Hostages to Fortune 3/7

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Title: Hostages to Fortune 3/7
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.

And again, our thanks to tavella for the great beta job.


Hostages to Fortune





The dining room doors were old fashioned, made of heavy, polished wood, with ornate brass knobs. They were incongruously secured shut by some kind of heavy, electronic lock, which had a keypad, a small, blinking red light on top, and the look of something that would explode if they entered the wrong combination.

"War Machine?" Steve snapped into his commlink. "We need a way in. Avoid the center of the doors; there's some kind of armed lock."

"You two standing clear?" Rhodey asked.

"We're clear," Sam said, as the two of them ducked to one side.

There was flare of light, and then the smell of smoke filled the air and there was a large, round hole in the left-hand door.

They were through the door in moments, Steve taking point, with his shield up to block any potential assault. The dining room was a mess; broken porcelain and glass littered the carpet, and half the tables had been over-turned. Things were calmer than he had expected, though not in any way Steve found comforting; most of the people were huddled in corners or unconscious on the floor. Carol was giving a middle-aged man CPR, and a dark-skinned woman lay on the floor inches from the door, hands bloody and fingernails ripped away. Steve had to step over her to enter the room.

Tony was standing in the middle of the disaster area the restaurant had become, completely motionless, the armor making him look like an incongruous art deco statue. Steve jerked his eyes away from Tony to make a quick scan of the rest of the room -- Jan was kneeling on the floor behind a table, a small child firmly attached to her neck; War Machine was restraining a man in a white waiter's jacket who was still clutching a steak knife in one hand -- before his gaze was pulled back to Tony.

"Carol," he said, and his voice sounded calmer than he'd expected it to be, given the way Tony was just standing there silently, "take him," Steve nodded at the man she was performing chest compression on, "down to the EMTs. They'll be able to do more for him than you can."

"Just waiting for you guys to get here," she said. She slid one arm under the man's back and the other under his knees, and stood, carrying him to the window. "I think things are starting to wind down; a lot of the victims have collapsed." She took off out the window, and Steve took a few slow steps closer to Tony.

"They're coming," Rhodey's waiter was whimpering. "They're coming. Do you know what they're going to do to me? I can't let them. I can't!"

"Tony." Steve took a slow step towards him. "What's your status?"

The red and gold helmet turned slowly toward him. "Steve?" Tony's voice sounded distant. "Where did the blood come from? Repulsor burns don't bleed."

Shit. "Tony," Steve said, exercising all of his self-control in order to keep his voice low and steady, "were you exposed to the toxin?"

Tony cocked his head to one side slightly, as if considering that. "Are there dead bodies all over the floor?"

Steve shook his head. "No," he said gently. "They're unconscious. No one's dead."

"Then I was exposed." Given the situation, Tony sounded strangely calm. There was no discernible emotion in his voice, and Steve was uneasily reminded of watching him on the news after the Helicarrier had blown up, and hearing that same empty calm when he spoke.

Steve took another slow step forward. "Tony," he said, still gently, "I need you to take off your armor." Before you hurt someone. Before they found out that whatever this was
was a slow poison on top of everything else. Steve took a final step, closing the gap between them, and laid one hand on the cool metal of Tony's arm. "You need to let the paramedics treat you."

Tony jerked away, shaking his head sharply. "I can't take it off." There was a note of panic in his voice now. "I'm not safe without it."

Steve put a hand on Tony's arm again, made his voice more firm. "Tony, you need to take your armor off, or you could hurt someone."

After an impossibly long moment, Tony nodded. Then he collapsed to his knees, the joints of the armor rattling faintly, and sagged forward, one hand flat against the floor.

"Tony!" Steve dropped to one knee in front of him, reaching for his shoulders, and then Tony went completely limp inside the armor, crumpling to the floor to lie half-curled on his side, legs twisted under him.

Steve stared at him for one frozen moment, very aware that no one but Tony himself could remove the armor these days. Unless Pepper had an emergency override code? He hadn't thought to ask, how could he not have asked?

