Chapter Text
There were two things that Tony Stark didn't want in his tower: Nick Fury, and a Hulk cage. Bruce had insisted upon the latter, but Tony had said a flat no to the first. After all, he was the specialist in armoured life support suits that could also put up one hell of a fight, so he had vetoed Fury and SHIELD and had the guy from the beach in the Hulk cage in his tower.
Steve had been the guy to get him there. The reasoning was simple enough. Steve, Tony liked well enough to have in his tower, in a few secrets (really, the guy was painfully honest and if he said he'd keep a secret, then he'd keep a secret - that wasn't even in question), and doing some heavy lifting in areas that couldn't admit a forklift. And the guy from the beach, well, it was either Steve or forklift.
As he paced his lab, eyes darting to the video display of the enclosure that he hadn't wanted to build in the first place, Tony had devoted a few minutes to wondering how Captain America felt about being a substitute for heavy machinery before deciding that the more important question was what to do with the guy in the cage.
The sunlight at the beach, the fluorescents in the tower; none of it illuminated a pretty picture. That suit was more banged-up than the loser of a demolition derby. He'd had scans done while Steve had been willing to hold him up - again, it was a choice of Steve or a chain hoist - and had spotted a few bite marks from a few sharks on the tanks. Jarvis was running a bite-mark match in the background, just to satisfy Tony's curiosity.
His 3D displays showed him rivets that had to be from the rivet gun their guy had carried up with him that had been rusted into uselessness from years of exposure, which explained why there were now parts that hadn't been repaired at all. Not a single weld after the initial construction, he saw. Just those rivets.
There were decades of materials all over him. Marine sealants held some pieces together. The sealants had to be from boats, having fallen off in a storm, sunk to the bottom, Tony thought. Patches of coloured metal dotted other places, obviously from air tanks that had suffered the same fate as the sealants. Yellow, red, blue, black, all on top of a brown-finished base that made him think of the ancient deep-diving suits that the Navy was only now getting around to replacing. And that fit the overall look of the suit in general, except for the patchwork on the tanks which threw off the whole menacing-steampunk thing as it added a dash of Grandma's country quilt.
Sea sponges and weathered nylon protruded from the largest, opaque, Cracker Barrel tanks, which immediately had Tony thinking that he'd done a hell of a job improvising filters - hell, improvising repairs in general - but the two others were filled with liquid and they didn't connect to the patched and spliced tubing that connected to the helmet. Necessary? If so, how had he refilled them during his obviously long walk?
All of Jarvis's sensors inside the cage said that the guy in the suit, what he could sense through the armor, was comatose. Even then, that was a best guess, but not too surprising. For years, Tony had had a weapon of mass destruction jammed into his chest to generate a protective magnetic field that would keep a fragment of shrapnel from jabbing into his heart and killing him. The fact that it had powered another weapon of mass destruction that he happened to fit inside and had constructed forty-three of was incidental. While he was inside the suit, vital signs were iffy from the outside, if they could be measured accurately by more commonplace equipment at all.
Luckily for everyone, he didn't have any commonplace equipment. He had rotating displays of their visitor, analyses running on what he could analyse without taking anything apart, and he had a terrible feeling that all of this was going to come down to another goddamn problem that Earth should've solved a long time ago (Hydra weapons, SHIELD - fucking Hydra weapons) but had gone under the radar.
Or sonar, in this case.
He had to chuckle at that. Submarine joke.
"Sir."
He'd been lost in his thoughts for long enough that Jarvis's voice actually startled him, making him catch his breath. "Christ, Jarvis, have a thought for my newly repaired heart. What is it?"
"You have a call, sir."
Tony sighed in exasperation. "I told you to hold my calls."
"Yes, sir," Jarvis answered smoothly, "and I have been, but this one, I believe you would make an exception for."
"Presumptuous damn computer, okay, who is it?"
"It is your colleague, sir. Charles Porter."
