When The Lights Go On Again 10/20

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Title: When the Lights Go On Again 10/20
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: 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: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
Author's Note:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq.

Also, this fic owes a great deal to tavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.

X-posted to Marvel Slash.


When the Lights Go On Again




It was snowing. Hank tipped his head back, staring up into the endless blue, and watched tiny flecks of white swirl down from the sky until one of them landed on his eyelashes, and he had to blink it away.

The last time he'd been outside, it had still been fall, the leaves just starting to turn. The world had been a riot of reds, and yellows, browns and golds; a sharp contrast to the blueish overcast everything had now.

"If there's any trouble," Steve was saying, "I want you both to get yourselves out of the line of fire and run for it." He held the two paramedics' eyes for a long moment to be sure they'd understood him, then added, "You too, Hank."

Hank started to protest -- he was an Avenger, which meant he'd spent half his adult life in mortal peril of some kind of another -- but Jan cut him off.

"He's right, Blue Eyes; you're too valuable to risk losing. No Goliath stuff, okay? Just run for it. Or shrink down and hide." He was too valuable to risk, but somehow Steve, who was running the entire resistance, wasn't.

Hank felt his face heat. The paramedics were staring at him, he was sure. They probably thought he was a sorry excuse for a superhero, getting ordered to run from a fight and not use his powers. He'd had to argue extensively just for the right to come along on this little field trip, insisting that there were chemical supplies he needed that he had to pick out himself.

In the end, though, Hank was pretty sure Steve had only agreed to let him come to make him stop whining; after all, Spiderman was a chemistry major, and would have been perfectly capable of fetching whatever supplies Hank needed.

Whining was selfish, especially since Tony probably hadn't even been above ground for three months, but he didn't really care. Even though he was only tagging along on a supply run to a drugstore, rather than actually participating in a mission, at least he was outside, walking around, doing something.

He had been pouring over the data from the Argonian autopsy non-stop for the past three days, and he knew he was missing things. He needed a break, to get out of the lab and burn off some energy so that he could concentrate again.

The sky was a strange, purplish-grey, even more leaden than it normally looked when it snowed, and the city around them was dark, despite the fact that it was just after noon. No cars moved in the streets, no streetlights were lit, and only a handful of buildings seemed to have lights on. The few people they passed hurried by, heads down, not looking at them.

They passed an Argonian and two humans in warrior blacks keeping watch on East 51st, in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Hank ducked his head, pulling his collar up and the fleece hat that had once been Vance's down, resisting the urge to make himself smaller literally as well as metaphorically.

None of the guards so much as glanced their way. Five humans in street clothes seemed to pass beneath their radar, at least here, where there were no major strategic targets to protect.

Steve's efforts as part of the Resistance had been in costume, as had Jan's. In normal clothing, especially in scarves, hats, and heavy winter coats, they blended right in, as did Hank and the two 'civilians.'

It didn't particularly bother Hank that he didn't know their names; there were so many people in the Waldorf-Astoria these days that it was impossible to keep track of things like that. He was pretty sure these two, a young white guy and a short, pretty black woman, had been among the emergency personal who had joined up after the attack on Penn Station, when word of the Resistance had started to spread.

They actually had a handful of people with medical training now, including one doctor who'd been a Navy reservist and therefore not safe staying in the hospital cancer ward where he'd worked. What they didn't have were adequate medical supplies. The hotel's own stock of first aid items had run out quickly, and while medicine wasn't as in demand as food, pharmacies all over the city were running low on cold medication, band-aids, and other commonly used medical goods. And since medicine wasn't among the items the Argonians were shipping in through the shield, they couldn't steal it.

Of course, without ration coupons, they couldn't buy it above board, either. Luckily, there were two drug store owners within walking distance who were willing to do business with them under the counter. One of them had been the victim of a robbery attempt a few years ago, when two teenagers hoping to steal prescription drugs had held him at knife-point and then been stopped by Daredevil. The other was the wife of a man who'd been rescued from a ferry explosion by the Fantastic Four. Technically, the ferry had only exploded because a supervillain who'd been trying to kill Reed Richards had attacked it, but thankfully, she was willing to overlook that.

That didn't solve the issue of adequate medical equipment -- as it was, several civilian refugees had had to be taken to city hospitals, because they had medical conditions requiring treatment that no one at the hotel could provide, like kidney dialysis, or twenty-four hour monitored care -- but it at least meant that they didn't have to revert to pre-20th century conditions and start cleaning wounds with alcohol from the Peacock Alley bar and cutting up sheets to make bandages.

The pharmacy itself felt as deserted as the streets; there was a man behind the counter, but other than that, the store was empty.

The shelves themselves were barren-looking, at least half the merchandise that would normally have been stocked just gone. And there was something else strange about them, too, though Hank couldn't quite pin it down.

