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First chapter of the action/adventure team fic I've been trying to work on -_-; We'll see how that worked out. *smiles faintly*
Title: Door Knockers
Chapter title: Part I - Capture
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
characters/Pairings: Ensemble, Team plus Fury, Pepper, Rhodey, Maria and JARVIS, and minus Thor. Teamfic
Summary: Someone decides to do an end-run around Fury, and kidnap Tony and Natasha in order to lure Steve and Bruce out into the open. That ... turns out to be a bad idea on more or less every conceivable level
Wordcount: 4454
Warnings/Notes: Action/adventure, kidnapping, escape, rescue, violence
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Door Knockers
Chapter title: Part I - Capture
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
characters/Pairings: Ensemble, Team plus Fury, Pepper, Rhodey, Maria and JARVIS, and minus Thor. Teamfic
Summary: Someone decides to do an end-run around Fury, and kidnap Tony and Natasha in order to lure Steve and Bruce out into the open. That ... turns out to be a bad idea on more or less every conceivable level
Wordcount: 4454
Warnings/Notes: Action/adventure, kidnapping, escape, rescue, violence
Disclaimer: Not mine
Door Knockers, Part I - Capture
The hotel was on fire. That was not how this evening had been supposed to go.
Tony crouched down behind the bar, ignoring the thundering of a crowd of functionaries in full retreat in favour of the far-too-close sounds of gunfire, and the weight of Natasha's body as he dragged her back into cover. The litany of muttered invective as she cursed her way up one language and down another was bizarrely comforting, under the circumstances.
"Just a routine surveillance, you said," he muttered, a little vicious himself as he put pressure on her upper arm. "Just act the idiot businessman, Stark, and get Romanov in and around, you said. No need to bring the armour, you said. Get yourself shot up in a burning building, funny enough, none of you said."
She glared up at him, sliding the magazine back into her gun and chambering a round with surprising delicacy, considering she looked like she could eat glass. "It came under 'don't screw up or you'll get shot', Stark," she growled.
Tony snorted. "Yeah, right. I thought that meant you'd shoot me."
Natasha opened her mouth, probably to say something comfortingly acerbic, when her expression suddenly flashed to raw alarm at something behind him, and Tony knew even before he felt the ring of cold metal pressed against the back of his neck that this was just not going to be his day.
"Oh, I'm sure the lady would be happy enough to let us take care of that part, Mr Stark."
***
Nick was not having a good day. Which was not as unusual as he'd like it to be, but there was your run of the mill bad day, and then there was the day when two of your best people were swiped from under your nose on a fucking milk-run mission because, apparently, their entire back-up cohort had mysteriously packed up and fucked off two hours in, leaving them stranded defenseless in fucking India.
"Find out who the fuck sent them that order," he snapped, and carefully didn't wince at the barely visible flare of justified annoyance on Maria's face. "No-one on that detail sees the outside of a debriefing room until we've found the damn breach!"
It wasn't her fault, he was damn sure of that, but it was someone's, because SHIELD agents didn't just up and leave in the middle of a mission, leaving two of their own stranded behind them, unless someone high up gave them a damn compelling reason to.
He was trying not to think, not directly, about who he knew that had a history of that. Not just yet, not until ...
"Director Fury!"
Nick did wince, then. Just faintly, as he turned to the woman striding out of the access hall towards him, her red hair windswept and her well-cut business suit rumpled. The reason for which disarray was stalking along beside her, presumably having taken his armour off in the Iron Man dock in lieu of Stark.
"Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes," he sighed, resisting the urge to scratch at his eyepatch. Best fucking day ever, oh yes. "You didn't bring Banner, too?"
Rhodes smiled at him for that one, a beautifully ironic little baring of teeth, and Nick almost blinked, wondering absently if that was a native feature or the result of years spent in the company of Tony Stark. "He's still on deck," Rhodes said, and yes, that was definitely patented Stark malice, there. "The flight was a little turbulent. He's composing himself."
... Wonderful. "We'd have sent a transport down, if you'd called," was all he said, though. Mildly, to boot.
"Where's Tony?" Potts cut in, with no preamble whatsoever. "You were supposed to be minding him!"
The edge of the briefing table creaked warningly under Nick's hand, and he almost gave himself away by looking down. Almost. Instead, he dropped his hands back to his sides, out of view behind the table, and settled for knotting them into fists.
"Agent Romanov is still with him," he said, and wasn't sure even himself if it was meant as a reassurance, or as a reminder that Stark wasn't the only fucking one in trouble. Even if they did have a point, even if SHIELD had dropped the ball and Stark had paid for it, Stark hadn't paid alone.
Potts quailed a little, there. She backed off, and Nick belatedly remembered that Natasha and this woman had quite liked each other. Not as much as Phil, but still.
Rhodes, on the other hand ...
"Are we supposed to be thankful?" the Colonel demanded, hard and clipped, and with fear lurking under the anger in his tone. And Nick understood that, Nick knew exactly what memories were causing that, but that didn't mean he was in the fucking mood for this shit. "You sent him on a mission with no training, no armour, and apparently no back-up, and we're supposed to be grateful you thought to send one competent agent with him?"
Oh, fuck this. Out of the corner of his good eye, Nick caught Maria starting to step forward, impassive face starting to twist in anger, and he'd just started to wonder which of them would get to Rhodes first when a commotion off to one side interrupted the budding confrontation.
Banner, he saw, looking pleasantly non-green as he burst into the room. Which would have been a lot more comforting if he hadn't had two other figures striding angrily alongside him.