Tony's chestplate was hard and smooth under his palm. Anything could be happening to Tony inside the armor; he might simply be unconscious, or he might have gone into cardiac arrest like the man Carol had carried out. They might have only a minute or so to treat him, and it would take far longer than that to get Pepper; the armor's codes were all voice-printed, and if she did have one, she'd have to verbally input it in person. Cutting the armor off him would take even longer, at least half an hour.

He knew it wasn't going to work, knew Tony had to have changed his access codes during the Registration fight, but even trying something useless was better than doing nothing. "Armor override Steve Rogers," he said, the words hurting his throat. "Code 34-44-54-64."

The armor opened up under his hands, red and gold metal falling away and clattering to the floor, leaving Tony lying half in Steve’s lap. He wearing the remains of what had probably started the day as a nice suit -- wrinkled black slacks and a white dress shirt, the fabric crumpled into shapelessness by the armor. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and he was breathing in shallow gasps.

Steve closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and reached down to brush a piece of damp hair away from Tony's face.

"I'll take him down to the ambulance guys."

Steve looked up sharply to find Rhodey standing over them. "No," he snapped. "I'll do it."

"Unless you can fly now, one of us is going to have to," Sam informed him levelly.

"So, what did I miss?" Clint's voice.

Steve looked back over his shoulder to see Clint climbing through the hole in the door, bow in one hand, but quiver conspicuously empty of arrows.

"Clint!" Jan jumped to her feet, letting go of the child she'd been huddled with, and dashed over to Clint. She buried her face in the front of his costume, her shoulders shaking. Was she actually crying?

Clint froze, the visible portions of his face a study in shock. "Shit," he blurted out. "Don't tell me Tony's dead."

"Everyone's so big, and so loud," Jan sniffed, her voice just audible from where Steve knelt by Tony. "Help me, Clint. I'm scared."

Behind his purple mask, Clint's eyes opened even wider. "Um, it's okay?" he tried.

Jan made a sort of sighing noise, and sagged against him. Clint grabbed for her, catching her around the shoulders before she could hit the floor. "They breathed that stuff in, didn't they?" He looked at Steve as he spoke, his tone imploring Steve to tell him that it was under control, was going to be all right.

Steve wished he could. "Yes," he said. "They've both been affected." First Tony and then Jan, and there was nothing he could do to remedy it. By the time the Avengers had gotten the call, they would have already been exposed. "I don't- I don't know what it's doing to them."

"Steve." Sam put a hand on his shoulder. Steve looked up at him, realizing dully that he was still stroking Tony's hair.

He slid his arms under Tony and stood, bracing himself against Tony's weight. "Get him down to the ambulance," he told Sam.

Sam didn't reply, just nodded and took Tony from him, draping Tony's arm over his neck and wrapping his own arm around Tony waist. Then his hard-light wings snapped out, and he stepped out the window.

Steve stared after him for a moment, then wrenched his gaze away from the broken window and the empty space beyond and turned to Clint. "Give Jan to War Machine. He'll take her down."

"The paramedics were following me up," Clint said. "They should be here soon."

"Clint, just do it."

"If we leave the armor here, Tony will kill us," Rhodey said, gesturing at the scattered pieces of Tony's arm with a clunky metal arm.

"I've got it." Steve took a deep breath, hoping his minor miracle was still working, and commanded the armor to return itself to Tony's briefcase. Luck was still with him; the pieces floated up into the air and repacked themselves neatly into the metal case.

Carol rose into view outside the window, stepping carefully over the broken glass and back into the room. "Who else needs to go down?" she asked.

"Jan-" Clint started, just as ambulance personnel began climbing through the broken door behind him.

"We'll take her, sir," one of them said, stepping over to Clint. His companion, a short woman with a red ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap, stared around the room at the wreckage.

"Damn," she said. "Could one of you guys punch that hole in the door a little bigger? We're going to need to get a lot of stretchers up here."

"Gladly," Carol said.

"Someone needs to contact Hank," Steve said. He needed to know what had happened to Jan, and he was also their best bet on finding out what this stuff she and Tony -- and all of these other people -- had breathed in was. "Ms. Marvel, War Machine, you stay here and help the paramedics get people out."

"No problem," Carol said. She planted her feet and slammed one fist into the edge of the hole Rhodey had burned through the door, breaking through another section of wood. "Want me to handle the press as well?"