Luckily, most of what he needed was more esoteric than bandages and shampoo, so he was able to find almost all of them. Irritatingly, all the nail polish remover brands the store stocked were non-acetone, which meant that acetone peroxide was off the menu as an explosives base and he was going to be stuck synthesizing nitroglycerin from battery acid, aqua fortis, and glycerol. Life would be so much easier if the cosmetics industry was still stuck in the 1970s, and if the Argonians hadn't gotten wise to the more common Earth methods of producing homemade explosives and shut all the hardware stores down. At least liquor stores were still open, and cheap Vodka still worked as the base for a Molotov cocktail.

Hank was staring at the depleted stock of cleaning supplies, trying to decide which brands of bleach and window cleaner contained the highest concentrations of chlorine and ammonia, when Steve's voice sounded directly in his ear.

"No, Hank. Under no circumstances whatsoever are we using tactics like that."

Hank jumped, his hand going automatically to the coat pocket where he'd hidden the hand gun Steve had given him "just in case." Then he relaxed and turned around, his face burning; when had he gotten so jumpy? And how could Steve think that he would actually contemplate making chlorine gas in the Waldorf-Astoria's basement?

"That's not what I need them for," he protested, slightly stung at the injustice of the assumption. "I'd never try something like that when I'm working without a fume hood."

Steve stared at him for a moment. "Hank, you're not going to not do it because it's dangerous. You're going to not do it because it's against the Geneva Convention."

Given how difficult it was to control the dissemination of gases once you'd released them into the atmosphere, it would have been a stupid tactic to use anyway, at least with the limited tools they had at their disposal. Still, "I don't think the aliens have heard of the Geneva Convention," he pointed out.

"We've heard of it." Steve's voice was level, calm, and completely uncompromising.

"I need bleach as a disinfectant and ammonia to make nitric acid and I am under no circumstances going to mix them." Hank knew he sounded defensive, but he didn't really care. Why did people keep assuming that he was a mad scientist with no concept of right and wrong, or of basic laboratory safety measures? Even his friends didn't have any faith in his ability to use science responsibly.

"Tony suggested it, too," Steve said, after a moment, smiling a little apologetically. "I told him the same thing."

"I know," Hank said. He'd seen the letter where Tony brought up the idea of flooding the lower levels of Grand Central Station with poison gas to take out the Argonian nerve center, only to shoot it down in favor of suggesting that a sufficiently powerful and expertly set explosion in the converter chamber would bring one of the walls down, flood the chamber with water, and cave the roof in, thereby destroying the power source for the Argonian's shield. He hadn't mentioned the fact that all the scientists and guards down there, including Clint and Tony himself, would be killed in the process.

Steve had been less than fond of that idea, as well.

Jan appeared around the end of the aisle, a shopping basket on one arm. "Joe and Simone say that have all the supplies they need. Well, all we could find, anyway."

Steve nodded. "Okay, time to go. We can send a second team to the other pharmacy tomorrow. Let's not push our luck by visiting two in one day."

He didn't mention that the Argonians were probably keeping an eye on hospitals and other sources of medical supplies these days; he didn't have to. Johnny Storm was currently flat on his back in their hotel suite's largest bedroom, instead of in the hospital room where he belonged, precisely because the hospitals were being watched.

He'd been on fire when an Argonian's sword had sliced his entire left thigh open, which meant the blade had been red hot. Otherwise, he would have bled out in Ben Grimm's arms while the Thing carried him home.

Hank grabbed the two cleaning products he'd decided on, making sure to get several bottles of each; there was no knowing when he'd have a chance to get his hands on more. "I've got everything, too," he announced.

Jan gave his shopping basket a significant look. "You are not making chlorine gas. Or hydrazine."

"No," he agreed, rolling his eyes. "Cap and I already discussed that. And I'd just like to point out that you two are the ones who thought of chemical warfare as soon as you walked down this aisle, not me. Also, have I mentioned that the fact that you know that you can make more than one volatile chemical by mixing ammonia and bleach is kind of sexy?"

Jan winked at him. "I know all kinds of things to do in a chemistry lab, Blue Eyes."

Steve cleared his throat.

"Right." Hank said. "Buying things now.

People in the city took only cash and barter now; credit cards had been useless since the power had first gone out, and everyone had stopped taking checks after the first month. Their baskets of supplies cost them nearly five hundred dollars of Tony's money, more than twice what it would have before the shield had gone up -- and Hank strongly suspected that clerk was giving them a discount.

Jan handed the cash over without complaint. "Thank you," the woman behind the register said, very quietly. "For what you people are doing. I used to read the fashion magazine during slow shifts," she added. "I've always liked your work, Ms. Van Dyne. On the runway or off."

Hank was caught off-guard by a sudden surge of pride. The store clerk didn't seem to recognize Steve, but she knew who Jan was.