"Who sold Natasha?" Barton opened, clipped and furious, at exactly the same moment Rogers snarled: "What happened to our people?"
Yeah, Nick decided. This was definitely not going to be his run-of-the-mill style of bad day.
Thank fuck Thor was still in Asgard, or he might actually have to be worried.
***
Their captors - and Natasha had worryingly little idea who those captors might be - had thrown them, handcuffed and with bound legs, into a concrete cell once they hit their destination, hustling them through in a blur of industrial doors and concrete corridors before dumping them uncermoniously behind a locked door.
Where, exactly, this industrial complex was was another question, but given the change in terrain and the time they'd spent wedged into the back of a covered ex-military truck (with someone all but sitting on her the entire way), she thought they'd moved north-east from Bangalore and into the hills of the Malenadu region. Possibly to what had once been a coffee farm, to judge from the equipment outside. And the smell.
Lovely. Finding her way out through heavily forested terrain was not her favourite part of this job. She was more an urban operative, for preference.
"You know," Stark mused absently from the other side of the cell, while she started working on getting her arms in front of her. "I'm beginning to think I should just stop going abroad. I mean, a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, a global IT conference in Bangalore ... and both times there ends up being fire and explosions and, oh yeah, kidnappings. You can see why I'm starting to get concerned?"
She looked over at him, frowning faintly. He'd wedged himself into one corner of the cell in order to lever himself into a sitting position, his hands fretting behind his back. His expression was mild annoyance, nothing more, but there'd been a tinge of hysteria in his voice, and he was hunching protectively over his chest.
Memories, she thought. Yes. Some lurking panic.
She bit her lip, and carefully blanked her own expression. From what she'd seen of the man, distraction would work better than sympathy, when it came to keeping him calm.
"There was also the madman on the tracks at Monaco," she noted mildly, finally pulling her legs through the loop of her arms and bringing the handcuffs up in range. "Though you did have the armour that time."
He blinked at her, for a second looking like he was working up to be angry, and then ... then a smile flickered across his features, wry and self-amused, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement of her tactics. "Next time," he agreed, "I'm taking the armour no matter what SHIELD says."
She grunted in agreement, twisting one wrist to give access to the other, slipping one of her wire-slips into the lock. "It would have come in handy," she said, holding the darker suspicions to herself. The sudden lack of back-up, the specificity of the order. Diplomatic reasons, yes, and there shouldn't have been a need for the armour, but now ... Natasha knew a set-up when she fell into one.
And so, apparently, did Tony. "Yeah, it would have," he said, softly. "Funny, that, huh? Under the circumstances?"
She went still, setting the handcuffs carefully onto the floor with a soft click. When she looked up, met his eyes, there was no blame there, no mistrust, but there was also not a shadow of a doubt that Tony Stark knew he'd been sold. And, she supposed, having read Phil's report on Stane, perhaps she should not have been surprised. The man had reason for paranoia, for the knowing look in his eyes. By this stage, he had reason.
And for the chill in her gut at that expression, more than for the minor wound on her arm or the bruises on her wrists ... for that, Natasha was going to see someone eviscerated.
"Help will come," she told him, holding his gaze firmly. "Someone is playing games, yes, but not Fury. Or the team. So help will come."
And there, oh, there, the fear swarmed up. The terror in his eyes that he savagely shoved back, his jaw setting viciously in its wake. Which made the attempted smile somewhat ... not. "Yeah," Tony murmured, with that fixed not-really-a-smile. "Sure. Just a matter of staying alive and in one piece until they do, huh?"
And Natasha understood that one, too, and she agreed with it, and damned if she was sitting around getting tortured until the cavalry arrived either.
"No," she said, pulling her feet a little roughly out of the ropes, getting to her knees and glaring at him. "Just a matter of getting free, gathering information, and running interference until they arrive with something useful. You agree?"
Tony blinked at her, startled, and then ... then he laughed, real and black and cheerful, and swung his liberated hands out from behind his back, the opened handcuff hanging loosely off one wrist.
"Now that's a plan I can get behind," he grinned, and flashed a sly look as she raised an eyebrow at the metal. "What? Not everyone's as flexible as you, you know. I can do locks blind, but it takes me a minute, alright?"
She tilted her head, looking from the metal circlets to his grin, to the fear and determination in his eyes, and slowly, surely, she felt herself smiling. The kind of smile that did not bode well for their captors, not at all.
"We can test your flexibility later," she said, with the suggestion of a leer just to keep his spirits up. "More importantly ... how are you at doors?"
***
In hindsight, Pepper wasn't sure bringing Rhodey had been altogether wise. Or Bruce, for that matter. Combined with Steve and Clint and Agent Hill, they were being ... very loud, and not really all that helpful. Not that she could really have left them behind. Not Rhodey, especially, not after ... Well. Not after Afghanistan. But this was not actually helping Tony, at this point.
The person who was being helpful, albeit very, very quietly and invisibly, was JARVIS. Because JARVIS still had an in onto the SHIELD systems, and JARVIS had been tracking the agents assigned to be Tony's back-up detail via their SHIELD satellite link-up, and JARVIS ...
JARVIS had noticed some small discrepancies, and JARVIS had subsequently launched a full-scale hack of the SHIELD system, and JARVIS, with a discreet little text message to her phone, had taken the opportunity to put some pertinent information in her hands.
And as she looked up from it, as she felt her face grow pale and her hands start to tremble, she found Nick Fury watching her, and saw his one eye squeeze shut in pained realisation at the expression on her face.
