all bullshit.”Tony, sickly fascinated, asked, “How do you kill them?”“Beheading’s the easiest way,” Dean replied with a shrug.Tony just felt sicker. Some of the fear leftover from his panic attack welled up again, and he pulled the blanket around him a little tighter. He’d wanted information, and Dean had given it to him, and Tony believed him. But was still overwhelming; a lot of grim, bloody reality all at once.He took a deep breath, then shook his head and said, “Okay, Twilight Zone, I think that’s my limit for tonight, you’re freaking me out. No more monster talk for a while, please.”“Yeah, that’s fair,” Dean agreed with something like sympathy. “It’s a lot to take in, I guess.”“You might say that,” Tony huffed, running a hand through his hair. He still hadn’t even asked about the whole angel thing yet. He didn’t think he had the mental and emotional strength for it now.He looked up to find Dean looking apologetic again, and offered a reassuring look. He knew it wasn’t Dean’s fault, not exactly. “You’ll have to tell me the rest. How to find them, how to protect myself,” he said.“Sure,” Dean said, watching Tony closely.“Not now,” Tony said. “Tomorrow or something. Later.”“Whatever you want,” Dean said, and the serious sentiment Tony could hear beneath the words sent a shiver down his spine.They lapsed into silence for a while, and then the lights went out. Tony was exhausted once again, but he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even bring himself to lie down. He forced himself to take slow, even breaths, and huddled into his blanket, wishing he could bring himself to ask Dean everything he wanted to ask. It’d been a long time since he’d felt so afraid to ask questions.Then the wolves began to howl again. The sound cut through Tony like a cold wind, and for a moment he teetered on the edge of another panic attack. But then he pictured them, caged and human, and remembered how angry Dean had seemed when he said Lewis was torturing them.What made these wolves different? If Dean was a werewolf hunter, why did he seem to know one of them? Why had he come to rescue the monsters he talked about killing?Tony latched on to the fruitless questions in preference to sinking into fear, and then his thoughts turned to his escape plan. Could he let them out? He’d seen Garth’s reaction to him, it seemed they might be just as likely to eat him as thank him for their rescue. But he didn’t think he could bring himself to leave them here.Abruptly, Tony said into the darkness, “About the other night, when you made me read the Bible.”A rustle of fabric from the other cell. “What about it?” Dean asked cautiously.Tony hesitated – or pretended to hesitate, to give the impression he was making a reluctant concession – then said, “Maybe we could revisit that whole thing tomorrow.”“You want to read the Bible?” Dean asked, letting just the right note of surprise and amusement into his voice.“Don’t make it into a big deal,” Tony snapped, feigning irritation. “Just. Maybe after dinner or something, you could find another story for me to read. A better one this time.”There was a moment of silence, then Dean reassured him, “I can do that.”Out loud, Tony huffed again, but he could tell that Dean had understood. Hopefully anyone listening would think that knowledge of the supernatural had made Tony afraid for his soul; Dean would know Tony wanted to talk without being overheard.He’d almost forgotten about the progress he’d made in the lab. The second component would be ready within a day, two if something went wrong, and if the rest of the reactor was done, he’d be ready to make their move. If Dean was helping, they’d need to coordinate, to plan their escape, and Tony could use the bible to ask what to do about the wolves.Just the thought filled Tony with tension and anticipation. He’d be free of this awful place, he could go home, and so could Dean.Assuming Dean had a home to go to. He’d said ‘we’, but the sense of loss when he talked about his family had been palpable. Hopefully he had friends, or colleagues, or some kind of community of monster-hunters like him.The idea of letting Dean just go back to his own life while Tony went back to his gave Tony a strange feeling. He knew all kinds of things about Stockholm syndrome and bonding in foxholes, and logically he was aware that Dean was someone he’d known for less than a week, trusted for an even shorter time than that. It was inevitable that they’d part ways, and Tony knew he shouldn’t care. But somehow, it still felt wrong. It felt strange and unnatural to think of waving good-bye and never seeing Dean ever again.Maybe there was a way he could stay in touch. Hunters had to need equipment, there had to be something he could invent that Dean would need. Or perhaps he could lure Dean to New York by asking for monster lessons? Anything was possible, as long as they escaped.***Against all the odds, despite everything he’d found out, Tony actually slept. He woke confused, but feeling more rested than he had in days. He was shocked he hadn’t had any nightmares.It left him energised, and he hoped they’d take him straight back to the lab so he could keep working. He pushed all the supernatural mess out of his mind – werewolves, vampires, whatever – and focused on what he had left to do to sabotage their bastardized arc reactor.Dean watched him pace round his cell. His expression was casual and relaxed, in deference to the cameras, but he seemed alert to Tony’s every movements. When Tony met his eyes, Dean looked back, open like he’d answer anything Tony asked. Tony felt something inside him relax, but he just flicked his eyes to the camera and back. Dean nodded minutely.When they heard the cell block door screech open, Tony made sure to hunch his shoulders just a little, and furrow his brow like he was anxious. Tony felt Dean’s eyes on him, watching him do it, and he glanced over just as Dean’s expression changed to a calm, in-control, slightly bored look.Morrison and the soldiers seemed grumpy again, but as he’d hoped, Tony was taken straight through the snow to the silo. The walk was far more comfortable in the snow boots they’d given him, and he was also given an MRE to eat as soon as he reached the lab. He ate quickly, under the close supervision of rifle-wielding cultists, and tried not to feel like a target as they escorted him to his workstation.His hands didn’t shake as he finished the second sabotage component. His eyes didn’t linger on the arc reactor, where he knew they were installing the electromagnetic coils. He didn’t think about how close he was to being able to make it all blow.Then Lewis came for a surprise inspection. Tony behaved with just the right mix of reluctant cooperation, politeness, and anger; exactly what she’d expect from her image of him as a narcissist she’d bested. She even watched him install the second sabotage component in the central housing of the arc reactor, totally unaware that he’d just finished work that would ensure its total destruction.Tony kept it together under her scrutiny. His hands didn’t shake, his heart didn’t race. He kept up his mask.She left, and the lab minions shared a late lunch with him, unaware that Tony was breathing carefully through an almost overwhelming mix of terror and sheer elation.The afternoon passed in a haze. Tony started building the rest of the components, even though he wouldn’t need them, just to keep up the façade. While he worked, he peripherally kept an eye on the workers’ progress on the coils, and saw them finish the installation.“It’s looking good, right?” Felix said, when he noticed Tony was distracted.“Sure,” Tony agreed. “Just a few more components to add. And the core housing.”“Actually, I was thinking you could put that in,” Felix said easily.Tony looked at him, surprised. “Really? Do you think they’d let me?”Engineering shrugged. “Why not? We’d all get to see the master at work.”“Well, sure, I guess,” Tony said, feigning reluctance while his nerves thrummed in anticipation. “Is it ready to go?”“Yeah, it’s one of the first things we built,” Felix confirmed. “We’ve been keeping the core in the lockers over there, so we put the housing in there too,” he said, waving one hand.Tony kept a brutal hold on himself and only glanced at the lockers for a moment. He very carefully didn’t react to the fact that Felix had just told him where they were keeping the core for the arc reactor.For a second, the fact that Felix had told him where the core was held made it all seem too easy. How could a soldier be that stupid?But then he remembered that he’d been tranquilized, and starved, and that they were open around him because they thought he was beaten. No-one in this building expected him to escape, let alone meddle with their precious mission.“Well, I mean, I’ll do it if you want me to,” Tony said, managing to sound anxious to help instead of burning with anger. “Does it just need to be welded into place?”“Yeah, the docking slots and connectors are all ready to go,” Felix confirmed, oblivious.“Alright, well. Whenever you’re ready,” Tony shrugged, dropping his eyes back to the part he’d been working on.Behind him, Felix gestured to Physics, who immediately went to ask for permission from Hanson, who’d taken over for Morrison after the Colonel’s visit.Hanson glowered at them, and stalked away to radio someone higher up the chain.Tony waited, pretending he didn’t care about the answer.The answer, when Hanson came back, was no. Disappointed, Felix tried to argue, but Physics interjected. “I’ll do it, then. What if we did it tonight, and Mr Stark stayed here to supervise?”“Instead of mess?” Hanson asked with a frown.Physics, Engineering and Felix all nodded like bobble-head dolls, eyes wide with anticipation. Tony knew it wasn’t because working on a project with Tony Stark was some kind of dream; it was far more likely that they were excited to make more progress on their lunatic mission.Hanson radioed up the chain again. Word came back that they had permission – Lewis was probably as anxious as anyone to get the reactor finished – and so Tony prepared himself for a night in the lab.Felix remained by Tony’s workstation, while Physics and Engineering busied themselves preparing to weld. They had to stay out of the way of the crew who were finishing the install on the electromagnetic coils, but these workers also seemed excited that more would be done once they’d finished.Everyone broke for food around dinner time - real food, stew and bread rolls, not MREs. The collection of workers eating with him had doubled, as some of the electromagnetic coil team were apparently keen to stay and see the welding. Tony ate slowly, explaining away the shaking of his hands as work related.After their meal, before Physics got to work, Tony was surprised to see them use the hydraulics to open the lid of the silo. One of the workers he didn’t know gave him a jacket to wear as freezing air flooded into the lab.“Why have they opened it up?” he asked.“Oh, ventilation,” the kid said casually. “Last time we were welding stuff down here, the fumes were way too much.”Tony frowned, but didn’t try to argue. He supposed it wasn’t that surprising that Cold-War era Canadian missile silos didn’t have great built-in ventilation.Tony was given a pair of goggles and allowed to watch closely while Physics completed what was actually a fairly simple weld. Tony took the opportunity, and the cover the goggles gave him, to study the rest of the reactor, evaluating its readiness. The electromagnetic coils, the sabotage components, the torus, and soon the core housing; all of it was in place. He knew where to get the core, and he could connect the power cabling. Five minutes and it’d be ready to blow.He’d seen what looked like a power station on the other side of the compound, during the drive to the werewolf cages. He thought he could avoid the patrols, and if he could break in, he could divert the power. Then he could blow the reactor, use the chaos for cover and make for the jeep or break into one of the other cars. If he hit the hinges of the gate at exactly the right angle, the whole thing would come down. And sure, then he’d be on the road, unarmed, in the middle of Canada, pursued by an angry cult, but he’d be out of the fucking compound and their arc reactor bomb would be gone. If he stole a laptop or phone, GPS could be helpful. Contacting Canadian authorities could also be helpful. Or he could just call the Avengers emergency mayday frequency.But the whole plan hinged on being able to get out of his fucking cell without alerting the entire fucking compound. He’d been watching for opportunities, breaks in his routine, times when he was less supervised, but he hadn’t found one yet. He hadn’t had a chance to steal any lock picking tools, they watched him too closely. He’d have to stage something, attack the guards or fake a seizure.Or Dean might have some ideas. He’d probably had more chances to steal items to double as lock picks, and he might be able to confirm whether Tony had identified the power station correctly.But now that the reactor was ready, now that Tony had realised they could probably escape as soon as they got the opportunity, he would need to decide once and for all if Dean could be trusted. What if he sent Dean the message that they were ready to break out, and all it got him was one of Lewis’s tranquiliser darts?Engineering’s triumphant yell brought him out of his head, back to the present. They’d finished the weld, and the nerds were actually all cheering. Tony grinned in congratulations.The reactor was ready for him. All the rest could be improvised.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tony was led back through the dark, freezing cold compound, back to the cells. They took the jacket they’d given him once he was safely within the heater’s radius, and he let them lock him into his cell without fuss.Dean was already there. He looked up quickly when they brought Tony into the block, and Tony caught a little relief in his expression. Dean covered it, though, and played calm, putting on a bored, mildly curious face for Morrison.Morrison handed Tony an MRE before he left – a second dinner, to make up for those days without food? – and nodded casually to Dean as he went.As Tony opened the packages and got the meal together, Dean said casually, “I was wondering where you were. We finished dinner in the mess ages ago.” He did a good job of keeping the anxiety out of his voice, but his expression was tight.“Yeah, sorry,” Tony said. “We all stayed late to weld the core housing into the arc reactor.”“Yeah? That’s important?” Dean asked.“Sure is,” Tony replied. “Means the arc reactor is practically finished, I just have to build the last few pieces.”Dean nodded, with a hint of anticipation on his face.The question of trust still loomed in Tony’s mind. He thought about the conversations they’d had, all the things Dean had shown him, and the few things he’d learned about Dean that he thought were actually real. There was a lot of crazy, a lot of subterfuge, but all of his instincts insisted that Dean could be trusted.But Tony had a lot to lose if he was wrong.To cover his indecision, and while he waited for the MRE to heat, Tony got the bandages out and ointment out of the pile of stuff in the corner of his cell.Dean watched him unwrap his arms with a frown. “What happened?” he demanded sharply. “Who—“ He cut himself off before he could accuse anyone of anything.“Oh, they did this when they brought me here,” Tony said, as though it wasn’t a big deal. “I had implants that I could use to call my armor. They cut them out when they abducted me.”Dean stared at his arms with the same kind of anger Tony had seen when Dean had discovered Tony was being starved. He looked ready to murder someone. He met Tony’s eyes, unclenched his jaw to speak, but then stopped again.After a pause, he said, “That’s a shame.” He sounded impressively casual, unconcerned. “But you’re healing up, right?”“I’ll be fine,” Tony confirmed, trying to infuse some genuine reassurance into his voice.Dean still frowned, but nodded. He got up to pace around his cell, glancing over to watch Tony apply the ointment and re-bandage his arms. He didn’t say anything else about it, but Tony could tell he was upset.He paced all through Tony finishing the bandages, and while he started to eat his MRE. Then he abruptly said, “You wanted to read some more of the bible this evening, right?”Tony had just taken a bite. Chewing and swallowing allowed him to stall; had he made up his mind? Could he trust Dean enough?In the end, he let his instincts take over, damn the consequences. “Sure,” he said. “It’d be good to understand more about what I’m building this stuff for. What do they say about angels in the bible?”Dean grimaced, but finally paused in his pacing and faced Tony. “There’s stories. No details, though, nothing concrete. They’re messengers, and they carry out God’s divine justice,” he said. “In reality, it’s a little more complicated than that.”Tony gave that some thought as he ate some more. By thinking very carefully around the whole concept, he was able to keep the panic at bay and postpone the massive mental breakdown he was planning to have about the existence of God for later, ideally after they’d escaped and he could interrogate Dean about it freely. “What about monsters?” he asked, because it was by far the smaller ideological shock. “I’ll admit I don’t know much about the bible, but I get the sense there’s no werewolves.”“Yeah, not really,” Dean confirmed. “There’s a whole section where God is bragging to Job about the cool, amazing stuff he made, including leviathans and the behemoth. Which, if you’d met a leviathan? Not something to brag about.”“What?” Tony said, genuinely alarmed.Dean waved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine, they’re gone, we took care of it,” he said, then moved on before Tony could pelt him with questions. “The really interesting guy in the Bible is Solomon.”“King Solomon? Cut a baby in half, Solomon?” Tony asked, letting himself be distracted by that. He finished the last bite of his meal, and came towards the cell bars, ostensibly to tidy his trash away. Dean came closer too, and faced him.“Yeah, that’s the story everyone remembers, isn’t it?” Dean replied with a smile, leaning one arm on the cell bars in a relaxed pose. His eyes were sharp on Tony, though. “Or the hot poetry.”“Hot poetry?” Tony frowned.At this, Dean actually laughed. “Song of Solomon, man, all that romantic stuff? I’m not reading it aloud, it’s got a lot going on. I did read it out once, I was with this girl from a bible camp? She was, well, she was very impressed, let’s put it that way,” he added, still grinning.Tony raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding me, right?” Close up, he could see the yellowing bruises under Dean’s beard, left over from the beating he must have had when they captured him breaking in. He could see the way the skin by Dean’s eyes creased when he smiled. He wondered what Dean had looked like when he was young.“It’s true, I swear!” Dean protested. “You know, Solomon was probably the closest thing to a hunter back in the day. He used magic, and he fought demons. And clearly he had game, like any good hunter,” he said with a smug look.Tony snorted. “Oh, is that another hunter essential?”Dean just grinned. “There’s other books, right, that were written in the same era as the Bible? One of them is called the Testament of Solomon and it’s all about his work as a hunter. It talks about all the major demons, and lists out all the ways to trap and neutralise them. It’s legit, too, it really works. Some of his other writings were passed down and translated, and there’s spells and protections in there that hunters are still using today. Man knew his way around a devil’s trap, that’s for sure,” he said admiringly.But a cold fist had clenched in Tony’s gut; he’d skipped over it the first time but now he registered, “Demons?”Dean tensed, hesitated, then admitted, “Yeah, demons are real.”Tony’s stomach churned. “Demons. Like, full-on devil horns, wings and tail, hellish demons?” The breakdown was threatening, and stupidly all he could think about were Halloween devil horns and idiotic magazine articles that used demons as a metaphor for alcoholism and drug problems.“Well, not exactly, but yeah, they’re real.” At whatever look was on Tony’s face, he hastily added, “But you don’t need to worry about them. They’re gone.”“You keep saying that, that these things are gone. What the hell does it mean?” Tony protested.The expression that crossed Dean’s face was devastated. He visibly struggled to get it back under control, struggled to hide it. Eventually, he said roughly, “I was the one who sent the leviathan back to purgatory, but my brother, he, uh. He sacrificed himself a couple of years ago to lock all the demons away. It was a ritual, it sent them all back to hell and sealed them all in.”Just the bare bones of Dean's story were enough to send Tony's anxiety into overdrive, but he shelved the numerous questions he immediately had. The tight set of Dean’s shoulders, the twist of his mouth, and the pain and loss in his voice were real – too real for this place, for the surveillance they were under. Tony felt a surge of empathy for Dean’s obvious grief.“I’m so sorry,” Tony said softly, watching as Dean tried to pull himself back together. “What was his name?”“Sam,” Dean admitted. He rubbed his hand roughly over his eyes, probably to hide his expression from the cameras, and Tony pretended not to notice how it shook. “His name was Sam.”“Sam,” Tony repeated. “He saved the world, then.”Dean exhaled. “Yeah, he did.” There was pride in his voice, and it seemed to help him recover himself. “He was amazing. You probably woulda liked him.”“Yeah?”“Well, maybe not,” Dean added with a grin. “He was stubborn and kinda uptight, and he could bitch a guy out like nothing else. But he was so smart, and funny, and he would’ve been impressed to meet you. Probably would have fanboyed like crazy.” The gruff affection in Dean’s voice was still full of grief, but Tony was relieved to see him smile at the memories.“Guess he had good taste,” Tony quipped in response.Dean rolled his eyes, but the grief seemed to sit a little easier. Then he turned away from the bars and sat down, picking up the Bible he’d left on his bunk. “What were we talking about before I got distracted? Solomon, right? But we’re not here to talk about stuff that’s not in the Bible. Let me have a look, what else is in here that you might like,” he broke off muttering, flipping through the pages, clearly keen to change the subject.Watching him frown over the book, Tony made a decision. “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.Dean stilled. He didn’t look up, didn’t give the game away, but he’d obviously caught the significance in Tony’s words.Without saying a word, he unfroze and kept flipping.Tony also played casual as he went back to his bunk to sit down. “What have you found?” he asked, indicating the Bible in Dean’s hands.“Genesis,” Dean said. “Thought we could go back to the beginning.”“Sounds good,” Tony said, and got up again to accept the book when Dean threw it across the gap between them.Tony skim-read the pages until he reached the underlined words, 'The earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them'. “Is it true?” he asked. “The story of creation, is it true?” It seemed like the kind of thing their jailers would expect him to care about.“I’ve actually never asked,” Dean admitted. “God exists, angels and demons exist, but I don’t know if it all happened exactly like the book says.” Tony nodded, but Dean went on, meeting Tony’s eyes with a serious look. “And sure, how it started is important, but what happens next is what we’ve got to concentrate on. Where we’re going, what we do. That’s the part we can change.”Tony knew the words were about their escape. “Tonight’s a good start, then,” he replied. “I feel like I’m ready to change.”Dean’s eyes gleamed. “That’s good, that you’re ready. If you’re working on the components and you’re in a state of salvation, it can only make the device more holy. Maybe Lewis’ll bring you to church again.”Tony nodded, trying to pretend he was overwhelmed. Meanwhile, his mind raced. The question of how exactly they’d get out of the cells hadn’t been answered, but between the two of them, surely they could get past the guards.“Don’t worry about anything,” Dean said, and Tony’s gaze snapped to his. “I’ll look out for you,” he promised. “I’ll take care of it, I’ll make sure it happens for you. Salvation, I mean,” he added hastily.Tony paused, deliberately keeping his expression neutral. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d appreciate that.”The air between them seemed to thicken with anticipation.***Soon, it was lights out. Tony waited in the dark.Suddenly Dean groaned.“Dean?” Tony asked.He got another groan, then a curse, as a response. He heard fabric rustle, and a soft noise as Dean’s feet hit the concrete, then Dean groaned again.“Talk to me,” Tony said, unable to keep the sharp edge of anxiety out of his voice. “Is something wrong?”“No, it’s—“ Dean cut off. He cursed again, and then Tony heard a liquid retch as Dean vomited into the toilet in his cell.The noise made Tony’s own stomach turn, and it got worse when the smell filtered over to him. “Oh my god,” he said. “Are you sick? Jesus, what’s wrong? You were fine!” He sat up, but he still couldn’t tell if this was real or some kind of diversion. Dean hadn’t given him any kind of signal.Dean didn’t reply. Tony couldn’t see him, it was too dark, but he heard Dean panting for breath, then more vomiting.The cell block lights flickered on, and then the door screeched open. Tony blinked the black spots out of his eyes. Dean was, as Tony suspected, hunched over the toilet. His face was pale and slack, and his eyes were watering.Three guards came in from the guard post outside; Tony didn’t recognise any of them. One waited by the door as the other two headed for Dean’s cell.“Dean? Jesus, dude, what did you eat?” the first guard asked, unlocking the door.“Did you get into the mystery meat?” Guard number two looked worried. “We warned you about that stuff.”Tony watched anxiously as they eased Dean back from the toilet bowl, then as Dean wrenched himself forwards out of their grip to throw up again.“Gross,” Guard One said, wrinkling his nose. “You didn’t get anything off of Warner, did you? Remember he got that bad schwag last month?” he said to Guard Two.“I’m okay,” Dean managed hoarsely, his throat rough. “I’m okay, I just—“ He broke off, coughing. He heaved for breath, and suddenly he seemed to be struggling for air. His hands grasped for Stooge Two’s shirt in desperation.“Oh shit!” Stooge Two said, and yelled to the first guard, who’d been hovering by the door, “Bennett, he’s choking!”Guard Three moved purposely into the cell, and from the other two made way for him, Tony assumed he must have medical training. Tony watched helplessly as they crowded around Dean, who was still kneeling on the floor.Suddenly, it was like a switch flipped. One minute, Dean was choking helplessly, held upright by the soldiers’ concerned hands. The next, Guard One had staggered back, clutching his throat, Guard Two had been thrown into the wall above the bed, and with Dean had knocked Guard Three out with two quick blows.Guard One regained his footing, but Dean was ready for him, and he joined Guard Three on the floor. Guard Two untangled himself from the bunk’s bedding and threw himself at Dean, but Dean used his own momentum against him and got him in a hold that knocked him out.Tony stared at Dean and the unconscious soldiers. “Oh my god.”Dean quieted him with a look, then, watching the unconscious soldiers warily in case they weren’t as unconscious as they looked, bent down and rifled through their pockets. He no longer looked sick, just purposeful.He took a set of keys from Guard Three’s belt, slipped out of the cell, then strode out of the cell block without a backwards glance.“Hey! Wait!” Tony yelled. His stomach dropped, and he stared helplessly at the open cell block door.But Dean returned quickly. “Relax, I was just checking for a transmitter. There isn’t one, it’s a closed circuit, but I’ve turned it all off now anyway.”“Oh,” Tony said, chagrined.“You meant it, right? It’s ready?” Dean asked urgently, coming to unlock Tony’s cell.“Too late if I didn’t, but yeah, it’s ready,” Tony replied, tense with anticipation.“Then get your boots on,” Dean ordered.Tony obeyed, hastily getting into the snow boots while Dean crossed back to his own cell, to check the men. While he was there, he grabbed his water, rinsed his mouth and flushed the toilet.“You’re not really sick, right?” Tony asked.“I’ve got some short-action emetics hidden in the lining of my coat,” Dean said, crouching down to investigate the soldier’s pockets again. He collected a couple of their radios. “Never know when you’ll need to get people to lower their guard.”“Looks like it worked,” Tony said, tying his second boot and getting the Velcro in place. He got up, squaring his shoulders as he walked out of his godforsaken cell for what he hoped would be the last time.Dean came out of his own cell and showed Tony one of the radios. “This doesn’t have enough broadcast power for you to call your friends, does it?”Tony examined it, but Dean was right; he couldn’t use it to call FRIDAY. “Damn. No, it doesn’t.”“Keep it anyway,” Dean said, and turned to lock the cell with the soldiers in it. “Let’s get this party started. What’s your plan?”“Blow the reactor,” Tony said, shoving the radio into his pants pocket. “It’s almost ready to go, just a couple of adjustments to make. And I need a phone, or a more powerful radio to use to call the suit.”“I’m sure we can make that happen,” Dean said as he led Tony towards the cell block door. “What adjustments?” He looked determined and weirdly professional, as though escaping from pseudo-religious cults was part of his job.“First, we’ve got to find this place’s power station, switch everything else off, and divert everything into the silo,” Tony said. “Then, once we get to the silo, I just need to attach the power couplings to the reactor, and put the core into the housing.”“How long will that take?” Dean asked with a frown. They’d reached the guard station, and he reached behind the door and unhooked two big winter jackets from where they’d apparently been hanging.“The power coupling will take two minutes,” Tony said, looking around at the equipment in case Dean had missed something that would let him call FRIDAY. He didn’t find it. “The core is right there, it’s ready to go, plug and play. Initialisation takes three minutes, and I’m not completely sure how long it’ll take the power to build up and then destabilise, which is what will make everything explode, but it won’t be too long, two, three minutes,” he estimated.“So what, ten minutes once we get to the silo?” Dean said, a calculating look on his face. He handed Tony one of the winter jackets.“Yeah, basically,” Tony agreed, pulling the coat on. “But we have to divert the power first, and I don’t know how much security the power station has. It could be totally locked down.”“It’s not. I know where it is, there’s barely a lock on the door,” Dean confirmed. At Tony’s surprise, he added with an eyeroll, “Come on, man, that was the first thing I looked for when I got out of the cells. You gotta know how to get at the power, it always comes in handy.”Tony squinted at him. “You’ve led an interesting life, haven’t you?”Dean grinned, then said, “Should we split up? I could go switch the power over while you get to the silo?” As he said it, he pulled his own stolen jacket on over his leather coat. The jackets were black and bulky, and had a semi-military style, but Tony didn’t think they were genuine military gear.Tony grimaced, thinking it over as he transferred his radio to a better pocket. “The power station should have a fairly simple setup, it’ll probably be a case of flipping a few switches. I don’t like the idea of separating, but it probably makes sense.”“I don’t like it either, but cutting the power will be like poking a bear. As soon as it goes dark, they’ll be onto us. We could get caught before we even get to the silo, and then this whole escape will have been a waste of time,” Dean pointed out.“True,” Tony agreed, eyeing Dean. He’d mostly gotten over his suspicions, but it occurred to him that if Dean was going to betray him, all he had to do was run to Lewis instead of diverting the power.Dean, oblivious to Tony’s thoughts, said, “I’m sure I can figure out how to re-route the power.” He held up the second radio he’d stolen from the guards and said, “The cult uses channels 1, 3, 8 and 9, but they’re probably not monitoring the other channels. We could use channel 12, with 6 as a backup if 12 gets compromised?”Tony nodded. “Okay, sounds good.” He was starting to feel like they could actually pull this off.“There’s no moon tonight,” Dean went on, “Which means we have a lot of shadows to sneak around in.” He checked his watch. “Patrols end in six, make that five minutes. They’ll go back to barracks, but there’s still guards in the towers. There’s this kid, Felix, he’s Lewis’s brainchild, right?”“Yeah, he developed the device. I met him in the lab,” Tony confirmed.“Well, he’s about your height, he wears a coat just like this one, and he always has the hood pulled up when he’s outside,” Dean explained. “Stay on the path, don’t run, don’t look like you’re hiding, and don’t let anyone see the goatee. Try to look like you forgot something in the lab, kid is always doing that.”“Really? Yeah, okay,” Tony agreed, surprised.“When the tower can see you, don’t sneak around, just act like nothing’s wrong,” Dean said. “The guys who’re on duty near the silo right now are maybe the least observant marines I’ve ever met, it’ll probably fool them.”“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Tony commented, fascinated. He never expected Dean would be so useful.“Oh, I’ve been planning this escape since they first brainwashed me with whatever that bright light bullshit is,” Dean said grimly. He sounded reassuringly angry.