That was when one of the front windows was smashed open, and a half-dozen Argonians, plus the two human guards from St. Patrick's, came pouring in.

Hank only barely stopped himself from changing size, remembering at the last second to grab for the gun in his coat pocket instead. It caught on the fabric, and he yanked at it futilely for what felt like an eternity but was probably less than a second, and then it was free.

The clerk had thrown herself to the floor behind the counter, out of the line of fire, and Hank spared a moment it be grateful that at least they weren't going to have to worry about hysterical bystanders getting in the way.

Then he was the one throwing himself flat, as one of the human guards slashed at him with a sword.

From the corner of his eye, he caught the flash of Jan's biochemical stingers, but he didn't dare turn to look. He had enough to do trying to keep himself in one piece.

He kicked the guards' feet out from under him, missing the extra reach he normally had in fights desperately, and rose to one knee, bringing the gun to bear on the second guard.

Then he froze. The man was bearing down on him, looking massive beyond what ought to have been possible -- he had to be taller than Steve, and possibly wider, too, and Hank had never truly realized what a psychological advantage being the biggest person in a fight was before -- and Hank could not move, couldn't make himself pull the trigger.

The man about to slice him in half wasn't a robot, or an alien, or a monster; he was a human being. An ordinary person, not a crazy mass murderer in a costume who wanted to wipe out a city block or rule the world. They didn't kill people. They were supposed to be the good guys.

There was the loud crack of a gunshot, and both Hank and the guard turned to see the female paramedic standing squarely in the middle of the aisles, holding her gun in two-handed shooting stance obviously copied from television. Her bullet had gone wide.

One of the Argonians turned as well, raising its plasma gun. Hank shot it.

The gun jerked violently in his hand, not at all like an energy weapon, and the bullet hit the Argonian in the shoulder instead of the center of the chest. Steve had warned him there would be a recoil, but he hadn't expected-

The guard's sword was swinging down toward his face. Hank threw himself sideways, firing again, and then the guard was on the floor, writhing and making choking sounds, and Hank was on his feet again.

He glanced around, heart hammering so hard he could barely breath, to find that the fight was already over.

One of the Argonians was still standing, but it -- no, there was no sign of an organic tailbarb, so it was a male -- he was clawing at his eyes with both hands, the fur on his face singed black by Jan's stinger blasts. The one Hank had shot was on her knees, head bowed, clutching at her bleeding shoulder, a snarl on her face. All of the others, humans included, were on the ground, unconscious or dead.

One of the Argonians had a pair of bullet wounds in its chest, blood staining its black uniform even darker. The female paramedic hadn't missed the second time she'd fired her gun, or the third.

"Someone grab the clerk," Steve ordered. "We need to run. Escape plan C."

That meant splitting up and finding their own ways back to the hotel. It put each of them in more individual danger, but would make them harder to track.

The male paramedic had the store clerk by the arm, now, and they were both running out the door. Amazingly, he hadn't dropped his bag full of newly-purchased medical supplies -- it swung from his other hand as they ran.

Hank shoved the gun back into his coat pocket -- leaving it behind was out of the question -- and grabbed his own bags of chemical supplies, shamed by the paramedic's example. Then he ran, too.

It felt wrong, running away instead of staying together as a team, like he was abandoning Jan and Steve, but when Steve used that particular tone of voice, you did what he said.

'I shot him.' The thought rang through his head as he ran, ducking down sidestreets and under abandoned scaffolds to stay out of sight. 'He was a real person and I shot him.' Except he almost hadn't; he'd frozen, and someone else with steadier nerves had had to come to his rescue. Someone who wasn't even a superhero, wasn't even a policeman. She'd probably never been in a real fight before, but she had reacted faster than he had.

Not only was he not doing a superhero's job anymore, he could barely do a normal person's job. No wonder Jan and Steve wanted him to stay in the lab.

***

The human laborers made a great deal of noise as they worked -- not through carelessness, but because to was impossible to dismantle some of the larger pieces of equipment in silence. Even larger, stronger Argonian warriors would have been hard pressed to do such a job quietly, were such labor not beneath them.

Isimud, bent over yet another of the seemingly endless sheets of technical drawings that had become his life these days, did his best to ignore them, but even the intrinsic interest of the task at hand couldn't distract him from the significance of the flurry of activity around him.

The situation in nuclear research area had finally become too dire for even Arch-Captain Mamitu to ignore any longer. Four of the human physicists had died, and nearly all of those who remained were ill, save for one or two of the abnormal 'superpowered' humans whose unusual physiology appeared to protect them from the effects of radiation. Two of the human guards stationed there had died as well, and last octnight, an Argonian mechanikos had finally succumbed, her superior constitution not protecting her from prolonged exposure.

If Isimud had not already been grateful that he was not one of the mechanikos whose duty it was to supervise the physicists, recent events would have sufficed to make him so.