He'd suspected. He'd ... He'd ...
"Director Fury," she said, and she wasn't sure what had been in her voice, what they'd heard, but for whatever reason, everyone in the Helicarrier conference room fell silent around her. "When exactly were you planning to tell us that SHIELD was involved in their disappearance?"
She was sure hers wasn't the only betrayed expression circling the table, but she kept her eyes fixed on Fury's face. She wanted to see the truth there.
Fury sighed heavily, leaning forward onto the table. "When we had some idea where the leak was," he answered, tiredly. And then, as anger crept back in, and some betrayal of his own, he shook his head. "No. When I had some fucking proof that we were being screwed over, and it was by the people I fucking thought it was." He glared up at them, at all five of them, while Agent Hill silently ghosted to his side. "At least then I might've had a hope of pointing you lot in the right fucking direction."
Pepper carefully kept her expression still. Years of board meetings with Tony trained someone to do that very well. And it didn't work too badly as an interrogation technique either, she'd discovered.
Fury, though, just narrowed his eyes at her. "While we're on the subject, though, you want to tell me how you found out, Miss Potts?" he asked, the kind of dangerously mild that rival company reps got just before they got to the thinly-veiled threat portion of the meeting.
Pepper smiled thinly. "How do people attached to Tony usually find things out?" she asked lightly, and with no intention whatsoever to back down. "He hacked you once. Did you think he couldn't again? Or, for that matter, that he'd have to again?"
Once JARVIS was in, it was very, very difficult to get him out again. Particularly if you had no idea what he was, and thus the level of complexity he operated at, and the really questionable sense of humour he'd inherited from Tony that meant he did things reasons that were less logical or traceable that she suspected most people expected.
Tony was a bad influence after, say, the first ten minutes of exposure. Ask anyone.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected Fury's response to that to be, but it probably hadn't been a slowly spreading smile. The really not friendly kind, that boded ill for someone. "I don't suppose," he said, slowly, "that 'he' found anything specific in this latest hack? Such as, for example, a point of origin?"
Pepper narrowed her eyes, but Clint and Agent Hill were already catching on, already turning back towards Fury.
"You want to backtrack the orders using an outside hack?" Clint asked, slightly incredulously. "You want to deploy Stark against whoever you think this is?"
Looking at the way Fury's smile slipped wider, and the whole library of very nasty things suggested by it, Pepper suspected that 'think' wasn't the word, there. But that, interesting as it was, wasn't the point.
"Yes," she said, standing carefully herself, leaning forward on the table to match Fury. "You want help with that, we can definitely work something out. However ..." She swallowed, and let her jaw firm. "However, we have a more pressing problem, first. Such as getting Tony and Natasha back?"
"I'm not waiting three months, this time," Rhodey interrupted, quietly, and she itched to reach out to him, to touch his shoulder. "Hell, I'm not waiting an hour, as soon as someone coughs up a damn location, or enough of one to start looking."
"Yeah," Clint said softly, beside him. Looking directly at Fury. "I know that look, sir. You already know who did this. Even," he held up a hand, "even if you can't prove it yet, or move openly. You know. Don't you?"
Fury's jaw clenched, for a second. Just a second, of indecision. Then he nodded.
"Yeah," he said, slowly and heavily. "But if I'm right, then I'm not sure you should be the ones going. No!" he barked, as four people surged up as one. "Sit the fuck down for a second, all of you!" He shook his head as they subsided, growling. "If this is who I think it is, then there's a very strong likelihood that this whole effort is to get you lot out in the open. If it's them, then I'd bet money this clusterfuck is a trap, and I'd bet ordnance that it's a trap aimed at you two -" he pointed to Bruce and Steve in turn "- in particular."
Steve looked vaguely alarmed, and vaguely guilty. Bruce never even twitched. He was used to that sort of thing, Pepper remembered. He was used to this kind of betrayal.
"How do you know?" she asked, carefully. Keeping her feet, drawing Fury's attention back to her, and away from the two men. "Why them? And why Tony and Natasha?"
Fury smiled grimly. "Rogers and Banner, because there are a bunch of people who really, really want that serum, whichever one they can get hold of, and however they can get hold of it. Romanov and Stark ... because I might have 'neglected' to keep track of you lot after Manhattan, much to the disappointment of my superiors. Meaning that whoever wanted you would have to go through the most accessible members of the team. Natasha is a SHIELD agent, easy enough to get on a mission, and Stark ..."
"Tony's the most public figure in the world," Pepper whispered, catching on. "If you want to get the rest of the team, without having to go through official channels or Nick Fury ..."
"Then you kidnap the most accessible members, and wait for the rest to crawl out of the woodwork," Fury agreed grimly. "And after the fucking nuke, I'm really not putting this shit past them."
Nuke ... Pepper blinked rapidly, catching a glimpse, there, of the size of the competition, the size of the enemy. She considered, briefly, being nervous. Being afraid.
But these people had taken Tony, betrayed him, used him against people he cared about. They'd played Obie all over again, and right now she didn't care if they were actually the secret leaders of the whole damn world. She'd blown Obie up, and she'd taken over one of the largest companies in the United States, and she'd held it through everything Tony Stark could throw at it. And, she thought, she had JARVIS, and that nasty look in Fury's eye.
No. Whoever they were, however deep they went. She was not going to let them stop her getting Tony back, and she was not going to let them get away with having taken him in the first place.
And on the heels of that thought ...