"Now that's a blast from the past." A blast without whom Jarvis wouldn't exist. Tony's brows raised. "I haven't heard from him in years, but that's still not a reason to interrupt--"
"Sir, he says he knows what you found on the beach."
He shrugged. "Everybody knows. It leaked onto the internet almost instantly thanks to a thousand camera phones, about eighty percent of which had my name on them," he said, waving it off.
"Sir, he says he knows what it's called, and its origin."
Tony's motion came to an abrupt halt. "Okay, that makes it worth an interruption. Let me take it in my office. And call somebody to come in here and keep an eye on Theta, here."
"No need, sir."
"Hey, just because he's comatose--"
"Captain Rogers has been sitting in the observation area for the past three hours, sir."
"...Ah. Well. That'll do." With a flick of his finger, he answered the phone, settling in for an interesting conversation.
----
He'd lifted motorcycles. Jeeps. Picking this guy up hadn't been too different. Just limbs in places where something of that weight usually had struts or a frame. Holding him up for Tony to scan had been harder than just carrying him because he'd had to stand back so all sides could get scanned. Easier said than done. But at least the guy had had those handles on the back of his helmet - something that Steve had caught himself drawing as he'd sat there, watching through the glass.
A few times, his drawings had made him get up and take a walk. Not because he was stiff or because his eyes hurt. That didn't really happen to him anymore. There were other reasons. Reasons that made him nauseous despite his chemically-enhanced health.
An artist's eye was discerning. Not that Tony's computers weren't, but they hadn't been to art classes. They hadn't been trained to spot movement and how to capture it with a few careful lines, and they didn't have human instinct.
Tony would probably argue that, and Steve knew he might have a point, but Steve wasn't a computer scientist. He was an artist, an observer, and sometimes a weight lifter, but right now, it was art and intuition that were telling him things.
Those handles on the back of his helmet, for instance. Those could've been easily written off as practicality for getting the helmet off and on, and sure, that was probably part of the design, but Steve had noticed the platform beneath those tanks. That platform wasn't holding any of the weight that those tanks surely had. Those tanks were held on by joints directly to the back of the suit and the platform was mounted beneath it. It was meant for something else entirely.
Coupled with the handles on the back of the helmet, it made him think that Theta - he took Tony's word for what the symbol meant - had carried another person on his back. Static loads didn't need handles. No problem there. This guy was probably about as strong as he was, and carrying a person on his back that way? Not a problem. But nobody grown could comfortably hold on with their feet on that platform and hands on the handles. Not even him, when he'd been a hell of a lot smaller than he was now.
He'd had to take his first walk after his mind had happened onto that idea, not wanting to think about the possibilities that opened up. He'd found a Sprite in one of the common areas - Tony did tend to keep those stocked - and while soda didn't do much for him, it had at least settled his stomach to allow him to go back into the room and look again.
The lighting was that godawful fluorescent crap, but it still illuminated well enough for him to get to work. The bed was one Tony had had to improvise, without those tanks coming off. To Steve's eyes, the platform he'd put together out of wire racks looked rickety, but it was holding well enough. Probably not comfortable, but that suit probably wasn't comfortable in the first place.
His boots were short, only ankle high, and his suit, even laying down, tucked in at ankle and knee. His arms did similarly at the elbows. As he drew, looking at fabric bunches and shadows, he had to wonder what it was that kept it in the same shape even though he was laying down.
The more he looked at the suit, the more that feeling in his stomach grew. There were screws in places that couldn't have only been going through leather and metal. Tubes that led into places that had no mechanical parts. There was no way to take the damned thing off for things like-- Like calls of nature.
Without even realising, while he swiftly downed cold, carbonated liquid to ease his stomach, he started to pray. The tanks were bolted into flesh, he was sure. And the rest of it--
He'd went into his own change knowingly. He'd not realised just how much he'd change, but he went knowing that change would come but he'd come out still human. Would anyone go willingly into a change that they'd come out of in a suit that they couldn't take off? All right, maybe, if it was a case of something uncurable. He'd heard about iron lungs, but that was the case, this was torture and treatment at once.