The Archon herself had ordered the removal of the more potentially dangerous scientific projects involving humans from Grand Central Station, directing the creation of two new research locations: one for physics, located on a small island that had previously been home to a human prison and therefore already had high levels of security and places to house the remaining human physicists, and one for the scientists and engineers assigned to work on weapons production, in an abandoned human subway station, where they could handle potentially volatile compounds and devices away from the main command center's all-important power core.

A human laborer near him dropped a section of metal sheeting, its collision with the cement floor creating a ringing clang that raised the fur on the back of Isimud's neck.

His head snapped up, ears erect and quivering, and felt utterly foolish when he realized that it was only a clumsy accident. Not an attack by rebels, of course not. No attacker could ever penetrate here, so far beneath the city.

Except, they had back on Argon. Men, women, and children had died in the tunnels there, even on the shores of Alulim's Well, the center of the world, the best-defended spot in half a galaxy.

But that had not been humans. Human could not see in the dark. Humans did not breed so quickly.

Isimud sighed, letting his ears sag downward, and resumed the painstaking task of re-drawing the technical plans of a portion of a ship's engine to conform with the data the human scientists had given him. His own duties, he reflected, were difficult enough, and being moved to another location would only make them harder, as machinery and facilities had to be moved and set up all over again.

Reconstructing a new ship based on the pattern of the old ones was proving a more difficult task then had first been predicted. Tony Stark and several of the other human scientists had proven skillful at identifying the metals used in the alloys that were needed to construct the engines and hull, but one of the metal ores needed to replicate the hull alloy, a metal common on Argon, was rare and difficult to find on Earth.

And then there were the blueprints, which were still being drawn up and corrected. After last month's humiliating structural failure of the first hull, which had set production back considerably, Isimud was double-checking everything.

He didn't blame Tony Stark for the error that had led to the collapse -- Tony had mentioned many times that his analysis of the technical drawings Isimud had made might not be completely accurate, apologizing repeatedly for his inferior eyesight and inability to read Argonian and the mistakes that might result from it.

It had been Isimud's fault entirely. His drawings of the ship's superstructure had been flawed, obviously, and blaming Tony for failing to notice his own mistakes was... it was the kind of thing Arch-Captain Mamitu did to the mechanikos all the time. Thinking of a warrior as a bad leader was a bit of near-treason that made him feel obscurely guilty, but it was true, and blaming subordinates for one's own errors was forfeiting one's own honor by taking the easy way out.

Isimud curled the edge of his lip at the drawing, flicking one ear back; the angle of the air intake valve was slightly off. He could tell that much by looking at it, but what ought the proper angle to be? The mathematical calculations involved were more complex than those he generally performed.

He would, he decided, not ask Tony Stark or any of the other scientists what the problem was and how to fix it. He would ask him to show him how to do the mathematical equations necessary to calculate the proper volume of air and the best valve configuration to achieve it.

Tony would, after all, be leaving soon, and Isimud would still have to solve problems like this in his absence.

Foolish and unworthy as emotional attachments to lesser species were, Isimud was going to miss Tony Stark. It had been pleasant having someone to discuss scientific concepts with.

He had learned a great deal from Tony, something which he had not expected at the outset. He was, after all, only a human. But he was a human who possessed a great deal of useful scientific knowledge, even if language barriers and other factors occasionally prevented the Argonian Empire from making full and proper use of said knowledge. And that knowledge made him useful, valuable.

Other humans respected him, or had, before he had sworn his allegiance to Argon and made them his enemies. Before the Argonians had arrived, he had been a person of great wealth and power, a maker of weapons so highly valued that his name had been known throughout the world.

No one knew the name of the mechanikos who had designed the first plasma gun anymore. If Isimud were responsible for rediscovering the secrets of nuclear fusion, if he personally oversaw the building of the first new power core in three lifetimes, his name and his contribution to the empire would not be remembered. Only the results would be.

Once, that had been enough for him, but now...

If knowledge had value, whatever its source, if people who possessed knowledge had value...

It had been thus on Argon once, or the great ships, the plasma guns, the nuclear missiles, the power cores, could never have been built. In the early days of the empire, the most skilled mechanikos had been a priesthood of sorts, respected and revered.

Now the empire had fallen, and nothing was the way it had been anymore. Even the sunlight was the wrong color, here. It was too bright, searing the eyes and making it difficult to see.

Strange, that he should feel so at home here, then. He wished it could have been so on Argon, that he could have found respect and others to share his love deciphering the way things worked there. But on Argon, he would never have given language lessons to a warrior, would never, ever have spoken directly to the Archon.

Isimud reversed the human writing stylus and used the small pad of rubber at its tip to erase the air intake valve from the drawing. It irritated him to see it there, when he knew it was in error but hadn't yet figured out why. Better to leave the spot blank, and to complete the design properly later.