"We're still going." Steve stood, glaring right back at Fury when the man turned to look at him. "Trap or no trap. If they took our people to get to us, then I say we give them what they want." A hard, grim smile, something that looked strangely right on his face. "I was always told to be careful what I wished for. I think we should show these people why that is."
Pepper blinked at him, somewhat surprised, but Clint was starting to smile, an evil little sliver of a grin, and Rhodey stood up beside her, his grin no less evil, if far less hidden.
"Hell yes," Rhodey said, quietly. "I'm not waiting for someone to shove some new piece of metal in Tony's chest." He shook his head. "And if they took Tony, they might be expecting the rest of you, but they probably won't be expecting an armour to show up." He lifted his lip, less a smile than a baring of teeth. "I'd like to show them why that would be a big mistake."
Fury stared at them, long and slow, and Pepper might have been wrong, but she thought there might have been a glint of approval in that solitary eye. "You people really don't get the concept of a trap, do you?" he said, but there was a lot less frustration in it than there should have been.
Clint grinned at him. "When have you ever known me to avoid falling into the hotspots, sir?" he asked, lightly. "Me, or Natasha." And there was a twitch, there, a flinch of worry, but the grin didn't falter.
"We're going, sir," Steve said, very quietly, and there was something there that Pepper didn't quite understand, something she hadn't expected, but there was determination and no small amount of anger in his eyes, and something she thought Fury, at least, recognised. "I've never left my people in enemy hands before, and I sure as hell ain't starting now!"
Then he flinched, a little, and looked back at Bruce. The only one of them still seated, meeting Steve's eyes with a blank, mildly interested facade that was creaking faintly around the edges.
"Though, when I say we ..." Steve started, almost hesitantly. "I know you've ... probably got a lot more to lose than I have ..."
"Yes," Bruce said, serenely. "Probably. Your, ah, your reputation should provide some protection. I'm afraid mine won't hold up so well." He smiled crookedly. "If they're loaded for Hulk, this will probably go ... very badly."
Steve winced, faintly, opened his mouth to ... apologise, offer a way out, she wasn't sure, but Bruce got there first. Bruce cut him off, with gentle finality.
"That's irrelevant, though," Bruce told them, and it was then that she noticed the worrying amount of green in his eyes, and the way his loosely clasped hands had tightened, slowly, in the past few minutes. "Tony is our friend. If they took him and Natasha because they wanted the Other Guy ... then the Other Guy is more than happy to oblige them." He shook his head, smiled gently. "The only question is, do you guys want to risk being there alongside him?"
And, Pepper thought, it was entirely possible that she was going to have nightmares about that smile, the perfect, amiable control of it, when his eyes above it were so icily, clearly green.
Steve stared at him for a long second. Weighing him, maybe, judging the risks and the rights in his head. Glancing around at the other two, at Rhodey and Clint. Seeing nothing but grim determination, and not an inch of give. Then, finally ...
"You haven't failed us yet," he said, almost gently, and Pepper could have sworn she saw Bruce flinch in shock.
"This is going to be the least stealthy infiltration mission SHIELD has ever launched," Agent Hill noted wryly, looking across at Fury. "I take it I should start talking to the Indian government now, sir?"
Fury sighed, reaching up to rub at his temples. "Yeah. See if you can highlight need for an international response to the attack on an international conference on their soil. Not to mention the kidnap of an American businessman." He glanced over at her. "Feel free to point them at Stark Industries if things get dicey." A slow grin. "I'm sure Miss Potts will be happy to help you threaten them into submission."
Pepper smiled thinly. "Oh, I'm sure," she agreed. "And a few more things besides." She tapped the phone and her link to JARVIS lightly on the table, and smiled serenely into the appraising look in Fury's eyes.
Rhodey and Steve and the team would get Tony back for her, get Natasha back for her. But Fury and SHIELD and Agent Hill ... they were going to help her hunt down whoever had ordered him taken. And they were going to help her show them why it had been a very, very bad idea. Whether they particularly wanted to or not.
But she thought, watching their expressions, that their wanting to wasn't really going to be a problem.
"Hmm," Bruce mused, quietly. Smiling faintly as she turned to him, that oh-so-worrying smile. This time, though, she felt herself meet it. Felt herself echo it. "I think, perhaps, that India are not the only ones who have to worry, yes?"
"No," she agreed, smiling softly. "Probably not."
***
The door hadn't proved that much of a problem, really. Not least because whoever designed the thing had it open inwards, thus leaving the hinges in full fucking view on their side of the fucking thing. Massive oversight, guys, Tony thought. Not that he was complaining, as such, stupid enemies were the best, but seriously? What the hell? Was this meant to be a quick job, or what?
Of course, the major problem with escaping a base wasn't so much the door to one cell, but the complement of guys spread out across the base on the other side of it, who would be attracted by loud noises such as, just for example, a door falling forward off its hinges because the fucking thing was too damned heavy for him to catch.
He straightened up from his flinching curl away from the noise, and glanced sheepishly at Natasha, who was standing beside him and pursing her lips at the door now wedged diagonally across the corridor.
"Okay, so," he offered. "Not my best work?"
She glanced up at him, and Tony blinked a little bit at the rich curl of amusement riding under the adrenalin and professionalism of her features. "No," she said, with a tiny smile. "But I suppose it will do for now."
And, since something had started blaring down one end of the corridor, he supposed it would have to.
"Shall we?" he asked, offering her his arm as he clambered over first, grinning at the darting arc of her eyebrow in response.