Beneath the nausea, there was anger. Who were these people? What were they thinking, treating people like this? He gave a weak laugh. That feeling of anger is probably why Doctor Banner hadn't come to take a look. Not that Steve blamed him, now that he thought about it. If he had a condition like Banner's, he wouldn't want to look at this, either.
But this was a person, he reminded himself. He'd seen human experimentation before. He'd taken people (taken Bucky, God, how that still ached) out of it. And everyone deserved someone to be beside their hospital bed, waiting for them to wake up.
He was resting his forehead in his hand, letting things settle in his mind, when he heard a footstep nearby.
"Stark?" He glanced to the side, sure it had to be either Tony or Pepper, and he wouldn't lay bets on Pepper coming anywhere in here while Tony had an unknown on the premises.
He was almost uncharacteristically still except for the nod of affirmation. "We're getting company, Cap. Old friend. Says he knows what's going on with this guy."
"Old friend as in actual friend or someone I should get my shield for?" Steve asked, remembering very vividly what Tony's idea of 'bringing the party' was.
"Actual friend," he assured. "Actually, old teacher. Learned a lot about computer programming from him while I was in college. Genius. Serious forerunner in the field of artificial intelligence. Name's Charles Porter." He turned to Steve, meeting his eyes. "You might recognise the name. He was one of Turing's codebreakers during the war. Just sent my private jet for him." Tony looked away, casual - the kind of casual that was a facade for deeper things, Steve knew. "Oh, and I got word from SHIELD that they're sending Clint."
"Do they figure you'll actually open the door for him?"
"If they do, then they figure right." Tony took a couple steps forward, looking at the figure in the enclosure. "Rather have him all up in my rafters than Fury right in front of me. Guy makes too many presumptions. So. Having fun looking in the fishbowl?"
Steve shook his head. "Not really."
"Yeah, me either. Deathwatch bites. C'mon, we'll leave Jarvis on duty, get some food - we've got time before Porter gets here."
The thought of food set off a quiet growl in his stomach and made him glance down at himself in exasperation. It took so little to remind him of how quickly he burned through calories. Exhaling, Steve looked at Theta, having to weigh newly-awakened hunger with keeping an eye on him. Only after reminding himself that he'd been introduced to Jarvis's capabilities did he stand, still with a little reluctance, and stretch a little, resigned to feeding his hyped-up metabolism. But for once, he had at least a slight ulterior motive.
Tony wasn't exactly being his normal self about this, and Steve didn't have to be a genius to see that. Tony Stark was mister mile-a-minute when it came to actions and thoughts. He always had something going on, always had plenty of distractions at hand, but now he was being way too sedate to be okay. His voice was too calm, too easy, and he was being too flippant about things like 'deathwatch'-- Or maybe not. Maybe that was just Tony, that joke, but the rest of it, he was still sure about.
He was even more sure when, as they ordered their food, Tony didn't change his mind twice and actually ordered without some sort of joke. Steve was, as ever, as polite as possible, paid and tipped well, and then sat across from Tony at a semi-private table. "So," he said, intentionally echoing Tony's earlier words, "having fun trying to work through whatever's in your head by yourself?"
"Not really."
Touche. Steve raised his brows expectantly, a fork full of noodles midway to his mouth, and as if on cue, Tony sighed. "It's weird, okay. What Porter told me. Kind of brought back some memories. And no offense Steve, we're not friends. We're coworkers--"
"I'm not asking you to bare your soul, Tony. I just know that you're not acting like you, and I need to know if that's going to make anything weird for figuring this stuff out," Steve interrupted.
"I'm pretty sure," Tony answered, looking up at him, "that nothing about this is going to be anything but weird."
That was a point that Steve certainly couldn't counter. He acquiesced with a nod.