Steve gave her a grateful look. "If you wouldn't mind."

Clint half-raised one hand. "I can tell Hank," he volunteered.

Steve nodded. "I'm going back down."

The stairs seemed much longer going down than coming up.

The ambulances had turned off their sirens, but their lights were still flashing garishly. There was a ladder truck there now, too, the firemen busily extending the ladder towards the building's top floor.

There were also three news vans, including, inevitably, one from channel five. Kristine Sullivan, a cameraman in tow, had cornered Sam and was holding a microphone in his face. "A video has recently surfaced on the internet wherein A.I.M. claims responsibility for this act of terrorism. Can you confirm or deny their involvement?"

"We've been busy getting people out of the building," Sam told her. He was standing very straight, arms folded across his chest, and was holding his head tilted slightly to one side, the way he did when he was considering something. Sam was no fonder of talking to the media than Steve was. "We haven't had time to check the internet."

"Have you uncovered any evidence that it was in fact A.I.M.? Has anyone been taken into custody?"

No, Steve answered her silently, because that would require actually having the guts to show up in person. He wished they had shown their faces, whether 'they' was in fact A.I.M. or some other group; someone ought to be made to answer for this.

The relief on Sam's face when he caught sight of Steve heading toward them was obvious even from several yards away.

"Sorry," Sam told Ms. Sullivan, "Gotta go." He turned his back on her without giving her a chance to respond and hurried over to Steve. "Paramedics say the people who were evacuated through the lobby all seem okay, but they're taking them all to St. Vincent's and a couple of other hospitals to run some tests and make sure."

Steve nodded. That made sense; taking them all to one place would have flooded the emergency room before capacity. "And Tony?"

Sam nodded at one of the ambulances, and Steve turned to see Tony, strapped to a stretcher with an oxygen mask over his face, being loaded onto it.

"Man, are we lucky he gave you new access codes to his armor," Sam said, shaking his head slightly. "If he'd gone crazy like some of those people did, I don't even want to think about how much damage he would have caused."

Except, Tony hadn't given him new access codes. He'd been too much of an idiot to ask, and Tony couldn't have simply reloaded the old ones; he would have needed a fresh voiceprint from Steve. "He never changed the access code."

Sam turned to look at him. "What?"

"I didn't think it would work," Steve explained. "I just couldn't stand doing nothing. The over-ride code I used was my old one. Tony never changed it."

Sam blinked. "You mean," he said, slowly and calmly, "you could have shut him down at any point during that whole mess?"

"I assumed he'd changed it!" Steve said defensively. It was insane for Tony not to have, to leave such a massive weak point in his defenses. He must have forgotten about it, ludicrous as that sounded. He had been juggling a lot of different things then, and he might have just overlooked that detail.

Or he hadn't been able to bring himself to change it and shut Steve out of his life that last little bit; the way Steve hadn't been able to keep himself from answering when Tony had called his cell phone.

"I can not believe you didn't even check," Sam muttered, shaking his head again. "You're supposed to be a strategist."

"I didn't think there was any point," Steve said. The paramedics closed the ambulance's back door, shutting Tony away from sight. "We were fighting. If it was me, changing those codes would have been the first thing I'd have done." The problem was, even when things had been at their worst, Tony hadn't thought of him an enemy. Steve couldn't say the same about himself -- he had been thinking of Tony as an enemy, after that first fight. He hadn't wanted to, but he hadn't had a choice, and he'd been miserable with it the whole time.

There was a sudden, jarring blast of sound as the ambulance turned its siren back on, pulling out into the street and away around a corner.


***


Clint had visited the emergency room in St. Vincent's on a number of occasions, both as a patient and as an actual visitor, but he'd never seen it this crowded. The waiting room was jammed with people who had been on the lower floors of the building the Meridian was in, waiting to have their blood tested; since the emergency room also had its usual complement of car accident survivors, mugging victims, people with the flu, and assorted runners up for the Darwin awards, they were low on the priority list and were probably going to have to wait a while.