"Just run, Stark," she growled at him, but he noted that she did actually take his arm. If mostly so that she could use it to drag him forcibly down the corridor in the opposite direction to the commotion. Tony followed her, humming lightly as he matched her pace.
He was, so far, in one piece. No gaping wounds stoppered up with medical tape and car batteries, no shrapnel embedded in his chest. Well, no new shrapnel, anyway. He was in one piece, accompanied by one of the most deadly and competent people he'd ever met, and he was out of his cell not two hours after having been shoved unceremoniously into it.
Already, he thought, this kidnapping was going a hell of a lot better than his last one.
TBC
The hotel was on fire. That was not how this evening had been supposed to go.
Tony crouched down behind the bar, ignoring the thundering of a crowd of functionaries in full retreat in favour of the far-too-close sounds of gunfire, and the weight of Natasha's body as he dragged her back into cover. The litany of muttered invective as she cursed her way up one language and down another was bizarrely comforting, under the circumstances.
"Just a routine surveillance, you said," he muttered, a little vicious himself as he put pressure on her upper arm. "Just act the idiot businessman, Stark, and get Romanov in and around, you said. No need to bring the armour, you said. Get yourself shot up in a burning building, funny enough, none of you said."
She glared up at him, sliding the magazine back into her gun and chambering a round with surprising delicacy, considering she looked like she could eat glass. "It came under 'don't screw up or you'll get shot', Stark," she growled.
Tony snorted. "Yeah, right. I thought that meant you'd shoot me."
Natasha opened her mouth, probably to say something comfortingly acerbic, when her expression suddenly flashed to raw alarm at something behind him, and Tony knew even before he felt the ring of cold metal pressed against the back of his neck that this was just not going to be his day.
"Oh, I'm sure the lady would be happy enough to let us take care of that part, Mr Stark."
***
Nick was not having a good day. Which was not as unusual as he'd like it to be, but there was your run of the mill bad day, and then there was the day when two of your best people were swiped from under your nose on a fucking milk-run mission because, apparently, their entire back-up cohort had mysteriously packed up and fucked off two hours in, leaving them stranded defenseless in fucking India.
"Find out who the fuck sent them that order," he snapped, and carefully didn't wince at the barely visible flare of justified annoyance on Maria's face. "No-one on that detail sees the outside of a debriefing room until we've found the damn breach!"
It wasn't her fault, he was damn sure of that, but it was someone's, because SHIELD agents didn't just up and leave in the middle of a mission, leaving two of their own stranded behind them, unless someone high up gave them a damn compelling reason to.
He was trying not to think, not directly, about who he knew that had a history of that. Not just yet, not until ...
"Director Fury!"
Nick did wince, then. Just faintly, as he turned to the woman striding out of the access hall towards him, her red hair windswept and her well-cut business suit rumpled. The reason for which disarray was stalking along beside her, presumably having taken his armour off in the Iron Man dock in lieu of Stark.
"Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes," he sighed, resisting the urge to scratch at his eyepatch. Best fucking day ever, oh yes. "You didn't bring Banner, too?"
Rhodes smiled at him for that one, a beautifully ironic little baring of teeth, and Nick almost blinked, wondering absently if that was a native feature or the result of years spent in the company of Tony Stark. "He's still on deck," Rhodes said, and yes, that was definitely patented Stark malice, there. "The flight was a little turbulent. He's composing himself."
... Wonderful. "We'd have sent a transport down, if you'd called," was all he said, though. Mildly, to boot.
"Where's Tony?" Potts cut in, with no preamble whatsoever. "You were supposed to be minding him!"
The edge of the briefing table creaked warningly under Nick's hand, and he almost gave himself away by looking down. Almost. Instead, he dropped his hands back to his sides, out of view behind the table, and settled for knotting them into fists.
"Agent Romanov is still with him," he said, and wasn't sure even himself if it was meant as a reassurance, or as a reminder that Stark wasn't the only fucking one in trouble. Even if they did have a point, even if SHIELD had dropped the ball and Stark had paid for it, Stark hadn't paid alone.
Potts quailed a little, there. She backed off, and Nick belatedly remembered that Natasha and this woman had quite liked each other. Not as much as Phil, but still.
Rhodes, on the other hand ...
"Are we supposed to be thankful?" the Colonel demanded, hard and clipped, and with fear lurking under the anger in his tone. And Nick understood that, Nick knew exactly what memories were causing that, but that didn't mean he was in the fucking mood for this shit. "You sent him on a mission with no training, no armour, and apparently no back-up, and we're supposed to be grateful you thought to send one competent agent with him?"
Oh, fuck this. Out of the corner of his good eye, Nick caught Maria starting to step forward, impassive face starting to twist in anger, and he'd just started to wonder which of them would get to Rhodes first when a commotion off to one side interrupted the budding confrontation.
Banner, he saw, looking pleasantly non-green as he burst into the room. Which would have been a lot more comforting if he hadn't had two other figures striding angrily alongside him.
"Who sold Natasha?" Barton opened, clipped and furious, at exactly the same moment Rogers snarled: "What happened to our people?"
Yeah, Nick decided. This was definitely not going to be his run-of-the-mill style of bad day.
Thank fuck Thor was still in Asgard, or he might actually have to be worried.
***
Their captors - and Natasha had worryingly little idea who those captors might be - had thrown them, handcuffed and with bound legs, into a concrete cell once they hit their destination, hustling them through in a blur of industrial doors and concrete corridors before dumping them uncermoniously behind a locked door.