Human paper was much flimsier and softer than real paper, and he had to take great care when brushing the scraps of rubber and paper fibers left by the eraser away, lest his claws catch on the material and tear it.

This would all be so much easier if the drafting programs he knew the humans' computers had were not utterly indecipherable, requiring, as they did, complete fluency in at least one of the many forms of human writing.

Humans were a disorganized, muddled species, many of them not sure what they were or where their place was -- even some of the most skillful of the human scientists they had captured or enlisted seemed to doubt their roles. Many of them had been imprisoned for terrible crimes, the product of attempting to be both mechanikos and warrior, an impossible conflict of goals that had driven them mad. And even with this, they had accomplished great things.

How much more could Argonians accomplish, then, if mechanikos were listened to? If the most knowledgeable of them could speak, not on a level with an Imperator or Arch-Captain, but at least on one above that of the lowest-ranking soldier? If they worked with warriors instead of serving them?

When he next spoke to her, for next octnight's language lesson, he would ask Sub-Captain Kammani to put forward Tony's name for elevation from human slave to the lowest rank of mechanikos. It was a great honor, rarely given to non-Argonians, for even being accorded a position in the lowest level of Argonian society was a gift most other species were rarely worthy of. It was the best way he could think of to thank Tony for opening his eyes.

There was nothing more to be done on this project for now, Isimud decided, studying the thin black and grey lines of the drawing one final time. It was time to hand it off to one of the human engineers before he was deprived of their assistance, and, if Arch-Captain Mamitu or her more loyal subordinates were not around, to request that math lesson.

Argonian warriors were the most fearsome in two galaxies. Surely, Argonian mechanikos could be equally unsurpassed given the proper chance. They, too, were children of Alulim, and they, or at least, their ancestors, had created the means to travel between stars, to replicate the inner workings of the stars themselves and use them for the glory of Argon.

If they could do so once more, then Argonians would never have to suffer defeat and exile again. They could return home in triumph, to build the empire anew, perhaps... perhaps even greater than before.

And the men and women who built that new empire's ships, forged its swords, designed its engines and missiles -- their names would be remembered, as the names of those who died to hold a tunnel against an invading host were.

***

Johnny is doing better. Dr. Ayers says that with luck he'll be able to walk without a limp. Spiderman has gotten him involved working on the Daily Bugle's Radio shows while he heals, so he won't drive the rest of us crazy because he's bored; I never thought I'd say this, but he might be almost as bad as you when it comes to convalescing.

He nearly died, Tony. Other men and women helping us have. The Argonians arrested the owner and all the employees save one of a pharmacy that they discovered was selling us medical supplies, and had the owner executed. We still don't know where they got the intelligence.

They caught us red-handed, right there in the store. It was a bloodbath; we had to shoot our way out, which means more dead Argonians, and now that they've started killing people in retaliation for Argonian casualties, where will it end? The fighting is only going to get more brutal, because there's no way to counter guerilla warfare that's not brutal. I knew that when we started this, but I'm not sure that everyone else did -- and at the end of the day, the tactics we use are my responsibility, because I'm in charge.

The dead are on my conscience, including the humans who are fighting on the Argonians' side. And I don't have the luxury of acting unsure; too many people are looking to me for me to visibly question our actions, for me to waver. If we aren't willing to fight with the only tools we have, we'll never be free again. But is freedom really freedom if you win it by becoming as terrible as your enemy?

I just wish that there was someone I could talk to about this, someone I didn't have to be strong for. Since Sam left, there's been no one. Carol is dealing with her own problems, and Hank... Hank can calmly contemplate poisoning dozens or hundreds of people with chemical weapons so vicious no one in the civilized world has used them since the Great War, but he hasn't come out of his lab since the firefight at the pharmacy. I can't burden Jan with this, or Wanda. They have too many responsibilities and worries of their own.

I wish you were here, Tony. I wish I could actually talk to you, just hear your voice. You always make me think, make me see the practical side of things, not just the ideological one, and I need that right now more than ever. I need someone to argue with about right and wrong, so I can remember how important doing the right thing is.

I think I've already shot my ability to bare my soul to Carol to hell anyway. She and Wanda are... frankly, I'm not sure what's going on there, but it culminated in Wanda kissing Carol and Carol leaving her behind on the battlefield. It's been almost a month, and I still don't think they're talking to each other.

I may have taken things a little personally when I debriefed Carol. She insisted she didn't know anyone who was 'like that' and that it was wrong, and I effectively told her I was attracted to men as well as women, then gave her a lecture on gay rights. With everything that's going on, I feel stupid even mentioning that, but you're my best friend, and who else can I talk to?

Maybe I'm just moping because it's nearly Christmas, and the tactical situation hasn't improved. I'd give nearly anything to get word from Sam. I knew we might be losing all contact with him when we sent him out, but that doesn't make it easier, anymore than the fact that I know all the logical, practical reasons we can't pull you and Clint out of there makes letting you stay down in that hell hole any easier.