The moment he, Cap, and the Falcon walked through the emergency room doors, everyone in the waiting room turned to stare at them. Well, everyone except for the teenager throwing up into a basin. Clint limped onward, doing his best to ignore the stares; they weren't staring at him because they all knew he'd been humiliatingly stabbed by one of his own arrows. It just felt like they were. They were probably staring at Cap, who had always attracted attention wherever he went, and tended to do so even more these days.

"I don't need stitches and I don't need a tetanus shot," Clint protested to Cap for the third time.

Cap kept his eyes focused straight ahead, not bothering to look at Clint. "You were stabbed in the arm with a fork, and your leg is bleeding."

"She stabbed me, too, if that makes you feel better," Sam offered. "Of course, it wasn't with my own weapon."

"Ahaha. Very funny," Clint muttered. "Where do you think they've got Jan and Tony?" The EMTs hadn't let him ride in the ambulance with Jan. Of course, they hadn't let Cap ride along with Tony, either, so that wasn't all that surprising. He wondered, if Hank had been there, if they would have let him ride along with Jan. Probably.

"We'll find out," Cap said, in a tone that promised unfortunate things to anyone who stood in their way. He started for the nurse's desk. Clint fell into step just behind him, and Sam moved up to flank him on the other side. The young man behind the desk looked up as they approached, his eyes widening.

"May I help you?" A blonde woman in a neat nurse's uniform stepped around the corner of the desk, intercepting them. She was about ten years older than Clint, but very attractive, in an efficient, well-put-together kind of way.

"Tony Stark and Janet Van Dyne," Sam said, not giving Cap a chance to speak. "The paramedics just brought them in."

"With the victims from the mass poisoning on Wall Street," she confirmed, nodding. "Are you relatives?" She eyed their costumes with an expression that said that she knew perfectly well that they weren't.

"No, Nurse," Clint glanced quickly at the woman's name tag, "McCall. We're not. But Jan's ex-husband isn't here yet, and Tony doesn't have any relatives." He paused, "Well, except for some cousin who tried to kill him once, but I don't think they're on speaking terms. So we're the best you've got."

"Yes." Cap said flatly, speaking over him. "We're relatives."

Clint silently prayed that Nurse McCall wouldn't try to refuse them access, because he had a sinking feeling that if she did, the next words out of Cap's mouth would be, "I'm sleeping with him," followed by some speech about equal rights. Cap tended to speechify when he was angry.

She sighed. "You know I shouldn't be doing this, but I get the feeling it will be easier for all of us if I just give in now. If you follow me, I'll take you to them."

"Thank you," Cap said. He sounded as if he meant it.

She started for the elevator, heels clacking loudly on the tile floor. "We've isolated all of the poisoning victims, since the paramedics said they were violent. We've had to restrain several of them."

"But not Jan, right?" The words burst out before Clint could consider them.

"Ms. Van Dyne is still unconscious," Nurse McCall said. "Her vital signs are strong, though. Mr. Stark has regained consciousness, but there are some anomalies..." she trailed off, then looked at Cap. "I don't suppose you know anything about the metal that's lacing his entire skeleton, or why he doesn't have any scarring consistent with the extensive open-heart surgery his medical record lists?"

"Some kind of technological virus called the Extremis rewrote his entire body about six months ago," Cap told her. "And he's got part of his armor stored inside his bones. You said he's awake? Is he okay?"

"That would explain why his name's red-flagged in our medical database as a known superhuman," she said, half to herself. "At least he has bones. The last superhuman we had in here had an exoskeleton."

"But he's awake," Cap repeated.

"Not exactly," she said, frowning slightly. "Maybe you'd better speak to Doctor Brackett. He'll want to hear everything you know about this Extremis, anyway. Ms. Van Dyne's name is flagged in the database, too. Is there anything we should know about her?"

"She can change size at will," Clint said. "She's been treated with Pym particles, plus a couple of other things that let her grow wings and zap people with bio-electric energy when she's small."

"It doesn't affect her physiology when she's normal-sized," Cap said. "What do you mean, 'not exactly awake?'"

"She means, I'm afraid, that your cybernetically enhanced friend is in a catatonic state." A dark-haired man in a white lab coat stepped out of a room a few feet down the hallway. "Thanks, Dixie. I'll take it from here."

