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Just a Game

Chapter Text

Tony was falling.

He had let go of the nuke (which exploded fantastically, by the way), and was falling through the velvet of space. Through stars he had never seen, through constellations he would never study, through eons and eons of emptiness he couldn’t even appreciate through the darkened HUD of his faceplate. Without power he was a meteorite, senseless, hurtling to his irrevocable fate.

Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived?

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder and with the last of his fading strength smiled. At least he wouldn’t die alone.

Wait, that wasn’t right.

“Tony!”

Tony opened his eyes to a city made of running watercolors. He blinked once, twice, his body vibrating in tune to the mortar shells that were ringing in his ears mutely. He could make out the Hulk struggling against something big in the distance. He felt a spray of debris shower him from above after a flash of red--Thor--sped by, followed by an unknown assailant.

Where’s--

Steve was suddenly too close, too bright, too focused. His face was too covered in dirt and blood and his eyebrows were wrinkled too close to each other to mean anything other than bad news.

“Tony, wake up! You need to--“

An explosion of light and fire, and Steve was gone.

And Tony was falling.

Chapter Text

Scenes came to Tony in snatches of bright light and muted sound. Voices spoke around him in a snarling, guttural language he couldn’t understand.

A small instinct in the back of his minds was waving a red flag, Afghanistan, but he was too tired and too drugged to pay attention.

But when he next awoke to incredible pain and saw strange hands taking something small and blue and shining out of his chest, he remembered that he was supposed to be screaming.

(Later, Tony would come to realize that his captors probably didn’t understand the term cardiac arrest, so it was a good thing that he panicked when he did. In retrospect, it could also be considered a good thing that his captors needed him alive, but those brief images made death look very viable indeed.)

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t see.

Something black was placed around the column of his neck. He could hear mechanisms whirring and snapping into place. Four metal cables, like oily tentacles, were released from the back of the collar and began digging through flesh and bone, latching on deep in the marrow of his vertebrae with painful accuracy.

He couldn’t protest, couldn’t struggle, couldn’t stop the surge of raw power that was pouring into his body and setting his nervous system to absolute agony.

“Control System is in working condition, sir.”

“Good. Set up secondary and emergency Systems now.”

More black rings were secured around his wrists and ankles. Same four cables, same shooting pain, same electrocution.

A gloved hand pulled up his eyelids and shone a bright light in his eyes.

“Number 595 is ready for preliminary trials, sir.”

“Take him to his cell. I’m going to take a look at how the other specimens are coming along.”

“Yes, sir.”

The fog of pain was finally starting to dissipate from Tony’s body. He turned his head limply, catching the attention of the doctor-soldiers.

“Wha--“

A prick of pain in the crook of his elbow, and Tony was under again.