People should be with their families on Christmas. Since we can't, I'm sending you a present instead. Well, sort of a present. When this is over, I'll draw you a proper one, one to keep, with everybody where they belong.

Yours,
Steve."

Tony turned the sheet of paper over, feeling numb. On the back of the page was a sketch of the Avengers in front of a Christmas tree. There were two open, empty spaces in the middle of the lineup, and little arrows had been drawn pointing to the gaps. Steve had written "Tony goes here," and "Clint goes here" next to them.

The empty space reserved for Tony was right next to Steve.

Tony blinked, and the picture blurred out of focus. He closed his eyes, turning his face away and covering it with his free hand, struggling to regain his composure.

He was going to have to destroy it; Steve's messages were too dangerous to keep. Destroy Steve's art, the first piece of home he'd seen in so long he could barely remember what it was like to not live under armed guard in an underground cave anymore.

"What is it?" Clint's voice was hoarse with concern. "What does it say?"

Tony's lips twitched unwillingly. Clint probably thought somebody had died. After all, normal, stable people didn’t start tearing up over being wished Merry Christmas.

He thrust the paper in Clint's general direction, not looking at him.

"Hey, it's a picture of the Avengers. Without us in it. God, Cap is such a sap." He sounded like he was smiling, concern gone. Then, after a long pause. "Tony, you know we have to burn this."

"I know," Tony snapped, dropping his hand from his face and snatching the letter back from Clint's grasp.

He grabbed the small welding torch off his workbench and turned it on with a sharp, jerky motion. Better to do it quickly, before he had to think about what he was doing.

The letter was written on very thin paper, as usual, and it burned quickly, also as usual. Within moments, there was nothing left of it but a small pile of grey ash.

Tony blinked, then blinked again; the smoke was making his eyes water. Clint, watching, said nothing.

"There," Tony announced. "No more evidence." He turned away, suddenly feeling very naked under Clint's silent gaze, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos Isimud had started leaving on his workbench in the morning. He couldn't muster the energy to feel guilty about the preferential treatment at the moment.

The lukewarm coffee splashed unevenly into the cup and he realized that his hands were shaking. He shifted his body slightly, shielding the cup from Clint's gaze, not wanting to answer whatever Clint might have to say if he noticed.

"Did Jan bring any salt?" His voice sounded calm to his own ears, controlled. At least he could still control something.

Clint handed over a single, small white paper packet. "I hate it here," he said flatly, voice empty of inflection.

Tony tore the salt packet open and poured the contents into his coffee cup, then drank half of it in one long swallow. It tasted strange, but it was better than licking salt off his hand like a drug addict.

"That's just weird," Clint observed. He smirked at Tony, though it was obvious his heart wasn't really in it.

"Better than looking like a junkie," Tony said, deliberately snide, hoping that Clint would take the hint and leave him alone.

"Well I guess you'd know, since that mechanikos can apparently bribe you into doing his bidding with caffeine."

Tony suppressed a flinch, and stared into his disgusting, salty coffee. He was being ridiculous; Clint was just acting like a bastard, it came naturally to him. He didn't actually mean it.

Connors and Gruenwald did, along with most of the other non-supervillain scientists in the place, and some of the supervillains, too. They had every reason to do so, and Tony wasn't entirely certain that they were wrong anymore. Of course they believed the worst of him -- when had he ever given them a reason not to? If he were honest with himself, their contempt for him was probably deserved.

It wasn't as if he were trustworthy -- after all, he'd been lying to them about Iron Man's identity for years -- or even a particularly good man, and now he was actively collaborating with the enemy.

Oh, he could tell himself that he needed to keep up his cover or he'd be no use as a spy, but he'd survived months in Afghanistan without giving in to the terrorists who'd held him. He'd withstood torture, then, to avoid letting his weapons fall into the wrong hands. This time, he'd built weapons of mass destruction for his enemies willingly. Even if the end goal was to bring the Argonians down from within, they were still out there fighting with weapons he had built and repaired for them.

So, at the end of the day, Gruenwald was right about his being a collaborator. Just as he was right when he called Tony "irresponsible." Tony had been called a lot of things over the years -- irresponsible, arrogant, a slut, a drunk, a spoiled rich boy, a war profiteer... the fact that the people making the criticisms hadn't liked him didn't make their words any less accurate.

Surely if he'd just been a little smarter, a little better prepared, he would have found a way to avoid having to surrender, found a better way to fight them. This way was going to cost too many other people their lives.

"I'm not the one wearing their uniform," Tony told Clint, tone as sarcastic and biting as he could make it. "Just be grateful they've kept you on central command guard duty. According to 'that mechanikos,' Sub-Captain Kammani wants to transfer you to her command and deploy you in the city. Suppressing resistance."