"Play nice, Kel," she told him, giving him an amused, through-the-eyelashes look, and okay, somebody was obviously playing "doctor and nurse" outside of hospital hours. "They're relatives. I've got to go check on the other victims." She turned and walked away down the hall. She had very nice legs for a woman in her forties, Clint observed distantly.

Catatonic state. Catatonic state wasn't good.

Cap was staring blankly at the doctor. "He can't be," he said, voice rough. "He was talking before."

"We don't know what this substance he and the others have been exposed to is," Dr. Brackett said gently. "We have no idea what it's currently doing to them, or how it's going to continue affecting them. Our lab is running tests right now, but it's going to be a little while before we have any real answers."

"So, you don't know what's wrong with them, and you don't know what to do about it?" Sam said..

"That's... pretty accurate," the doctor admitted. "Mr. Stark's vital signs are steady, and his pulse is elevated -- all of the victims' pulses are elevated -- and the EEG shows considerable brain activity, which is a good sign under these circumstances. We haven't figured out why he's non-responsive, but it's not unique. Several of the victims are; the ones that aren't trying to stab themselves or the medical staff."

"I want to see him." Cap said. "Then I want to see Jan."

"I understand that, but before we get to that, I'd like your permission to restrain Mr. Stark. Before he became non-responsive, he pulled all of his IV lines and monitor feeds out, and there's still a chance that he might become violent."

Cap's eyebrows went up, his expression obviously horrified.

"You don't want to do that," Clint said quickly. "When people in our profession get tied up, it's usually by someone who wants to kills us."

"We need those monitor lines to stay in place," Dr. Brackett countered. "Two of the victims have already died of heart failure brought on by the stress of whatever this is, and your relative," he stressed the word ever so slightly, "has a history of heart problems."

Cap stared at the doctor, drawing himself up and folding his arms across his chest. "Tony can control electrical equipment with his mind. Think about how much damage he could do if he thought you were attacking him."

Dr. Brackett looked from Clint to Sam. They both nodded at him, and he sighed, shaking his head. "Perfect. Wonderful. We can't sedate him, because God knows how it will interact with whatever he's already been given, and he can screw with medical equipment with his head. Do you have any idea how much sensitive and expensive medical equipment there is in this wing of the hospital alone?"

"I can make sure the monitors stay on, and I can tell you if he's using the Extremis," Cap told him.

"Fine." Dr. Brackett waved a hand toward the room he'd just exited. "I hate New York," he muttered. "I don't suppose there's any way to turn this Extremis thing off?"

"Unfortunately, no." Cap walked past him toward the room. When he reached the doorway, he hesitated, turning to Clint and Sam. "I can handle this. You two go check on Jan. She shouldn't be alone when she wakes up." He said it steadily, as if Jan not waking up wasn't even in the realm of possibility.

"I'll do it," Clint said.

"I'll go downstairs and wait for Hank," Sam said. "Redwing's going to be outside the window," he told Cap. "Just knock on the glass if you need me."

Cap offered him what Clint thought was probably supposed to be a smile. It looked more like a wince. "Thank you, Sam." He turned away, and stepped into Tony's room without looking back.

Clint took a deep breath. "Which room is Jan in?" he asked the doctor.

"That one." Dr. Brackett nodded at the room directly across the hall from Tony's.

Clint nodded. "Right, thanks," he said, steeling himself against whatever might be waiting for him in there.

Jan looked very small and still in the middle of the white hospital bed. There were wires running off her, attached to EKG and EEG machines, and an IV line stuck in her elbow.

Clint stared down at her and felt deeply useless. Yesterday, things had been on their way back to normal, if you ignored the fact that he was supposed to be dead and that Cap had been sulking over Tony not being there to a degree that surpassed even his previous sulking fits, and now Jan and Tony were hurt, and Cap, who was supposed to be the one who held things together in these kinds of situations, was visibly upset, and Wanda had maybe done something to Clint's mind.

The Avengers were the only real family he had. It wasn't fair for things to go this wrong, this quickly.

Jan shifted slightly, moving her head on the pillow.

Clint realized that he was hovering just inside the doorway, and moved to stand beside the bed.