Where, exactly, this industrial complex was was another question, but given the change in terrain and the time they'd spent wedged into the back of a covered ex-military truck (with someone all but sitting on her the entire way), she thought they'd moved north-east from Bangalore and into the hills of the Malenadu region. Possibly to what had once been a coffee farm, to judge from the equipment outside. And the smell.
Lovely. Finding her way out through heavily forested terrain was not her favourite part of this job. She was more an urban operative, for preference.
"You know," Stark mused absently from the other side of the cell, while she started working on getting her arms in front of her. "I'm beginning to think I should just stop going abroad. I mean, a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, a global IT conference in Bangalore ... and both times there ends up being fire and explosions and, oh yeah, kidnappings. You can see why I'm starting to get concerned?"
She looked over at him, frowning faintly. He'd wedged himself into one corner of the cell in order to lever himself into a sitting position, his hands fretting behind his back. His expression was mild annoyance, nothing more, but there'd been a tinge of hysteria in his voice, and he was hunching protectively over his chest.
Memories, she thought. Yes. Some lurking panic.
She bit her lip, and carefully blanked her own expression. From what she'd seen of the man, distraction would work better than sympathy, when it came to keeping him calm.
"There was also the madman on the tracks at Monaco," she noted mildly, finally pulling her legs through the loop of her arms and bringing the handcuffs up in range. "Though you did have the armour that time."
He blinked at her, for a second looking like he was working up to be angry, and then ... then a smile flickered across his features, wry and self-amused, and he inclined his head in acknowledgement of her tactics. "Next time," he agreed, "I'm taking the armour no matter what SHIELD says."
She grunted in agreement, twisting one wrist to give access to the other, slipping one of her wire-slips into the lock. "It would have come in handy," she said, holding the darker suspicions to herself. The sudden lack of back-up, the specificity of the order. Diplomatic reasons, yes, and there shouldn't have been a need for the armour, but now ... Natasha knew a set-up when she fell into one.
And so, apparently, did Tony. "Yeah, it would have," he said, softly. "Funny, that, huh? Under the circumstances?"
She went still, setting the handcuffs carefully onto the floor with a soft click. When she looked up, met his eyes, there was no blame there, no mistrust, but there was also not a shadow of a doubt that Tony Stark knew he'd been sold. And, she supposed, having read Phil's report on Stane, perhaps she should not have been surprised. The man had reason for paranoia, for the knowing look in his eyes. By this stage, he had reason.
And for the chill in her gut at that expression, more than for the minor wound on her arm or the bruises on her wrists ... for that, Natasha was going to see someone eviscerated.
"Help will come," she told him, holding his gaze firmly. "Someone is playing games, yes, but not Fury. Or the team. So help will come."
And there, oh, there, the fear swarmed up. The terror in his eyes that he savagely shoved back, his jaw setting viciously in its wake. Which made the attempted smile somewhat ... not. "Yeah," Tony murmured, with that fixed not-really-a-smile. "Sure. Just a matter of staying alive and in one piece until they do, huh?"
And Natasha understood that one, too, and she agreed with it, and damned if she was sitting around getting tortured until the cavalry arrived either.
"No," she said, pulling her feet a little roughly out of the ropes, getting to her knees and glaring at him. "Just a matter of getting free, gathering information, and running interference until they arrive with something useful. You agree?"
Tony blinked at her, startled, and then ... then he laughed, real and black and cheerful, and swung his liberated hands out from behind his back, the opened handcuff hanging loosely off one wrist.
"Now that's a plan I can get behind," he grinned, and flashed a sly look as she raised an eyebrow at the metal. "What? Not everyone's as flexible as you, you know. I can do locks blind, but it takes me a minute, alright?"
She tilted her head, looking from the metal circlets to his grin, to the fear and determination in his eyes, and slowly, surely, she felt herself smiling. The kind of smile that did not bode well for their captors, not at all.
"We can test your flexibility later," she said, with the suggestion of a leer just to keep his spirits up. "More importantly ... how are you at doors?"
***
In hindsight, Pepper wasn't sure bringing Rhodey had been altogether wise. Or Bruce, for that matter. Combined with Steve and Clint and Agent Hill, they were being ... very loud, and not really all that helpful. Not that she could really have left them behind. Not Rhodey, especially, not after ... Well. Not after Afghanistan. But this was not actually helping Tony, at this point.
The person who was being helpful, albeit very, very quietly and invisibly, was JARVIS. Because JARVIS still had an in onto the SHIELD systems, and JARVIS had been tracking the agents assigned to be Tony's back-up detail via their SHIELD satellite link-up, and JARVIS ...
JARVIS had noticed some small discrepancies, and JARVIS had subsequently launched a full-scale hack of the SHIELD system, and JARVIS, with a discreet little text message to her phone, had taken the opportunity to put some pertinent information in her hands.
And as she looked up from it, as she felt her face grow pale and her hands start to tremble, she found Nick Fury watching her, and saw his one eye squeeze shut in pained realisation at the expression on her face.
He'd suspected. He'd ... He'd ...
"Director Fury," she said, and she wasn't sure what had been in her voice, what they'd heard, but for whatever reason, everyone in the Helicarrier conference room fell silent around her. "When exactly were you planning to tell us that SHIELD was involved in their disappearance?"
She was sure hers wasn't the only betrayed expression circling the table, but she kept her eyes fixed on Fury's face. She wanted to see the truth there.
Fury sighed heavily, leaning forward onto the table. "When we had some idea where the leak was," he answered, tiredly. And then, as anger crept back in, and some betrayal of his own, he shook his head. "No. When I had some fucking proof that we were being screwed over, and it was by the people I fucking thought it was." He glared up at them, at all five of them, while Agent Hill silently ghosted to his side. "At least then I might've had a hope of pointing you lot in the right fucking direction."
Pepper carefully kept her expression still. Years of board meetings with Tony trained someone to do that very well. And it didn't work too badly as an interrogation technique either, she'd discovered.
Fury, though, just narrowed his eyes at her. "While we're on the subject, though, you want to tell me how you found out, Miss Potts?" he asked, the kind of dangerously mild that rival company reps got just before they got to the thinly-veiled threat portion of the meeting.
Pepper smiled thinly. "How do people attached to Tony usually find things out?" she asked lightly, and with no intention whatsoever to back down. "He hacked you once. Did you think he couldn't again? Or, for that matter, that he'd have to again?"
Once JARVIS was in, it was very, very difficult to get him out again. Particularly if you had no idea what he was, and thus the level of complexity he operated at, and the really questionable sense of humour he'd inherited from Tony that meant he did things reasons that were less logical or traceable that she suspected most people expected.
Tony was a bad influence after, say, the first ten minutes of exposure. Ask anyone.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected Fury's response to that to be, but it probably hadn't been a slowly spreading smile. The really not friendly kind, that boded ill for someone. "I don't suppose," he said, slowly, "that 'he' found anything specific in this latest hack? Such as, for example, a point of origin?"
Pepper narrowed her eyes, but Clint and Agent Hill were already catching on, already turning back towards Fury.
"You want to backtrack the orders using an outside hack?" Clint asked, slightly incredulously. "You want to deploy Stark against whoever you think this is?"
Looking at the way Fury's smile slipped wider, and the whole library of very nasty things suggested by it, Pepper suspected that 'think' wasn't the word, there. But that, interesting as it was, wasn't the point.
"Yes," she said, standing carefully herself, leaning forward on the table to match Fury. "You want help with that, we can definitely work something out. However ..." She swallowed, and let her jaw firm. "However, we have a more pressing problem, first. Such as getting Tony and Natasha back?"
"I'm not waiting three months, this time," Rhodey interrupted, quietly, and she itched to reach out to him, to touch his shoulder. "Hell, I'm not waiting an hour, as soon as someone coughs up a damn location, or enough of one to start looking."
"Yeah," Clint said softly, beside him. Looking directly at Fury. "I know that look, sir. You already know who did this. Even," he held up a hand, "even if you can't prove it yet, or move openly. You know. Don't you?"
Fury's jaw clenched, for a second. Just a second, of indecision. Then he nodded.
"Yeah," he said, slowly and heavily. "But if I'm right, then I'm not sure you should be the ones going. No!" he barked, as four people surged up as one. "Sit the fuck down for a second, all of you!" He shook his head as they subsided, growling. "If this is who I think it is, then there's a very strong likelihood that this whole effort is to get you lot out in the open. If it's them, then I'd bet money this clusterfuck is a trap, and I'd bet ordnance that it's a trap aimed at you two -" he pointed to Bruce and Steve in turn "- in particular."
Steve looked vaguely alarmed, and vaguely guilty. Bruce never even twitched. He was used to that sort of thing, Pepper remembered. He was used to this kind of betrayal.
"How do you know?" she asked, carefully. Keeping her feet, drawing Fury's attention back to her, and away from the two men. "Why them? And why Tony and Natasha?"
Fury smiled grimly. "Rogers and Banner, because there are a bunch of people who really, really want that serum, whichever one they can get hold of, and however they can get hold of it. Romanov and Stark ... because I might have 'neglected' to keep track of you lot after Manhattan, much to the disappointment of my superiors. Meaning that whoever wanted you would have to go through the most accessible members of the team. Natasha is a SHIELD agent, easy enough to get on a mission, and Stark ..."
"Tony's the most public figure in the world," Pepper whispered, catching on. "If you want to get the rest of the team, without having to go through official channels or Nick Fury ..."
"Then you kidnap the most accessible members, and wait for the rest to crawl out of the woodwork," Fury agreed grimly. "And after the fucking nuke, I'm really not putting this shit past them."
Nuke ... Pepper blinked rapidly, catching a glimpse, there, of the size of the competition, the size of the enemy. She considered, briefly, being nervous. Being afraid.
But these people had taken Tony, betrayed him, used him against people he cared about. They'd played Obie all over again, and right now she didn't care if they were actually the secret leaders of the whole damn world. She'd blown Obie up, and she'd taken over one of the largest companies in the United States, and she'd held it through everything Tony Stark could throw at it. And, she thought, she had JARVIS, and that nasty look in Fury's eye.
No. Whoever they were, however deep they went. She was not going to let them stop her getting Tony back, and she was not going to let them get away with having taken him in the first place.
And on the heels of that thought ...
"We're still going." Steve stood, glaring right back at Fury when the man turned to look at him. "Trap or no trap. If they took our people to get to us, then I say we give them what they want." A hard, grim smile, something that looked strangely right on his face. "I was always told to be careful what I wished for. I think we should show these people why that is."
Pepper blinked at him, somewhat surprised, but Clint was starting to smile, an evil little sliver of a grin, and Rhodey stood up beside her, his grin no less evil, if far less hidden.