Clint stiffened visibly, looking sick. "She's not! Arch-Captain Mamitu hates her! She'd never let anyone be transferred out of her command into Mamitu's, even a human."

"She's seen you practicing with that sword." Tony nodded at the curved Argonian short-sword at Clint's hips. "Apparently it impresses her. Luckily for you, protecting the infrastructure here is their first priority." Clint wasn't a fencer, but no one who'd been trained by Steve in hand-to-hand combat was going to disgrace themselves in a fight, no matter what the weapon.

"Well, my first priority is keeping an eye on you, and keeping the lines of communication open with Jan." Clint was glaring at him now, arms folded, like a shorter, slightly younger, significantly less intimidating version of Steve. "Otherwise, what good are you as a spy?"

"I'm doing a negligible amount of good here, anyway." Tony waved a hand at the closest workbench, which was covered in his latest project, subjecting metal alloys to stress tests to determine if they could be used in Argonian spaceship hulls. "You'd be safer if you were somewhere else."

Because of Tony, the Argonians were significantly closer to regaining nuclear capacity. Because of him, they had functional missiles that could work in vacuum again. Thanks at least in part to his work, they had the more damaged of their spaceships almost completely repaired and had begun building a new one, which would be complete in every way save for its power core -- which they still couldn't duplicate, and never would if Tony had anything to do with it -- in only a few months.

All Tony had to show for his undercover efforts was some basic information on their weapons and shield that he had slipped out to Steve, and a half-finished pair of jury-rigged repulsor gauntlets, currently disassembled and hidden around his work area. He had scavenged the parts from various projects Isimud had given him, one tiny component at a time, and he still lacked several vital parts to make them fully functional.

If he had to, if Steve's hope that Sam could return with re-enforcements to attack the Argonians from without came to nothing, if things got so desperate that the Resistance's only chance of survival was to bring the shield down and do it immediately, Tony could. It would completely destroy Grand Central and kill everyone in it, including hundreds of innocent human prisoners, but once the gauntlets were done, he could do it.

It was probably the one thing that would make everything he'd done for the Argonians, and the loss of his abilities in the Resistance effort, a worthwhile strategic trade-off. It was an order Steve was never going to give, but that didn't mean things wouldn't reach the point at which it was necessary.

He was never going to leave this station again; Tony had made peace with that. With luck, he might be able to get Clint out, though. It would take work, but Clint already worked a guard shift at surface-level, which meant leaving the station was possible for him. Leaving without orders to do so would mean that he couldn't return to the station without being executed for desertion or treason, but since the Argonian high command would have collapsed into the city's depths at that point, it wouldn't really matter.

"Yeah, but I'm more useful here. Plus, Cap would kill me if I left you alone down here." Clint offered Tony a bright, deliberately obnoxious smile. "I know you gave me an order, Cap," he went on, in a sing-song tone full of innocence and fake cheer, "but Tony was being sarcastic at me."

Tony rolled his eyes. Then he sighed, and rubbed at his forehead with one hand, trying to massage away the headache he could feel gathering behind his eyes. "Fine," he said. "You win." He was too tired to keep the conversation going right now; he'd figure out a way to get Clint out of the line of fire later, when the gauntlets were done.

He was always tired now, and his whole body ached, especially his ribs. They had never really healed from the beating he had taken when the Argonians had arrived, or if they had, the vitamin C deficiency had caught up to him and begun sabotaging what months of recovery had done.

"So, what did it say in the letter?" Clint asked. He was leaning one hip against the side of the workbench now, poking absently at the bits and pieces of metal strewn across it. "I didn't get to read it before you over-reacted and burned it."

Tony sighed. "You're the one who told me to." He reached over and removed a coil of wire from Clint's hands, before it could be bent out of shape. Without missing a beat, Clint picked up one of the pieces of disassembled repulsor gauntlet and started fiddling with that.

"I didn't mean now," he said. "I meant after I got to read Cap's mail." He smirked faintly. "'Dear Tony," he went on, in the high-pitched voice he used when he was pretending to be someone else in order to mock them, "I miss you so much. Please come back so we can sit around the Mansion and braid each others' hair and talk about our feelings.'"

"His letters are nothing like that," Tony snapped, yanking the repulsor port core from Clint's grasp and deliberately setting it down out of his reach. "And don't touch that," he added, in an undertone. "It's part of a repulsor gauntlet."

Clint raised his eyebrows and held his hands up in an innocent gesture, but said nothing about Tony's little side project. "Oh come on, you know they are," he returned, sticking to his subject. "For a straight guy, he spends entirely too much time talking about people's feelings. I don't even have to read this one to know what it said. 'Dear Tony, blah blah, feelings, blah blah the aliens suck. The team is barely functional without Hawkeye to be awesome for us. I am worried that everyone I'm in charge of will be blown up like Bucky. Hank is a psycho who wants to poison everyone. Don't get killed. The End. Love, Cap.'"