"Besides, anything that comes to mind, if I tell you, then I'll have to repeat it later, and then it'll have to be repeated again, and then it'll be some really weird version of rehash-Tony's-history telephone and it'll come out worse than something in the Sun or the Weekly World News - too bad both of those went down before you came out of deep freeze. That would've been educational for you."
"You realise I know what a fictional tabloid is, don't you?" Steve answered. "They've been around longer than you have."
"Shows what you know," Tony said, gesturing with a breadstick. "The world started when I was born. Give me twenty minutes and I can come up with a working scientific theory that would speak to that fact and couldn't be wholly disproved. Matter of fact, I can do it in five."
"Subjective anthropic principle. Did it in twenty seconds. You buy dessert."
Stark's nose wrinkled. "You aren't any fun. --Hey, where'd you learn about that?"
Steve just smiled, but it wasn't a smile that lasted. "I wanted to ask, though. Is this seriously a death watch?"
For a moment, beyond the background sound of other people talking there in the restaurant, the clink of silverware, the general sounds of the city that leaked through the walls, there was almost silence. Tony's fork scraped the plate. It was all the answer that Steve needed.
"Why?"
"Why what? Why is it-- I mean, that's kind of obvious, but why is he... I don't know, you know what condition he's in the same as I do. He's just... He's slowly shutting down. There's something he's not getting, and not a single readout I'm getting can tell me what. It's slow. He's got... days, probably. Refrigeration at the bottom of the ocean is pretty good." Stark gave him a pointed look that he rolled his eyes at. "Nature's best preservative. So whatever it is, it's delayed by that, at the least."
"Just call me Capsicle and get it over with. It's been on your mind for five hours."
Tony's shoulders slumped. "...You really aren't any fun. I seriously just felt the fun leak out of me."
"That's too bad."
Both of them looked up at the new voice, instantly recognising the sandy-haired man that walked up, a thin, metal briefcase in one hand.
"Well, look what the hawk dragged in," Tony replied, tossing the new arrival a piece of garlic bread. It was snagged, one-handed, out of midair without so much as a hesitation. "Figured we'd only see you at the place with the thing."
Barton focused on Steve, asking with a certain quirk of eyebrow, "And he went to how many years of college to be able to say 'the place with the thing?'" He held the bread in his mouth, seating himself astride a chair that was quickly flipped around, back against the table.
"Wouldn't know. Never counted," Steve answered. "I figured you wouldn't blow your cover, hanging around us."
"Cover is already pretty well blown." Clint bit into the bread with a shrug. "High profile alien-shooting has a tendency to end up on YouTube."
"Can we not talk about the whole aliens thing, please, thank you," Tony muttered. "Anyway, I figured you'd end up at the tower, not just wandering in here and plopping down to eat my bread."
"You gave me the bread."
"That's beside the point."
Clint looked at him for a few long moments in contemplative silence before asking, "You were one of those kids who moved the croquet wickets, weren't you?"
Tony threw up his hands. "What is this? Steal Tony's Fun day? Worst holiday ever."
Barton smirked and took another bite of the bread. "Too bad it happens a few times a month, right?"
"Oh, like you--" He stopped and looked critically at Clint before continuing. "Okay, wait, maybe you do know. Anyway, what's the briefcase for?"
With his hand midway to grabbing a tomato, Clint answered, "Briefs."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "Boxer briefs or tighty whities?"
"Don't you wish you knew," came the answer with a suggestive waggle of an eyebrow.
"Don't tell Pepper, she'll get ideas. --Aww, look, Steve's turning purple." Tony grinned over at him. "Too much underwear talk?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "Can we just finish eating and get to the real problem at hand?"
"The problem we should talk about in a much less public venue," Clint agreed. "I'm going to go on--" He popped the tomato into his mouth. "And I'll see you two there." With utter ease, he stood, replaced the chair, and walked toward the door, lifting a hand in farewell.
"You owe me a tomato," Tony called after him.