"Hell yes," Rhodey said, quietly. "I'm not waiting for someone to shove some new piece of metal in Tony's chest." He shook his head. "And if they took Tony, they might be expecting the rest of you, but they probably won't be expecting an armour to show up." He lifted his lip, less a smile than a baring of teeth. "I'd like to show them why that would be a big mistake."
Fury stared at them, long and slow, and Pepper might have been wrong, but she thought there might have been a glint of approval in that solitary eye. "You people really don't get the concept of a trap, do you?" he said, but there was a lot less frustration in it than there should have been.
Clint grinned at him. "When have you ever known me to avoid falling into the hotspots, sir?" he asked, lightly. "Me, or Natasha." And there was a twitch, there, a flinch of worry, but the grin didn't falter.
"We're going, sir," Steve said, very quietly, and there was something there that Pepper didn't quite understand, something she hadn't expected, but there was determination and no small amount of anger in his eyes, and something she thought Fury, at least, recognised. "I've never left my people in enemy hands before, and I sure as hell ain't starting now!"
Then he flinched, a little, and looked back at Bruce. The only one of them still seated, meeting Steve's eyes with a blank, mildly interested facade that was creaking faintly around the edges.
"Though, when I say we ..." Steve started, almost hesitantly. "I know you've ... probably got a lot more to lose than I have ..."
"Yes," Bruce said, serenely. "Probably. Your, ah, your reputation should provide some protection. I'm afraid mine won't hold up so well." He smiled crookedly. "If they're loaded for Hulk, this will probably go ... very badly."
Steve winced, faintly, opened his mouth to ... apologise, offer a way out, she wasn't sure, but Bruce got there first. Bruce cut him off, with gentle finality.
"That's irrelevant, though," Bruce told them, and it was then that she noticed the worrying amount of green in his eyes, and the way his loosely clasped hands had tightened, slowly, in the past few minutes. "Tony is our friend. If they took him and Natasha because they wanted the Other Guy ... then the Other Guy is more than happy to oblige them." He shook his head, smiled gently. "The only question is, do you guys want to risk being there alongside him?"
And, Pepper thought, it was entirely possible that she was going to have nightmares about that smile, the perfect, amiable control of it, when his eyes above it were so icily, clearly green.
Steve stared at him for a long second. Weighing him, maybe, judging the risks and the rights in his head. Glancing around at the other two, at Rhodey and Clint. Seeing nothing but grim determination, and not an inch of give. Then, finally ...
"You haven't failed us yet," he said, almost gently, and Pepper could have sworn she saw Bruce flinch in shock.
"This is going to be the least stealthy infiltration mission SHIELD has ever launched," Agent Hill noted wryly, looking across at Fury. "I take it I should start talking to the Indian government now, sir?"
Fury sighed, reaching up to rub at his temples. "Yeah. See if you can highlight need for an international response to the attack on an international conference on their soil. Not to mention the kidnap of an American businessman." He glanced over at her. "Feel free to point them at Stark Industries if things get dicey." A slow grin. "I'm sure Miss Potts will be happy to help you threaten them into submission."
Pepper smiled thinly. "Oh, I'm sure," she agreed. "And a few more things besides." She tapped the phone and her link to JARVIS lightly on the table, and smiled serenely into the appraising look in Fury's eyes.
Rhodey and Steve and the team would get Tony back for her, get Natasha back for her. But Fury and SHIELD and Agent Hill ... they were going to help her hunt down whoever had ordered him taken. And they were going to help her show them why it had been a very, very bad idea. Whether they particularly wanted to or not.
But she thought, watching their expressions, that their wanting to wasn't really going to be a problem.
"Hmm," Bruce mused, quietly. Smiling faintly as she turned to him, that oh-so-worrying smile. This time, though, she felt herself meet it. Felt herself echo it. "I think, perhaps, that India are not the only ones who have to worry, yes?"
"No," she agreed, smiling softly. "Probably not."
***
The door hadn't proved that much of a problem, really. Not least because whoever designed the thing had it open inwards, thus leaving the hinges in full fucking view on their side of the fucking thing. Massive oversight, guys, Tony thought. Not that he was complaining, as such, stupid enemies were the best, but seriously? What the hell? Was this meant to be a quick job, or what?
Of course, the major problem with escaping a base wasn't so much the door to one cell, but the complement of guys spread out across the base on the other side of it, who would be attracted by loud noises such as, just for example, a door falling forward off its hinges because the fucking thing was too damned heavy for him to catch.
He straightened up from his flinching curl away from the noise, and glanced sheepishly at Natasha, who was standing beside him and pursing her lips at the door now wedged diagonally across the corridor.
"Okay, so," he offered. "Not my best work?"
She glanced up at him, and Tony blinked a little bit at the rich curl of amusement riding under the adrenalin and professionalism of her features. "No," she said, with a tiny smile. "But I suppose it will do for now."
And, since something had started blaring down one end of the corridor, he supposed it would have to.
"Shall we?" he asked, offering her his arm as he clambered over first, grinning at the darting arc of her eyebrow in response.
"Just run, Stark," she growled at him, but he noted that she did actually take his arm. If mostly so that she could use it to drag him forcibly down the corridor in the opposite direction to the commotion. Tony followed her, humming lightly as he matched her pace.
He was, so far, in one piece. No gaping wounds stoppered up with medical tape and car batteries, no shrapnel embedded in his chest. Well, no new shrapnel, anyway. He was in one piece, accompanied by one of the most deadly and competent people he'd ever met, and he was out of his cell not two hours after having been shoved unceremoniously into it.
Already, he thought, this kidnapping was going a hell of a lot better than his last one.
TBC