“What happens if they realise we’re missing from here?” Tony asked.“When, not if,” Dean corrected. “Our guards are probably meant to do check-ins. But we have a window of time, and hopefully by the time anyone realises, the reactor will be ready to blow. Once that’s distracting everyone, you and me’ll be calling your robot army, and we’ll be golden.”“Where will we meet?” Tony asked.“The building just below this one on the hill, right, it’s just near the path to the silo? Kind of inside a bunch of trees?”“Yeah, I’ve seen it.”“It’s got a radio antenna on it, so I’m about sixty percent sure it’s where the communication relays are. I’m hoping it’ll have emergency power, so we can break in and get a signal out.”“Hoping?” Tony asked.“It’s not like I’ve been able to investigate!” Dean protested. “If it’s dead, it’s dead, and we’ll try something else. It’s not far from the power station, we can turn everything back on. But there are deep shadows on the side of that building, so it’s a good place to meet up. Then we can break into the building, and we’ll be out of sight while we look around, and we can take cover there while we figure out what to do next.”“What if we can’t break in?”Dean shrugged. “If things get too hot, there’s a parking lot full of Humvees just across the way. We’ll steal one and leave.”Tony accepted this with a nod. “Alright, good plan. What about the wolves?”It pulled Dean up short. “Damn. Yeah, I’ve got friends down there, it’s why I’m even here.” He ran a hand through his hair as he thought. “We’ll deal with them after. Might need to split up. Once you’ve got your suit, you could fight off the cult, and I can sneak down there and get my friends?”“Whatever you think is best,” Tony said. “I have no idea what to do with werewolves. I imagine setting them all free is a bad idea?”Dean grimaced. “Oh yeah. There’s no moon, so they’ll be at their most human, but the cult’s been starving them, so they’ll be angry.”“Angry is bad,” Tony agreed. “How long until the patrol ends?”“Three minutes. We better get out into that stairwell, ready to go. Remember,” Dean said, holding up his radio. “12 then 6. But we should stay off the radios as much as possible. Click twice when you reach the silo, then two more when you want me to switch the power over.”“Got it,” Tony said, anticipation burning in his guts.“Here, take this,” Dean said, and almost as an afterthought, he pulled a gun from his pocket to hand to Tony.“Get it from the soldiers?” Tony asked, as he checked the gun. Single-stack magazine, which meant 10 bullets.“Yeah, and take it easy, they didn’t have any spare ammo,” Dean said.Tony shot him an exasperated look, and shoved the gun in his pocket.They crept along the corridor silently, then carefully crossed the foyer by the elevators. There was no sign of any other personnel, and the lights were off except for a few by the fire exits. They waited in the stairwell, just inside the exit door; Dean kept his eyes on his watch.“You ready?” Dean whispered.Tony nodded grimly. Dean clasped a hand on Tony’s arm in reassurance, solid through the thick material of the jacket. “It’s gonna work,” he promised.“You don’t know that,” Tony said, gritting his teeth.“Sure I do. Tony Stark and Dean Winchester? What could go wrong?” Dean whispered with a grin.“Now you’re just asking for fate to kick us in the balls,” Tony hissed back, but he did feel weirdly reassured.Dean grinned infuriatingly, and with a quirked eyebrow, went forwards towards the door. Tony braced himself, and followed.They split up outside, and Dean disappeared into the shadows, purposeful and determined.Tony took a deep breath, pulled the hood up, and walked out into the open. He kept his posture tall, and behaved as though he was exactly where he was meant to be.He managed to get past the first guard tower and onto the path without being hailed. It wasn’t well-lit, and the trees overhead made it even darker, but he didn’t slip. The air was frigidly cold, and he wished he had more winter gear than just the jacket.When he reached the clearing that held the silo and the second guard tower, he refused to hesitate, and walked out into the relative light at a careful, calm pace. He kept his head down, and when a voice from the tower shouted Felix’s name, Tony waved.The soldier laughed, and said to be quick.Once inside, Tony stumbled down the stairs. His hands were shaking, and he barely remembered to click the radio twice to signal to Dean that he’d arrived. The two answering clicks felt reassuring.Tony entered the lab cautiously. It was dark, and freezing cold thanks to the still-open hatch at the top of the missile well. He listened carefully, and when he felt sure no-one else was there, he turned on one of the lights by the door, then crossed to the workstations by the device and put on a couple of lamps.Then he noticed Felix’s tablet on one of the benches, and froze. He’d actually forgotten it, which meant he could show up at any moment, alerting the guards that there was an imposter. But there wasn’t much Tony could do about it until it happened, other than hurry the fuck up. After a moment’s thought, he tucked the tablet into his jacket; maybe he could use it for evidence or information later.He headed for the lockers. He opened the one he’d seen Physics using, expecting to see the reactor core on a shelf, and stopped in his tracks. Panicked, he activated the radio. “You there, Twilight Zone?”“Loud and clear,” Dean said, sounding amused.“It’s not a locker!” Tony hissed, all his confident plans crumbling around his ears. “It’s a safe!”“Come again?”“It’s a fucking safe! The locker has a fucking safe inside it! Of course it has a safe, they wouldn’t keep precious materials in a fucking locker, I’m so goddamn stupid,” Tony ranted, keeping his voice low.“Calm down.”“Fuck you!” He took a deep breath, exhaled, then said, “The arc reactor core is inside the safe. I need time to crack it. Tools as well. Not sure how long I’ll be.” He couldn’t believe they were being foiled by a goddamn cheap fire-proof gun safe. He really should have anticipated this in his planning.“Oh, shit. Okay, okay. Let me think.” Dean’s voice sounded anxious through the radio static.“What, you’re going to guess the code?” Tony asked, disbelieving.“Yep,” Dean said shortly. Then without skipping a beat, he suggested Tony try a series of six numbers.“That’s, what is that, that’s a date, that’s like four days’ time,” Tony said, even as his fingers punched the keys.“Yeah, they call it D-day around here. Apparently it’s when your components will be done and the world will get re-made,” Dean explained, not bothering to hide his sarcasm now that he didn’t have a façade to maintain.The safe bleeped red. “No luck, not the code,” Tony reported.Dean cursed. Then he said, “Wait, wait, what was that thing she said…Try 11, 25, 26.”“Why?” Tony hissed, but again, he obediently punched the keys.“It’s a Bible verse, just try it!”The light on the safe had already flicked to green.“Holy shit. It worked!”“Yes! I am a fucking genius!”“How the hell did you know?” Tony demanded, twisting the lock and opening the safe door.“Because Lewis’s a fucking egomaniac who thinks she’s Jesus. Now, how much more time do you need?”Tony didn’t answer. He was staring at the contents of the safe. The case with the core in it was there, but so was something else. It was in a vial, and it shone with a beautiful, delicate light, like nothing he’d ever seen before. It made Lewis’s light of revelation look harsh and fake by comparison.“Stark? Stark!” came the voice on the radio.Tony snapped back to reality. “Sorry,” he managed. “There’s something else in the safe. It’s really. Bright.”There was a pause. “It’s the grace. Bring it with you,” Dean instructed him tersely.“Okay,” Tony agreed. With trembling fingers, he reached out and picked up the vial. He shoved it in the inner pocket of his jacket, zipping it in to make sure it was secure. Then he reached back into the safe for the case. “I need about five minutes to—“The radio suddenly screeched with static. Tony cursed. He flipped to channel six, but it was the same. The cult must have flooded the frequencies.They were rumbled.Five minutes, that was the last thing he’d said to Dean. He had five minutes. Tony raced over to the arc reactor. He installed the core quickly, slotting it into its freshly welded housing and inserting the cables. Then he moved to the power couplings, making sure they were firmly attached and locked in, so the power flow would be unhindered.Then he hopped inside the torus, to double-check that the sabotage components were connected and ready to handle the power surge Dean was about to send their way.With his remaining moments, and with a twist of anticipation in his belly, Tony went to the control panel. With a deep breath, he turned the reactor on, then dialled the power switch up to full.Nothing happened.It was fine, Tony told himself. He was just early. Dean would switch the power over, the reactor’s energy levels would spike high enough for the chain reaction to begin, and then it would overload. Everything would blow.Or Dean had lied to him, and Lewis was on her way. Either way, Tony needed to be elsewhere.He hurried around the side of the reactor, and came face to face with Felix. Surprise froze him in his tracks.Felix looked equally surprised to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?”“Kid, you scared the shit out of me,” Tony told him, one hand on his chest, frantically trying to think of a plausible excuse for being in the silo, alone, at night, and not in his cell where they left him. “Look, we need to get out of here.”But Felix wasn’t an idiot. Within seconds, his expression had gone from shock to realisation, and there was a gun pointed in Tony’s face.“What are you doing down here? What have you done?” Felix’s voice rose and rose, in anger and disbelief.Tony slowly put his hands up. He didn’t reply, not yet; he didn’t think anything he had to say would diffuse the situation.Felix had been glancing around the lab, and when his eyes lingered on the open locker, the case on the floor, Tony suspected the game was up. “What have you done?” Felix said again, looking panicked this time.Tony held up his hands, placating. “Now, let’s not freak out--”“What have you done?” Felix screamed.“What have you done, Stark?” came Lewis’s voice from the lab doorway, much calmer but far more terrifying.Tony backed away. She’d arrived much faster than he’d expected, and she’d brought guards with her. No sign of Dean among them, at least.And Tony felt furious, rather than afraid. He’d gotten so fucking close. “I’ve done what I had to do,” he spat, anger building in his chest. “Did you really think I’d just help you? You’re goddamn murderers, you actually thought I’d just do what you told me?”“Oh shit, he’s sabotaged it!” Felix shouted.Just as he said it, the lights went out, and Tony had heard the tell-tale whine of initialisation as the power surge brought the reactor online. His heart leapt. Dean.Back-up power kicked in. Emergency lights cast a red glow over the lab. The arc reactor was humming with acceleration, powering up quickly, and Tony saw Felix leap for the control panel.“Stop!” Tony yelled. “You need to get out of here, it’s going to blow!” None of them listened to him.“Get Stark!” Lewis shouted, to the guards behind her. She went with Felix to the reactor to try and stop the overload, and the guards raised their weapons and came for him.Tony had already ducked away, behind the reactor. He pulled the gun from his pocket and shot at them hastily, enough to force them to duck back behind the device so Tony could get out of their sight and change positions. He slipped through the dim red light to shelter behind the hydraulics near the missile well.The missile well. He could feel the freezing air coming down from the open hatch, and it occurred to him that without power, they couldn’t close it. Could he climb out? They weren’t far below the surface. Would he have better luck than Barnes?He tucked the gun in his pocket, quickly slipped around the edge of the wall, grabbed the safety ladder, and began to climb as fast as he could manage. The metal was slippery in patches with ice, and he divided his attention between watching where he put his hands and taking desperate glances back down towards the lab, waiting for the soldiers to work out where he’d gone. He tried to avoid looking at the vast black empty hole below him.“Hey! I think he’s on the ladder!”Tony climbed faster. Fortunately, the angle was bad, and they couldn’t easily shoot at him without getting out on the ladder themselves. One of them tried, and Tony paused long enough to pull out the gun and shoot back. His stomach lurched as the soldier cried out, but he didn’t fall, his friends dragged him back into the lab.“It’s going to blow, you idiots! You need to get out!” he yelled, and kept climbing, praying they didn’t have any tranq guns.Just a few rungs from the top, he had to pause to shoot again. They ducked back inside, where he could hear the whine of the reactor building, as the power increased. “You need to get out!” he yelled. He didn’t know if they could even hear him.But he had to leave them – he refused to fall and die and the dark. He refused to get trapped in the explosion. He could feel the frigid night air on his face – he was so close.The gap between the missile well and its lid was a tight fit, but Tony shoved himself through it without even checking for soldiers on the ground outside. Fortunately the opening was angled away from the guard tower, so no-one could see him. Felix’s tablet dug into his stomach as he slid down the snow-banked wall and landed on his feet.He crept around the silo cautiously, even though the whine of the reactor was building below him, and he knew the soldiers could take the stairs and appear at any second. But the guard tower seemed empty and its lights were out – evidence of Dean’s work.Tony ran quickly across the open ground, to the forest near the path, and relief flooded through him when he reached the safety of the trees without being accosted or shot in the back.Just as he passed into the shadows, he heard the sound of boots on metal, and a slamming door. Lewis’s guards were coming for him.He didn’t stop. He ran through the trees, desperate to get as far away as possible.The night suddenly lit up as bright as day. The explosion sent a towering pillar of energy up into the night sky, and Tony had a split second to realize the levels were off and the reactor had taken more power than he’d anticipated.Then the shockwave came and kicked him in the back. Something big flew past him, the ground rushed up to meet him, and everything went black.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Tony woke with a start. His head was pounding, and he was freezing cold. His hearing was muffled, whining with tinnitus, but then it suddenly resolved, and the night around him was alive with sounds – shouts, gunfire, and howling.He was lying face-down on the ground. All his muscles protested when he rolled over, tangled in his coat. His back felt like one huge bruise, and his entire face throbbed.On his back, he stared upwards in confusion at the starry sky above him. It should be blue, this was the desert, there were mountains nearby and shrapnel in his chest…but then he remembered where he was. When he was. The arc reactor, the silo, the snow.Alarmed, he pushed himself up. The trees around him were a wreckage. Some were still standing, but the explosion had torn branches off and split trunks. There was debris everywhere, and Tony was covered in leaves and twigs.He checked himself quickly. His ribcage ached, but when he ran his fingers over it, nothing seemed cracked or unstable. His back hurt, and his head, and his ears were ringing. His nose throbbed, and his fingers came away red. All in all, though, he felt mostly undamaged.He almost couldn’t believe it. He’d been close enough that the explosion could have killed him; he must have been sheltered somehow. He’d been phenomenally lucky.Lewis, Felix and the guards hadn’t been as lucky, and Tony felt a twinge of guilt. He staggered carefully to his feet, only to find that beyond the trees, the silo was now a dark scar in the earth, surrounded by a radius of scorched, blackened dirt. The explosion had also swept the ground clean of snow, obliterated the guard tower, and thrashed the surrounding trees.The compound had clearly had more power than he’d anticipated. He’d expected an explosion half the size; enough to destroy the lab and collapse the silo, not level the entire clearing. And he hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt; the silo was supposed to be empty.He shoved the feelings away. The light from the reactor explosion had probably been visible for miles, so there was a chance that the Canadian equivalent of Homeland Security was already on its way to investigate, but hell, he wasn’t going to wait around for them. He needed to find Dean. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, what if Dean had already left?Tony’s muscles felt like water, but he turned away from the remains of the silo and set out through the destroyed forest. The path was nearby, but he didn’t head towards it, wary of who he might meet. He stayed in the shelter of the forest, travelling from tree to tree, using them as cover and support for his shaky limbs. All the lights were still down, taken out by the explosion if not Dean’s work at the power station, and the shadows made it slow going.His decision to stay off the path was justified when he caught movement ahead and realised the shapes were a group of people, hurrying along the path towards the silo. He ducked behind a tree trunk to stay out of their sight and watched them pass, studying their movements. The people at the front surveyed their surroundings warily, and the ones at the back were armed, watching their six. Some of them spoke; the ringing in his ears made it hard to hear, but their panicked, confused voices were just loud enough.“She might have left the compound. She might have gone somewhere else, not to the silo.”“Who let them out, that’s what I want to know? Fucking mad dogs.”If they hadn’t found out she was dead yet, he couldn’t have been unconscious for long. But then Tony’s breath hitched in realisation. The werewolves were free?Then one of the soldiers growled into a radio, “Where the fuck is Stark? He did this, I know it. Her wrath and the wrath of Heaven will fall on him.”Chilled, Tony waited a moment longer after the group had passed before he started creeping through the trees again. He could only imagine what they’d do to him if they caught him.He reached the main part of the compound, only to find total chaos. Up and down the hill there was fighting and gunfire, and howling from the wolves. He stayed hidden in the shadows and couldn’t see much, but from the screams, and the glimpses he did get of fighting, the wolves were attacking the cult in force now that they were free.Tony hesitated in the trees by the edge of the path, anxious to get to Dean but concerned with remaining unseen. His goal was diagonally downhill, across a patch of cleared ground where the path to the silo met the main compound. It was overlooked by another guard tower, but Tony could see from his position that this tower was empty of soldiers, and all the lights were out.Another group of cultists fled past him along the path. Tony took a chance and emerged in their wake, hurrying across the path, hoping he wouldn’t be seen.“Stark,” came a shout.Tony whirled around; it was Morrison, alone, crossing the open space from the direction of the building with the cell block. Tony’s heart sank – of all the people to find him.“Hank,” Tony said. He felt very aware of the gun in his pocket. He only had one, possibly two bullets left.He felt sure Morrison would shoot him before he could draw it and aim.“You did this,” Morrison growled, still approaching. Tony took a careful step back, without taking his eyes off the other man. “You did this,” Morrison accused. “You ruined it.”“You’re god-damned right I ruined it!” Tony hissed angrily. “You think I’m going to let you use my reactor for this bullshit?”“You selfish bastard!” Morrison yelled. “We were changing the world!”Before Tony could answer, cries rose into the night from the direction of the silo – from the site of the explosion – a long aggrieved scream of protest and mourning.Tony’s stomach clenched. He didn’t take his eyes off Morrison, and it wasn’t too dark to see the moment that shock became denial.“Stark, where’s the Colonel?” It almost sounded like he was pleading, begging Tony to deny the truth.Tony clenched his jaw as fear ran down his spine.“You killed her?” Morrison said, and he seemed caught somewhere between disbelief and rejection.“I didn’t mean to,” Tony admitted. “I told her to leave before the reactor blew, but she wouldn’t.”The grief that passed over Morrison’s face was astonishing, even in the dark. The anger that followed was frightening.With a wounded cry, he lunged for Tony, and Tony jerked backwards but wasn’t fast enough; his jacket tightened painfully around him as it twisted in Morrison’s grip. He raised his arms defensively, but his head exploded with pain as Morrison punched him in the face.Tony fell into the snow, and Morrison pinned him down and punched him again. Tony struck back quickly, jabbing at Morrison’s belly and neck. He got his feet braced and bridged his body, trying to throw Morrison off, but Morrison punched him in the sternum. The air whooshed out of Tony’s lungs and agony ripped through his ribcage, and he fell back down into the snow.Then Morrison got his hands around Tony’s throat and squeezed.Tony struggled, panicking, scrabbling for Morrison’s eyes. His vision darkened at the edges, and pain crackled through his chest as he tried to breathe.Suddenly Morrison’s weight was wrenched off of him. Tony rolled away, lungs heaving, desperately sucking in oxygen.He crawled away, expecting Morrison to be on him again any second. Then his brain registered a chilling snarl, far too close to him.Tony jerked around, instinctively scuttling back away from the noise. He was just in time to see Morrison getting to his feet, surrounded by werewolves. He was favouring one leg, leaving bloody marks in the snow, and he stared at the wolves angrily. Their eyes were inhuman and yellow, and their mouths were loaded with fangs.Tony backed away carefully. He felt like a coward, but took the opportunity to flee into the trees.In the woods, Tony’s legs gave out from under him and he crouched behind a tree, shaking with adrenalin, struggling to control his panicked breathing. He peered through the trees behind him, listening desperately, trying to work out whether the wolves had given chase.All he heard was Morrison’s scream, and the sound of wolves.He flinched, and stumbled further into the trees.As he got closer to the building where they were meant to rendezvous, the shadows got deeper. He slowed down, and crept forwards carefully, jumping at every snapped twig. He didn’t want to risk calling out, or even whispering Dean’s name.Then he saw someone silhouetted on the far side of the wood, just inside the line of trees. They were facing away, towards the main compound, looking out at the vehicle tracks that ran down the hill.Tony edged closer, uncertain. The person was about the right height and was wearing one of the black military jackets, like the ones Dean had stolen for them, but the hood was pulled up and the jacket was common among the cult members. He couldn’t be sure it was Dean.He’d just convinced himself that no-one else would be waiting in these woods when someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him back. They shoved him into the shadows and pinned him to the freezing, hard brick of the building.A bare, cold hand covered his mouth.With the touch of skin against his own, the cold night around him abruptly disappeared. Light blazed up, and suddenly all Tony could see were Dean’s green eyes, wide with surprise. Thundering heartbeats filled Tony’s ears, and he realised it was his own and Dean’s. They synchronised, and Tony felt a connection flare between them like a tangible thing.Suddenly he could feel everything Dean felt – love, grief, protectiveness, determination. He felt like Dean was part of him, like he’d always been a part of him. He was a piece Tony hadn’t even realised was missing.The connection deepened, and Tony lost all sense of I and me, becoming plural, becoming we and us. They merged into a kaleidoscope of moving parts and beautiful light, intertwining into something bright and strong and transcendent.Eventually, Tony became aware of himself again as a separate entity. Dean’s eyes still filled his vision, and the look on his face was both heartbreakingly vulnerable, and full of relief.Then Dean frowned. “What the fuck?” he said. He yanked his hand away from Tony’s face.The light between them blinked out, and the sense of belonging faded. Tony’s head spun with disorientation. Reality returned, and he sagged heavily against Dean. He felt heat prickle across the skin at the bottom of his ribcage.Dean’s hands shook as he tried to hold him up, and despite their new separateness, Tony could tell he’d been hit with the same wave of weakness and vertigo.And why the fuck could he tell? A chill went down his spine. What the fuck had just happened?“Shit. Sorry, are you alright?” Dean said softly, but before Tony could answer, or even react at all, something growled a warning in the trees behind Dean.They both froze. Tony clutched at Dean’s jacket. The layers of fabric between Dean’s back and danger suddenly seemed very thin, and Tony desperately wished for his armour.“Who’s there?” came a panicked voice from over by the treeline.It seemed their weird lightshow – their strange merge, their bizarre kaleidoscope moment – had only lasted a few seconds, and possibly only affected the two of them, because the soldier was still there and apparently hadn’t noticed anything wrong.The wolf growled again. The soldier cursed, and turned on his heel to run out into the open.A dark shape exploded into movement behind Dean, to chase the soldier out of the trees. Dean flinched, and covered Tony protectively, but the wolf didn’t even seem to glance their way.Tony’s head spun with terror. Strange mind-melds, soldiers, werewolves. At least Dean’s body felt strong and solid under his hands.A shout nearby froze them again; it was a group of cult members, who ran past the woods and chased the werewolf uphill.When the night around them stilled, Tony whispered hoarsely, “We need to get the hell out of here.”“What about the suit?” Dean whispered back. “We can call your friends.”Tony had practically forgotten their plan to break into the building and find communications equipment. “No, forget it. We don’t even know if this is the right building, or whether they have back-up power,” he hissed. “I don’t want to get trapped in there, surrounded by fucking werewolves!”“Okay,” Dean agreed easily. The huff of breath on his cheek sent a shiver down Tony’s spine. “Do you want me to go get a truck and come back for you?”“Hell no, you’re not leaving me here,” Tony protested, clutching at Dean’s arms.“I won’t! I won’t leave,” Dean promised. He checked their surroundings, then grimly turned towards the gap in the trees where the soldier had been waiting. “Come on, let’s go.”Tony followed Dean closely. They paused at the tree line, and Dean drew him close. “Can you see that big tree over there?” he asked, pointing across the clearing. “We’re going past it into those trees, and then between two buildings. There’s a path, but it’s hard to see. We’re going to move quick, okay? I want you to run.”“Yeah, okay,” Tony agreed. They had to cross vehicle tracks and a wide section of option ground. He couldn’t see anything moving out there, just some slumped shapes that could have been bodies, but there were sounds of fighting uphill.“Ready?” Dean asked.“Ready.”They launched themselves out of the trees, running in the dark across the snow. Dean took the lead, and Tony followed, eyes on the back of Dean’s coat until he nearly tripped and had to watch his feet. The tracks were rough, rutted and slippery by turns, and he scrambled to make it without falling.Movement downhill drew his attention. Tony slowed; there were werewolves clustered at the compound gates. Further down, there was a pack of people around the warehouse-like building where the cages were, handing out packages of something that had to be food based on the way the recipients tore into them. Then two or three people came racing out of the warehouse doors, and the crowd scattered.“Shit!” Tony realised what was about to happen just as the building exploded. The blast wasn’t big enough to endanger him, but the night lit up and heat poured over him in a wave.Suddenly there was a thwip, and another thwip, and snow puffed up from the ground a few feet from him. Reflexes had him running for cover even before he consciously realised someone uphill was shooting at him.More bullets whizzed past as he ran, then he saw Dean sprinting back towards him when he should have been safe in the trees.“No, go back!” Tony yelled.They collided, and Dean grabbed Tony’s arm to drag him to safety. Then he gasped, and stumbled.“Shit, please tell me you’re not shot,” Tony cursed.Dean didn’t fall, and they staggered unsteadily past the tree line, out of the danger zone.“It’s fine, it’s nothing,” Dean wheezed, but his hand was pressed against his jacket, low on his right side. Panicked, Tony fumbled to help, but Dean pushed at him, moving them deeper into the shadows. “Keep moving. The trucks are that way.”Downhill, the wolves started to howl.Even injured, Dean led him unerringly through the snow, past dark shapes – trees, buildings – until they reached a shape that became a Humvee when Tony got close enough. He balked for a second – he hadn’t been in a Humvee since Afghanistan – but at the same time, it was a way out.Much to Tony’s irritation, Dean immediately headed for the driver’s door.Tony followed, hissing, “Are you crazy? You’ve been shot!”“I’m fine, it’s barely anything,” Dean insisted. “I can drive! And I know the roads!”“You’ve been shot, you can give me directions!” Tony argued.“Keep your voice down! We have to go!” Dean was already climbing into the driver’s seat.“Shit!” Tony hovered ineffectually, indecisive, long enough for Dean to slam the truck door, retrieve the keys from behind the visor, and glare at Tony pointedly.Then something crashed through the snow in the forest behind him, snapping low-hanging branches from the trees nearby.Tony whirled around in terror, staring into the dark trees. Dean reached out of the truck window and grabbed him, shoving him bodily towards the front of the truck. “Move! Move!” Dean yelled.Tony cursed again, and sprinted around the truck as Dean frantically watched their surrounds and started the engine.Tony flung himself at the passenger door and scrabbled to get it open. He was barely inside before the Humvee lurched forward, but he got the door shut, keeping whatever was out there on the outside. His hands shook and his heart raced as he clutched at the grab handle.Dean manoeuvred them quickly and expertly around other trucks and trees, onto a track that headed back out into the clearing, and the gates. As they left the tree line, Tony leaned back in his seat to keep his body behind the truck’s armoured panels. Whoever was up the hill fired a few times, but the bullets pinged off the rear doors.Dean drove quickly, and Tony repressed the urge to tell him to go faster. He expected a platoon of angry cultists to show up any second, he only had a couple of bullets left in the goddamn gun, he half-expected another goddamn explosion at any moment, and the fact that neither of them had managed to acquire any more weapons now seemed horrifyingly short sighted.Suddenly Dean slammed on the brakes, stopping the vehicle out in the open, and leaned out his window to whistle, loudly.“What the fuck are you doing?” Tony hissed, grabbing Dean’s arm.Dean didn’t answer, and just whistled again.“What the fuck are you doing?” Tony demanded again, but then he noticed two shapes running across the snow towards them.“Dean!” one of them called, and Tony suddenly recognised the tall skinny werewolf man, Garth.“Are you serious?” Tony hissed. “They’re going to eat us!”“They’re not going to eat us,” Dean promised, then called to Garth as he got nearer, “Hurry the hell up and get in the truck!”Garth and a blonde woman Tony had never seen before clambered quickly into the back seat. They’d barely got the door closed when Dean revved the engine and they were off again.“Oh my god, Dean, thank you so much,” Garth babbled from the back seat. “I can’t ever thank you for this.”“Save it, Garth,” Dean said roughly. “Get your seatbelts on,” he ordered.He headed straight for the gates, flashing the Humvee’s lights to warn the crowd of werewolves.“Aim for the middle,” Tony advised, strapping himself in. “You need to go faster.”“Faster it is,” Dean agreed, and accelerated. When some of the wolves were slow to react, he started leaning on the horn.The Humvee ploughed through the snow, and Tony had just enough time to brace himself and pray they made it on the first try before they rammed into the gates.The vehicle was barely jolted; the gates crashed open with a shriek of metal and the Humvee hurtled through. Tony had a quick impression of snarling wolves beside the truck, but when he looked in the side mirror, all he saw were people flooding out of the open gates, escaping the compound into the night.Tony turned to the front just as Dean spun the wheel to turn on a sudden curve of the road, bringing them within inches of a cluster of trees. Tony cursed again, bracing himself, but they didn’t hit. They barely slowed down, and within moments, they were speeding along a snowy road through the forest, with no other light but headlights.The compound disappeared behind them. It was over. Tony laughed involuntarily, and his eyes met Dean, wide with adrenalin and exhilaration.
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Garth was exuberant. He cheered in the back, hugged the blonde woman, and then threw his skinny arms around Dean’s shoulders in a hug. The grudging look on Dean’s face made Tony laugh again, with less hysteria this time. He felt punch-drunk with relief.“Oh my god, I can’t believe that worked. I can’t believe any of that worked!” Tony said, covering his eyes with his hands. All the ways it could have gone wrong washed over him, as the adrenalin crash set in.“Are you the one who blew up that big thing? When the power went out? Was that you guys?” Garth asked.“Yeah, that was us,” Dean said. “Garth, Tony Stark. Tony Stark, this is Garth and Bess, friends of mine.”Tony raised his head to find Garth grinning broadly, and Bess totally astonished. “Hi.”“Dude, this is the best day of my life,” Garth said. “I get out of those fucking cages and I get to meet Tony Stark again? Hot damn!”Tony raised one eyebrow, amused. “Happy to be of service,” he quipped. To Dean, he said pointedly, “Will you please let me drive now?”“What? No. Why?” Dean replied, apparently confused.“I don’t know, because you’ve been shot?” Tony reminded him.“You’ve been shot?” Garth repeated, refocusing on Dean, who suddenly had two very concerned werewolves hanging over his shoulders.Dean sent Tony an annoyed look. “It’s just a graze,” he dismissed. “I’m barely bleeding. I’ll be fine, quit pawing at me, I’m trying to drive!” He pushed Bess’ hands away from his side when she pulled at his coat.Tony just took her place, and slapped Dean’s hand away when he tried to push him away too. “Just concentrate on driving, would you? I didn’t blow up a reactor and escape from a cult just to die in a car wreck because you insisted on driving through blood loss.”Dean snorted dismissively but turned back to the road. Tony pulled at his coat, and said, “Is there a flashlight back there? Anything we can use for bandages?”The werewolves found a first aid kit under one seat, which had a small flashlight Tony could use to look at the wound.Warmth flooded up his arm as he touched Dean’s skin, reminding him of the moment in the woods. But he refused to talk about that in front of the werewolves, and besides, he figured it was all probably a weird hangover from Lewis’ brainwashing. Or even if it wasn’t, it could wait until nobody was bleeding.The bullet had gouged a shallow valley across the lower part of Dean’s abdomen. It was scorched and seeping blood, but fairly shallow. They’d been lucky, it could have been so much worse.“Okay, it’s not bad,” Tony exhaled, and ignored Dean’s “I told you!” After another check, Tony added, “I think it could use some stitches, but some gauze and tape should be enough for a while, until we make it to a hospital.”“That’s good news,” Garth said, relieved.“I’m not going to hospital for this, it’s barely a scratch,” Dean grumbled.The werewolves both protested, and Tony let them argue with Dean about it while he channelled his nervous energy into cleaning away some of the blood. He figured there was plenty of time to fight with Dean about infections and blood loss once they were under the lights of an ER.Bess won the argument. “Dean, you’ve done so much for us, won’t you let us make sure you’re alright?”Dean folded so quickly under her earnest appeal it was almost embarrassing.“Bess, I think we’re going to be great friends,” Tony said to her, impressed.“Oh! Well, sure, Mr Stark,” she said, sounding a little surprised. She passed him some gauze, and some tape. Garth was holding the flashlight.“Oh, honey, we just escaped from a cult together, please call me Tony,” Tony said absently. “Dean, sit forward for a minute, would you?” Dean objected, but when Tony’s fingers touched his skin again, he subsided immediately, and let Tony plaster his side with gauze and tape.Finally, Tony felt he’d done everything he could with the first aid kit. “The strongest thing they’ve got is aspirin, do you want some?” he offered, even as he dry-swallowed a pair of pills himself. He accepted the half-full water bottle Bess passed him, and gratefully took a sip or two.Dean refused the aspirin, looking extremely unbothered by the injury. His adrenalin had to be crashing just as bad as Tony’s, but his eyes didn’t waver from the road and his movements seemed unaffected. Tony, after an extra moment of scrutiny to make sure Dean wasn’t bullshitting him, sat back in his own seat and relaxed.“So, I suppose hitting up the next burger joint we come across is out of the question,” Tony commented. He was craving cheeseburgers again. “Where are we? Where are we going?”“Got a safe house about ninety minutes away,” Dean replied. “There’s a phone there, you can call whoever you need to call.”Before Tony could answer, Bess said, “Don’t forget about the other truck, Dean. We should stop and get it.”“Oh yeah. We haven’t passed the turn off yet, have we?”“No, it’s up ahead.” To Tony and Garth, she said, “Dean and I drove up from the safe house, but we parked the truck and hiked in to the compound.”Abruptly, Tony noticed the radio built into the dashboard right in front of him. The Humvee looked new, but the radio looked like the older setup, which Tony knew didn’t require pre-broadcast computer configuration. He could only hope the cult hadn’t disabled its long-range capability, or cannibalised it for parts or anything.He reached back to take the flashlight from Garth, and used it to examine the radio, as Garth said to Dean, “Dude, I think me and Bess should take the truck and head straight for the farm.”“You want to split up?” Dean said, sounding surprised and almost hurt.Garth hesitated, and then admitted, “Well, I mean. We’re kind of. We’re really hungry.”The shame in his voice caught Tony’s attention, and he asked curiously, “Is it because of Dean? Because he’s still bleeding?”“No, no, never!” Bess and Garth insisted simultaneously. “We’re just hungry. I think the food they were giving us was vegan?” Bess added.“Vegan?” Tony was disgusted, but then his curiosity grew. “Wait, is it a biological thing? You guys need red meat to function properly, like cats?”Garth grimaced, but said, “Yeah, kind of. If we don’t get enough red meat, we can lose control, and we start losing our memories of what happens when we shift. And if we eat human meat, it gets bad. Real bad,” he added with a worried expression.“That’s fascinating,” Tony said, intrigued. He turned back to the radio, flipping switches and getting the power on. “Vegan food, though, really? That’s just. Such a step too far,” he muttered. Then he remembered some of the things he’d seen at the compound. “What about the others, the ones who attacked the cult? I saw some of them, you know,” he waved his hand uncomfortably, “eating. What’ll happen to them?”Awkward silence filled the car for a second, then Dean said, “We’ll figure out what to do.”But Tony had thought of something else. “Shit. If the Canadians picked up that explosion, which they should have, and if they’re sending their people to check it out, and they’re not prepared—““Oh, goddamnit, you’re probably right,” Dean sighed. “Shit, should we turn back?”“No! Hell no, I just need a minute to get the radio working,” Tony said, tuning to a frequency he knew FRIDAY would be monitoring.“Who are you going to radio?” Dean said skeptically. “There’s no-one within, like, fifty miles.”“Sure, no-one but a few of my low-orbit satellites.”“And what exactly are you going to say, if you can get hold of someone on that thing?” Dean asked warily.“As little as I can get away with,” Tony replied dryly. “Don’t worry, if I get on here and start talking about werewolves, they’re going to think I’ve lost what’s left of my damn mind.” Possible strategies and their consequences began unfolding in his brain. “God, the debriefing for all this is going to be a nightmare. And don’t even get me started on you, angel boy,” he said to Dean. “I can’t even explain you.”“And my shit is far weirder than you even know about yet,” Dean muttered. Then he added, “Any chance I could convince you to leave us out of all of it completely? You could have escaped alone, right? Because if you call the Avengers and they come to get you, there’ll be a lot of questions I’m not exactly keen to answer.”Tony paused in his search for viable frequencies, when the defensiveness in Dean’s voice set off red flags and his mind jumped to the obvious conclusion. “It’s illegal, isn’t it?” he said. “The stuff you do? Being a hunter?”Dean huffed in amusement. “Oh yeah.”“Okay, so I have to ask, has anyone in this Humvee ever been convicted of a crime?” Tony said lightly. The Accords were funny about associating with convicted felons.Bess responded in the negative, and Garth cheerfully said, “Came close a few times!”Dean was noticeably silent for a moment, before he hedged, “Not convicted, no.”Tony sighed. “Let me guess, you never stuck around long enough to go to trial. Look, you got in trouble over offing a vampire, or some other kind of monster, I’m just going to let it go for now. We’ll sort it out later,” he decided, turning back to the radio.“But what are you going to tell them?” Dean pressed. “How are you going to let them know about the werewolves without, you know, telling them about werewolves?”“Haven’t decided yet,” Tony admitted. “I don’t suppose any of you have a handy contact in the military who knows about all of this creature feature bullshit and can step in, here?” he asked, glancing in the back as well.They all shook their heads. “Sorry man, wish I did,” Dean said.Tony sighed, and asked impatiently, “What do they even need to bring? How do you fight werewolves?”“They’ll need to bring silver bullets or silver weapons,” Bess informed him calmly. “A shot through the heart is the only sure-fire way.”Tony stared at her, astonished that she’d just told him how to kill her. “Really? Like the movies.”She wrinkled her nose. “Well, the silver part is. Most of the rest of it is nonsense.”Tony laughed, then made himself focus on the radio again. “Alright, I think I can make this work.” He finally reached a clear frequency among the range he’d pre-arranged for FRIDAY to monitor in emergencies. “S-O-S broadcast. Authorisation code Indigo-Mike-two-oh-three-six-five—“FRIDAY’s response came almost immediately, crystal clear. “Hello Boss. It’s good to hear your voice.”Relief swept through Tony like a wave, and he clutched at the radio handset for a second. “You too, FRI,” he managed. “Connect me to the response team.”“Of course, Boss.”“FRIDAY, status check on law enforcement near my location. I’m currently…” He paused, waiting for Dean.“We’re about 140 miles north of the Minnesota border,” Dean said. Tony repeated it into the radio.“Canadian law enforcement is responding to reports of a large explosion. ETA five minutes.”“Damn, okay.”“Be advised, US military are showing interest in the explosion, and negotiating with the Canadians to assist,” she reported.“Yeah, I bet they are,” Tony muttered darkly.“Canadians are refusing for now,” FRIDAY added.“Okay, that’s fine. Patch me through to Hill.”Hill was on the line within moments. “Iron Man? Is that you?”“Did you miss me? It sounds like you missed me,” he said, with a grin.“Glad you’re alive, Stark,” she replied, ever professional. “Do we need to mobilise?”Before Tony could answer, Vision spoke up. “Tony.” His tone held a wealth of concern and relief. “What is your location?”“I’m safe. I’m fine.” Tony hesitated, then said, “Take me off broadcast comms.” He knew Hill would have had him on speaker in the war room, or wherever they were operating out of for his recovery.A click, and the Vision said, “We know who took you. We identified Colonel Lewis and a number of other soldiers from video taken during your abduction.”“And so did the public,” Hill added dryly. “Every public and private law enforcement agency in the country has been scouring US Army property looking for you.”“Son of a bitch, she really burned that bridge,” Tony muttered. Then he realised it had probably been deliberate. His abductor’s identities would have been a huge red herring, and pitted the US Army against anyone who wanted him found. Meanwhile the cult would have plenty of time with him while the world looked in the wrong direction.It was going to be a PR nightmare when he got back. “Did the Army cooperate?” he asked.There was a slight pause before Hill said, “They denied all knowledge and called it an unsanctioned attack, but they’ve been relatively open about letting us onto their property.”“They’re telling the truth.” Tony explained very quickly about the Colonel, and the off-the-books nature of the cult. “But we can talk about this later,” he said. “FRIDAY, give them the coordinates for the explosion.”“In Canada? We’ve been monitoring that situation as it developed. Seemed like it could be a familiar hand at work,” Hill said sardonically.“You know me, the bigger boom the better. That’s the compound, the explosion was, uh, me, and I escaped in a vehicle.” He hesitated for just a moment, and said, “Hill, if I told you to mobilise a strike team to the explosion site, but they had to bring silver weapons and silver bullets, would that mean anything to you?”For a long moment, she didn’t respond. Then she sounded wary as she said, “Yes, it would. What kind of threat are we talking about?”Beside him, Dean raised his eyebrows in surprise at the radio. Tony was just glad he hadn’t been wrong.“Lupine,” he clarified. “They weren’t the aggressors. They were imprisoned, like me. But I released them while I was escaping, and obviously they’re uncontained now. I think most of the non-dangerous ones left the compound when I did, but there could be some…combative elements leftover,” he hedged, uncertain whether man-eaters was a term he could use. “Vision, I need you to go with Hill and assist. I don’t want the Canadians to walk headfirst into something they’re not prepared for.”“Understood,” Vision agreed.“We’ll take care of it, Stark,” Hill promised, still sounding slightly surprised. He was astonished that he’d managed to shake her composure.He also assumed whatever file or dossier they kept on him would now be updated, advising that everyone’s favourite billionaire had uncovered the Night World, or whatever hokey code spies undoubtedly used to describe the supernatural. He predicted a series of irritatingly vague and euphemistic conversations in his future.“I’m also hoping you can help me prevent any information leaks,” Tony added. “Not to mention any opportunistic grabs for supersoldier materials.”“Absolutely,” she confirmed, all business again. “Do we expect any other involvement?”“AIM was the money behind the work at this compound,” he told her. “So they could show up. So far, in terms of law enforcement it’s just the Canadians, but FRIDAY says the US Army was offering to get involved. It’ll get bigger once the Avengers step in, and we need to lock it down.”“No shit,” she said baldly. “And before you ask, SHIELD policy was to leave experimentation in that area to the Nazis, although of course I don’t know how HYRDA’s influence affected that.” She sounded thoughtful. “How much time do we have?”“Minimal,” he replied.He heard her give instructions to the staff that were no doubt clustered around her, waiting for word. The words ‘containment’ and ‘irregular ammo’ were used, much to his relief.“Should we expect to see you there?” Vision asked. “Do you have a suit, or do you require exfiltration?”Tony made a split-second decision. “No, I’m safer where I am. I’m going to keep moving. I’ll get back in touch soon.”“Copy that,” Hill said crisply, before signing off.“I’m glad you’re safe, Tony,” Vision added. “Signing off.”Once he was gone, Tony asked, “Did you get all that, FRIDAY?”“Solid copy, Boss. I’ve taken the liberty of informing Ms Potts that you’ve made contact. She cursed several times, then began to cry. Colonel Rhodes is resting, but Ms Potts indicated her intention to visit him when he wakes.”Tony exhaled, so grateful. “Thanks, FRI. Monitor the strike teams and see if you can find any networks in that area to infiltrate. We cut their power not too long ago, so it might be a dead spot, but check anyway. If you find anything, copy all stored data, then restrict access to anyone who’s not me.”“Yes Boss. Sure I can’t send you a suit?”“Not yet. I’ll be in touch,” Tony said. He signed off and relaxed back into his seat.“Whoa man,” Garth said, drawing Tony out of his head. “You’re Tony Stark.” His eyes were big and astonished.Tony frowned, and gave Garth a confused eyebrow. “Sure am, hi?”“Dude, you’re Iron Man,” Garth said. “You’re Tony Stark!”Tony grinned. Nothing like a little belated appreciation for his awesomeness.Dean cleared his throat. “Uh, who’s FRIDAY?” He had a slightly disturbed look on his face, like he’d temporarily forgotten who Tony was too.“My AI,” Tony said easily.Dean’s eyes widened in surprise. “And Hill? I didn’t catch a name for the other guy.”“Viz, short for the Vision, he’s an Avenger. Hill is the Avengers Chief of Staff,” Tony replied. “She used to be a commander with SHIELD, and she’s been around. I figured if anyone was going to know about, you know, all this business,” he said, waving vaguely, “It’d be her.”“And you trust her to do what she says?” Dean asked, curious rather than accusatory.Tony shrugged. “I trust her for now. She might need me to step in, to make the army and the Canadians back off, but she has authority while the rest of the Avengers are grounded or, in my case, missing. I’m pretty happy to let her deal with it for at least a couple of hours,” he added.Beside him, Dean looked a little overwhelmed, but the truck had reached a crossroads and he slowed. “This is it, right? I’m turning right?” he asked Bess.“Yes,” she said, sounding relieved. “I think we went west for about a mile before we stopped.”“I still can’t believe you came all this way to rescue me,” Garth said to her, sounding emotional. “I can’t ever repay you.”Bess immediately protested the idea that he owed her anything, and Dean snorted in amusement. “Bess is Garth’s wife, so he’s being totally ridiculous,” he said to Tony.“And you guys are friends?” Tony asked.“Yeah, we were friends before Garth got bit, back when he was a hunter,” Dean said, but then grew distracted. “There it is,” he said, and pulled the Humvee to a stop in the middle of the road.Tony peered out into the dark night, and thought he could see the shadow of a tailgate between the trees.“Time to go, guys,” Dean said to Bess and Garth. Freezing air flooded into the truck as he climbed out. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Tony.Bess and Garth clambered out of the back. They all stood in the headlights, and Tony watched them talk for a minute. When Garth and Bess hugged Dean again, Tony opened his door and got out.They all looked up as he approached. “Come on, I’m not going to say good-bye? Didn’t we bond? We’re on the run from a cult.”Unsurprisingly, Garth rushed over with a big smile. “I can’t believe Tony Stark is so down with werewolves,” he garbled, throwing his skinny arms around Tony tightly.“Yeah, it’s a work in progress,” Tony muttered, but he grinned, feeling weirdly touched by Garth’s affection.“Thanks for getting me the hell out of there,” Garth said quickly, as he released the hug.“Anytime,” Tony found himself saying. “You guys sure you’ll be okay?”“Yeah, we will now,” Bess said, ducking in for a hug as well. Her embrace was quick but genuine. Before she pulled back, she said, “You’ll be careful, won’t you? About Dean?”“Of course,” Tony said, but as she turned away he realised he didn’t really know what she meant.They disappeared into the woods towards the truck. Dean watched after them, to make sure they made it, so Tony casually turned back to the Humvee and picked up the pace a little. “So I figure I’ll drive for a while.”“What? No!” Dean protested, but Tony had already reached the driver’s side while Dean was distracted, and he climbed quickly into the seat.Dean glowered at him, but Tony just raised his eyebrows pointedly and refused to move. Dean gave in, making an annoyed face and grudgingly walking back around to the passenger seat.“So, where are we going?” Tony asked as he started the engine, not bothering to disguise his smugness.“We gotta go back the way we came, back to the road we were on before,” Dean grumbled.“No problem,” Tony said, as he got the Humvee in gear. He reversed a little, then executed a neat three-point turn in the road. Then he paused to extract Felix’s tablet from his jacket, where it was digging in every time he moved his leg. “Here, take this.”“What is it?” Dean frowned.“Felix’s tablet. I stole it from the silo.” Tony rolled forwards a few feet, but paused again so he could watch Garth and Bess start their truck and reverse out.Dean studied the tablet, but didn’t turn it on. “Think they could use it to track us?”Tony shrugged. “Probably not. I don’t know. We can turn it on when we get further away.” Garth and Bess were out, so he accelerated.Dean nodded, and shoved the tablet into a side pocket of his jacket.“Will they be okay?” Tony asked, indicating the truck behind them.“Yeah, they’ll head for Bess’s uncle’s deer farm. It’s near the border. He’s human, but he knows about her and her family. It’ll be the best place for them to go right now,” Dean explained. He still seemed unsettled, frowning at his seat belt and the passenger seat around him.Because they could get something to eat, seemed like the unspoken implication of Garth and Bess’s plan. “Are they going the same way we are?” Tony asked.“Yeah, they’ll follow us for a while,” Dean said. He still frowned, and began glaring at Tony’s hands on the wheel. “You know, the safe house is over an hour from here, it’s a long drive.”“I don’t mind, I like driving,” Tony said easily. Dean kept glaring, and Tony had to laugh. “What are you, a five year old going to the dentist? You’re a grown man getting driven places by a billionaire, just relax.”Dean huffed. “You know I’m fine, right? If you’re just sticking around to drive me to the safe house, you don’t need to.”“That’s not why,” Tony denied. “Although, some life advice, if you get shot? Maybe don’t drive?”Dean rolled his eyes. “Seriously, it’s fine. I’m not even vaguely light-headed. I just don’t get why you didn’t tell them where you were so they could send one of your suits.”“Like I told Hill, who knows who’s listening?” Tony said. “I’m pretty sure that radio is looped through the compound, so if there’s any survivors, they could find out where we are.” It wasn’t the whole truth, not by a long shot. Tony’s vague plans consisted of making sure Dean got to safety, making sure his wounds were taken care of, then making sure he could pester him with questions about the supernatural. But he didn’t feel the need to articulate any of that yet.“Couldn’t your AI send a suit faster than they could find us?” Dean argued.“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Tony asked, deflecting. All of Dean’s arguing was just making Tony more determined to see his plan through. Dean clearly couldn’t be trusted to seek help when he needed it.“No!” Dean denied. “I just. You don’t have to stay, you know? You’d be safer. You should have your people around you. You don’t have to stick around for me, I’ll be fine.” He sounded defensive and a little confused.Tony chose not to take it personally. “I know,” he said. At Dean’s glower, he added, “You got shot trying to get me to safety, the least I can do is drive you to safety now.”Slightly mollified, Dean studied him for a long moment, then huffed again. “Fine, whatever. Do what you want, I guess.”Tony rolled his eyes at the ingratitude, but he felt relieved that Dean wasn’t going to keep insisting.Silence settled over them for a while, and as Tony drove he let just a little of his exhaustion return to the surface.With every mile they put between them and the compound, though, he relaxed. He was tired, but he felt weirdly at peace. Ordinarily, he’d have climbed into the suit and gone back to wreak vengeance on the people that imprisoned him. But for some reason, he was content to leave that for the others for now, and stay exactly where he was.As they drove, the anxiety that’d been burning through him since he’d been abducted faded away almost completely. The tightness in his chest eased; the clench of his stomach relaxed for the first time in weeks.They kept going. Their headlights opened the road in front of them, but most of the rest of the moonless landscape remained a mystery. At one point, the highway forked, and Bess and Garth took the other route.The night outside was pitch black, and the headlights only illuminated the two-lane road and the looming trees on either side. Tony slowed when they approached a town, but Dean didn’t ask him to stop. Street lights flashed over the Humvee as they passed silent buildings and shuttered stores.Eventually, Tony felt like he was legitimately about to fall asleep, so he broke the silence, hoping for distraction. “So, question. How is this something you do? Where do you even train? Is there a West Point for hunters? Some backwoods school for how to be a badass?”Dean cleared his throat – he’d been relaxing back in his seat, almost like he’d been falling asleep too – and huffed in amusement. “No, man. My Dad trained me. Me and my brother. We learned while we were growing up, you know? How to shoot, how to drive, how to kill a werewolf.”Tony hesitated, then asked carefully, “How old were you when you started?”Dean scratched his beard, looked out the window. “It’s complicated. My mom was killed when I was four, and my dad started hunting by the time I was five. He needed me to look after my brother, so I learned some stuff, how to shoot, that kind of thing. Didn’t kill a monster until I was twelve, though. And I didn’t get to go out on an actual hunt until I was thirteen.”Tony just barely managed to swallow his horror at how young Dean had been, not to mention how normal Dean seemed to think it was. When Tony felt like he could control his tone of voice, he managed, “Your dad, huh? You said it was a family thing, is that how everyone learns?”“I guess you’d say it’s an apprenticeship system. People learn from their parents, or from other hunters. My Uncle Bobby, he taught me a lot about investigating. How to look for clues, how to talk to witnesses, how to make a Devil’s trap. Anything I didn’t learn from watching Dad, it was probably Uncle Bobby.”Tony thought about asking where Uncle Bobby was now, but the memory of Dean’s voice in the cells saying nobody’s coming for me, was too much of an answer. “Okay. And about this record you’ve got, just how bad is it?”“Bad,” Dean said bluntly. “We get involved in a lot of messed up stuff, and the cops don’t see the full picture. We’re in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot, too.”“I can imagine,” Tony said drily. “Well, maybe we can clear some of it up. If we can prove you didn’t kill anyone human, or if there’s events that you genuinely weren’t responsible for, maybe my lawyers can do something about it.”“You’d really do that? Clean up my record?” Dean sounded surprised, and he stared at Tony. His gaze made Tony feel warm.“Well, my lawyers would, sure. And there’s got to be some advantage to knowing practically everyone who’s anyone in law enforcement.”After a moment’s hesitation, Dean sounded guarded as he said, “Why?”“Why not? I’ve got them on retainer, might as well give them something to do.”He could feel Dean’s eyes on him, and when he glanced over, Dean looked like he was trying to figure out what the catch was. “Look, it’s not a big deal,” Tony huffed. “If you were really in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’m gonna see if it can be sorted out. That’s all.” Dean was really confirming all Tony’s suspicions that he wasn’t good at accepting help, but he was also making Tony wonder whether many people had ever offered.Dean was silent for a moment, then with an obvious air of someone choosing to change the subject, he said, “Alright. What about the wolves? Are you really gonna lie for Bess and Garth? To everyone, not just the press?”Tony considered the question. “Yeah, I will,” he decided. “As long as you’re vouching for them, that they’re not a danger to people, I’m happy to not tell anyone about them, and I’ll try to control the fallout.”“Thanks. Really, I’d appreciate that,” Dean said. “They’re quiet people, you know? They’re not gonna hurt anyone.”“As long as you’re sure. The shit I saw at the compound was pretty freaky, I’ve gotta say, but after I saw the cages…” Tony trailed off.“Yeah,” Dean said, grimly. Then he asked, “Thanks for telling your AI to hide the data. Pretty sure the last thing anyone needs are goddamn werewolf weapons.”“Right?” Tony agreed. “I don’t want AIM or the military to get hold of any of that, or the plans for my tech. Not to mention, I wasn’t sure how much data they’d have about you, either. If they have records of your presence in the compound, too, it could make lying about it later really difficult.”“Me? What would they have about me?” Dean asked, alarmed.“Well, she said she emailed someone your fingerprints, for a start,” Tony reminded him. “The surveillance in the cells could have been saved somewhere. Oh man, if they kept video of me getting tranq’d and that shit had leaked onto the internet, I’d have been pissed off. I don’t want to be another meme.”“What the hell’s a meme?” Dean demanded.Tony eyed him for a second. “Really?” When Dean continued to look like he wasn’t joking, Tony added, “Okay, it’s just a joke on the internet, something that goes viral, don’t worry about it too much. If FRIDAY can’t get access to their shit, I’ll erase it all myself when I go back to the compound.”“You’re going back?” Dean sounded surprised.“Of course I’m going back, I’m gonna go back and raze the place to the ground,” Tony said, feeling a sudden spike of anger. “They fucking starved me.”Rather than being perturbed by Tony’s reaction, Dean offered, “I’ll come with you, if you want.”“What?” Tony asked, surprised.“I’ve got your back,” Dean insisted. “I’ll come with you, back you up.”“Won’t that be kind of a problem, Mr Outstanding Warrants?” Tony pointed out.Dean opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap and scowled.“I’ll be fine,” Tony said. “I’ll have the suit, and I’ll have the Avengers strike team. I won’t get imprisoned again,” he promised.“Yeah, well, if you do I’ll just break in to rescue you again,” Dean muttered angrily.“Rescue me? You didn’t rescue me, I rescued myself,” Tony protested.“Excuse me? Who got you out of your jail cell?” Dean demanded.Tony frowned; Dean had a point. “I would have found a way out,” he insisted.“Sure,” Dean drawled. “How long would it have taken? They told me you got busted breaking out with a pen on your first day. And after that, you seemed too busy getting pissed at them for tranquilising you.”“I may have made a few missteps in the beginning,” Tony admitted defensively, “But I would have figured it out.”Dean laughed. “I know. But you didn’t have to.”“No. No, I didn’t have to,” Tony frowned. He was no longer sure where this conversation was going, and attempted a redirection. “Because you were there. Were you always going to get caught? Was it deliberate?”Dean snorted. “No, that was poor fucking planning on my part,” he admitted. “Not enough recon. There were three times the number of soldiers than I expected.”“Probably because they had me by then,” Tony said. “I still don’t know how many of them were involved in the abduction, but best guess, Lewis spent a lot of time manoeuvring a lot of soldiers into a lot of specific positions, and they probably couldn’t go back afterwards.”“Yeah, that does make sense,” Dean said. “It was big, then? When they took you?”“Of course it was big, I’m the goddamn Iron Man,” Tony replied, then added, “Morrison, Walters and Hanson were on my private security detail. When they abducted me, Morrison led the rest of the team into an ambush and they were all killed.”“Jesus, really?” Dean was shocked.“Yeah,” Tony said. “I don’t know how many other people died, I was tranquilised and losing consciousness for most of it, but I think they opened fire in the street, and I’m pretty sure they blew something up to create a diversion.” He frowned, then added, “They tranquilised me and neutralised my suit, somehow they had a lot of information about me that they shouldn’t have had, and when I go back I need to find out how they got it.”Dean huffed in agreement.“What about you?” Tony asked. “Lewis knew all that stuff about you, she said you were the greatest hunter in the world. That true?”Dean shifted uncomfortably. “No. I don’t think so, anyway. I mean, I’ve been doing it for a long time and I’ve seen a lot of weird shit. But there’s other hunters, I’m nothing special.”“The cult seemed to think you were. She knew your name,” Tony said.Dean looked out the window. He stayed silent.“What about the machine?” Tony said, trying another subject. “Was it ever going to work?”This made Dean snort in derision. “No, man. When Lewis showed it to me the first time, I almost laughed in her face. I had to bite my tongue and pretend to be impressed, it was ridiculous.”“Seriously?”“Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck they thought they were doing, but angelic grace and human souls are absolutely not compatible. Other than fucking your way to a Nephilim, there’s no way to combine them, it’s like oil and water,” Dean said, gesturing in a baffled way.Tony pretended he didn’t hear the part about Nephilim. “You can actually mix oil and water together into an emulsion, using detergent,” he informed Dean.“Thanks, Bill Nye,” Dean shot back grumpily. “Two un-mixy things, then, okay? Two very, very incompatible things.”Tony grinned. “Guess it just proves her plan wasn’t God’s plan after all.”“No, it sure as hell wasn’t,” Dean agreed, sounding satisfied.But then Tony had to ask. “About that. About God.” He paused.Dean waited for him to find the words.“How much of what you told me was true?” he finally said.“All of it,” Dean confirmed gently.Tony exhaled slowly, his mind spinning. “You’re sure?”“I’m about as sure as any single human being can be,” Dean said. The joking tone was gone from his voice, and he sounded almost apologetic. “Between what I’ve seen and what I’ve been told by people I trust, I’m sure. And…I’m sorry. I knew I was, like, collapsing your worldview when I showed you the werewolves, but I needed you to trust me.”“Yeah, I get that. We had to trust each other if we wanted to escape,” Tony said. Anger was flickering on the edge of his thoughts, but confusion and curiosity was stronger. “But you could have told me the werewolves were mutants, you could have made out the whole thing was a military program. You could have told me she was making the angel stuff up, and I wouldn’t have known. Why did you push it?”After a moment of hesitation, Dean admitted, “I didn’t want to lie to you.” He sounded surprised.The words hung in the air. Tony had no idea how to respond.Then Dean added, “It’s fucking abnormal for me, you know. I’ve spent my whole life not telling people about this stuff, I have no idea why telling you the truth was so important.”“I know what you mean,” he said instead. “I knew when you were lying. You made it look like you’d switched sides, and every damn thing you said was either crazy or totally suspicious, but somehow I knew you weren’t out to double-cross me.” He hesitated, reluctant to address their weird connection directly, but felt compelled to ask, “Do you think it has something to do with the Colonel’s white lights?”Dean hummed thoughtfully. “It’ll probably fade on its own.”“Sure, okay,” Tony muttered. He didn’t like the idea. He didn’t want it to fade. But he refused to think about that, so instead he said, “You know, I gotta say, it’s another thing on the long list of weird shit that’s happened to me the past few days. Between the werewolves and all the brainwashing, this whole abduction has been a nightmare.”Dean grinned, and the glimpse Tony caught of the flash of bright smile beneath the ugly beard, and the lines at the corner of his eyes, made his chest feel warm.“Oh, speaking of weird bullshit,” he remembered, and fumbled with the inside of his jacket until he could fish out the small vial he’d taken from the safe in the silo.Bright light seeped through his fingers and illuminated the cab of the Humvee as Tony held out the vial of grace.Dean studied it apprehensively, laughter gone, before reaching to take it.“What are you going to do with it?” Tony asked, once it was safely off his hands.Dean shrugged as he stowed it away in his own jacket. “Give it back to Heaven.”“How?” Tony asked, skeptical.“I’ll just,” Dean waved a hand absently, “I’ll pray, I’ll tell them what I found. They’ll want it back, they won’t leave it down here.”“Wait, you’re telling me you can pray to them and they listen?” Tony demanded.“They’re always listening,” Dean said. “They just don’t respond unless they want to. They don’t come down here for just anything, but they will for something like this,” he said bitterly.“What about the millions of people who actually believe in this stuff, and pray out of faith?” Tony demanded. “What do they get?”Dean shrugged again. “Nothing?”Tony clenched his jaw angrily. “That’s. That’s.”“I know.” Dean’s resigned tone seemed to indicate that he was fully aware of how inadequate it was.“I thought protecting humanity was their job?” Tony pointed out. He glanced over just in time to see Dean grimace.“It’s not, actually,” Dean said. “Their job is to follow Heaven’s orders, and carry out God’s plan. His actual plan, not any weird cult bullshit. They’ve intervened in different things on Earth, but usually it’s less about protecting people day-to-day and more about their bigger picture.”Tony found himself lost for words.“Right now, they’re under new management,” Dean continued. “I think he’s mostly focused on rebuilding, at the moment, since the war.”“The war?” Tony asked. “There was a war in Heaven?”Dean seemed to catch himself, like he’d said something he hadn’t meant to. But he confirmed, “Oh, uh. Yeah, there was. The apocalypse was supposed to happen, right? Michael and Lucifer, fight to the death. But it didn’t happen the way they expected, so it led to civil war in Heaven. A lot of angels died.”“Wait, is that what the Colonel was talking about in the church?”“I don’t know. When?”“One of her sermons, she said the end of the world had been fought to a draw,” Tony remembered, frowning.“Huh. Well, yeah, probably.”“Jesus.”“No, he wasn’t there,” Dean smirked.Tony glared at him.“Neither side won,” Dean went on hastily. “So the world got to keep on ticking. And Gabriel, right, he died during the fight? But then later on, Hell got all closed up, and God brought Gabriel back, so now he’s management. He went back to Heaven to lead the army, and he’s been sorting out all the factions. He’s got, what’s it called, Divine Mandate, so they all seem to be falling into line these days. Heaven’s a lot more stable now than it was.”Once again, Tony found himself trying to digest. “I think I liked it better when I still thought you were crazy,” he muttered. “Would they help us, though? If the Earth was in serious, grave danger, would they help to protect us?”“Protect us from what?”Tony hesitated. Then, he braced himself, and carefully outlined his fears regarding alien invasion. He described what he’d seen through the portal, and what he suspected the future held.He hadn’t been able to convince anyone yet, but Dean believed in demons. Surely he’d heard stranger things?The risk paid off; Dean hummed thoughtfully. “I don’t know, but I can ask. And I’ll help too, if I can.”“You will?” Tony asked, surprised despite his hopes.Dean shrugged. “Sure. I never fought aliens before, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be. But if there’s anything I can do, if you need me for anything, I’ll do it.”“You believe me, just like that?” Tony pressed.“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Dean asked with a frown.Tony stalled, unable to fully explain how strange it was to be believed without question. His voice cracked a little as he said, “Thanks.”“No problem.” Dean sounded far too casual, but his acceptance and understanding seemed genuine. “I’ve been in the world-saving business for a while, I'll back you up however I can.”Tony felt unaccountably reassured.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They drove on. Every so often, there’d be a sign for a town, or a campground, or a lake. Finally, just as exhaustion started dragging at Tony again, Dean sat up a little in his seat. “We’re nearly there.”The exit came up, and soon they were driving through the streets of a small town off the highway.“Take this left,” Dean said, pointing. He directed Tony through several more turns, until they were on a road that seemed to lead out of town. They followed it for several miles before finally turning onto a narrow, unpaved road that turned out to be a kind of driveway.The Humvee rolled to a stop outside a dark, abandoned house. The yard was thick with weeds, the porch gutter was coming down, and the windows were boarded up. “This is it?” Tony asked doubtfully.Dean smiled. “Trust me, it’s fine. Pull around there to the barn, we should get this truck under cover,” he said, pointing.The barn was a looming shadow on the other side of the yard, and the Humvee lights flashed over a sagging roof and peeling paint. Tony could practically feel the cobwebs on him already.“Just hold on a minute, I’ll open the door,” Dean said, and hopped out.Tony waited nervously, but when Dean waved, he eased the truck into gear and drove it carefully into the empty spot beside a covered car.When Tony turned off the motor, he was struck by the sudden absence of sound and throbbing vibration. He exhaled, trying to remind himself that abandoned ruins and cobwebs aside, freedom was far better than a clean jail cell. And after all, FRIDAY and his suit and his spider-free penthouse were just a phone call and a short flight away.Dean tapped on the window. “Are you alright?” He sounded concerned.Tony waved dismissively and opened the truck door, forcing Dean to step back. “I’m fine, I’m revelling in my freedom,” he said, as he climbed down out of the truck. “I’m not locked in that goddamn cell, I’m not surrounded by cult weirdos, and I haven’t been tranq’d for twenty-five hours and counting.”Dean chuckled again, and said, “Come on, let’s get inside and get warm.Tony managed to emerge from the barn cobweb-free, and pulled his jacket closed around him as they walked across the yard. He looked warily up at the gothic ruin they were walking towards and asked, “You’ve got a first aid kit, right, somewhere in this derelict ruin you’re calling a safe house?”“Yep, fully stocked. We weren’t sure what state Garth would be in, so we’ve got painkillers and everything,” Dean replied.“Glad to hear it,” Tony said. “Hope we can keep it clean. From the looks of this place, you’re guaranteed to get an infection.”Dean snorted. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he said, as he led the way up the creaking front steps. He quickly unlocked and unjammed the stubborn front door, and once inside, flipped on the lights.But the forbidding exterior was a disguise; inside, the house was clean, brightly lit, and the boarded-up windows were unbroken. The furniture was rustic and basic and the appliances were older, but there was a TV in the living room, and Tony could already feel heat coming from the vents.“Okay, my mistake. Whose place is this?” Tony asked, fascinated. The living room was on the left, and on the right there was a combination kitchen and breakfast room, with a six-seat table. The cabinets looked old and the decor was deep in the eighties.“A buddy of mine in Chicago.” Dean shucked his jacket and hung it by the door. “He’s had to use it a few times to hide out from one thing or another, so he keeps the power on, keeps the wifi connected. I called him when I knew we were coming up here, and Bess and I stocked the place before we left to get Garth.”“Wait, wifi? Out here?” Tony was astonished.“We’re in Ontario, not the Yukon,” Dean said with an amused look.Tony was impressed. Then he focused; he took off his own coat and tossed it over the back of a chair, retrieving the gun from its pocket as an afterthought and setting it down on the kitchen table. Then he made a beeline for the big medical kit he’d seen sitting on the coffee table in the living room. He noticed some big black duffle bags by the sofa, incongruous against the traditional farmhouse look of the rest of the house, but decided not to ask.“Alright,” he said, hefting the medical kit and giving Dean a determined look. “Before we do anything else, I want to take another look at that gunshot.”Dean rolled his eyes but followed him obediently into the kitchen, and even sat in the brightest light so Tony could see.Both Dean’s flannel shirt and the t-shirt underneath it were ripped and stained with blood. Tony carefully pulled the material back, then removed the hasty, slapdash bandages he’d attached in the car.The bullet had scored an uneven wound about four inches long across one side of Dean’s flank. The skin around it was bruised and a little burned, but it seemed reassuringly shallow.“Jesus. I can’t believe you didn’t stay in the trees,” he complained, feeling a little nauseated at how close Dean had come to real injury.“You’re the one who froze up out in the open,” Dean replied mildly.“I didn’t freeze up!” Tony protested. “Something exploded downhill.”Dean just gave him a look.“Look, it was a glitch, alright? I admit it. It was a slightly less perfect moment in an otherwise surprisingly effective plan, but I didn’t freeze, okay? And it could have been a lot worse, I mean, this is luckily just a graze,” Tony added, trying to put on a positive spin.“A scratch,” Dean agreed. “It’s nothing. I’ve been hurt worse getting groceries.”Tony eyed him suspiciously. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Without waiting for a response, he took a closer look at the wound, forcing himself to double-check for muscle tissue or worse, intestines, which would mean the wound was deeper than it seemed. Fortunately it was too shallow, and it was far enough away from Dean’s hip to have affected bone.The brief, unavoidable touches to Dean’s skin sent warmth zinging through him again, but he ignored it as much as possible.“Okay, so I guess we try to clean. I really think it might need stitches, though, and I am not a medical professional,” Tony warned.“I can do ‘em,” Dean said.“You can—what? You’re not serious.” Tony stared at him, appalled.Dean huffed impatiently. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Seriously, I can do it.”Reluctantly, Tony gave way. “If you’re sure. How often do you get shot, anyway?”“Hazard of the job.” Dean seemed oblivious to the edge of worry in Tony’s voice. “What about you? You must get beat up sometimes, all that superheroing you do.”“Yeah, but I’ve got armour,” Tony pointed out, watching Dean investigate the medical kit and pull out all the materials he’d apparently need to tend to himself.“You didn’t tonight,” Dean countered. “Your head feel okay? You were close to that explosion. And what about your arms? Do you want some more aspirin?”“I do have a bit of a headache, but my arms are fine. I’ll take some more aspirin, I guess,” Tony said. His back still hurt a bit, but moving around was helping. And it didn’t feel too bad, just bruised.On Dean’s insistence, Tony went to the fridge for a bottle of water. There were six bottles of water in there, as well as a jar of peanut butter, some mustard, and a loaf of bread.When he turned back, Dean was already cleaning the wound without any visible signs of discomfort. Tony felt useless just observing, so he asked, “Did you bring Felix’s tablet in from the truck? I want to see if there’s information in it that I can send to Hill.”“Yeah, lower inside pocket of my coat,” Dean said absently.Tony retrieved it and brought it to the table to open. The screen presented him with a keypad, so he tried a few basic codes, trying to remember what he’d learned about Felix.“It’s locked, right?” Dean asked.“Sadly yes,” Tony answered. He thought about overrides, about whether it’d be worth the time it took to break in without FRIDAY’s help.“If the tablet’s got wifi, I’ve got a program that’ll unlock it,” Dean offered. “Grab that laptop over there,” he said, gesturing to one of the countertops, where Tony found a black, heavy-duty laptop.Once he’d booted it up – and after a pause during which Dean cleaned his hands and used two long passwords to unlock the screen – Tony found himself staring at a heavily customised GNOME desktop. “What the hell? You don’t know what a meme is, but this is your operating system?”“Don’t ask me, man, it’s new. A friend set it up,” Dean said, going back to his half-finished stitching job. “There’s a program called Skeleton Key that’ll find the tablet and break in.”Tony opened the program, and sure enough, it identified the unknown device nearby and offered to ‘Break and enter’. “Cute. At some point you and I are going to have a chat about the hackers you know and whether I need to arrest them for anything.”“I only know one, and no, you don’t,” Dean was frowning down at his stomach as he tugged the last stitch into place. “She hasn’t done anything wrong, and I’ve never used that program before anyway.”“Uh huh,” Tony said. He didn’t believe that for a second, but he was distracted by the fact that the program was apparently running a sophisticated check on Felix’s tablet before it accessed any files. It was testing for just about every type of reactive firewall or malicious tracking and infiltration software under the sun. Whoever this hacker was, she was both paranoid and very brilliant.It was taking some time, so Tony turned back to Dean and helped him wipe the stitched-up wound site with some more antiseptic and apply some butterfly bandages for extra support.“Thanks,” Dean said, as Tony carefully taped clean gauze over the wound, and his voice sounded warm and pleased.Tony blushed, his fingers tingling again from the feel of Dean’s warm skin. He wondered how often Dean had to doctor himself alone. “No problem,” he managed, then turned awkwardly back to the laptop.The program was already finished. All of the tablet’s files and programs were displaying in a window on the laptop.Tony eyed the Skeleton Key icon for a second, itching to get in touch with FRIDAY and get her to track down whoever the hell this hacker was. But he told himself it could wait, and descended into work mode as he began reviewing the tablet’s contents.It seemed Felix had been a trusted member of the build team. Tony found full copies of plans and schematics, materials testing, some weird data about the type of wood they’d used in the device, and a long string of saved project files that made it seem like Felix had been involved since the beginning.Tony studied the arc reactor files. He’d need to check the compound’s network for more copies, but the plans looked like official Stark Industries versions.He’d have to find the source. Had they come from Stark Industries personnel – the two abducted scientists – or someone else? Or had the military infiltrated SI at some point and stolen them? He couldn’t rule anything out. He needed to find out what Colonel Lewis could have accessed, or been given.Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else in the files. Absolutely nothing about the wolves, and no personnel records or security information.Tony turned to the tablet itself, to check over the programs and apps, and look for signs of the compound’s network. As he swiped through the screens, he spotted an app with a notification, and realised abruptly that it was a messaging program. When he opened it up, it showed an error, that it was unable to connect to the server, but in one of the latest messages, he spotted Dean’s name.It turned out the cult had their own on-site internal messaging system. Tony couldn’t download the newest message, since the power outage had affected the servers, but the lack of connectivity didn’t stop him from seeing Felix’s past conversations. The majority of them looked like group chats with members of the lab teams, on technical subjects, but a few looked heavily religious, back-and-forth exchanges of bible quotes and theological arguments.But one set of messages between Felix and another member of the cult were about Dean.The recent ones talked about the world bearing false witness against Dean and his brother, but when Tony scrolled down, they discussed a misunderstanding. Felix expressed faith that the Colonel must know more than they did, that the infamy must be a lie. Confused, Tony scrolled down until he suddenly found the source of their worry.A screenshot of a news article about Dean and his brother, with the headline Winchester killing spree continues, 41 dead.Shocked, Tony turned to the laptop and ran a search.It immediately pulled up the news article, but also about a hundred more, not to mention videos. Tony’s jaw dropped as he took in the details of the ‘misunderstanding’ Dean had mentioned. 16 dead in a bank in California, 8 in a convenience store in Colorado. Two more attacks, and 55 people dead in total, before Dean and his brother were arrested in Iowa.“Oh my god, this is what you were talking about?” he said, indignant.When no-one answered, he looked around at the empty room and belatedly remembered Dean saying something about checking up on the car, which Tony had half-listened to while deep in the tablet’s files. Presumably Dean was outside. Perhaps it was for the best; googling the felonies Dean had been accused of seemed like it could get awkward.He turned back to the computer, unable to believe the scope of the frame-up. He’d need to get more information out of Dean – he needed to know who had done this to him. The volume of coverage wasn’t the issue, he’d seen how easily lies and misinformation could circulate, and a solid PR campaign about an exoneration should be enough to counteract it. But to get there, his lawyers would need to know as many details as Dean could provide.Then, against his better judgement, Tony opened one of the videos.It promised full coverage of the Winchester crime spree. The first thing Tony saw was security footage as two men herded customers into a bank vault and opened fire. Tony recoiled.But it was blurry. Sure, it looked like Dean without a beard, but the whole ordeal with Barnes had proven how easy it was to manipulate standard CCTV footage.The video moved on to a new crime, in a convenience store this time, with perpetrators who looked even more like Dean and his brother. Full colour was even more convincing. His lawyers might have a harder job than he’d anticipated.Then suddenly the scene changed to crisp high-definition footage – a cellphone camera, in a diner – and Dean casually asked “Shall we?”Then he opened fire.The shaky camera panned away from him to watch Sam – big, angry, and heavily armed – actually quote fucking Pulp Fiction. Dean, on the counter with an automatic weapon, then threatened to execute every last one of them.And they did. Tony watched, horrified, as they murdered everyone there, one by one.When the shooting stopped, and the diner fell silent, Dean came close to the camera and smiled.Tony stared at those green eyes and listened to that familiar voice – that deep, gravel-and-honey voice, that’d conspired with him, laughed at his quips, and grouched about not being allowed to drive – as he promised to kill again.The video stopped. Tony, shocked and numb with anger, sat frozen as the scales fell from his eyes and the illusion crumbled around his ears.Then he replayed it, desperately looking for anything to prove it wasn’t real, any sign that this video was a lie, or a misunderstanding.But he found nothing. How could this be a frame-job? There was no mistaken identity here, no ambiguity. It was Dean’s voice, Dean’s body, his stance and his determined expression; it was all unmistakeable.Dean had lied to him. No, he hadn’t just lied; he was a lie. A cold, clinical killer had lurked underneath the friendly, capable exterior this entire time.Tony couldn’t believe he’d been so wrong.He watched the video again, and then again, grimly taking in the way Dean’s professionalism and capable efficiency was turned on the crowd in the diner, the bank, the convenience store. Sam, too; the beloved brother whose death had left such a mark of grief on Dean, was cruel, practically gleeful in the face of the victims’ terror. Their training and their frightening skills concentrated into a terrible threat, and every time they opened fire, Tony held his breath until his lungs hurt.Suddenly, there were heavy footsteps on the porch.Tony stopped the video and listened, cold panic rolling down his spine.Dean opened the front door and came in. “Hey. Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked, casually shucking off his coat.For a crucial moment, Tony froze. He stared at Dean, shocked again by the friendly façade obscenely overlaid over a murderous psycho.Dean glanced up and frowned. “What’s wrong? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”The concern in his voice seemed so real, and abruptly it was sickening. It snapped Tony out of his shock and he snatched up the gun as he leapt to his feet, toppling the chair he’d been sitting on. He trained the gun on Dean, ready to pull the trigger. Only two bullets left, but it would have to be enough. “Don’t come any closer! Don’t move!”Dean stared at him in disbelief. “What the hell?”“Hands up. Hands up! Keep them up where I can see them!” Tony ordered.Slowly, Dean obeyed. “Tony, what the fuck is going on?” He looked baffled, and vaguely hurt, and god the performance was masterful.“Oh, I should really be asking you that,” Tony snapped. He turned the laptop around without taking his eyes off Dean, and slapped the key to restart the video.The sound of gunfire immediately filled the room.“Oh. Oh crap!” Dean’s expression went from shock to fear. “Hey, that wasn’t me!” he protested. “It wasn’t us!”Just as he said it, Sam’s voice came clearly through the speakers, ordering the terrified diner customer to keep filming them.Tony laughed, bitter and disgusted, and said, “Not you? Are you fucking joking?” he spat. “It’s your face, it’s your voice!” His disappointment welled up, almost overwhelming his anger. “I should never have trusted you, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, letting you convince me--”“You can trust me!” Dean shouted. “That video is bullshit, and you know it. You know it’s a lie, you’ve met me, you know me.”“I don’t know you!” Tony denied. He wanted to vomit.“You do! You do, don’t try to tell me you don’t,” Dean insisted. “You can’t really believe that’s me.”“Yeah, actually, I fucking can!” Tony snapped.Dean flinched.“Nothing about you makes any goddamn sense,” Tony added. “Everything that’s happened over the past few days has been so goddamn crazy, and now this? Jesus, I’ve been wrong about people before, but this is a new low. And now you’re telling me to believe you, to trust you, over what I can see with my own goddamn eyes?”Even as he said it, a rebellious part of Tony’s heart desperately wanted Dean to convince him otherwise. He scanned Dean’s face, watched his expression frantically, hoping Dean would have an explanation, some kind of proof that the mass murderer was the lie, not the man standing in front of him.But Dean just clenched his jaw and looked away.Tony’s stomach sank like a stone. After a moment of silence, he ordered, “Turn around.”Dean raised his hands, and obeyed. Once his back was turned, Tony switched the gun into his other hand and fished a zip tie out of the medical kit.“Don’t do this,” Dean said softly.“Shut up,” Tony snapped. “Kneel down.”“Look, you’re upset, I get it,” Dean said as he got to his knees. His voice was shaking a little, and Tony hated that he sounded so sincere. “I’m fucking upset about it too, Tony, because it’s my goddamn face but it’s not me,” he insisted. “Please. We were framed, you have to believe me.”Tony huffed out a bitter laugh. “Yeah? Tell it to the judge.” Disgust felt like a knot in the back of his throat.Dean’s head dropped in resignation.“Dean Winchester, I’m placing you under arrest,” Tony recited. “You will be detained and extradited back to the United States, where you will face trial.” He ignored the way his voice broke over the words. He approached Dean, ready to hook the zip tie around one of his hands, ready to order Dean to restrain himself. “You have the right to remain silent—“It happened fast.One moment, Dean was on his knees and Tony was behind him, reaching towards him with the zip tie.The next, Dean had grabbed his arm, and then Tony was flat on his back on the floor with Dean crouched over him, pointing the gun at his chest.Tony froze in shock.But Dean immediately pointed the gun at the ceiling and opened his hands placatingly. “Sorry,” he said. “But I didn’t want—““Fuck you!” Tony interrupted, shoving Dean backwards. He surged up off the floor and lunged for the gun.Dean cursed and grappled with him, keeping the gun away until Tony rabbit-punched the injury on his belly. Dean barely jerked, but it distracted him just enough for Tony to get his fingers around the gun.It went off, and plaster exploded from a wall in the living room.Dean rolled them, elbow wedging between their bodies to push Tony away. Tony struggled under Dean’s weight, trying not to get pinned. His fingers were still clamped around Dean’s, and for a second he felt that warm connection sparkling on the edge of his senses. It made him furious; he was fighting for his life, it was perverse.“Stop fighting me! I don’t want to hurt you!” Dean insisted, but the gun went off again, and the bullet struck the ceiling, shattering the living room light fitting.Then Tony heard the click of an empty clip; the gun was out of bullets.Giving up on the weapon, Tony shoved at Dean with all he had, hoping to extract himself from close quarters. Dean rolled back, and Tony landed a punch on his jaw once he had enough space. It was like striking concrete, and when Tony tried to follow up by scrambling to his feet, Dean anticipated him and got his arms around Tony in the beginnings of a grappling hold.By delivering several panicked blows, Tony managed to drive Dean back, and launched himself up off the floor. Dean was on him again fast, and he ignored Tony’s renewed punches; he quickly got Tony pinned to the wall.Tony struggled, but Dean’s grip on him was secure.“You need to stop fighting me,” Dean said. He’d leaned in close, right near Tony’s ear.In response, Tony snapped his head back. He missed Dean’s nose, but nailed his chin and jaw instead.Dean cursed again, but when Tony tried to take advantage and shove away from the wall, Dean shoved him back, hard. He twisted one of Tony’s arms up behind his back and used more force to pin him. This time, no matter how hard Tony struggled, he couldn’t break free – not without dislocating his shoulder, or injuring himself.Forcibly pacified, Tony seethed with anger. His skin crawled where Dean touched him; it was through his clothes this time, so he didn’t have that creepy connection, but it still felt like a horrifying mirror of the way Dean had pressed close in the forest to protect him from the werewolf.“Are you going to listen to me now?” Dean asked, roughly. “Will you stop panicking, so I can explain?”“Do I have a choice?” Tony spat. The wall was hard and cold against his chest and his face, and his arm was going numb. His anxiety was revving into high gear.Behind him, he felt Dean sigh. “Okay, fine. No, you don’t have a choice,” he said. A little of the weight shifted on Tony’s back, and the next moment there was a gun tapping the wall next to his face.Tony eyed it crazily, and realised it wasn’t the empty gun they’d struggled over; this was a Colt M1911A1 with a white pearl grip. He thought of everything Dean could probably do with that gun, and his stomach turned over.“Yeah, you win,” he said quickly. “You win.”Behind him, Dean was silent for a long moment, then said, “No, I really don’t.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Just. Just don’t.” Tony couldn’t take his eyes off the gun, couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Dean’s face in the diner footage. His vision narrowed, and he could feel his breathing start to speed up.“I’m not going to hurt you!” Dean protested. He sounded offended, and it made Tony sick that someone so cold and crazy could sound so genuinely emotional.“Gun says otherwise,” Tony managed.“The gun is to stop you from arresting me for something I didn’t even do!”“If you didn’t do it, why the fuck is there video?” Tony hissed out, before he could think better of it. Story of his fucking life; for all the worst betrayals, there was always a fucking video.Silence from Dean, then another sigh. The gun was removed from Tony’s field of vision. Echoes of the video went through Tony’s mind – Good night, St Louis, you’ve been a wonderful crowd – and a fresh wave of fear swept over him.“Fine,” Dean’s voice rumbled. “In a minute, I’m gonna let you go. We’re going over to the table, and you’re going to sit in one of the chairs. Think you can do that for me, Stark?” He still sounded hurt, but a little more guarded, and resigned.Calculating the odds of winning their next fight, Tony decided to play along for now, and nodded.Dean finally stepped back, and Tony could breathe again. He turned, cautiously, but Dean let him. Tony risked a glance at Dean’s face, but found his expression shuttered. Under his beard, his jaw was clenched.He gestured impatiently, and Tony walked slowly towards the dining table with his hands up. He followed Dean’s orders to drag a chair away from the other furniture. Dean made him sit down, then held out two of the zip ties. “Tie your ankles to the chair legs.”“That’s it, huh? The gloves are coming off?” Tony sneered, estimating the time it would take to get to his feet and out the door before Dean shot him in the back. He eyed the gun Dean was still pointing in his direction.“I’m not gonna do anything to you,” Dean said, and bizarrely he sounded tired. But his gun looked like an extension of his arm, and Tony remembered how coldly and clinically he’d shot the people in the bank, the diner.Cautiously, Tony forced himself to accept the zip ties and obey Dean’s instructions. “Tighter,” Dean said blandly, when Tony tried to leave one of the ties loose around his ankles.“Wrist next,” Dean said, holding out a third zip tie once Tony was done. Tony restrained his left hand to the chair’s arm, and once again, Dean noticed the looseness and gestured with the gun for Tony to tighten it, which he resentfully did.Then Dean shoved the gun into the back of his waistband and advanced on Tony. Part of him wanted to cringe away, but he forced himself to wait until Dean was in range, and then he threw a punch with his remaining free hand, aiming for the wound on Dean’s belly again.Dean deflected it, though, and in the scuffle he pressed enough weight on Tony’s free arm that he was forced to lower it to the chair. It seemed insultingly easy for Dean; Tony cursed with frustration, and struggled with his entire body, but Dean was implacable, methodical, and in the end, heavier.He tied Tony’s wrist, then bent to check the other ties, ignoring the way Tony fumed.“I’m gonna make you regret this,” Tony promised through clenched teeth, his chest heaving.Dean looked at him, and Tony braced himself for a blow. Surely the mask would drop now that Tony was safely restrained?But Dean just said, “I already regret it,” and it didn’t sound like a threat; it sounded vulnerable, sad, and genuinely despairing.Tony jerked away, disgusted. Dean sounded so emotional, so honest. “God, you’re the best liar I’ve ever met,” Tony muttered. He clenched his fists. He couldn’t believe this was happening again.Dean stared at him for another second, open and raw with hurt, but then he turned away. He didn’t take the gun out again; he paced restlessly across the room.“The first we heard about was on the news, you know,” he said. “Me and Sam were on the other side of the country when it started. We just, you know, saw them on the TV.”Tony stayed carefully silent. He really didn’t understand why Dean was bothering to keep up the façade, but Tony’s disgust was beginning to give way to dread. He twisted his wrists in the zip ties, he couldn’t keep his mind off that gun, and he was still breathing hard from the fight. The ease with which Dean had subdued him was chilling.Dean crossed the room again, and settled on the back of the sofa, sitting across from Tony with several feet of floor between them. “Before we could catch up with them, they’d already hit Colorado, then Wisconsin,” Dean went on. “The diner was next, in Missouri.”“There was a pattern. It was all places we’d been before, places we’d worked jobs. We’d saved people in all of those towns. And that fucking diner, they had the best goddamn burgers in the state. They picked that place just to piss me off,” Dean frowned.Tony watched him carefully. He didn’t believe a word of it – he couldn’t even begin to understand the convoluted internal logic and delusion it would take to attack your own favourite diner and somehow feel insulted – but Dean, for whatever reason, wanted to tell this story, and he wanted Tony to believe him.Maybe trying to stay on the serial killer’s good side was the smarter choice this time. “So you’re saying they knew things about you,” he said slowly, trying to keep his tone neutral. “They…They’re you, but they’re not you, and maybe you don’t remember what you did, that’s fine, you can argue that,” he began, grasping at straws as he tried to figure out what Dean was telling him.“Oh, fuck you, I’m not crazy!” Dean interrupted angrily.Tony flinched, jerking back and averting his eyes. Misstep, misstep, his panicked brain told him, as he waited for a blow.But nothing happened. Silence fell, and when Tony could bring himself to risk a look, there was a stunned, wounded expression on Dean’s face.“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said emphatically. He’d backed way off, keeping his body language open and non-threatening. “I didn’t want to tie you up, I don’t want to—but you pulled a gun on me! And I can’t let you arrest me. I refuse to go down for it, Stark.”Tony still hated how goddamn sincere he could be. “What the hell do you want me to do?” he said, his voice cracking as his calm façade broke.“Let me go,” Dean begged, as though Tony was the one holding him hostage. “I know I can’t prove anything, I can’t prove that it was Roman, but I didn’t do it, it’s not us, on that tape. And you haven’t reported to anyone yet, you won’t get in trouble. All you have to do is pretend you never saw me.”Tony recoiled automatically, and before he could remember to keep his goddamn mouth shut, he said, “You murdered over fifty people, and you expect me to just let you walk?”“I didn’t murder anyone!” Dean yelled.Tony flinched again, and quickly said, “Okay, okay, I believe you! You didn’t kill anyone, it’s fine!”“Don’t lie to me,” Dean ground out. Then he turned away, and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, you’re right. You’ve got no reason to believe me,” he muttered. He paced, and his expression was distressed.Tony’s stomach clenched with anxiety, and he clamped his jaw shut. While Dean’s back was turned, he twisted his wrists again, testing his bonds. They held tight, and the zip ties cut painfully into his skin. He knew he could try flipping the chair over, but it would only free his legs, not his hands, and Dean was so fast, and armed.Tony tried to think. Dean’s behaviour was erratic, but he claimed he wanted Tony alive. He’d been friendly, he’d helped with the escape. He was pretending to be upset now that Tony was suspicious of him. If Tony could re-establish some trust, maybe Dean would let him live long enough to get to a phone, to escape?“Convince me,” Tony suggested.“What?” Dean turned, and gave him a skeptical look.“Tell me again what happened. Tell me why,” Tony went on, making eye contact even though he could barely stand it. “Give me something to work with, here,” he begged. It seemed like a good plan, to get Dean talking, to let him feel heard and acknowledged. If Tony appeased him, his chances of living were probably higher.But Dean gave him a bitter half-smile, and said, “I know you won’t believe a goddamn word of it, Stark.”“Hey, I’ve been believing all kinds of weird shit this week,” Tony persisted. “You say you were framed, tell me why.”Dean sighed again, and studied Tony. Eventually, he said, “Fine, we can do this,” with a tone that indicated that he knew exactly what Tony was trying to do and had decided he might as well play along. He settled himself on the back of the sofa again, facing Tony, and said, “You remember Dick Roman?”“Sure, he was a CEO until he was killed a few years ago. He was…” Tony trailed off. Dick Roman had died under mysterious circumstances, along with most of his inner circle, at one of his subsidiaries. “Oh my god, was that you?” Tony whispered, horrified. “Did you kill him, too?”Dean frowned and didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “He’s the one who ordered us to be doubled. Roman had plans, really fucked up plans. We knew what he was, and we were investigating him so we were a threat. They sent people to kill us, but we went off the grid, and I guess we were too well hidden or it was taking too long or something, because Roman got impatient.“He wanted us discredited, right? He wanted to make sure no-one would believe anything we had to say about him. He also wanted us found, and fast. So he had us doubled, and made the doubles…put on a show,” he said, grimacing. “He got what he wanted. He had every cop in the entire country looking for us, not to mention anyone watching the news.”He fell silent for a moment, and Tony took a second to try to process that pile of paranoia and delusion, trying to hide his skepticism. He also watched Dean like a hawk, searching his expression, his body language, for any sign that Dean was lying, that he didn’t one-hundred-per-cent believe what he was saying. He couldn’t find one.“We got arrested in Iowa,” Dean finally said. “The Sheriff took us in, so the doubles showed up at the station to kill us. I guess the Sheriff saw them eating someone, and saw them change shapes.”Tony jerked in surprise, because what? Change shapes? Eating someone?“So he let me out of my cell,” Dean went on, as if he hadn’t just thrown cannibalism into the mix, “And I went to get Sam. Luckily, they liked to monologue so they hadn’t actually killed him before I got there. We killed the doubles, the Sheriff told everyone we were dead, and we got away,” Dean finished, with a wave of his hand.Tony tried to assimilate this new story into his growing understanding of Dean’s worldview, and the realisation that if Dean wasn’t a liar, he was deeply, deeply unwell swept over him. All the monsters – and now cannibalism – could be the product of some serious delusion. Delusions coupled with psychopathy, sociopathy, folie à deux since the brother was involved; something was wrong with Dean.Outwardly, Tony tried to project comprehension, trying to show Dean that he was taking it seriously and he could be convinced. “The news articles said the Sheriff died,” he said, trying to make it sound more like a question.Dean sighed, and nodded regretfully. “Yeah, I guess Roman’s people came in to clean up. The Sheriff was alive when we left, but we found out later that him and the ME were both killed.”Tony clenched his jaw. How screamingly convenient.Out loud, he said, “You still haven’t told me how they did it. Did Roman have access to facial prosthetics, or some kind of tech? How did they double you?” Neither suggestion would explain how they copied Dean’s voice, or his stance, or his eyes, but Tony wanted to give Dean as many chances as possible to think that Tony was taking him seriously.Dean didn’t jump on the suggestions the way Tony expected. Instead, he regarded Tony with a measured look on his face.Just like he had before he told Tony about angels, Tony realised. It was so clearly evaluating; he was either trying to work out if Tony could take any more supernatural crap, or how many lies Dean could get Tony to believe. Either way, Tony felt sickened.You did see a werewolf with your own eyes, his brain reminded him, but he dismissed the thought with extreme prejudice. Who the fuck knew what Garth really was?“I told you about Heaven, and about Hell,” Dean began. “There’s a third place, Purgatory. Roman and his people were all from there. They’re called leviathans, and they can copy people. They used it to assimilate into human society. Dick Roman, by that point, wasn’t really Dick. He wasn’t human, he’d been copied.”Tony hadn’t realised he’d still held any hope that Dean could explain himself, that this could actually be a horrible misunderstanding, but he felt it when that hope dissolved. Bile rose in his throat, as disappointment flooded through him.“Okay,” Tony said. “Okay, that’s—“But once again, Dean had read Tony’s expression and accurately guessed the truth. “You don’t believe me,” he said.“I. I’m trying,” Tony said, suddenly afraid that his inability to convincingly believe the lie would finally lead Dean to abandon his mask of civility.Dean shook his head and ground out, “It’s fine, Stark. It’s fine. I can’t prove it. I can’t make you believe.” His mouth was a flat line and his jaw clenched; he looked like he was trying to feel nothing, trying to feel resigned, but his eyes betrayed how distraught he was.Dread flooded through Tony again, because the only thing worse than a psycho was probably an upset psycho. He flinched in alarm when Dean abruptly stood.But Dean didn’t come any closer to Tony, not yet; instead he went around the sofa and knelt to unzip one of the black duffle bags.Tony, hyperaware of the danger he was in, blurted out, “Dean, wait. Please, come on. I’m just having some trouble taking it in, it’s been a long night.”Dean’s shoulders tensed, but he continued rifling around in the duffle bag. Eventually he stood, and Tony tried to brace himself, but all that was in Dean’s hands were a fresh shirt and a washbag. Tony stared in wide-eyed confusion as he headed out of the room and down the hall.A moment later, Tony heard the sound of running water.He didn’t waste any time. Immediately he started wriggling the chair closer to the table. Dean had been cutting his stitches with scissors, and if Tony could get close enough, he might be able to get to them and cut the zip ties. The chair made noises against the floor, but Tony knew speed was more important, and the sound of the sink might just disguise it.He was almost there – his fingertips were just brushing the handle of the scissors – when the bathroom door suddenly slammed open again, scaring the shit out of him.Dean rushed out, wearing a clean t-shirt and a wide-eyed stare.“It’s not what it looks like!” Tony protested, leaning away from the scissors in the hopes that Dean wouldn’t confiscate them. “I didn’t do anything! I was just moving around.”Dean studied him with hair-raising intensity.When he didn’t speak, or attack, Tony’s anxiety only grew worse. “What?” he demanded, alarmed. “What is it?”“You’re—“ Dean stopped, swallowed heavily. For a split-second, the expression on his face was strange – naked and weirdly vulnerable. Then he blurted out, “I have to go,” and turned on his heel and disappeared back into the bathroom.Tony started reaching for the scissors again, but the water turned off and Dean stalked back out into the living room far too quickly. Tony watched him anxiously; he still looked wide-eyed and a little wild, like he’d been shocked by something. He didn’t come near, just carried his bloodied clothes and wash bag back to the duffle and shoved them in.“Dean, what’s going on?” Tony asked cautiously.Dean didn’t answer. He crossed the room towards Tony, and Tony tried to brace himself, but Dean just went past him to the laptop, and packed it away. He packed up the medical kit with efficient movements and a clenched jaw; Tony watched the scissors go with a sinking feeling.“Seriously, what’s going on?” Tony demanded, anxiety crawling through his guts.“What’s going on is that I’m getting the hell out of here,” Dean ground out, suddenly angry. Tony had no idea what had cause the sudden change in mood, and he dreaded what might happen.But Dean just shoved all his stuff into the duffle bags, then went to the door and yanked on his coat. Tony had no idea what he was thinking.“Okay, seriously, what’s wrong?” Tony tried. “Something spooked you? Come on, talk to me.”Dean’s mouth was a flat line. The door slammed behind him as he left, taking all the bags with him.While he was gone, Tony frantically tested his bonds again. He craned his neck, but the kitchen and lounge room were bare of tools he could use to escape. He tried not to panic.Now that Dean had lost it – lost control, lost his mind, lost whatever sense of connection was keeping him from hurting Tony – there were probably only a few ways this could play out. Dean would kill him, or leave him to freeze, or he would pack Tony up and take him with him. Obviously getting executed was the worst option, but Tony didn’t love the idea of another road trip with Dean now that he knew Dean was probably unhinged, and a goddamn mass murderer.Plans streamed through Tony’s mind at lightning speed, but before he could settle on a course of action, there were boots on the porch, and the front door opened. This time, Dean crossed the room to Tony without hesitating.Tony cringed away when Dean got close, and flinched when Dean grabbed his hand. The touch of their skin sent weird sparks through him – Dean inhaled sharply when it happened, like he’d felt it too – and Tony’s terror swelled. He couldn’t unclench his fist, so Dean did it for him, and he closed Tony’s fingers around something hard.And that was it. Dean stepped back.Tony opened his eyes, and looked down to find that Dean had given him a knife.Tony frowned, baffled. “What the hell?”“I’ll leave the lights on, and the radiator, so you won’t be cold,” Dean promised. His voice sounded unsteady, and he wouldn’t look at Tony’s face. “And I’m sorry,” he added, raw and hoarse. “It’s—I’m really fucking sorry. There’ll be a reason they did this to us, but you’re definitely better off without me. I didn’t mean to get you mixed up in anything.”“What the fuck are you talking about?” Confusion overcame the fear that was clenched in Tony’s stomach.Dean smiled mirthlessly. “You don’t get it yet, but you will.” He held up a cheap burner phone so Tony could see it, then left it on a side table near the door.Then he left, without another word.Alone in the room, Tony tried to understand what the fuck had just happened.Distantly, he heard a car start. “Wait, you can’t leave me here!” he shouted uselessly. The car roared past the house as Dean accelerated away. “Hey! Wait! Come back!”Silence fell. For a long moment, Tony wondered whether this was some kind of sick game. His hand tightened around the knife. Was Dean releasing him, just to re-capture him, because it’d be fun for him? Was it a test? Would Tony’s escape finally provoke him into violence?Then he realised that if Dean really had left, it meant he was getting away.Enraged, Tony cut himself free and lunged for the phone. It had an active dial tone, and he called one of his emergency numbers. “FRIDAY, code red. Track this signal and send me a suit.”As he said it, he slammed the front door open and hit the porch. Dean’s taillights had long since disappeared, and the night outside was silent and still.The suit took precious minutes to arrive, and Tony paced impatiently, watching the dark shadows in the yard with the phone pressed against his ear. “FRI, get me all the information you can on Dean Winchester. He’ll have a criminal record with state jurisdictions and the FBI, and possibly even Homeland Security.”“Yes, boss.”He kept the line to FRIDAY open, listening to her update him on the suit’s flight path as he watched his surroundings. At last, he heard the welcome sound of incoming repulsors.Tony went down into the yard to meet the suit as it touched down. It folded itself around him, power and protection combined, and information flooded across the HUD. Abruptly, he was connected again – his tower, his systems, his network. He’d missed it like a phantom limb.Iron Man rose into the air and soared above the house. Dean’s entire criminal history started streaming across the HUD as he hovered in the air above the safe house, and Tony felt sickened all over again.He scanned the nearby town and forested highways intently, looking for heat signatures and headlights and signs of life. The town was silent and still. There were no cars on the road, not a single person outdoors.FRIDAY reported that all heat signatures within a twenty mile radius were stationary, and within private property – people at home, asleep in their bedrooms. The only signals from phones or laptops were inside peoples’ houses.“Come on, come on,” he muttered, furious. “FRIDAY, widen the search. Maybe he got further than I thought.”They caught a few trucks at the outside edge of the search area, but none of them matched the car he’d glimpsed under covers in the barn, or the roaring engine he’d heard when Dean left.Tony’s frustration built as the minutes wore away with no sign of his quarry. It shouldn’t be possible, Dean couldn’t have gotten that far, he’d only had a ten minute head start at most. He couldn’t just disappear.“Iron Man, status? FRIDAY notified us when you requested a suit.” Hill’s voice came over the comms.“Operational,” Tony snapped, distracted. He scanned again, and once again found nothing. Dean Winchester had vanished into thin air.Angrily, Tony said, “FRIDAY, forward my location to Hill, and get the Vision on the line. Hill, you’re not going to believe who helped me escape from these assholes.”Dean might have escaped from him, but not for long. Between Iron Man, the Vision, and the full Avengers strike team, there was no way he could hide forever.
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Tony flew the skies for hours, furiously searching every back road, barn and abandoned building. About half of the Avengers strike teams joined him, combing the safe house and setting up search grids, while Hill took the rest to handle things at the compound. She sent him updates as they subdued and arrested the surviving soldiers, but Tony focused solely on hunting for Dean, with the Vision as back-up.Infuriatingly, they failed to find him.The hours slid by, the search radius gradually widened, and Tony’s anger grew. The sun rose, and Tony barely noticed; he was too busy requisitioning aircraft and personnel. There was no sign of Dean anywhere within a hundred miles, and it didn’t seem possible.Tony flew above the forests, re-covering ground he’d already covered and feeling his frustration burn.“Boss?” FRIDAY said.“What?” He snapped. He’d just received a report from the strike team that they’d located three deer farms between the compound and the border, but hadn’t found Garth and Bess. The owners had all been taken in for questioning, but none admitted even having a niece, let alone assisting two people in the past twenty-four hours.God, was anything Dean had told him actually true?“Patching through Ms Potts,” FRIDAY advised.“Wait—“ Tony protested, but Pepper was already on the line.“Tony? Are you there?”“Yeah, hi,” he said, attempting to project calm confidence. “Hey, how’s things?”She ignored his flippancy and exhaled in relief. “It’s good to hear your voice. Are you alright?”“I’m fine,” he said quickly. “I’m no longer imprisoned, it’s great. I’m just, you know, looking for someone.” In the back of his mind, he knew his anger was a shell, a wall, blocking out something overwhelming. He couldn’t let her crack it open.“I know, they told me! He sounds dangerous.”“He won’t be for much longer,” Tony said, determined.“I’m sure you’re right, but Tony, have you thought about coming home?” she asked. There was a careful lack of coaxing in her voice, and it made his hackles go up.“Why the hell would I come home before I’ve found him?” he demanded.“Because you must be exhausted. Don’t you want to come home for some food, maybe some rest?”With sick clench to his stomach, he realised someone must have asked her to intervene. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise my continued presence was interfering with the search,” he sneered.“What are you talking about?” She sounded genuinely confused. “I don’t know anything about the search, of course you’re not interfering. I’m just worried about you,” she said.“Are you trying to manage me right now? Is that what’s happening?” he said.He couldn’t see her roll her eyes, but he knew she did. “No, of course not, why on earth would I try to achieve the impossible?”He felt the shell crack, just a little, and clenched his teeth.“So how long do you think you’ll prolong this?” she added, when he didn’t say anything.“I’m not prolonging anything,” he snapped. “He’s a criminal. I’ll come back when he’s been locked in a cell again, I can’t just go and sleep it off while everyone else is here looking for him!”“Why not?” she countered. “After everything you’ve been through, don’t you think you deserve to come home?”Home. He felt the shell crack, and the overwhelming feeling inside him threatened to well up.He clenched his teeth and shoved it right back down. “I’m the one he lied to, Pepper,” he gritted out. “What I deserve is to be the one to bring him in!”“You deserve to rest, Tony,” Pepper said. “All of Canadian law enforcement is looking for him, not to mention the Vision and the Avengers support staff. They can keep searching the forest, and they’ll keep you informed, you know they will. FRIDAY won’t stop either, and she can alert you to any developments. Come home. You can start fresh tomorrow.”He couldn’t stop. If he stopped, he’d crack right open, and then he’d have to deal with how badly he’d been fooled. So he tried to ignore her, he tried to stay angry, but suddenly he knew it was coming. The shell was not just cracking, it was dissolving into nothing, and everything was going to come spilling out. Pressure was already building in his chest and the back of his throat.“FRIDAY, cut the call,” he said, ignoring Pepper’s protests. His stomach was clenching, his heart rate was climbing. His skin crawled, and every muscle in his neck and shoulders drew painfully tight. He tried to focus, tried to keep the panic at bay and stabilise his suit, but he lost altitude. The tree tops got closer and closer.“I need to land,” he managed.“Clearing up ahead, Boss,” FRIDAY said, showing him the gap in the forest. He guided the suit down too fast, and landed heavily on one knee, bracing himself on one closed fist and sending up a spray of snow.He staggered upright, but his left arm twinged, and the HUD felt like it was shrinking. “FRIDAY, let me out of this thing,” he gasped.The suit opened, and he practically fell out into the snow, dropping to his knees as panic raced through him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t distract his brain from the feelings.Dean was a mass murderer. He’d lied, and he was a goddamn mass murderer.Tony had been lied to before, but for some reason this beat out even Steve Rogers for how devastatingly betrayed it made him feel.There would be no fresh start tomorrow, no triumphant return to the city. As Tony struggled to draw breath and ride out the panic, he felt like nothing would ever be alright ever again.A shadow crossed the snow and the Vision flew down into the clearing. “Are you alright?”Hearing JARVIS’s voice felt like an extra stab of grief when he was already bleeding, but Tony pushed the feeling aside. “Just give me a minute,” he rasped.He breathed, or tried to, as The Vision knelt in front of him. Count to four, he told himself. God, why couldn’t he get a grip on himself?Because Dean is a mass murderer, his traitorous brain whispered, setting off a fresh wave of tremors and what he had to admit felt a lot like grief.“Your heart is beating far too fast,” The Vision diagnosed. “Allow me to bring you to the medical staff.” He reached out to take Tony’s hands.“Don’t touch me,” Tony snapped, jerking back. His back hit something hard – the suit’s legs – and the Vision backed off obediently.“Tony—“ he said.“I’ll be fine,” Tony snapped. “Could you just give me a minute?”When Vision didn’t approach again, Tony went back to breathing, finding slightly more success. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, rinse and repeat.The trembling in his hands gradually slowed, and the horrible shivers crawling over his skin faded, leaving his body feeling cold and heavy.“Tony?” Vision said hesitantly. “May I take the liberty of performing a scan?”Shame flooded through him; he shouldn’t have snapped. He waved a hand in permission, unwilling to try to speak again.“Your ribcage is intact,” The Vision said. “Your heart rate is stabilising. You have bruises and contusions, but no serious injuries. I am glad the breathing exercises have worked.”Tony nodded. Nothing he didn’t already know.Then the Vision asked, “Will you continue the search, or return to New York?”Tony closed his eyes. Exhaustion pulled at him. He felt numb. He made a decision. “Yeah, tell them I’m going home.”“I will,” the Vision promised. “Everyone will be glad you’re resting. And please don’t be anxious. We’ll continue the work.”Tony sighed in resignation. With effort, he got to his feet, squared his shoulders, and stepped back into the suit.***By the time he reached the city, exhaustion had dug in and become a kind of numb blankness. He landed on the balcony and walked into the penthouse still wearing the armor.His security armed itself as soon as he was inside, and for a moment – once he was alone, quiet, safe, off the comms, with no-one to pretend for – the numb feeling threatened to give way to overwhelming grief again. His sense of failure swelled when he faced his home.Then Pepper said from a nearby sofa, “There you are.”He froze. She’d obviously been waiting for him, and now she stood up from the sofa with a relieved look on her face. He could tell she’d been crying.“Tony, I am so sorry. Whatever I said—“ she began, with a worried frown.“No, hey, that wasn’t your fault,” he interrupted, feeling a stab of guilt as he retracted the helmet. “It’d been coming on for a while, and I was ignoring it. You didn’t trigger anything, Pep, my brain was just refusing to be distracted anymore.”She still looked upset. “But I shouldn't have pushed you! Are you alright, though? Vision said it was a panic attack?”Tony grimaced. “Yeah, it kind of was,” he said, unwilling to go into specifics. Pivoting, he said, “It’s good to see you. I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”“Of course I’m here,” she protested, beautiful and worried, looking him over. Her eyes lingered on his neck as she said, “Look at those bruises! What happened? Are you injured?”He flinched back when she lifted a hand towards his neck. “You should see the other guy,” he muttered, his stomach twisting dangerously as he thought about what’d actually happened to Morrison. To disguise his disgust, he turned away to step out of the suit. “I’m fine,” he pre-empted, before she could ask him. “A few bruises, and maybe a headache, but it’s nothing life-threatening, I promise.”And wasn’t that a miracle? He’d gotten away from the cult, the werewolves, and the mass murderer with only bruises, sore muscles, and a few tranq hangovers. And some fresh, new anxiety and a little emotional shrapnel.“Are you sure?” Pepper was saying. “What about your ribs?”“Vision scanned me, and FRIDAY will too,” he promised. “Everything feels okay, and if there is something wrong, I swear I will tell you this time.”She eyed him for a moment, then nodded. “I’m choosing to believe you, because you have to know by now how bad it is when you hide things like that from me.”“Scouts honour,” he promised. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”She rolled her eyes at that. “I know you were never a boy scout, Tony,” she said, and her voice held so much warm amusement that his chest constricted. He’d missed her.Abruptly he realised he hadn’t even hugged her yet. “Hey, come here,” he said, and he just had to open his arms a little before she was in his arms, hugging back tightly.Her scent surrounded him, and he buried his nose in her hair, holding her tightly. “Sorry about the smell,” he said. “Didn’t get a shower yet.” He was still wearing the goddamn sweater the cult had given him, and he didn’t even want to think about the last time he’d changed his underwear.She just held onto him tighter. “I don’t care, I knew you weren’t away at a spa. Tony, I was so worried—““I know, I’m sorry. I’ll be alright,” he interrupted. He wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not, but he felt grateful for the sound of his name in her mouth and he wanted her to feel better.Eventually they let go, and as Tony stepped back, he said, “I came back as soon as I could. I know you hate it when I get kidnapped.”She shook her head, refusing to engage with his joke as she blotted away a tear with her fingertips. “I do hate it,” she said. “And I’m glad to see you.”It made something ache in his chest. The break in their relationship had been rough on them both – he hated the lost potential, of what could have been if they’d been able to bend themselves into just slightly different shapes – but even though it hurt, he was so, so grateful that she was still there.“I’m glad to see you too, Pep.”With a sigh, he turned away and wandered across the penthouse. It was good to be home, even with the way things had ended, and he tried to feel relieved. He let the sun wash over him as he stared out the windows, at the view over the city.It was so strange that New York looked just the same. And Pepper, she was just the same. He couldn’t believe it’d only been about twelve days since he was in Washington. Everything felt different. He felt different – almost alien.Pepper came and stood beside him, but he kept his eyes on the city outside.“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked simply.“No,” he said reflexively. His throat tightened, and he tucked his suddenly-shaking hands into his pockets.After a tense silence, he said, “I really hate being lied to, Pep.”“The man you escaped with?” she asked. “He lied to you?”“He had me so totally fooled,” Tony confessed bitterly. “I thought he was really—he was so genuine. But it turns out he’s the worst one yet.” Pepper didn’t know about Steve yet, but she knew about the others. She knew about Stane.“You know it’s not your fault,” Pepper said. “You’re not a mind reader, Tony.”“Yes, but why the fuck can I never tell when people are lying to me?” he ground out.Pepper didn’t seem to know what to say, and he knew it wasn’t her he was angry with.He sighed. “Whatever, it’s okay.” His back ached, his exhaustion felt bone deep. He felt weighed down. “I think I just need some sleep and a shower.”“Do you want me to stay with you? I don’t think you should be alone right now.”“No, that’s okay, you’ve got stuff to do.”“I’ve always got stuff to do, but if you need me to stay with you, I will.” She hesitated. “It’s not about us right now, but I did—I do still care, Tony, and—“Once again he interrupted. “Pepper, it’s okay. I know you care about me. I care about you, I missed you so much, but you were right, I need rest. I’m exhausted, I can barely keep my eyes open. I want a little privacy, but all I’m planning to do is pass out. I’ll call you when I wake up, alright? We can talk more about it then.”She hesitated again, then nodded. “If you’re sure.”“I’m sure,” he promised, then added, “I’m not going to lie, the whole…experience has been pretty fucked up.” Jesus, what an understatement. “But I’ll be fine.”“Okay,” she reluctantly agreed. “I’ll take care of things at the company, of course. We’ll need a public appearance from you at some point, but it can wait a few days. What about the Army? And the Avengers?”Tony waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not going to deal with them now. I’ll get FRIDAY to field their calls and let them leave as many voicemails as they want. But if you can give the press something to keep them occupied, that would be great.”“Don’t worry about that, I can handle them,” she said crisply. She gave him one last, assessing look. “I expect you to call me in no more than eight hours. I want to hear from you then, or I’ll come to find you and FRIDAY won’t keep me out.”“Absolutely,” he promised.Then she added, “I’ll tell Rhodey that you’ll come and see him when you wake up too, okay?”Tony held back a flinch – oh god, Rhodey – then nodded. “That’d be good. Thank you, Ms Potts.”She replied with a smile, “Sleep well, Mr Stark.”The elevator doors closed behind her, and Tony was alone. He took one deep breath, then another.After a few more deep breaths, he paced over to the sofas, scrubbing his hands restlessly over his face. The drag was still there – like there was an anchor tied around him – but the rest of his emotions felt far away, and despite what he'd told Pepper to get her to leave, the thought of sleep made him recoil.If he couldn’t sleep, there were a lot of other things he could do. Too much chaos; perhaps he could make order.“FRIDAY?” he said.“Yes, Boss?”“Start me a to-do list,” he began, gathering his thoughts. “In sections, with subsections.”“Ready when you are, Boss,” she said.“First, the cult.” He paced thoughtfully. “Keep an eye on the status of the survivors, of arrests, charges, lawyers, all of that.” While he’d been hunting for Dean, Hill’s teams had begun processing the compound, getting the power back on and gathering evidence. It had let FRIDAY get into the systems, and while she’d quarantined a lot of data, she’d also found a complete list of soldiers involved with the cult and passed it on to Hill, to make sure they made a full round of arrests.“I also want to be informed of any new developments, any reports coming from the support staff on-site in Canada. I’m going to need copies of the data, especially the video footage. Flag anything to do with the arc reactor plans.”“I’m also gonna need all the records from the compound about the werewolf research, and the connection to AIM. If they’re moving into werewolves, it’ll probably be fucking bizarre, so we’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with that.” He wasn’t sure how, exactly. “I’ll need to talk to Hill, and find out…I don’t know, just make a note and I’ll figure it out later.”He rubbed his forehead. “I also want information about the cult members, especially Colonel Lewis and Sergeant Hank Morrison. Who are they, where the fuck did they come from, and how the hell did they end up in this cult. Anything about Lewis and strange occurrences, she had some kind of ability and I want to understand what it was.”“Next section, Stark Industries.” He needed to check in with Pepper about the company’s performance while he was gone. They’d put strategies they’d put in place to prevent losses from his death or disappearance, and he needed to find out how well they’d worked. “Remind me to get a bit more aggressive about optimising our long term survival. More hiring in R&D, new researchers, new developers, see if we can find some hotshots. I need to make sure the company will stand without me.”“Legacy, Boss?”“Yeah,” he agreed. Then, pivoting slightly, he said, “I also need to contact all the families of the people they killed to get to me.” His throat tightened a little, but the rest of him felt a dull sort of numbness. “Some kind of compensation, reparations, make a note for me to talk to Pepper about it.”He paused, then added, “Make a note under the cult section about the cult members’ families, too. With a question mark. I’ll ask Pepper what she thinks about our involvement in that.”On firmer ground, he said, “Back to SI, I also need to investigate the theft of plans and materials. The cult stole a quantity of the Stark element, and if no-one raised any flags it means we’re going to have to look at our employees. I need to confirm that they got the arc reactor plans from the scientists they killed, and not from anywhere else.”Another pause, for a deep breath as he allowed his mind to let go of the things he’d already listed so he could move on.“New section, personal threats. I want you to investigate any contact the cult members could have had with Avengers support staff, and also WSC and UN staff in the United States. Personal connections, communications, reports, vendettas against me personally. The cult knew a hell of a lot about my personal security, and I want to know how. If someone official has put analysts on me to work out how I use my tech, I want to know about it, and I want to know how Colonel Lewis got tipped off.”“High priority?” FRIDAY asked.“Absolutely. But keep a low profile, I don’t want anyone to know we suspect anything until I work out what to do about it. Just keep me informed.”“Yes, Boss.”“Pay special attention to Secretary Ross,” he added. “His office, his army career. Lewis called him General Ross, she might have served under him, but it could have been one of the others as well. See if there’s a connection.”The next items he added to her list were also about his personal security; namely finding out what the hell was in that tranquiliser and where they’d got it, and how to upgrade the suit in case he was incapacitated like that again. After Siberia, he’d heavily reinforced the chest-plate, but now he felt like it was time to do something a little more extensive.“Next section. Werewolves.” Hill’s people hadn’t found any left at the compound by the time they got there. Tony knew some had stayed to fight the soldiers, but it seemed they’d either been killed or fled when the helicopters touched down. Hill had promised to keep the bodies under control, and she’d said she had people she could call about the maneaters. He wasn’t sure how far to trust her with all of this, but she’d seemed genuinely worried about the potential for exploitation.“I need to talk to Hill, and find out what she knows,” he decided. “I need to know who else knows, and who I can talk to or who I should avoid.”“Will you be informing Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes?”Tony laughed bitterly. “Christ, I don’t know. I’ll think about that later. I do want to find out more, though. I need to know more about magic, and monsters, and what’s actually real. I need to find someone reliable to tell me the truth.”He wandered away from the sofas towards the windows again, feeling slightly less burdened than he had when he’d arrived. The list was helping to exorcise some of the stress from his system.“New section,” he said slowly. “Dean Winchester.”He exhaled slowly.He still like felt he should be out there, tracking him down. He wanted to plan, to plot a course of action for FRIDAY to follow. He wanted to tell FRIDAY to get him criminal records, to start combing through digital records and surveillance footage to try and find him.But he couldn’t stop thinking about the anguished look in Dean’s eyes when Tony didn’t buy into his lie. He couldn’t stop thinking about the video, Good night, St Louis, you’ve been a wonderful crowd, and the look in Dean’s eyes when he opened fire.“Fuck’s sake,” Tony muttered under his breath, wanting to bleach it all from his brain. He wished he’d never found the videos. He wished he’d never let Dean help him to escape. God, if only he hadn’t fallen for it.“Boss? Can I suggest trying to get some sleep?” FRIDAY said.Tony huffed a laugh. “Oh, sure,” he replied sarcastically. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” His head throbbed, and his stomach took the opportunity to growl. Grateful for the distraction, Tony whirled around and headed straight for the kitchen. “You know what, since you’ve mentioned self-care, FRIDAY, I hope someone’s been by to stock the fridge.”“Ms Potts arranged for them to bring your favourites,” FRIDAY promised.Sure enough, when Tony yanked the fridge door open, every shelf was covered in things he liked.Fresh fruit and vegetables for smoothies, cheeses and charcuterie, some Japanese take out, and even a box tucked in the back that he suspected might contain lasagne from Emilio’s, ready for him to warm up.His throat tightened again, and the numb feeling inside him cracked right down the middle. Food.He fell on the nigiri and cold noodles like a starving man, and didn’t bother to heat the gyoza before digging in. He also made himself some coffee, which tasted like ambrosia not just because it was coffee but because it didn’t come out of a fucking MRE and he didn’t have to pander to a fucking cultist to get it.Eventually he paused for breath, and then abruptly caught sight of his reflection in the backsplash over the bar. Not only was his beard a nightmare, but he hadn’t showered in over a week and he realised he was still wearing the fucking sweater the cult had given him.“FRIDAY, make a note for me to burn this goddamn sweater.”After a token effort to put away the leftovers, and a pause to grab a refill on his coffee, Tony made a beeline for the bathroom. He finished the cup on the way, and then avoided the mirror as he stripped out of his soiled, grimy clothes. FRIDAY started the shower for him, and he grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste before stepping in.Once under the spray, he avoided looking at himself, avoided the sight of bruises and scrapes, and used the loofah to coat himself in lather, relieved to scrub away the old fear sweat and gunshot residue. The smell of the cell block, the clammy warmth of his blanket, and the feel of wearing the same clothes, day after day, all flowed down the drain. He brushed his teeth in the shower as well, cleaning away all the leftover bad breath and fuzziness.When he was finally clean, with only the scent of his usual shampoo and soap surrounding him, something inside him finally, finally relaxed. He stood under the hot water with his eyes closed, letting heat soak into his muscles.He was home.The dam he’d built around his feelings abruptly broke again. Anger, leftover fear, wounded pride; all of it swept over him in a rush. He couldn’t believe he’d been so badly fooled. God, he’d trusted too easily again, when the fuck was he going to learn?Once again, he was left mourning for something that hadn’t been real to begin with.The hot water gradually went from comfort to irritant as his fingers pruned and he started to feel soggy. Heavy with regret, Tony shut the shower off and got out, wrapping a towel around his waist. He turned reluctantly to the mirror, preparing to assess the damage.He had a split second to take in the face reflected back at him, to recognize the familiar look of surviving yet another Afghanistan, another Siberia.Then he saw the mark on his chest, and his mind ground to a halt.He stared at it, and his breath caught in his throat.It looked like a soulmate mark.No, that wasn’t possible. He had to be seeing things.A soulmate mark?Automatically, he raised a hand to scrub his fingers across it, expecting it to smear. As soon as his fingers touched the raised, dark lines, a strong impression of Dean washed over him. It wasn’t images in his head, or smells, or anything he could name; just a strong sense of Dean, and a connection.A soulmate mark. How could this be possible?Tony backed away from the mirror in shock and collapsed heavily on the bench behind him. He stared down at his own chest in horror, and touched it again.Dean.Tony wasn’t sure how long he sat there, trying to understand, but eventually threads of panic wound through him and he quickly left the bathroom. He dressed with shaking hands and a ringing in his ears. His brain kept refusing to compute. This couldn’t be happening.In the hopes that it wasn’t, he went back to the mirror and pushed up the t-shirt he’d put on, to expose his chest again.The mark was still there.The more Tony stared at it, the more real it looked.He shoved the shirt down and gripped the edge of the sink with shaking hands, taking deep breaths.He shoved the shirt up one more time. The mark still hadn’t disappeared.“Shit,” he exhaled.He couldn’t believe it. He refused.Fear crawled down his spine as the shock started to wear off. His first instinct was to get the suit, and hunt that bastard down. What the hell had Dean done?It had to be a lie, a fake. Tony headed for his lab; he’d find Dean and there’d be hell to pay, but first Tony was going to undo whatever this bullshit was.It had to be some kind of mind-bending mutant thing, like the Colonel’s brainwashing, or maybe magic. Dean must have abilities like Wanda’s, or a staff like Loki’s. It couldn’t be soulmates.In the back of his mind, Tony remembered a bare hand pressed over his mouth to prevent him from giving away their position. He remembered the bright light, the warmth, the feeling of communion; the sudden awareness of Dean’s soul against his own.No. No. It was brainwashing. Or magic. Tony would figure out what it was, get himself an antidote, and then make Dean regret that they’d ever even met.“FRIDAY, new file, private server,” Tony snapped. “Soulmates. Get me all the stories about fakes. Anyone who tried to fake the marks, or fake the connection, I need all the info about how to prove or disprove that the pairing is real. This is a top priority until I say otherwise. Keep it for my eyes only. Use every security protocol we have.”“On it, Boss,” FRIDAY agreed, no questions asked.“In fact, get me everything anyone knows soulmates,” he ordered harshly. “Get me the most recent research, all the studies, lab tests, any data you can find, and all the rumours and religious mumbo-jumbo as well,” he added.“Yes Boss,” FRIDAY replied.God, wasn’t it enough to manipulate him, to pretend to be an ally and a friend and fucking con his way into gaining Tony’s trust? He had to violate Tony’s mind, too?He thought of the shock on Dean’s face when he came out of the bathroom in the cabin – the wild look in his eyes, the strained apology – but dismissed it because this was completely impossible.It had to be a lie. The biggest lie. Dean had done this to him, and when Tony found him, he was going to ruin his fucking life.Once in the lab, Tony’s bots mobbed him, but he ordered FRIDAY to keep them back as he headed to the equipment he used to calibrate the bio-functions of the suit. He needed to take some readings of his biometrics and start analysing the mark, to figure out what the hell Dean had done to him and how.He yanked at the drawers, slammed instruments onto the workbench, and jostled the diagnostic machines into position. He hooked himself up to one of the cognitive function sensors he’d used to develop the BARF, just as words like psychopath and mass murderer suddenly started to ricochet through his brain, making his skin crawl.God, what if it was real? What if he had a soulmate and he was a goddamn psycho?He remembered the feel of Dean’s body pinning him to the wall in the cabin, and that voice, Goodnight, St Louis, you’ve been a wonderful crowd, and wanted to vomit.Suddenly he was hot, sweating through his t-shirt, and he realised he was spiralling into a panic attack, again. He immediately yanked the sensors from his skin and backed towards the wall on trembling legs. There was enough space between two counters for him to slide down and make himself small, knees up to his chest while his whole body shook uncontrollably. It was worse, this time, like his fear had compounded. He felt like he was going to die; his heartbeat thundered in his ears and he couldn’t stop any of it long enough to catch his breath.Dean’s voice rang in his ears, and none of it made any sense. Stop fighting me! I don’t want to hurt you! Goodnight, St Louis, you’ve been a wonderful crowd. Tony couldn’t stop the echo, over and over again.After an eternity of spiralling panic, a soothing sound nearby eventually drew Tony out of his head. FRIDAY was playing the pattern of tones and lights they’d set up for his attacks, but there was also a shape looming over him. He jerked away before he realised it was only DUM-E, peering worriedly over the edge of the counter.Tony exhaled in relief. “Thought I told you to stay away,” he rasped out.DUM-E made a noise of protest, then swivelled to carefully pick up a smoothie off the counter next to him. As he held it out, Tony spotted Butterfingers and You watching anxiously from nearby. They were keeping a careful distance, and Tony realised DUM-E had rolled in at an angle, coming in close to the counter but leaving a clear path in front of Tony so he wouldn’t feel trapped.Tony’s throat tightened. “Good boys. Thank you,” he said, eyes damp as he reached up to take the glass. The bots beeped in pleasure.Tony tipped the shake towards his mouth, then paused. “There’d better not be ghost peppers in this,” he warned.Over DUM-E’s affronted response, FRIDAY said, “Don’t worry Boss, I supervised.”Tony sighed in relief. “Thanks, FRI.”The shake was cold and fresh. He managed a few mouthfuls before his hands began shaking again and he had to lower the glass to the floor. Closing his eyes, he clenched his fists and breathed.He could almost feel the touch of cold, bare skin over his mouth like an echo. The warmth, the connection. His stomach turned over again. How anything to do with a mass murderer be so beautiful?No. No. It was a lie. It had to be.He shoved all thoughts of Dean out of his mind and focused on the pattern of sounds that FRIDAY was still making. Improvements, he was going to make improvements to the suits thrusters, and obviously the security specs. He thought about the details while he watched the lights that FRIDAY was projecting on the floor in front of him.Many, many careful, slow breaths later, his heart rate had slowed a little more. Very carefully, he picked up the smoothie again. DUM-E made encouraging noises.As he sipped and his trembling limbs grew still and heavy, he cautiously started to think it over, wary of provoking another round of anxiety.How the hell could someone fake a soulmate mark?Tony thought of the moment in the cells when Lewis had invited Dean to touch her skin. At the time, he’d been so astounded by her arrogance, and then he’d completely forgotten to ask Dean how soulmates fit in with his deranged worldview. Now he felt a wave of bitter irony. What would Dean have told him, if he’d asked? More lies, surely.Eventually, Tony pushed himself slowly upright. DUM-E followed him across the lab as he headed for the main workstation. He needed more than just some half-remembered facts and a bunch of religious beliefs; he needed real, scientific data. He needed information.Anxiety still shivered down his spine and cramped in his stomach as he stood in front of his screens. “Okay, FRI. Soulmates. Show me what you’ve got.”Data bloomed in front of him, and he got to work.
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The lab was filled with light from Tony’s screens. He’d been collating and analysing information for hours, with FRIDAY’s help, and when he wasn’t being infuriated by the results, he’d began running medical tests on himself – blood, biometrics.He was reading over yet another soulmate-related research paper, when suddenly he jerked up, away from the screen, heart pounding. “Mark forty-seven, now!” he yelled.His armor flew to him, drawn by his re-inserted implants, and assembled around his body. The HUD snapped on, and he primed the repulsors, ready to attack.But the lab around him was quiet – even the bots were on standby in their charging stations.On the HUD, FRIDAY scanned fruitlessly for threats, then asked, “Boss, are you alright?”Tony blinked, and breathed heavily, clenching his jaw. He scanned the room again. There was nothing, but he’d felt something, a surge of anger and adrenaline.Then he realised it wasn’t his own anger he could feel, it was Dean’s.The connection Dean had managed to make between them had flared hot with rage, and now it seethed with stress and frustration.Panic crawled down Tony’s spine. He couldn’t tell what Dean was responding to, only that he was deeply pissed off. Tony’s heart still raced, but now he could tell the anger was not his own.“FRIDAY, status report on Dean Winchester. Have they made contact?” Hill’s team and Vision were still out there searching for him, and it made sense that that kind of anger could have come from getting caught.FRIDAY replied in the negative. No sightings of Dean anywhere.Just anger.With a sick feeling, Tony wondered if he was out there killing someone. Could Tony’s rejection have sent him on a killing spree? “FRIDAY, I want status updates on the search at all times. And start monitoring Canadian law enforcement. Watch for activity, new reports, new murders. Anything that seems big and violent.” The anger continued, but Tony stepped out of the suit and sent it away – he had no idea where Dean was, so there was nothing he could do.Then the live-wire tension pulsing through the bond abruptly became grief. Their connection ached with sadness and loss.“For fuck’s sake, what is this?” Tony protested futilely, hands in his hair as the intensity of Dean’s emotions tightened his throat and wrenched at his heart.After a few more deep breaths, it all faded away. An echo remained where the mark stretched across Tony’s skin, just tangible enough to make him uncomfortable, but the intensity of the connection was gone.He refused to acknowledge what being able to feel Dean’s emotions might be a symptom of. It was all fake, it had to be. Maybe Dean was using magic to project emotions through whatever hooks he’d left in Tony’s mind? But how could it feel so real?With a wave of horror, Tony suddenly realised he was compromised. Even if it was all a lie, Dean had managed to influence his mind, and Dean was a mass murderer.If someone found out before Tony could get the connection cut off…God, and to think Tony had been worried about hiding the werewolves.“FRIDAY, I need to get a message Charles Xavier,” he ordered. With effort, he turned back to his work. “I need answers.”***Tony stared out the window at the cold, bare dawn, feeling the drag of exhaustion in his bones and in the ache around his eyes. Anger was banked in his belly, though, so his mind kept ticking over.Following the strange surge of emotions, he’d fallen back to work, obsessively processing the huge amount of information available about soulmates. FRIDAY had helped to weed out the less relevant, and together they’d reviewed the science, myth, religious texts, even fiction and plain old rumour.Unfortunately, what they’d found was limited. Equally unfortunately, none of it proved the connection was fake.Most of the information had come from the soft sciences. People like Lewis saw the whole thing as a blessing from God, and religions worldwide considered soulmates to be sacred ambassadors from their various deities, to be venerated and occasionally even worshipped. Supposedly they brought good fortune and blessings to their communities. There were stories of divine protection, and also divine wrath; according to myth, messing with soulmates wasn’t just taboo, it had brought intense waves of bad luck to entire families, entire villages. In one tale, killing a pair of soulmates had placed a curse on an entire country.More recently, some researchers had investigated all of this bullshit and tentatively identified a similar pattern for modern soulmates – runs of good luck in their families, improved conditions in their communities. It was speculative enough to give Tony hives. And in popular culture, soulmates were goddamn cultural unicorns – pure, blessed, and influential. Two people met, their skin touched, and they were together for the rest of their lives; fiction had made them into a romantic fairytale, or a heart-warming story of platonic devotion.Which was all well and good – Tony would have liked to see them explain this, a soulmate who was by the simplest definition, evil – but none of it helped him to understand whether or not what was happening to him was real.The myth and rumour had been impossible to avoid, but frustratingly, there wasn’t much else. Science had tried to study the phenomenon, but it was so rare – Tony had been astonished to find there were fewer than forty pairs of soulmates in the United States, and fewer than a thousand pairs worldwide. The sample size was small, and not every pair of soulmates had been interested in donating their time to science.Some had, but the connection stubbornly resisted quantification. It didn’t show in the blood, or the cells. The pairs weren’t biologically similar, they didn’t share any extra chromosomes or DNA markers. No genetic connections, no shared characteristics. There was no virus, no pheromones, no infection. No-one knew what caused two people to connect so strongly and irrevocably with just a single touch of their skin.The marks were also inexplicable. Scientifically they were barely more unusual than birthmarks; simply different-coloured skin cells, behaving as if they’d always been part of the skin. But that couldn’t explain the way they looked so deliberate. These were no abstract blotches; they looked completely inorganic, like they’d been carefully designed. Some even resembled trees, or birds, or even stars.The mark on Tony’s chest was a pattern of hexagons, sharp lines, and strange symbols, and it was much bigger than the other soulmate marks he’d seen in photographs. He tried not to think about the same mark, carved into Dean Winchester’s skin.The mark itself was the least of his problems, anyway; according to the research, the connection between them was going to grow. A single advantage was that soon Tony was going to be able to find Dean over any distance, but apparently feeling Dean’s strongest emotions was something he was going to have to deal with now, and forever.He felt sick at the idea; he was going to have to feel what it felt like when Dean Winchester killed someone. It was going to drive him crazy.Horrifyingly, they were also going to need physical proximity. One researcher had managed to test what happened to a pair of soulmates during separations longer than a few days, and the results had been extremely depressing. The pair involved in the study had responded so badly to lack of daily physical contact – not just emotionally, but physically – that the researcher had proposed a new study to examine whether skin contact changed their brain chemistry.Which meant Tony was going to have to hold hands with a psychopath. He could have laughed, if he hadn’t felt so much like screaming.He’d found a few stories of people who’d tried to fake it. Opportunists with tattooed marks and stories of divine light; the occasional pair of con artists trying to get access to important people.But the gap between fake and real was large, and the fakes were caught quickly. According to the stories, no-one had ever inflicted a soulmate bond on someone else. No-one had ever been catfished into thinking they had a soulmate when they didn’t. The con was always run by a pair, and one way or another, they were always caught. If the lack of psychic connection didn’t expose them, the lack of divine protection usually did. One of the most successful cons had ended when one soulmate was accidentally run over by a bus, leaving the other soulmate not only unaware but completely unscathed, thus exposing the ruse.Because that was the most uniquely terrifying piece of data Tony had discovered: soulmates apparently died at the same time. Simultaneously, down to the second.He’d been hoping that would turn out to be a hyperbolic myth, part of the fairy tale. Instead he’d found enough evidence, enough witness statements and modern medical records, to prove that it was more or less real. The implications were horrifying. Tony’s skin crawled whenever he thought about it. What if it was real, and Dean resisted arrest, and they killed him?Tony loathed the idea of throwing everything he had at protecting a murderous scumbag, to keep him from getting them both killed. But what if he had to do it?If Dean could have done it deliberately, he would have, Tony was sure. What murderous psychopath wouldn’t want a soulmate bond to a billionaire and a goddamn superhero?Tony was still hopeful that it could all be some terrible fake, the product of magic, or mutants. He’d emailed Charles Xavier, and he didn’t know where to start with the magic thing yet, but he was determined to find someone.But he remembered what Wanda’s influence had felt like in his mind. He’d only known it was there after it was gone, but in retrospect it had felt different. Barton, too, had felt changed – he’d described Loki’s magic as overwhelming, as a force that took him over and emptied him out. Tony had read up on other people who’d experienced a mutant influence on their mind, and most had described feeling possessed, like they’d lost control.Tony didn’t feel overwhelmed, or possessed. He felt like himself, only like he’d been added to – like there was another part of him out there somewhere. Which was exactly how real soulmates in the research papers described it; there were dozens of first-person descriptions of what it felt like to meet a soulmate, and be a soulmate, and they’d all used words like conjoined, and augmented.Another worrying argument against the magic idea was the fact that Tony was questioning any of it at all. If Dean had the power to mimic a soulmate bond, to insinuate himself into Tony’s mind and alter his reality so profoundly, surely he would have altered it to include positive feelings for Dean? Not this suspicion and disgust?But maybe the real Dean – not the person Tony had met, but the one from the videos, the one capable of the most cold-blooded, calculating lies Tony could imagine – didn’t actually care what Tony felt and thought? Maybe he only cared about getting leverage, to make Tony do what he wanted?Or, maybe there was no magic, no lies. Maybe the mark on Tony’s chest was real.The moment in the woods was still in the back of his mind, along with the shocked, spooked look on Dean’s face. What if Dean was both a psycho and a soulmate?If so, what the hell was Tony going to do?“Boss?” FRIDAY interrupted, breaking him out of his furious thoughts.“Yeah, what’s up?” His voice was hoarse from lack of use, and his head ached.“Miss Potts is calling.”“Fuck,” Tony said. It’d been longer than eight hours, he’d been putting her off. “Accept the call,” he said, trying to tamp down on his anger.“Good morning,” she said.“Hey Pep. Sorry I didn’t call,” he lied.“FRIDAY told me you’ve been working,” she said, sounding like she disapproved. “How are you doing?”“I’m doing better than I was this time last week.” Another lie. This time last week he’d been trapped in a cell, tranquilised and starving, but at least he hadn’t had a fucking soulmate.“You haven’t slept a wink, have you,” Pepper said calmly.“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds—““Honestly, Tony,” she interrupted, losing patience. “What you’ve just been through—““—that it might incriminate me, look, I tried, okay?” he lied again. “I showered, I ate—““—You need to take care of yourself after something like this,” she went on. “I can’t believe—““—what more do you want?”“—you didn’t sleep when you know you need to go and see Rhodey this morning. How’s he going to feel when you turn up looking like a wreck?”“Jesus. Low blow, Potts,” he muttered, but against all the odds, his shoulders had un-tensed, just the slightest bit. His skin was still crawling with horror, but he’d missed her. Then he pictured the look that would be on her face – the disgusted recoil – when he was forced to finally admit what Dean had done to him. “I’ll be fine, Pep,” he lied.“You know I’m here for you, Tony,” she said softly. “Whatever you need.”His throat tightened. “Thank you. You do so much for me already.”“That’s what friends are for,” she said, voice still soft. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”“I know,” he confirmed. Silence fell between them, and he knew she was giving him space to talk if he wanted to, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t.“Go and take a nap,” she suggested, after a while. “Have something to eat, then go and visit Rhodey. He needs to see you, Tony, and I think it’ll make you feel better.”He exhaled slowly. His chest ached, and he knew he was going to lose her. “You’re probably right. Thanks, Pep.”She huffed. “Of course I’m right. And take care of yourself.”“I will, Ms Potts.”***The trip out to the Avengers’ compound took no time at all. Rhodey had been transferred there from the hospital in Berlin, and the Avengers medical team had been temporarily expanded to include a neurosurgeon and several different specialists in spinal injury and recovery.When Tony landed, some of the Avengers support staff collected to greet him. He tried to plaster on a reassuringly confident look, but he wasn’t sure how effective it was given the nauseating anxiety whirling inside him.Some of the staff immediately tried to lure him into meetings, but he brushed them off, heading straight for the Medical wing. Vision came out of nowhere to flank him, asked after his welfare, accepted a lie in return, then reported that the search had moved half its operations back to the Avengers compound to take advantage of the technology.“We’ve been running background on the population of the town. It hasn’t yielded any information yet. Dean Winchester seems to have no contacts there, no connection we could find. We’ve also traced the ownership of the safe house back to a shell corporation with bank accounts in Singapore, but we haven’t been able to trace it further.”“What? He said it was a guy in Chicago,” Tony frowned, as they boarded the elevator.“Apparently another lie, or else he wasn’t referring to the exact financials and the source of the shell corporation is Chicago. We’ll keep looking.”“And the search?”“We’ve expanded the radius, but the teams are focusing on digital security footage and traffic cameras while they work up a profile and try to predict his next movements.”“I thought he was always unpredictable, that was part of the problem with apprehending him before,” Tony said.“For the FBI, yes. But until now, FRIDAY has never been asked to find him,” Vision replied confidently.Tony’s heart sank. When Dean was found, he’d no doubt spring the trap he’d laid for Tony. He’d reveal how he’d compromised the Iron Man, and—what? Demand freedom? Insist that Tony protect him in some way?Tony needed to make a plan for dealing with that. He had plenty of ideas, but he needed some time to examine the implications. How far would Dean go? Which option carried the least risk?But he was here to visit Rhodey, so Tony pushed it to the back of his mind. He tried to steel himself; if anyone was going to see through his paper-thin façade and guess that something was seriously wrong, it’d be Rhodey.“How did he find out I was missing?” Tony asked, as the elevator doors opened to Medical.“I believe he saw a news report,” The Vision replied.“You kept him up to date? He was in the loop?” Tony checked.“As much as possible,” Vision acknowledged. “I believe Miss Potts visited almost every day.”“Good, that’s good,” Tony said. They paused in the hallway. “You coming in?”“No, I’ll give you some space.”“Thanks, Viz.”Tony tapped on Rhodey’s door as he opened it. “Hey boo, you decent?”“Tony,” Rhodey said, and the mixture of relief, grief and worry in his voice was palpable. Tony crossed to the bed, leaning down for a hug. Rhodey gripped him tight, and neither let go for a long moment.“What have I told you about getting kidnapped?” Rhodey rasped out angrily, over Tony’s shoulder. “What have I told you?”“Oh please! You can’t pin this on me,” Tony protested.“Whatever, where have you been?” Rhodey demanded. He released Tony’s shoulders but kept a grip on one arm so Tony couldn’t go far. “The hell took you so long to get here? You look like shit, you better not be dying again.”“Yeah, sorry. Not dying, I swear, just. You know, sleeping is hard,” Tony deflected. He perched on the bed by Rhodey’s legs and let Rhodey keep a grip on one of his hands. “How are you feeling?” he asked, taking in Rhodey’s unkempt stubble, the bags under his eyes. “You look terrible too. Have you been terrorizing the medical staff?”Rhodey huffed. “Hell with the medical staff, what about you? Tell me everything.”Tony stalled, pretending to be getting comfortable while he tried to decide what to say.“They told me about the cult,” Rhodey said, when the silence stretched too long. “Army? Some kind of doomsday thing?”“Yeah, seems so,” Tony agreed, grateful for the prompt.He gave Rhodey the general picture – Lewis, angels, the arc reactor – and explained what they’d wanted him for. Rhodey held his hand and watched him talk, occasionally interjecting with a question or a little friendly outrage on Tony’s behalf. The nurses also interrupted once or twice, with new meds, cups of water.The whole time he talked, Tony hedged around Dean’s involvement. He felt sick at the thought of talking about him.“Damn,” Rhodey exhaled, when Tony was done. “A cult, right in the middle of the army. Bet Ross is having kittens.”Tony snorted. But when he looked up, Rhodey was eying him suspiciously. “What?” Tony asked.“I don’t know,” Rhodey said, frowning. “You’ve got a look like your whole world’s been rocked. Charismatic weirdoes aren’t enough to do that to you.”Internally, Tony cursed the existence of friends who knew him far too well. Made it so damn hard to hide anything. Outwardly, Tony glanced at the door, and leaned a little closer. “Well, Jim, you’re totally not going to believe this,” he began, and explained about werewolves.Not talking about Dean was more difficult this time, but he managed, and Rhodey’s eyes grew wider and wider.“Jesus. Are you sure?” he asked.“Saw them up close,” Tony confirmed. “Watched one transform.”“What the hell,” Rhodey said. “I mean, Loki was a whole thing, but he came from up there. Werewolves, here, the whole time? How come nobody knows?”“Not too many of them, apparently, and they deliberately stay under the radar,” he said, trying not to think about whose words he was parroting.“And they were doing a whole evil scientist thing? Full-on monster lab?” At Tony’s nod, Rhodey shook his head, silently baffled. “Damn.”Then he re-focused, and said, “Anyway, tell me the rest.”“Rest? What rest?” Tony bluffed, plastering on a confused look.“Pepper said you and Hill were looking for some dude you escaped with, America’s Most Wanted,” Rhodey said with a frown. “He was locked in the cell next to you or something, right? You haven’t mentioned him.”Tony’s stomach dropped, and he clenched his jaw so hard it hurt.“Tones?” Rhodey asked. “What is it?”Tony exhaled sharply. “I really don’t want to talk about him,” he managed.Rhodey looked surprised. “Why not? What happened?” he demanded, sounding ready to get angry.“Nothing! I just.” All of Tony’s self-disgust collected in the back of his throat, and forced its way out. “I just trusted him, that’s all. And I gotta say, I’m getting a little tired of people turning out to be different than I thought.” He tried to keep his tone bitter, resigned, ironic, but his voice cracked on the last few words, and he had to swallow hard.“That sucks, Tones,” Rhodey sighed. “What’d he do? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”“Not physically. He just manipulated me,” Tony said. “He just lied. You’d think that after everything, I’d stop believing every fucking person who comes at me with a sob story, but apparently I never fucking learn.”“Hey!” Rhodey snapped. “Your ability to trust people isn’t the fucking problem, here! When people lie to you, that’s on them! They’re the problem, not you.”“Yeah, sure,” Tony said bitterly. Two for two, he supposed, since Pepper’s reaction had been basically the same. After a tense silence, he admitted, “He just. He got to me, Rhodey. He got under my skin and I fell for the whole act.” It was the least of what he could admit to – the part he felt vaguely capable of talking about.Rhodey tsk’d disapprovingly. “What an asshole. He must be a great liar.”“Best I’ve ever seen,” Tony said, thinking of the way Dean had seemed so real, so genuine. Tony still couldn’t believe how good his façade was, and how thoroughly he’d hidden the coldness underneath. “Seriously, not even Natasha was that good. I’ve never seen anything like it.”But Rhodey’s eyes had wandered away, fixing on the ceiling, and then he rolled his head back again and said, “We should build, like, a bigass moat around you, with a sign that says ‘Assholes and liars need not apply’.” He gestured with a grin, using his free hand to outline a circle in Tony’s general vicinity.Tony stared at him, baffled, until he remembered that the latest nurse had adjusted Rhodey’s IV. “Oh honey bear, the good drugs have kicked back in, haven’t they?” His laughter had a tinge of hysteria to it.“Mmmmm,” Rhodey agreed. “We might need to go over this again tomorrow. I think I made up something about werewolves,” he admitted.Tony laughed again, helplessly.“Don’t laugh at me, Tones,” Rhodey said sadly.“I’m not, platypus. I just missed you, that’s all,” Tony told him, affection welling up inside him.Rhodey smiled. “Missed you too, Tones,” he murmured, as his eyes fell closed. “Shit like this, I always do.”***
The shockwave swept over him as the arc reactor exploded. He stumbled through the trees, cold and hungry. A werewolf raced past him, clawing through the snow as it outran the soldiers and their machine guns. Dean took his arm, gun in his other hand, and urged him onwards, towards the gate. The armor was just on the other side, if Tony could only get there. More soldiers ran past. The arc reactor exploded again and another shockwave swept over them both, whiting out Tony’s vision. Then Dean stood in front of him, looking at Tony like he could see right down into his soul. He wore a stranger’s face, and the gun in his hand was bigger as he turned from Tony and ran uphill towards the church. The arc reactor exploded again, blasting Tony off his feet.
Tony woke abruptly, cotton-mouthed and starving. For a disorienting moment, he couldn’t understand why his cell bunk felt so soft.Then FRIDAY said, “Good evening, Boss. You are your bedroom in the penthouse of Stark Tower. It’s nine thirty-six PM, forty-nine degrees outside, and raining with a chance of thunder.”Tony choked out a breath as a wave of relief swept over him. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Oh my god.”“You’ve been asleep for six point three hours,” FRIDAY added, and Tony had a moment to be astonished by that before she went on. “You returned from the Avengers compound, ate a meal, and then showered and went to bed even though it was early afternoon.” She didn’t sound disapproving, just slightly curious.“Yeah, I did. I was tired,” he said. Pepper had been right; talking to Rhodey had made him feel much better, enough that he’d gotten home and laid down for what he assumed would be a short nap.“FRIDAY, any progress in Canada? What’s Commander Hill’s status?” he asked as he sat up and carefully stretched. His lower back creaked in protest, but his ribs felt okay. The artificial sternum didn’t feel inflamed, nothing felt swollen or too bruised. He made mental note to get FRIDAY to do a few scans anyway.“Approximately twenty minutes ago, I identified Dean Winchester in the security footage from a gas station in Bemidji, Minnesota,” she said.Tony leapt to his feet, heart hammering. “What? Why didn’t you wake me?”“The footage is time-stamped three days ago, approximately five hours after you last saw him. This corresponds almost exactly with the driving distance between the house you were taken to, and the town of Bemidji. Commander Hill has dispatched a team to the gas station.”“Wait, you’re saying he drove? I scanned every single car on the road in a two hundred mile radius and somehow I missed him?” Tony demanded, outraged.“I can’t be certain, Boss. He appeared on camera, but we should have seen his car when we scanned the town and the surrounding roads. I’m not sure why we didn’t.”“Jesus,” Tony exhaled, rubbing his forehead. “Alright. Keep me updated on Hill’s team. I’m gonna…Fuck, if he made it back into the US three days ago, he could be anywhere,” he groaned. “Start systematically scanning for systems nearby, and see if you can track him.” Three days. How cold would the trail be?He considered getting into the suit to go out to the site, but what could be gained? Part of him wanted to trace Dean’s steps in person, but he knew there was nothing he could learn from some gas station in the middle of nowhere. So instead, despite his agitation, he headed to the lab and sat thoughtfully on a stool by his main workstation.Without the exhaustion pounding against his temples and fraying his temper, he felt slightly more equipped to deal with the mess he’d found himself in. He could feel Dean through their connection, out there somewhere – no emotions yet, just vague impressions. Dean felt anxious. Hunted.Tony wondered how long it would be before Dean tried to leverage what he’d done, and take advantage of his connection to Tony to keep the law off his back. He wondered if the connection would follow the soulmate pattern, and allow Tony to find Dean wherever he was.Because at some point, Dean was probably going to kill again. He hadn’t succeeded in lying to Tony; the disappointment might be driving him to murder.The thought of feeling complicit in that galvanised Tony. Whether this bullshit connection was all fake, or whether it was real and Tony was the first man with an evil goddamn soulmate, he was going to be the one with the tools to find Dean and keep him away from the public. Soon he’d be able to sense his location, and when that happened, he wanted to be ready.“FRIDAY, show me the Dean Winchester files.”***Hours later, Tony frowned at the information spread across his screens, unable to decide which of it bothered him the most.The first screen held an email from Charles Xavier. Tony hadn’t admitted to the connection with Dean – it had felt like too much exposure, too much risk – but instead he’d written about Lewis, suggesting she’d seemed to have some kind of psychic skill which had not only given her control over the cult but the ability to simulate soulmate bonds over a protracted period. He’d asked politely whether Charles had ever heard of anything like it before among mutants.Unfortunately, the concise and precisely-worded reply that Tony was staring at promised that the mutants who could sustain a psychic fiction – like a fake soulmate bond – for longer than a few hours without the subject descending into insanity or catatonia were few and far between. It would take immense control, and more importantly, Charles felt sure he would have noticed if someone like that was operating nearby. Which meant Dean probably wasn’t a mutant.The email finished with an offer to examine Tony’s mind for manipulation anyway, which Tony was desperately tempted to accept, as soon as he could be sure he wasn’t going to be vulnerable.The rest of the screens were about Dean. He was getting live updates from the strike teams; the footage from Minnesota hadn’t led them anywhere, Dean had been long gone from the gas station, and no-one they’d interviewed could remember which direction he’d taken. FRIDAY was still scanning the surrounding areas, trying to pick up a trail, but cameras were sparse on the back roads Dean seemed to favour.The footage itself showed Dean pulling into the gas station and filling up his car. It was black and white, but they’d been able to get the make and model, at least, and the license – a well-kept 70s Chevy Chevelle with Colorado plates – and put a BOLO out on the car with law enforcement.Dean had paid in cash. His mouth had been grim, and he looked stressed on the footage. Furrowed brow, tense shoulders. No evidence of whatever magic he’d used to evade capture.Tony had also ordered FRIDAY to go through all the footage from the cult compound, isolate anything that featured himself or Dean, and analyse it for any strange behaviour. She hadn’t found anything specific, but Tony had reviewed sections of it, especially the parts where he was drugged or asleep, to see what Dean did. He’d been hoping to find clues in that he’d missed at the time, or changes in Dean’s behaviour when he wasn’t being watched.They hadn’t found anything. No strange behaviour, no slips. Perversely, it made Tony feel slightly better about being taken in. He hadn’t missed anything; Dean was just that good. He’d fully inhabited the lie to a point where he seemed like a whole, entire real person, rather than someone wearing a persona like a mask over their real psycho personality.In addition to the footage, Tony had also been examining the timeline of the Winchester brothers’ crimes. Hill’s analysts had put it together with FRIDAY’s help, to try and predict his next movements. FRIDAY had supplemented the criminal records with news reports, eyewitness accounts, and location data, including cellphone GPS, credit card transactions, traffic camera footage, gas station CCTV, and any other surveillance she could find. Tracking their aliases had been a challenge, but she’d made a huge amount of progress.The sheer number of crimes and variety of jurisdictions involved would have been enough to give Tony heartburn, but then FRIDAY had drawn his attention to the irregularities.In about fifty-five percent of cases, old location data put the Winchesters over a day’s drive away when the first crimes occurred. Whether it was a killing, an attack, or something stranger, the Winchesters were provably not there when the first police reports or news reports were made. Later they’d arrive in town, and then they might become implicated in further crimes, but after that the killings would stop and they would leave.It backed up Dean’s story of vigilantism. Witness testimony had the brothers impersonating everyone from journalists to priests, and a huge number mentioned odd questions, but they all described a process of investigation. Some of the witnesses were even law enforcement, reporting federal officers who behaved like Men in Black, requested information or evidence, and then disappeared.Tony didn’t know whether the brothers had been hunting real ghosts, or hunting serial killers and criminals that their delusions told them were ghosts, but apparently there was at least one thing Dean had possibly told the truth about.During the period immediately before the killing spree, though, Dean and Sam had been completely off the grid. FRIDAY hadn’t been able to find any data to confirm their location.What if one more thing Dean had told him was true? Or true-ish? Tony didn’t believe for a second that Dick Roman had framed the brothers, but maybe there was a connection after all? Why would Dean have even mentioned Roman, if there wasn’t something there? Curious, Tony had accessed the FBI files on the Dick Roman case.What he’d found wasn’t conclusive at all.The Dick Roman case file was alarmingly locked-down. Aside from some very bare-bones crime scene reports from their offices in Chicago, where the mass murder-suicide of Dick Roman and half his staff had taken place, the bulk of the file was offline, kept in hardcopy in some secure FBI fileroom. Not too unusual, he supposed. But one of the few things available in the file was a list of physical evidence collected from the RRE offices during the investigation, and Tony had found himself drawn to one particular item: a private server belonging to Dick Roman himself.There was no information available about what had been found on the server, which Tony knew could easily mean they’d found nothing of value. But it itched at him. What if what they’d found was incredibly sensitive, and they were deliberately keeping it offline? What if there were connections to the Winchesters that would actually explain some of Dean’s fucking bizarre stories?Whatever it was, it was all offline. If he wanted access, he was going to have to negotiate.With that in mind, he told FRIDAY to place a call. When it picked up, he said, “Senator! Remember that favour you owe me?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The files took two days to arrive, and while he waited, Tony kept busy. The hunt for Dean continued with a singular lack of success, hitting so many dead ends Tony had trouble believing it wasn’t magical in some way. In between, he allowed FRIDAY to schedule some of the least postpone-able meetings, which meant he met with two belligerently apologetic US Army representatives, a liaison to the World Security Council, three members of the UN Accords committee, and also received a call from the President, whose concern for Tony seemed surprisingly genuine. Pepper strong-armed him into two public appearances, so even the media was placated while Tony waited for the files.Tony had framed his interest in the Dick Roman file as an offer to consult on the case. He wasn’t sure what went on behind closed doors, but he was sure they’d leaned heavily on a possible connection between his abduction and the Dick Roman case, maybe even implying an ongoing threat. Technically, they weren’t even wrong. The Director of the FBI half-heartedly tried to stonewall, but given the request came down via three active members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, eventually he had to acquiesce.So, late afternoon on day two, after signing a very thick nondisclosure agreement and getting a whole new FBI clearance level, Tony was made part of the evidence chain and permitted to transport three file boxes and Dick Roman’s actual private server to his lab. The FBI Computer Lab also sent over Roman’s personal laptop, which Tony hadn’t requested but the Lab assured him he was going to need.He went into lockdown, and started digging in.Then he discovered that the reason there was no information about the contents of the server in the files was because they hadn’t been able to break it open yet.At first he was surprised – they’d had it for five years, after all – but then he checked their progress reports and discovered why. The server had just about the most elaborate, dense layers of security he’d ever seen on a private device that didn’t belong to him.The logs recounted the frustrating progress they’d made. First, the server shut down every time it was connected to an unknown device. They’d resurrected Dick Roman’s personal laptop, only to find the server only allowed the connection when the device was disconnected from the internet and all other network devices. Once they got it to connect, they were able to view the security, and they’d discovered that instead of the usual one to two security encryption layers, there were five. Five. Tony had to shake his head.He kept reading. The server was a custom build, obviously, and didn’t have any of the usual vulnerabilities. The techs had also quickly learned that the authentication system ran on a timer; incorrect keys set off a three-week lockdown before access re-opened.“Jesus, tell me the bad news,” Tony muttered. The techs had eventually disabled the timer and begun to work on the security keys. The first had turned out to be a 14-digit alphanumeric PIN, and the second had been a 10-digit time-based one-time password.They seemed to get stuck after that, and when Tony reached that section of the report, he understood why. He had to stop and read it twice before he could believe it. Biological security keys weren’t unheard of – a fingerprint lock, a retinal scanner – and even though the input sensor hadn’t been found among Roman’s effects, there should have been a way to simulate an input.But when the techs had managed to access some stored data from old scans, the biometrics had been incredibly foreign. Almost alien.Tony felt a frisson of suspicion. From purgatory, Dean had said. Leviathan.The report stopped there, dated only two weeks earlier, so Tony turned to the boxes of hardcopy files. He stacked the pages on one of the data tables for FRIDAY and waited impatiently while she scanned the contents and transcribed it into digital files.“Show me the information about their move into the food industry.” That was when things had changed, he remembered; it had been a huge redirection for a company like Roman’s.Within minutes, FRIDAY had isolated reports and memos about the poisonous additives Roman’s company had put into production in high fructose corn syrup and sugar-free sweeteners. And that would have been horrifying enough, but Tony spotted something about disease prevention and kept looking.“What else changed?” he muttered, once he was done reading about millions funnelled into curing the worst of human diseases.FRIDAY showed him all the real-estate acquisitions and building plans. He was frowning at what seemed like an out-of-place blueprint for a strangely-proportioned slaughterhouse, mixed in with the blueprints for labs and housing, when it all abruptly clicked into place.This was livestock. Husbandry. Cannibalism, on an industrialized scale.Horrified, Tony sorted through the evidence again. It was thin, but fragments of it were there, in the documents, in the effect the additives had on the human body, and in the strategic move into both food production and disease prevention.He returned to the server with new determination, trying to shove the suddenly burgeoning hope to the back of his mind.With FRIDAY’s help, he forced the program to accept fake biometrics. Then they set to work on the algorithms powering the fourth and fifth levels of security.Eventually, they broke through.Information unfolded before him, and Tony read through the detailed, chillingly-businesslike plans to turn the entire human race into a food source with nausea churning in his guts. He skimmed more blueprints, more chemical work on the additives, goddamn recipes for bulk production of human meat.He also found a list of exemptions – high-profile figures, to be brought into the inner circle while the masses were turned into livestock – as well as additional long-term goals that would move Roman and his followers towards international power and control.“FRIDAY, inform the Bureau that we got the server open, then forward copies of everything we’ve looked at so far to the Deputy-Director, as instructed,” he managed hoarsely. It was part of the deal he’d made – if he found any new evidence he had to turn it over.Within minutes, a notification popped up for an incoming phone call. “FRIDAY, dismiss it. Tell them I’m still working.” He kept looking, through folders and drives, barely pausing for breath, barely daring to hope.Then, buried in the file structure, he found a folder called WINCHESTERS.The hair on the back of Tony’s neck prickled. “FRIDAY, what have we got?” he asked, as she opened everything up for him.Timelines, psych reports, photographs, internal memos, video files; the leviathans had built obsessive, comprehensive dossiers on Dean and his brother. They’d documented their movements, their family history, known associates, jobs they’d worked. Tony skimmed through, not sure what he was looking for until a series of videos dated at the time of the killing spree caught his eye.His heartbeat picked up in anticipation as he told FRIDAY to play them.The first video filled the screen with Dick Roman’s face. He wore a calm expression, but his eyes were hard and cold. The camera zoomed out a little to show him standing alone in a plush-looking office. “Is it ready?” he asked someone off screen.After they’d apparently answered, he turned his gaze to the camera, and grinned smugly out at his imaginary audience. “Good evening! Welcome to the annual Roman Enterprises nondenominational holiday party!”Tony blinked, wondering what the hell a cheesy corporate video could tell him. “FRIDAY—” he began, but then Roman went on.“This year has been jam-packed full of milestones, as we turn this miserable place into something habitable, something to sate our hunger.”Tony froze, chilled.“One of our wonderful HR team suggested a video, to document our progress, and I though, great! Excellent! And I knew just what our first little segment should be about,” Roman said, leaning casually back against his desk. The cold, shark-like intentness in his gaze curdled Tony’s stomach.“Now, most of you know that we’ve had something of a time trying to track down two particular little…insects who seem to think they can actually cause trouble for us,” Roman sneered. “Like two ugly, useless cockroaches, they’ve been surprisingly evasive. I’d be impressed, if humans were capable of impressing me, but instead I find myself bored, and, if you’ll permit me to take the metaphor to the breaking point, I’ve decided to call the exterminator. Gentlemen?”Two nondescript men entered the frame.“Before you can kill a cockroach, you use bait to draw it out of hiding,” Roman said, facing the camera again with that plastic smile. “Consider this the construction of a lovely little roach motel.”He gestured with one hand. Behind him, the men morphed, and became Sam and Dean Winchester.Tony exhaled in shock, gripping the side of his workstation for support.“The next few clips contain all the action! Enjoy!” Roman said cheerily.The clip ended there, and Tony immediately said, “FRIDAY open the next ones. Show me the next ones!” His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest.The next clip was one Tony had already seen – the Winchesters’ attack on the first bank. But the clip after that was incongruous; it was Dean, entering a gas station and paying for gas and what looked like beef jerky.The video after that was the killings in the convenience store. Then Tony watched as Sam paid for takeout from a mom and pop diner. Then the second bank, and then Dean and Sam walking past an ATM camera.He frowned. “FRIDAY, what—““Boss, the timestamps on the videos almost match.”“What do you mean, they match?” Tony demanded.“According to the location data, the first video was taken here,” she said, showing him the bank location on a map onscreen. “The second was taken here, sixteen minutes later,” she added, showing him a second location hundreds of miles away.“Oh my god, that’s too far to drive,” Tony breathed.“It would also not be possible to travel using any known commercial or private flight service,” FRIDAY informed him. “Portals or teleportation are possibilities.”“The footage hasn’t been tampered with?”“No sir.”“And these videos didn’t come up in your searches?”“They come from the type of system that’s usually erased regularly. The data indicates that Mr Roman’s personal copies were made before the footage could be lost.”“What about the biometrics?”“Biometrics match exactly,” FRIDAY confirmed. “It’s almost impossible to tell the nonviolent pair from the pair committing the crimes.”“Shit,” Tony exhaled, still staring at the videos with wide eyes. “I mean. Shit.” He sank back into his chair as desperate, desperate hope surged inside him, unstoppable this time.“Boss, there’s one more file,” FRIDAY said.Tony braced himself. “Alright, go ahead.”He’d been expecting footage to prove they hadn’t been in Iowa – hadn’t been arrested, hadn’t been killed in the Sheriff’s station.Instead, he saw security footage from what appeared to be the station’s squad room. He watched, frowning. The footage flipped to the lobby, then a hallway, then suddenly there was Dean, in cell. The next shot showed Sam in an interrogation room.“Data indicates that this footage takes place after they were arrested in Iowa,” FRIDAY informed him.The shot flipped back to the main squad room, and Tony watched, nervous with anticipation, as a deputy worked at his desk and another crossed the room to the printer.Someone entered, slightly out of frame, and the next moment the deputy at the printer was flung across the room. The other deputy sprang into action, but the stranger blocked his attack with ease, and then suddenly lifted him up.Tony had just a second to see that the attacker looked identical to the first deputy, down to the uniform, when the attacker’s entire head unfolded into a huge mouth, and he bit into the deputy’s head."Oh my god." Tony recoiled. “FRIDAY, show me that again. What the actual fuck?” He watched the replay, then stared as the leviathan lowered the deputy onto a desk and kept eating, taking huge bites with his mouth-like head.It only stopped when someone walked into frame behind it. The video had no sound, but it was easy to tell that the monster was annoyed at being interrupted.The monster abandoned his meal, and walked with the other person out of frame. The view flipped to a new camera, and one after another, the monster and the other person turned into Dean and Sam Winchester.“Oh my god,” Tony exhaled again, watching fervently.The screen flipped to the cell block, where the Sheriff was releasing the other Dean from his cell. This Dean spoke to the Sheriff intensely, then snuck around a corner. He quickly encountered the leviathan wearing his brother’s face. He attacked just as quickly, with assistance from the Sheriff, and beheaded the imposter impersonating his brother. The imposter’s blood was black.The other leviathan had headed to Sam, handcuffed to the table in the interrogation room, but Dean wasn’t far behind. Watching Dean behead himself should have been more disturbing than it was.The tape finished there, and Tony could only assume Sam and Dean had escaped. He remembered Dean’s description of what’d happened – it matched the tape, it matched exactly – and ran shaking hands through his hair.Then he went back and watched all of it again. He replayed the footage of the leviathans transforming into Dean and his brother again, and then the section where the monster exposed its true form. He replayed them again and again, looking for the lie, looking for the CGI, desperate to be sure before he let himself hope again.He couldn’t find it. He couldn’t find a lie. FRIDAY couldn’t detect any manipulation, and the file hadn’t been accessed since before Dick Roman’s death.Eventually, the truth seemed undeniable. Tony turned away from the screens and hunched over, shuddering. He covered his face with shaking hands and tried to breathe through the absolute tidal wave of relief that swept through him. He wanted to cry – or laugh – with relief. “It’s real,” he gasped. “Oh my god, he wasn’t lying.”Dean hadn’t betrayed him. He wasn’t a mass murderer, and he wasn’t secretly a cold-blooded psychopath with the uncanny ability to impersonate a real human being. He’d been telling the truth.A massive weight slid down off Tony’s shoulders. He hadn’t missed any signs, he hadn’t failed to see the red flags. Dean was exactly what he’d appeared to be, and Tony hadn’t been wrong to trust him.It was overwhelming, and it changed everything. He pressed a hand to his shirt, over the mark on his chest, and for the first time he didn’t feel disgust. All his fears about Dean’s psychosis could be let go; he laughed, then laughed again, feeling shaken and slightly unhinged. He’d never been so happy to be proven wrong.“Okay,” he eventually told himself, wiping his eyes, “Okay, let’s get it together.”He turned back to the screens, to the video files. He could barely focus – his brain felt overloaded – but he tried to concentrate. Everything had changed; he had to work out what to do.First things first. “FRIDAY, I need a copy of this entire server. Use one of the quarantined drives in the high-security area. Send all of the Winchester information to my personal devices, with high encryption,” he began.How long would it take the FBI to publicize this break in the Dick Roman case? And what would they do about Dean? With a surge of anticipation, he realised he could clear Dean’s name, just like he’d promised.“Boss, Deputy Director Fuller is calling again,” FRIDAY told him. Speak of the devil.“Don’t accept the call,” Tony replied. “Connect me to Commander Hill instead. We’ve got a manhunt to call off.”***Later, Tony stood in his bathroom. He took a deep breath. Then he raised his shirt to look at the mark.It stretched across his chest where the arc reactor used to be, cutting cleanly through grafted skin and scar tissue from surgeries to replace his destroyed sternum. Its lines were delicate, dark, and vibrant, defining a honeycomb-like pattern of hexagons – eighteen of them – with thin lines radiating outwards from the upper sides in a halo like a rising sun. More thin lines stretched out on either side in a wave pattern, dotted above with small stars.A row of small, intricate symbols ran underneath the hexagons. “FRIDAY, what language is that?” he asked.She couldn’t find a match in any known alphabet, which just made Tony wonder about unknown ones. Lowering his shirt and leaning on the sink, he added it to the long list of things he wanted to ask Dean about.He’d spent most of the night fielding calls from progressively higher-ranked officials in the FBI and liaising with Hill and Canadian law enforcement to dismantle the manhunt, but in between, he’d been trying to absorb Dick Roman’s appallingly thorough dossiers on the Winchester brothers. He’d also talked to Hill, and she’d confirmed unequivocally that the supernatural existed. She claimed she wasn’t an expert, but she knew enough to promise him that it was real.Between that, the evidence of his own eyes, the videos he’d seen, and the dossiers, which didn’t bother with euphemisms for the things the Winchester brothers hunted, Tony’s existential crisis was something he could no longer push into the background.The supernatural was real. Werewolves, vampires, angels, all of it was real. It was quite literally the stuff of nightmares, and so unscientific it was making Tony’s skin crawl, but it was real.He’d really seen a werewolf with his own eyes. He’d seen angelic grace. He’d seen the leviathan open their mouths. Hell, he personally knew a Norse god; there was a limit to how much denial he could allow himself, especially when it was right in front of him, etched on his own skin.But it still felt like a huge paradigm shift. He didn’t yet know how to assimilate the new data with what he’d already believed. How were monsters biologically different from humans? Where had they come from? Why on earth did some of the things described in the Winchesters’ dossiers even work? It said they vanquished creatures with silver and rock salt, of all things.So, he had questions. He could only hope Dean would be willing to answer them.Dean. His soulmate.Tony knew that almost anyone else would have felt blessed. Soulmates were a miracle, a rare gift. And he could feel the connection working on him – the warmth of the bond, the promise of an end to loneliness, the lure of someone who would understand him completely.But the more he accepted idea that some kind of force out there in the universe had bound him to another human being, the more it didn’t sit right. No choices, no consent. It lodged in his gut like a stuck screw, refusing to move. He hadn’t even believed in any of this nonsense for more than a few hours; what right did God have to attach him to a soulmate?And what about Dean? Tony had been so afraid that Dean had violated his mind to gain something – money, power, immunity from imprisonment – but he hadn’t. His shock and desperation in the cabin had been real. He was just as powerless in this as Tony.Now that he knew Dean wasn’t a mass murderer, Tony couldn’t stop thinking about how much he’d liked him. Even in the cells, before they touched, he’d thought Dean was clever, and charismatic, and he’d already been strategizing how to stay in touch after the escape was over.But was the bond influencing him? How much of it had been real, and how much the nascent connection between them? How much of it was divine manipulation?At least he could be sure of some of it; FRIDAY had been able to use the dossiers to flesh out the Winchesters’ timeline even further, matching hundreds of victims and crimes to monsters, and to Dean and his brother. Tony had been shocked at the rate the brothers worked, job after job, day after day, year after year. He couldn’t imagine how many thousands of people they must have saved.Reading between the lines of the leviathan’s dossiers, Tony felt he’d been able to form a clearer picture of their personalities. Two dedicated, well-trained, clever men, two sides of the same coin, facing down monsters in the dark with almost no resources. Lives full of difficulty, and loss. The more Tony read, the more he regretted throwing Dean’s trust back in his face, no matter how frightening the situation had been at the time.All Tony could do was make up for his mistakes. But how? Calling off the manhunt hadn’t made Dean any easier to find, and for a while Tony contemplated trying to get a message out through the media. But how could he, without painting an even bigger target on Dean’s back?And if he figured it out, then what? If they made contact again – if Dean even agreed to talk to him, which Tony doubted – what would they do? They were bonded. How would they make it work?Tony closed his eyes and concentrated. He could feel it, their connection. He could feel Dean’s absence like an ache; he felt like something was wrong, like something was missing. He touched his fingertips to the mark, and Dean felt near, like he stood just out of reach at Tony’s back, and all Tony had to do was open his eyes and turn around. It was overwhelming; Dean felt so close.Tony opened his eyes. The bathroom was empty; he was alone.He dropped his hand. The connection remained, but it felt thin and lacking, strained by distance.Frowning, he lifted his shirt and studied the mark again. It was so incredibly strange to think that it had etched itself onto his skin in the woods, in the instant that Dean’s hand had touched his mouth – and stranger still to know there was an exact match in the same place on Dean’s skin.Was Dean feeling the same confusion and ambivalence? Was he wondering about Tony? Was he angry, or would he understand?What would happen when they saw each other again?***“Rhodey, I’m going to do something uncharacteristic,” Tony said, pushing the door to Rhodey’s hospital room open.He’d spent the night trying to come up with a plan, but there were so many variables to consider. Not just about Dean, and the fact that this soulmate bullshit was going to irrevocably combine their personal lives; Tony was the goddamned Iron Man, one of the only Avengers left on the roster. If he went public with something like this, the ramifications could be huge. How would it affect the ongoing negotiations over international peacekeeping and the Sokovia Accords? How big of a target would he make them, if he went public? Then there was the unavoidable issue of Dean’s reputation. No matter how thorough the FBI’s exoneration was, things like hugely public killing sprees were probably difficult to come back from.With FRIDAY’s help, Tony had made and scrapped at least eight soulmate-related to-do lists, circling around and around on it all so many times that it’d finally driven him out of the penthouse and towards a desperately-needed reality check.Now, Rhodey looked up at him from his hospital bed, raising his eyebrows. Next to him, Pepper did the same from her seat in the visitor’s chair.Tony paused in surprise, but then refused to let her presence slow him down. “Pepper, great! I can talk to both of you at once, that’ll save a lot of time.” He quickly locked the door and lowered the blinds on the window out into the corridor.“Tony, what’s going on?” Pepper asked with a concerned frown, as Tony pulled a security device from his pocket and set it to work.“I’m going to ask for advice,” Tony announced.For a second, they both looked shocked.“Are you feeling alright?” Pepper said, sounding insultingly alarmed.“Yeah, do you have a temperature or something?” Rhodey just sounded amused.Tony gave them both an unimpressed look, but he could hardly blame them. “I know it’s not my usual move, but this is…really, really different from usual,” he admitted. “I need to talk about something, and it cannot leave this room.”The device was done scanning for listening devices, so he quickly reset it to create a cone of silence around Rhodey’s room. No transmissions, no eavesdroppers, electronic or otherwise. Out of all of his to-do lists, at this point secrecy was the only thing he was sure he needed.Rhodey and Pepper seemed to catch on to his serious mood. “Yeah, man, of course,” Rhodey said with a frown. “You can tell us anything.”Tony opened his mouth, then stopped and narrowed his eyes at Rhodey. “How drugged are you right now?”“You’ve got two hours until they dose me up again, I’m as clearheaded as it gets, now tell us what’s wrong,” Rhodey said impatiently.Tony hesitated, feeling lost for words now that he staring into their expectant faces. No matter how he’d imagined telling them, he hadn’t been able to predict what their reactions would be. Better to do it fast, like ripping off a bandaid. “Yeah, so, here’s the thing. I think I might have a soulmate.”The words hung in the air, and a shocked silence filled the room.“You what?” Pepper eventually gasped.“That isn’t funny, Tony,” Rhodey said sharply. “Soulmates are serious shit, you can’t just go around…saying…”He trailed off, staring, when Tony lifted his shirt to show them the mark.They stared at it for a long time – Pepper’s eyes were huge in her face – and Tony waited patiently.“Tony, that’s—that’s amazing,” Pepper said. “Who is it?”Tony hesitated.“Oh my god,” Rhodey said, with a look of dawning realisation, “Oh my god. Please tell me it’s not who I think it is.”Tony hadn’t expected him to get there quite that fast. “Uh. Well, it might be,” he hedged, lowering his shirt. “But it turns out he’s not a bad guy after all?”Pepper had caught on and was looking at him in horror. “Dean Winchester? Dean Winchester is your soulmate,” she said, aghast. “How is that possible?”“Because he was telling me the truth!” Tony protested quickly. “He isn’t a mass murderer, it was a frame job.”They stared at him.“I’ve got proof,” he added. “I’ve got proof that almost every single thing he told me was true.”They both looked stunned. Then Pepper visibly braced herself and said, “I think you’d better start at the beginning.”***Days later, Tony stood at his windows again and stared out at the city. Pre-dawn light was filtering across the sky, and the TV in the background was frantically dissecting yesterday’s FBI press conference, when the Deputy Director had announced the new evidence of Dick Roman’s terrorist activities.On Hill's advice, Tony had read in Deputy Director Fuller to a certain extent. He'd kept back the dossiers and anything he could find about the supernatural generally, but they'd handed over evidence that the leviathan were creatures, not human. In these post-Loki times, it wasn't so unbelievable. Now, the FBI was keeping the shapeshifting monsters under wraps, of course, because everyone involved had agreed that certain parts of the truth should be kept classified to prevent public panic. But the files had contained plenty of other transgressions, enough to make it very believable that the massacre in Roman’s offices had been the result of psychopathic hubris. It was going to be the story of the decade.However, they were also keeping Tony’s involvement under wraps. More media scrutiny was the last thing he felt like coping with, and given the circumstances, linking his name with Dean's at all seemed like a bad idea. He’d asked them to take the credit, and they’d barely pretended to protest.Behind him, the elevator dinged. A few moments later, Pepper came and stood at his side.“Are you’re going to leave soon?” she asked.“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Headaches are getting worse, and I threw up twice last night.”The physical symptoms had kicked in around day four of his separation from Dean, starting with mild headaches and shakiness, escalating to a feeling that was almost feverish. But the pull west was stronger, and he could finally pinpoint Dean’s location on the horizon.“Is everything in place? How did the debriefings go yesterday?” she asked.News of the frame-up hadn’t been shared publicly yet, but Tony had run new debriefing with the Avengers staff and with his own security staff prior to the press conference, outlining the connection between Roman and the Winchesters. He’d shown them some of the videos, and he hadn’t said outright that he was going to continue looking for Dean, let alone invite him to come to New York, but he’d heavily implied it. He’d wanted to lay the groundwork, so that if Dean agreed to come to the Tower, or to the Avengers compound, no-one got overly enthusiastic about detaining him.“It was fine,” he reported. “They had a lot of questions, but the situation seems pretty resolved. I sent Dean's record over to Legal, too, but we should probably get him independent counsel to deal with the rest of the criminal charges.”Given the choice, Tony would have waited until Dean was in the clear before inviting him to the city. Even though the FBI had promised a public exoneration for the killing spree was ‘imminent’, and he was confident his lawyers could handle the rest, he’d learned the hard way not to rely on promises.But the headaches were getting to a point where he couldn’t wait anymore, and besides, he wanted to go. He had apologies to make.“You think he’ll agree to come?” Pepper asked.The plan the three of them had hashed out in Rhodey’s hospital room was fairly simple: bring Dean to New York, keep everything about it under wraps, and work out what to do as the situation unfolded. Pepper, of course, had started working on strategies and contingency plans, and Rhodey had decided to move back to Stark Tower as soon as his medical team gave him the all clear. Together, they were going to help Tony manage how much of his life this new development was going to change.Tony’s main job, for better or worse, would be to develop a functional relationship with his soulmate. But as he pondered Pepper’s question, he still wasn’t sure if Dean would even agree to speak to him.“I don’t know. The whole manhunt thing might have justifiably pissed him off.” He hesitated, then added, “I do feel like once I find him, everything will be fine, though.” It was uncharacteristically optimistic, and it baffled him.“Maybe it will be,” Pepper said.Tony snorted. “It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t even know him. Not really.”“Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense.”Tony gritted his teeth. Given everything he’d recently discovered, he didn’t actually have an answer for that.They fell into silence for a moment, and then Pepper said, out of the blue, “You know, I met a pair of soulmates once.”Tony stared at her. “You did? When?”She shrugged. “I was young. But being in the room with them, it was…I could feel it. When two soulmates are together, the whole world around them changes. Things happen for them. It’s like the universe bends itself to make things easier.”Surprised, Tony tried to process this.“I’m no big philosopher, Tony,” Pepper went on. “I don’t have any answers about whether this is God, or some kind of science that we don’t understand. It could be divine, or it could turn out to be quantum entanglement. But even if it’s some unguided force of physics, I know that soulmates are special and you’re part of that now. Dean is part of it too.” She shrugged philosophically. “I suppose I have faith that things are going to work out for the two of you.”Tony looked at her in surprise. The future was far too uncertain to think about special things and whether he deserved them – even if he was starting to suspect that the bond was something he desperately, desperately wanted – but her take on it was surprisingly reassuring.He looked out the window again. After a moment, he said, “It’s the strangest goddamn feeling, Pepper,” he confessed. “I barely know him, but he matters. He’s not here and that matters more than anything. I don’t even remember what I really felt like before, and it should feel so unnatural, but for some reason…for some reason…” he trailed off, uncertain.“It feels right?” Pepper guessed.“But isn’t that bad?” he asked. “Shouldn’t I be freaking out, instead of just accepting it?”She looked thoughtful. “I can’t tell you what you should do,” she said. “No-one can tell you how you should feel about all of this, Tony. It’s a huge change, and I know it’s not something you asked for. But I’m certainly not going to judge you for accepting it. There are more things in the universe than we understand, and definitely more than we can control. You can’t freak out about all of them,” she said, smiling wryly.Once again, he didn’t have an argument. With a shake of his head, he said, “God, it’s so weird, though. A soulmate. What the hell?”“Life is definitely full of surprises,” Pepper agreed drily. Then she turned to him with airy purpose and said, “Enough talking. I want to meet this soulmate of yours. Don’t you think you’d better go and get him?”Anticipation kicked in his chest. “Thank you, Miss Potts,” Tony said, grateful for the prompt – exactly the kick he needed to get him out the door.He stepped out onto the balcony, and the armor folded around him. Iron Man launched up into the sky, heading for the west.***The car was parked under a tree in a clearing off a back road in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska. It had a beat-up dark green paint job that hadn’t been visible in the black and white footage from the gas station, and the license plates had been changed since the gas station.There was one heat signature, stationary in the front seat.Tony landed carefully in the clearing and waited for movement.When there wasn’t any, he approached the car with his heart in his throat. Dean’s head was resting against the driver’s side window, and as Tony moved closer, he found out he was slumped down, fast asleep.He looked exhausted, almost ill. Guilt over the manhunt grew heavy in Tony’s stomach as he took in the dark circles under Dean’s eyes, the furrow still in his brow in sleep. But there was only one way to fix his mistake, so Tony tapped gently on the car window.Dean jerked awake and the bond immediately flared with anxiety. He stared up at Tony in shock, and Tony stepped back, palms out, hoping Dean would get out of the car so they could talk.Resignation crossed Dean’s face, and the bond soured with disappointment as he glared tiredly out the windscreen for just a moment. Then he squared his shoulders. He held one hand up as he used the other to open the car door and carefully get out. “Yeah, okay, Stark. Take it easy.”Dean got out of the car with his hands still up, and it took Tony a moment of befuddled confusion before he realised he was still in the armor and Dean thought he was being arrested.“Oh wait, no,” Tony said, even as he opened the suit to step out. “Jesus, I’m not here to arrest you! Haven’t you seen the news?”“What news?” Dean’s voice was hoarse, and his expression wary.“I found proof,” Tony said. “I got access to Dick Roman’s private server, and I found proof. Records, videos. I know it wasn’t you, I know you were telling me the truth.”For a moment, Dean stared at him, open-mouthed. His arms drooped a little but his hands remained up. “What?”“I sent it to the Feds,” Tony promised anxiously. “They’ve been talking about Roman’s terrorist activities for the past twelve hours, and they haven’t announced it about you yet, but they will. They know you were framed, they’ll clear your name. It’s all over the TV, haven’t you seen it?”Dean just stared at him, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.“Seriously, put your hands down,” Tony said. “I’m really not here to arrest you.”Dean didn’t drop his hands. “Wait, so. So you believe me?” he said. “You believe I’m not—that we didn’t kill all those people?” His voice cracked in the middle.“Yeah, I do,” Tony said. His own voice was unsteady as well; the words felt weighted with meaning. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before.”Hope seemed to dawn on Dean’s face. “You really mean it? You found proof?” he asked again, studying Tony closely.“I did,” Tony promised, taking a step closer. “I should have trusted you without it. I didn’t know about the soulmate thing, but even then, I should’ve…I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He felt raw with regret.But Dean’s entire body sagged against the car as tension and stress drained out of him. “Don’t apologize. I mean, I know how it looked, you had no reason to trust me,” he said, running a shaking hand through his hair. He sounded shocked. “I can’t believe you found proof.”Tony shrugged. “What can I say? I was motivated.”“Yeah, I guess you were,” Dean said. He stared at Tony in surprise, and slow trickle of relief came through the bond.Their eyes met and lingered, but then Tony looked away. The gratitude in Dean’s expression was too much; where was the anger? Surely it couldn’t be this easy?Not only that, but the urge to step closer and touch Dean’s skin – to sink into that connection again – was almost a compulsion. But how could he be sure it was what Dean wanted?“So,” Dean said. “I guess you know, then. About the whole soulmates thing.” He gestured between them awkwardly, but his eyes were intent on Tony’s face.“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Not what I expected to see in the bathroom mirror, but. Well. Yeah.”Dean grimaced, and regret throbbed through their connection. “I’m really sorry. I really, really didn’t mean to get you drawn into all of this.”Tony frowned. This echoed the apology Dean had given him in the cabin, and he still didn’t really know why Dean felt responsible. “How on earth is any of this your fault? You don’t have to be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong.”Dean looked like he wanted to disagree, but he didn’t seem able to find the words.Tony decided that there were more pressing matters; nausea was rolling in his belly, and his headache was piercing. “Look, we need to deal with this, right? Make a decision?”Dean frowned. “A decision?”“Yeah, so the way I see it, we have two choices,” Tony went on. “We can lean into this whole soulmate thing and figure out how to make it work. It can’t be all bad, a lot of soulmates seem pretty happy. I’ve been drawing up lists, there’s a lot I don’t know, obviously, and we’ll need to work on the rest of your legal situation, but I mean, it’s a good option. It’s option one.”“What’s option two?” Dean demanded, confused.“We undo it, obviously,” Tony said. “I haven’t worked out how, yet, but if I can study it long enough, I’m sure I can find a way.Dean’s brow furrowed, and his mouth dropped open. “Undo it? It’s a goddamn soulmate bond, Stark.”“So?” Tony frowned. “Just because no-one understands what causes it, doesn’t mean we can’t make it go away. Biologically, it’s probably like a virus, or something. I’ll figure out a way to manage the symptoms.”Dean looked wretchedly frustrated. “Oh, for—it’s not a virus! And you won’t be able to make it go away!”“Says who?” Tony demanded, almost offended.“Angels,” Dean replied. At Tony’s surprise, he went on. “Night after I left you, I prayed to Heaven for help. They came to take the Grace from me, but when I asked them to undo the bond, they couldn’t. It comes from God, Stark. It can’t be undone.”“Then we get him to undo it,” Tony argued. In the back of his mind, though, he realised that must have been the anger that came through the bond. Dean must have been desperate to get the bond undone and furious when they refused him.“He won’t,” Dean began, but Tony wasn’t interested.“We’ll make him,” Tony insisted.“We won’t be able to,” Dean snapped. “Soulmates happen for a reason. God puts them in place for a purpose, to help humanity, or whatever, I don’t know. But the bigger the mark, the bigger the work.”“What?” Tony’s mind whirled. Soulmates had purpose?“Our marks are big,” Dean added grimly. “Whatever we’re supposed to do will be big, too. I’m talking world-ending big,” he warned.An alien invasion, Tony thought.Then Dean said, “I wish we could undo it. If you could stay away from me, you’d be better off.”“I don’t want to be better off,” Tony said angrily. “I know I fucked up when I didn’t believe you before, but I thought you were a mass murderer. Now I know you aren’t. So there’s a world-ending catastrophe on the table, what’s new? I’m not just gonna leave you to deal with it.”“You should,” Dean said, and even though his face didn't change, loss yawned inside him like an abyss.“I won’t,” Tony promised roughly. “Look, this isn’t the point. I don’t care about who did this, or what it all means.” He did, but it wasn’t immediately important. “What I need to know is what you want.”Tony had a moment to feel Dean’s desperate, fierce longing before Dean shoved his feelings down. “What I want doesn’t matter,” he said.“It matters to me,” Tony said, a little louder than he intended.The words echoed in the clearing. Dean looked startled.“Look, this is all something that was done to us,” Tony began, trying to keep his volume a bit more reasonable. “But the way I see it, the only way it’s actually going to work – the only way we can actually get along, and work together, and be actual soulmates – is if we both agree that it’s what we want. And if you want it too, great, I will be fucking thrilled, and I will do everything I can to make us both happy.“And if you don’t want it,” Tony made himself say, even though it hurt to even think about it. “If you truly don’t want this connection, then I will undo it. Whether that means finding a drug or a treatment that helps us to live apart from each other, or starting a fight with God himself, I will make it happen,” he promised.Dean stared at him. Through the bond, Tony could feel an overwhelming clamour of emotions.“We didn’t choose to start this, but we can choose how it continues,” Tony finished, trying to convey how much he truly believed it.Dean held on to his guard for another moment, and then his resistance abruptly collapsed. “I want it,” he said, like the words had been scraped out from somewhere deep inside of him. “But you have no idea—If you believed me.” He hesitated again, looking anguished. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. It’s not just me, it’s everything. Angels, demons. My whole life is poison.”“Because my life has been such a bed of goddamn roses so far?” Tony countered. He stepped closer, growing more confident now that he could feel through the bond that Dean wanted this just as much as he did. “You can’t scare me away, Dean. Sure, the monster thing has been kind of a shock, but I’ll adjust. I’d rather fight at your side than hide away from what’s coming.”Dean’s breath hitched. “Oh my god. You can’t mean that,” he insisted weakly as he frantically studied Tony's face.“Sure I do,” Tony promised, staying resolute under the scrutiny. “So what do you say? You in?”Dean studied Tony intently for another long moment, with all the wariness of someone who’d been betrayed a few too many times, and couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to have what he wanted.Then Tony felt clear, firm determination filter through the bond, as Dean said, “Yes.”Tony exhaled in relief. He took one more step – into Dean’s personal space – and finally, finally slid his hand onto the exposed skin at the back of Dean’s neck.With the touch of skin, a bright, warm spark of connection exploded inside them. The cold morning, the road, the car; all of it disappeared. Dean gasped as their foreheads touched, and his arms came up around Tony’s waist. The wrong, cold, alone feeling that Tony had been trying to ignore dissolved under a wash of warm, bone-deep rightness.The sound of their heartbeats filled Tony’s ears, thundering in time with each other. Dean was relieved, completely relieved, and he was also lonely and grieving and hopeful and Tony could feel it.With a sharp noise, Dean pressed closer and Tony’s vision blurred; he sank deeper into the merge, and he felt their souls fit together like intricate clockwork. Dean’s soul was laid bare for Tony to see – a kaleidoscope of strength and pain, sacrifice and guilt, trauma, loss, pride, and deep, unfathomable love. There was an indescribable brightness at its centre, a core of something steady and light and beautiful, that washed over Tony like a wave until all of his own dark lonely places were filled.Neither one of us will ever be alone again, Tony realised. It felt like a gift.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
EPILOGUE
They sat across from each other in the booth of a diner in a nearby town.In the clearing, after they’d peeled themselves apart, Tony had shown Dean the files he’d found, and the footage of the FBI press conference. He’d tried to apologise again, but Dean had dismissed it and instead looked at the files like he’d been given an immensely valuable gift.“This is going to clear my brother’s name,” he’d said, voice rough and genuinely grateful. “I won’t ever be able to thank you enough for that.”Flustered by the feelings swooping in his stomach, Tony had immediately changed the subject and tried to talk about his lawyers, and their options when it came to the rest of Dean’s criminal activities.Dean had taken one look at the pile of paperwork and refused to discuss it further without coffee. And breakfast.So they’d stashed the suit in the trunk and gotten into Dean’s car, and they’d found a diner that served all-day breakfast. Dean had given him a ballcap and some dark-rimmed glasses to wear, so he’d be less recognisable.Now, he watched Dean from across the booth and waited impatiently for their pancakes and coffee. He’d had to fight off some anxiety and a sense of déjà vu when he’d sat down – he still couldn’t set foot in a diner without suspecting he’d get stabbed in the neck – but the sheer fact of Dean’s existence had distracted him quickly. His soulmate. Sitting across from him, real, solid, and warily casing the diner for threats. Who’d have imagined it?Their embrace that morning in the clearing had completed the bond. Tony hadn’t realised how unsettled and unfinished it was until it wasn’t anymore. He suspected that they’d gotten most of the way there the first time, in the woods, but interruption and separation had kept them slightly mis-aligned, slightly less than perfect.Now that their skin had touched again – and more, now that they were aligned in their purpose and goals as well, willingly and without lies, confusion, or anger between them – everything had clicked into place. The connection hummed between them like an electromagnetic field, strong and perfectly balanced.Tony felt calm and whole in a way he’d never experienced before in his life. It was like Dean was the missing piece, the answer to the question, the solution that completed the design. Tony’s current sense of satisfaction, of completion, was astonishing.He also felt sharply curious. He had so many questions, about Dean, and soulmates, and the mark, and the situation they’d found themselves in. But he kept quiet; his questions didn’t feel urgent, he knew there was time, and he was reluctant to disturb the peace they’d found.His soulmate. Tony couldn’t keep his eyes off him; he studied the changing line of his mouth, the furrow in his brow, the creases in the corner of his eyes. Dean still looked tired, but less ill, like he was feeling the positive effects as well. For a while, he didn’t look up, though, and Tony was on the verge of being worried about that until he worked out that Dean was actually staring at Tony’s hands.Eventually, Tony said, “So this is it, huh? This is our thing now. We have to work out how it’s all gonna go.”Dean’s eyes snapped up to meet his. “Yeah, I guess we do.” He leaned casually back in the booth, but his eyes were now on Tony’s face, and he felt curious too. “What’s on offer? Apart from Legal Aid, apparently.”“New York. My place, if you want,” Tony said lightly. To be equitable, he also conceded, “Or your place?”Dean frowned. “No, I don’t have a place,” he admitted.Tony pretended like the thought of that didn’t bother him and kept moving. “Well, I’ve been taking steps to make things easier for you. The legal thing, obviously. I’ve made sure the people around me know you’re not a murderer, cause I figured that would help. And then, I don’t know. There’s stuff we’ll have to work out.”“Who gets which toothbrush,” Dean said, nodding sagely. “Who gets which side of the bed.”Tony could tell when he was being tested, so he shoved down on the burgeoning sparks of desire he felt and said lightly. “I figured we’d need a little more space than that. You’re very handsome, but movies are bullshit and this isn’t an arranged marriage.” He could feel it when something tense inside Dean immediately relaxed in response.“It’s good to have everyone’s expectations out in the open,” Dean said.Tony cocked an eyebrow. “Absolutely. And my expectations are purely platonic.” It was probably for the best; he could only imagine how fucked up things could get if they tried to sleep together and it went badly.Dean relaxed further. “Platonic. Yeah, I can handle that.”Tony buried any pang of regret he might have felt down very, very deep, away from their bond, and said, “Great, glad we’ve got that squared away. Now, tell me more about this soulmates-for-a-reason thing. Did they tell you anything else?”Dean snorted. “No, because that would have been useful. Gabriel doesn’t like giving people straight answers when he’s not trapped in holy oil,” he said bitterly.“But it could all be about the alien invasion?” Tony pressed, torn between anticipation and dread.Dean eyed him thoughtfully. “Yeah, I suppose it could be.” After a moment, he shrugged and added, “I still don’t know how much help I’d be fighting aliens, but I’ll give it my best shot.”Tony had to laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find something for you to do. Get you a gun, get you suited up, it’ll be fine,” he promised breezily, already hatching the beginnings of a new suit of armor. Something with lots of safety features, obviously. Maybe it was time to try a deep green, or a midnight blue?Dean’s eyebrows went up, but before he could open his mouth to reply, a short dude slid into the booth next to him.“Well, isn’t this a beautiful moment,” the stranger said, glancing between Dean and Tony with a grin.“Excuse me, this is a private conversation,” Tony sputtered.Dean, however, said with visible annoyance, “Oh, now you show up? Not any time in the past few days when I actually needed help?”Tony’s lingering guilt over the manhunt twinged, but the stranger just waved dismissively. “You didn’t really need me, you were doing fine. And besides, I knew you’d be alright. Come on, Dean-o, this is a big day! I had to come and meet your soulmate!”Tony looked around anxiously, hoping no-one had overheard, and Dean hissed, “It’s supposed to be a secret, Gabriel, Jesus!”Tony froze, and stared. This guy was Gabriel?“Oh please,” Gabriel said witheringly. “You think anyone can eavesdrop on me?”Dean huffed, and eyed him warily. Then he relented. “Fine, sorry.”“Water under the bridge,” Gabriel said with a magnanimous wave. “Now introduce me!”“Tony, this is the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel, meet Tony Stark,” he droned, gesturing vaguely between them.For a second, Tony stared at them wordlessly. “Archangel?” Nobody had said anything about archangels.“You make the worst introductions,” Gabriel told Dean with a frown. “No sense of announcement.”Dean just rolled his eyes.Gabriel turned to Tony. “Really, though, I just had to come down and meet you in person. I mean, Dean Winchester with a soulmate? Who saw that coming?”He sounded amused, and Dean glowered.“And he was on the bench, you know?” Gabriel went on. “Officially retired. But it looks like the big guy wants him back in the game, and when the big guy says jump, we all jump.”Gabriel’s eyes held a dangerous spark of anger that Tony had no context for, but he was distracted by the way the words made Dean’s glower darken and turn inward.“It might not be that,” he insisted immediately.They both stared at him. Tony met Dean’s eyes and added, “Maybe it’s just, you know, a thing, a retirement gift. Thanks for saving the world, here, have a free soulmate. I am a billionaire, after all, I’m a great substitute for a gold watch, he could do a lot worse. And he can still be retired if he wants.”The words hung in the air. Dean stared at him, eyes full of undecipherable emotions.“Oh, you’re cute,” Gabriel said, snapping them out of the moment. Tony bristled at the condescension. “I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” he added, sounding almost apologetic.“When is it ever?” Dean muttered.“I’ll help as much as I can,” Gabriel promised. “You know that Heaven is on your side, Dean.”Dean looked out the window and didn’t respond. Tony felt a wave of grief go through him.“However, I suspect that at some point we’ll be cut off,” Gabriel added slowly.“What do you mean, cut off?” Tony asked, alarmed. “Is that usual?”“Sure, happens all the time,” Gabriel said bluntly. “Whenever Dad decides the humans have to fend for themselves, Heaven becomes…limited, in what we’re allowed to offer.”Tony looked to Dean, unsure of what any of this meant, but Dean was too busy clenching his jaw and glaring out the window, with that abyss of loss yawning wide open inside him again.Feeling out of his depth, Tony asked, “Well, what can you tell us?”Gabriel’s mood abruptly went from sombre to bombastically cheerful. “Right now? Almost nothing! I know there’s something coming, but I don’t know what, or when, or how!”“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tony hissed, but Gabriel ignored him, instead glancing up at the waitress as she came by with their pancakes.“Oooh, someone’s got a good breakfast! Thanks, sweetheart.”She smiled at him. “One stack of blueberry, and one buttermilk with bacon,” she said as she put them down in front of Tony and Dean. “Can I get you anything?” she asked Gabriel.“No, I can’t stick around,” he told her, as he slid out of the booth. To Tony, he said, “Take care of this one for me, would you?”“Of course,” Tony said reflexively, frowning.Dean rolled his eyes. “Bye Gabe,” he said pointedly.Gabriel grinned and waggled his fingers at him as he walked away.Tony turned to watch him go – the bell on the door even jingled as he went out. When he turned back, the waitress was gone, and they were alone again.“Does that happen often?” he asked, feeling baffled.Dean huffed. “Not so much anymore.” He frowned down at his pancakes, and didn’t pick up his cutlery. “He’s right, though. I gotta come back off the bench, no choice about it.”Tony studied him. “I meant what I said. I won’t involve you if you don’t want to do this anymore.”Dean looked up and his eyes held, of all things, gratitude. “Thank you.” Then he packed the emotions away and said roughly, “But it’s fine. If God’s involved, and Gabriel’s involved, you’re definitely gonna need my help.”His devastation had faded slightly, and while his apparent resignation to their combined fate was horrible, Tony could tell he felt a sense of purpose, and determination.“So I guess you’ll be coming to New York, then?” Tony asked.Dean huffed a laugh. “Yeah, sure, I guess I am.”“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything,” Tony promised. “You’re gonna love it.”