Jan's eyes opened, and then she froze, staring up at Clint with wide eyes.

"It's okay," Clint started, keeping his voice low. The people he'd helped the EMTs load into the ambulances had panicked when you tried to talk to them; it was how he'd gotten stabbed in the thigh. "You're in the hospital. I don't know if you remember, but you were drugged with something. The doctors are going to help you."

"Jan!" Hank burst into the room, white lab coat flapping around his legs. He had obviously come straight from whatever he'd been doing in Avengers Tower without bothering to change his clothes.

Jan screamed, flinching back against the wall at the head of her bed. She drew her legs up and hid her face in her arms, making little whimpering noises, and oh God, what the hell was wrong with her? The other people, the ones Cap would have called "civilians," had been bad enough, but this was Jan. Jan was always in control, always together, always strong. It was one of the things he had always admired about her.

Hank had frozen in the doorway, face gone dead white. He looked sick, like someone who'd been stabbed in the gut and was only just looking down to see the knife sticking out of him.

"You should leave," Clint forced out, moving to place his body between Hank and Jan, trying to block her view of him. Maybe if she couldn't see him anymore, she'd calm down.

"I-" Hank started.

Sam appeared in the doorway behind him, looking grim, and fastened one hand around Hank's bicep. "We'll be in the hall," he said, and tugged Hank backwards out the door.

Hank went obediently, stumbling slightly. He kept staring at Jan until Sam had yanked him out of sight around the doorframe.

"Jan," Clint said. "Jan, it's okay. He's gone, okay? Calm down. Just-- stop doing that." He almost reached out to touch her, but he was afraid that might just make things worse. Normal, rational Jan wasn't this over-emotional, and wasn't afraid of Hank. If Clint touched her, even some place innocuous, like the shoulder or something, he wasn't sure what she might do.

So he hovered, paralyzed, while she took a deep, shaky breath, and slowly uncurled from her protective ball.

"It's okay," Clint repeated.

Jan rolled onto her side, facing away from him, and started crying quietly.

"Can I..." Clint hesitated, "do anything?"

"Just leave me alone," Jan said, her voice muffled.

"I'm not sure-" he started.

"I have wires stuck all over me. If I get worse, they'll know. Go away."

"Right. I'm going." Damn it, he only wanted to help. Why was nothing he did working? Clint turned and limped toward the door, letting his shoulders sag a little. His leg was really starting to hurt now. Today was sucking in every possible way.

When he left the room, Clint found Hank and Sam waiting in the hallway, right outside the door. Hank was sitting on the floor against the wall, hands over his face.

"People were jumping out of windows and screaming and attacking stuff that wasn't there," Sam was saying. "She's not in her right mind right now. This isn't about you."

"Yes," Hank muttered. "Yes it is. You don't know. It is."

Sam shook his head. "Look if you want to help her, go downstairs and help the doctors analyze this thing. You were nominated for a Nobel Prize in biochemistry; this is what Cap put you on the team for."

"Yeah, Man-Mountain, go be useful," Clint said. He'd never expected to feel sorry for Hank, but right now the guy actually hadn't done anything wrong, and if Clint was being fair, Hank had to be just as worried about Jan as he was, maybe more. "We'll call you if anything changes."

Hank nodded, and forced himself to his feet, looking back over his shoulder at the door to Jan's room. Then he left, walking down the hall to the elevator.

Clint watched him go, rubbing absently at the ache in his thigh.

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Didn't Cap tell you to go get stitches for that?"

"Jan might need-" Clint started.

"If she does, Cap or I can call you on your communicator."

Clint hated having his own logic turned against him. "Fine," he said. "But I'm coming right back up as soon as they slap a band-aid on me."

"Cap told you to get a tetanus shot, too."

Clint pulled a face. "Tetanus shots hurt. And I've already had three in the past two years."

"Don't get one, then. When you get lockjaw, it'll be quiet."

Clint couldn't think of any response to that that wasn't more immature than he was willing to be with anyone who wasn't Cap, so he went. Like Sam had said, they'd call him if Jan needed him, or if she and Tony suddenly got worse, or... And anyway, Cap wasn't going to let anything happen to them.


***



Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven