Work Text:
It takes them a long time to start feeling like a team, but eventually they get there. Everyone moves into the newly renamed Avengers Tower and it's awkward until they stumble upon Bruce accidentally pouring orange juice into his Cheerios at three in the morning and Thor wandering around naked in the middle of the day and Natasha in a pair of bunny slippers that no doubt also function for some sort of nefarious purpose. Team Movies become A Thing and so do Team Dinners, and they are surprisingly fun and homey for a group of people that never really had a chance to truly experience the idea of comforting family life. The battles are few for a while, and those that come strengthen their bond. And yeah, some of those bonds do tend to get...stronger...than some of the others. Clint and Natasha were no surprise to any of them, but Steve and Thor being together was a bit of a shock. Especially since they found out because of the volume of Thor's voice during, ahem, private activities was a few decibels above his normal speaking voice. However, the team altogether was strong and they were finally working as a team.
Until they weren't.
The battle had been going on for hours, and Tony had thought that they were finally wrapping up. Thor was blasting Hydra squads down on Park and Clint and Natasha were having a grand old time picking them off in small groups while Hulk herded them down Fourth in droves. That left Tony watching Cap's back as they cleared each section of the city of civilians and looked for anyone that needed help. Tony was idly chattering about the low structural integrity of a building Hulk was blasted into when he noticed that Cap's end of the comm had been silent a bit too long, and he hadn't told Tony to shut up in a while.
“Cap? You alright down there?” Tony asked as he flew around a corner and touched down on the street. His heart stopped in his chest when he saw that Steve had been pinned by five Hydra goons, shield embedded in the helmet of a sixth lying prone on the side of the road. His mouth was covered by a gloved hand and he was straining his neck away from...oh shit.
“Make one move, Stark, and we'll jab him. See how long it takes a super soldier to process Hydra's new poison, yeah?” The glint of the afternoon sun reflected off the long, long needle pointed directly at his vein. Steve's eyes were glued to Tony's through the helmet, and Tony watched as they slid slowly to the side, pointing out a child desperately trying to free his mother's legs from a large pile of rubble, right under the building Tony was worried might collapse. Steve wanted him to save them, wanted him to leave him to Hydra to save the civilians.
“No. Not this time,” Tony said quietly into the comms, brain trying to calculate how fast he would have to move to get Steve free and get to the civilians, how much time he had left before the foundation would give way, the probability of-
But his mind was brought to a screeching halt when he heard the child scream, the mother cry out, and the sound of a building crumbling down.
Tony moved.
He put all he had into the thrusters and pushed the mother and child under the shelter of the armor as the building came down around them. Bricks tumbled and walls collapsed but the armor was built for more than a little rubble, and it held. Once all was quiet around them, he freed the mother and let both her and the child up, carrying them to emergency responders. The woman couldn't walk, likely paralyzed from the impact, but aside from a few cuts and bruises, her child was fine.
By the time he turned to face the spot where he left Steve, Thor was howling in rage towards the skies over the unmoving body of Captain America. The team surrounded their captain as S.H.I.E.L.D medical rushed towards them, and as they looked back at Tony, their solemn looks turned into hard, dark glares.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Medical told them they didn't know how long it would be before Steve woke up. They seemed fairly confident he would, but only time would tell. When the doctor asked the team exactly what happened, they turned to Tony, Thor gripping Mjolnir tightly in his fist.
“There were five Hydra guys on top of him, holding a needle to his neck, and they said if I moved they would inject him with this poison, but then Steve-”
“Gonna try to blame this on Cap now, Stark?” Clint said sharply, eyes burning. “Gonna try to make this his fault, like he did this to himself?”
“No, of course not, but-”
“The word 'but' negates everything you just said,” Bruce said quietly. “How could you do this? Why would you do it? I knew the two of you had problems before, but I thought you had sorted it out. I was wrong.”
“No, you don't understand, he looked-”
“Helpless? Afraid? Is that what you want to say? You want to tell us how you let him be taken down when you were supposed to be working with him and then just them at him? Did you enjoy having him look to you for help and then denying it, Stark? Is that what you get off on?”
“If you would just listen-”
“We WERE listening, Anthony!” Thor shouted, spitting his name like an insult. “We heard you say unto our captain 'not this time!' We heard you as you denied him the aid he needed of you! We saw as you left the scene post haste and appeared back as if you cared what had happened to Steven in your absence! You didn't care!” Thor was shouting, anger broiling brightly in his eyes. The team stood behind him, a united force against Tony, against what he had to say. They stared at him in anger, in resentment, in disappointment.
He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe they thought he would...that he would let Steve be poisoned if he could stop it. That they thought so little of him that they didn't even bother to check the facts, to find out what really happened, that they blamed him for this. His heart ached as he lowered his eyes to the floor, feeling something rip itself out of his chest. Tony took a step back, and then another, and before he knew it, he'd run out of the ER and was driving home, his mind a painful whirlwind of self-hatred and disbelief.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tony spends three days locked in the workshop, unable to work himself out of the painful haze he's lodged himself in. He tries to drink himself into a stupor, but that only causes him to relive the scene to try to find a way he could have saved both Steve and the civilians. Becoming obsessed with it, he maps it out, charts it and diagrams it but can't understand how he could've done better, can't handle the thought of letting a teammate slip carelessly through his fingers, so he figures that he just wasn't smart enough to find the way to do it.
The next step was trying to invent a universal antidote to every known poison that could be turned into a capsule and given to the team, but he was honestly no chemist a Bruce refused to talk to him, so that became a pipe dream. He found that every attempt to venture into a public part of the tower, like the living room or the kitchen, caused every member of the team in the room to vacate immediately, so he stopped going up there so he wouldn't have to inconvenience them all the time. JARVIS prattled on about inane things like the weather and the stock market, making sarcastic jokes because he knew Tony needed to hear a friendly voice. U and Butterfingers both became amazingly good with predicting when Tony would topple over from exhaustion or intoxication (the latter becoming less frequent, the former moreso) and would come to offer a blanket or aspirin depending on the situation, both of which Tony routinely refused.
DUM-E, having known Tony the longest, was used to times such as these, where Tony's self-loathing would consume him for periods of time and cause him to act irrational, and was the best at dealing with it. He'd been the reason Tony could wake up in the morning and invent new things after long sleepless nights of comparing himself to the legend of his father and not even seeing a close race, the reason Tony was able to function when he'd drunk himself so deep the numbers blurred in his mind. He was there after Afghanistan to make soothing beeps and whirs and wrapped his claw in Tony's hand when he woke panting from a nightmare after Pepper left him. DUM-E knew every inch of Tony Stark and he was still there for him every step of the way.
DUM-E offered him bottled water when he realized his tongue had dried to the roof of his mouth, covered him in a blanket he tried to refuse when the shivers would not abate, and sat next to him, like a guard and a friend when he slumped against the wall. The third straight night Tony was in lock down, he curled around the bot and tugged him close, sighing as DUM-E's arm wrapped around his back. “Thank you, DUM-E,” he whispered into the metal. “You're the best son a father could ask for.” And it had slipped out without him thinking about it, but he didn't try to take it back. DUM-E whirred happily and let out a series of loud beeps as he patted his back, and Tony smiled.
“Sir, you've created a monster. DUM-E is now bragging to all the other bots that he is the favored son in the family,” JARVIS said, tone mockingly serious. Tony let out a shocked laugh and gripped tighter onto his bot, his boy, his first boy. And he fell asleep for the first time in far too long.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In the middle of the fourth day, a knock came to the door of the workshop. Tony was busy with the soldering iron, but he didn't think it would be a member of the team, so it was probably Pepper. He shouted something resembling acceptance as he focused, but his concentration snapped when he heard the glass door shatter.
Thor was standing inside the empty threshold, having slammed the door so hard against the panel that it shattered inside the frame. The look of rage on his face was unlike anything Tony had ever seen, and the adjective 'thunderous' had never been so accurate. His eyes were dark and his hands were empty of the usual hammer, but they were clenched tightly into fists that shook at his sides.
“Thor?” Tony asked, voice smaller than usual. “Any news?”
“It has been four days, Anthony,” Thor snarled, stepping towards Tony slowly, menacingly. “It has been four days and my love has not awoken.”
“I'm sure he will. He survived 70 years in the ocean, I'm sure he'll be fine-” Which was apparently something Tony shouldn't have said, because all of a sudden Thor was right in his face and his hand had come up and slapped him so hard across the face that he fell off the stool he had been sitting on.
“HE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO!” Thor yelled, booted foot kicking Tony in the stomach and sending him sprawling across the floor. Tony couldn't breathe, couldn't think, because Thor, kind, caring, compassionate Thor had just hit and kicked him, was screaming and raging and the lights were flickering-
“THIS-” A stomp on Tony's right arm, fracturing his wrist and ulna at the least. “IS-” A step on his left hand, breaking his pinky immediately, possibly his ring and middle fingers as well. “ALL-” A kick to the ribs, he could feel them sitting wrong inside his chest. “YOUR-” A punch to the face, already his right eye was swelling. “DOING!” Slammed against the wall of the workshop, head bouncing off the concrete, vision skewed by a possible concussion.
A series of whirs and beeps interrupted the onslaught and Tony could make out DUM-E wielding his fire extinguisher. “DUM-E, no-” he tried to croak out, but Thor had whipped around and seen the little bot ready to defend his creator. Thor turned back to Tony, ignoring the burst of foam that hit his back, he growled into Tony's ear.
“Do you care for him as I care for Steven?” And Tony was a smart man. He could see where this was going, what the gleam in Thor's eye meant for DUM-E.
“Please, no, please-” Tony pleaded, eyes wide and desperate, nothing going through his mind but a litany of nononopleasenothimnopleaseno.
“Not this time,” Thor whispered.
Tony screamed as Thor turned, screamed out for DUM-E to go, to leave, as Thor reached for him. DUM-E fought valiantly against the god, claw reaching out for Tony as his beeps turned panicked and desperate. The thunder god wrapped both hands around the base and began to shred the metal apart, piece by shiny, well-loved piece. Thor pulled wires and ripped out screws, crushed metal sheets and electrocuted servers.
And amongst the screams of both Tony and DUM-E, one so very human and raw and one progressively deeper and slower as the life was torn out, Thor killed Tony's first child.
When it was done, when DUM-E was barely recognizable bits of metal on the workshop floor, when Tony had reverted to horrified, traumatized silence and grief, Thor stood and made his way out of the workshop. But before he left, he paused for a moment, stood silent, and said softly, intimately:
“It spent years as scrap metal. I'm sure it will be fine becoming it once more.”
Thor left Tony to scream and cry alone amongst the carnage.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Early in the morning on the sixth day, the doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D managed to get a hold of the team through Clint's cell phone. The others had remarked that it was odd that JARVIS had seemingly stopped responding to them, but Thor had lightly suggested that Tony was being childish and ordered him not to so the topic was quickly dropped. Thor had been acting...differently...but they thought maybe the lack of Steve's presence had been the cause and they weren't too keen on getting into it so they had let that go as well. Frustrated at the run-around they had to go through to get in contact with the team, the doctors let them know that Steve was awake and doing just fine, and that was all it took to get them all in the car on the way to see him.
When they arrived, Steve smiled at them and blushed brightly when Thor pulled him into a deep, searing kiss. The team laughed it off and took seats, chatting with Steve about how he was feeling, if he needed anything, just idle chatter. But Steve sat up a little further a few minutes in to the reunion when he noticed that Tony was missing.
“Where's Tony? Is he at a meeting or something?” He asked, voice a bit rough with disuse. Immediately the tone darkened in the room and tension was high in the air, everyone looking down.
“We're sorry about what he did, Steve. We couldn't get there in time,” Bruce said sadly, sneaking a look up at Steve's confused face.
“What do you mean, what he did?” Everyone looked up, looked around, pulses starting to get faster in slow, painful realization.
“He let you...he let them...” Clint started, but couldn't finish. Steve's eyes brightened in understanding, before promptly darkening in fear.
“Tony didn't just let them poison me. There was a building wobbling a couple hundred yards away, and there were civilians, a mother and a child, in danger of being crushed by it. I tried to signal him to go, to get them to safety, but he didn't want to. He told me, 'not this time.' But he couldn't see that the building was about to come down, and he didn't notice until it started collapsing, and he knew he had to save them so he went and...what...did you guys actually think-”
“Oh, Steve, it's so good to see you're okay!” Pepper said brightly, bursting into the room. She ran and hugged him tightly, laughing as she pulled back, but when she saw the look on his face, she knew something was wrong, something was terribly, terribly wrong. “Oh, my God, what happened?” Steve was nearly frozen as he looked around at his team, staring shamefully at the floor. Except for his lover, who was staring at his hands in complete and utter horror.
“They...they thought that Tony was...that he...” Steve tried, but his voice died.
“We thought that Tony had intentionally left Steve to be poisoned by Hydra and wouldn't listen when he tried to explain that it wasn't his fault, because we thought he was lying. We gave him the cold shoulder and ignored him, but he stayed in the workshop and we didn't really hear anything from him. The plan after Steve woke up was to bring it to Fury and ask to have Tony removed from the team,” Natasha said, voice serious and tense. Pepper straightened immediately, eyes going hard and cold. She opened her mouth to shame them and yell at them and maybe scream a little when Thor's chair skittered back across the floor as he stood up, hands held in front of him like they were smeared with blood.
“I was blinded. I had begun to think that my beloved Steven would never awaken, that he was lost to me forever. I felt as though Anthony was hiding, like a coward, so I searched him out in his smithy and I...I...” Thor's voice wavered, and Pepper glided over to him, a picture of fury and rage covered in terrifying calm.
“What did you do, Thor?” She asked, voice clear and hard. Thor looked at her as a tear slipped out of his eye and slid down his cheek.
“I...attacked him. I beat him brutally until he could barely speak. But then a small figure appeared, a figure of metal and rolling on wheels, and Anthony urged him away, told this figure to retreat with his device of spraying foam. And I looked at him, and he was looking at the figure as I know I sometimes gaze upon Steven, and a powerful rage consumed me.” Suddenly, the calm in Pepper snapped and she grabbed the front of Thor's shirt, yanking him down, her eyes a mess of panic and fear.
“Tell me you didn't hurt him. Tell me you didn't.” Thor took a deep breath and looked Pepper in the eyes.
“I destroyed the figure. I ripped it to shreds. I walked out as Tony was screaming in agony, and I felt vindicated. I am unfathomably regretful-”
A loud slap rang through the small room as Pepper's hand collided with the side of Thor's face. Tears were streaming down her face and a sob escaped her before Bruce gasped in realization and said quietly, almost to himself, “DUM-E.” Clint, Steve, and Natasha jerked collectively as they remembered Tony as he talked about the bot, pride and love radiating in his tone as he affectionately argued with him or threatened to donate him. Tony loved the little bot with all his heart, and they all knew it.
And Thor had killed him right in front of him.
“We have to go to Tony. Right now.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Tony! Oh, Tony,” Pepper said, horrified. The Avengers piled behind her, staring in shock at what was left of the workshop. All of the glass walls had been blown out, the holographic screens had been scratched and cracked. Tools were thrown everywhere, empty bottles of alcohol littered the place. But otherwise, the workshop was entirely empty. There were no signs of life; the coffee cups had been cleaned away, the files and notes and documents had been cleaned off the tables and out of cabinets. There were three bags by where the door used to stand, and at the far end of the workshop stood Tony.
The entire right side of his face was black and blue, and his arm was wrapped in a makeshift cast. Three of his fingers were bound and cuts and bruises littered his body. The long rip in the side of his shirt revealed that his chest was wrapped tightly, and the glow of the arc reactor was barely visible. He looked up at Pepper, and she noticed that with his good arm, he was clutching a small box to his chest. Tony limped slowly toward her, towards the team, and he held out the box. Hands trembling, Pepper took it gently from him, and under his silent watch, opened the lid.
Inside were hundreds of little bits of metal and wire, tiny fragments of circuit boards and sensors. At the top of the box was DUM-E's familiar claw, one prong open farther than the others and covered in blood. The dark splatters on the inside and the pieces were blood, too, and looking at Tony's hands and arms, she could see that it was from Tony frantically trying to put DUM-E back together, to make him whole again. Tony's eyes were empty and hollow, and he reached for the box once more. Pepper laid it gingerly in his hands, and Bruce stepped forward a bit.
“Tony, I wanted to say that I'm so, so sorry for-” Bruce stopped mid-sentence as Tony slowly looked up at him, face blank and clear. He seemed to look into Bruce's soul before moving over to Natasha, then Clint, Steve, Pepper. Pepper was crying silently, one hand still resting on the top of DUM-E's coffin, when Tony made eye contact with Thor.
“Are you happy?” He asked, voice flat and without inflection. Thor started, body shaking and eyes glistening.
“No, Anthony, I am not happy, had I known that you did not-”
“Do you mean to say, that if you had known I had not intended for Steve to be hurt, that you would not have murdered my child in front of me while I screamed and begged for you to stop?” Tony asked in the same voice, eyes locked onto Thor's unerringly. “That if you had known Steve would've been fine that you wouldn't have torn him apart without a care, ripped him to shreds with no remorse and left with no shame?” Tony stepped forward, closer to them, and tilted his head up. “It doesn't matter. None of it matters. I realized that. DUM-E was just like a child, because even if I put the pieces back together, even if I fixed him up and welded him together, it's still nothing but an empty carcass. DUM-E is gone, and you killed him!” Tony was heaving, shouting in their faces. “And you, all of you, my team. You actually thought I could've done it, could've let them kill Steve like he wasn't a part of the family I thought we were building. But here's the difference between me and you,” Tony snarled, hands curling so tightly around the box he could feel splinters digging into his palms. “I don't kill family.”
Thor jerked, head hanging down as he dug his nails into his palms so hard he drew blood. The team retracted once more, giving Tony his space as he grabbed one of the bags and threw it on a dolly. Pepper stepped forward and grabbed Tony's hand, her other hand going to cup his cheek. She was still crying, eyes burning at the pain in her chest knowing DUM-E was gone and imagining the pain Tony must've been going through. She kissed him lightly on the forehead and when she locked eyes with him, the brown, murky depths seemed to soften for her a bit. He squeezed her hand and moved to stack another bag.
“Everything else is packed. All of the bots are safely stowed on the moving truck, away from murderous intent, and JARVIS' mainframe was never at the Tower, so he simply uninstalled himself. I'll be moving back to Malibu, severing ties with S.H.I.E.L.D, and dropping the Avengers entirely. No more of my funding, my weapons, my buildings, or my services will be afforded to you. S.H.I.E.L.D will simply have to find other sponsors for the 63% of the program I funded. Stark Industries will no longer be affiliated with the Avengers in any form. You will need new PR managers, lawyers, attorneys, and lackeys. SI will be moving out of this building, as I am donating it to you as a last act of entirely undeserved goodwill. Do not expect to rely on Iron Man for support in missions. I'm no longer an Avenger, and I won't be helping you anymore.” Having loaded all the bags onto the dolly and dragged it to the elevator, he stopped suddenly and turned as he remembered something. Walking up to Thor, he pulled a chain from his pocket and laid it gently around his neck like a necklace. From the end hung a single, mangled screw, warped and blackened. Thor thought he felt it sear against his chest where it rested. Tony leaned up, right next to Thor's ear, and Thor squeezed his eyes shut tightly.
“A reminder of the child you killed. May you wear it and remember how I loved him, much like you love Steven, Almighty Thor.”
Tony left Thor to cry in anguish, hitting his knees as he screamed in pain.