The fact that, aside from the comments about Clint himself, it was a vaguely accurate summary of Steve's latest few letters did not make it funny. "Shut up, Clint. Why don't you go guard something?" Tony leaned forward, his hands on the edge of the workbench, and glared at Clint across the clutter of works-in-progress, trying to silently will him to go away. Normally, he liked having Clint's company while he worked; it wasn't as if anyone else down here ever talked to him, unless you counted Isimud, and it made the days go by a little less slowly. Right now, though...

He needed time to absorb everything Steve had just told him. Time to mourn lost opportunities and the holiday he was not spending with the only family he had in peace. To think about what it meant that Steve had oh-so-casually slipped that mention of his sexuality into the letter, as if it were no big deal, were something Tony already knew. What it meant that in Steve's picture, he had left a place for Tony at his side.

Unfortunately for Tony, Clint was apparently in one of those moods where all he wanted to do was pester somebody. "Because this is more fun," he said, not moving.

Tony rubbed at his forehead again, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Forget vitamin deficiencies. Clint could induce migraines just fine without any help. "Let me rephrase that. Why don't you go guard something before the Argonians start wondering why you've been hanging out here for an hour?"

Clint made a dismissive gesture. "The Rhino talks to Dr. Schultz or whatever his name is all the time."

"That's because he's some kind of supervillain."

Clint frowned a little. "What makes you think that?"

"Because he talks to the Rhino. Willingly." Not to mention that he seemed to be on speaking terms with Connors and Octavius as well, or at least as close to speaking terms as anyone ever got with Octavius. He seemed to be compensating for his lack of mobility by verbally eviscerating anyone who got too close to his work station. Tony did his best to stay away from him; he got enough verbal abuse from the scientists who weren't career criminals.

Clint nodded. "I see your point. And you're right. If I hang out here too long, Isimud will show up to start quizzing us about warrior-scientist relations in human society, and I have this disturbing suspicion 'relations' doesn't just mean warriors and scientists being buddies with each other."

Until a few minutes ago, Tony had always assumed that Steve was basically heterosexual, and it had turned out to be about as true as any other unfounded assumption. In Clint's case, though... no amount of money would make Tony take a bet that Clint was anything but as straight as one of his arrows.

Tony summoned up his best lascivious grin, and gave Clint a slow once-over through his eyelashes. Flirting, oddly, took less energy than trying to have a real conversation, possibly because it was something he could do by reflex. "You mean the honeymoon is over already?"

Clint shuddered, making a face. "Please don't remind me how long it's been since either of us has gotten laid."

"Some of us got-" Tony began, intending to claim that he, unlike Clint, had gotten enough sex in the months prior to being captured that a few months of celibacy wasn't a hardship; it wasn't actually true, but Clint didn't know that. He stopped mid-sentence as he remembered that the last time Clint had had sex, it had probably been with Bobbi. Bobbi, who Clint had watched die less than a year ago. He'd said her name, once, while delirious from the Argonians' poison. "Nevermind."

Clint stared at him, brows drawn together in confusion. "Nevermind what?"

When Tony didn't answer, Clint shook his head, heaved a deep sigh indicting that he didn't know why he even bothered with someone as hopeless as Tony, and strode off.

Tony heaved a sigh of his own, and resisted the urge to simply put his head down on his workbench and close his eyes. He wasn't sure if the continual exhaustion that dragged at him these days was due to incipient scurvy, the lack of sunlight, or just the situation in general. He had to be on guard all the time, make sure to never let his cover slip when an Argonian was watching, until even in his sleep, he couldn't make himself relax. Even in his dreams, he was still stuck down here, except for the ones where his subconscious jumbled things up and he was still in Afghanistan, creating the original prototype for the armor and watching Yinsen die. Even in those dreams, his waking reality leaked in -- the warlord who'd held him captive became Mamitu, or another Argonian, and he would kneel down beside Yinsen's body, armor clanking, and find himself staring at Clint's bullet-riddled corpse instead, or Jan's, or Pepper and Happy's bodies, or, once, Steve's.

He hadn't mentioned that in any of the letters, and he never would. There were a lot of things he'd never mentioned.

Steve was... just the sight of his handwriting made being down here almost bearable. Tony had never told him that -- hinted, but never come out and said that looking forward to Steve's next letter was the only thing that gave him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Because if he did, he would have to explain why, and until now, that had seemed like a wasted endeavor that would just make Steve uncomfortable and possibly cost Tony the best friend he had.

His head still hurt, a dull ache that was steadily ratcheting up into an actual migraine. He hadn't gotten one of those since he'd healed from the last round of concussions. The converter room's just-this-side-of-dim lighting was starting to hurt his eyes, and combined with the headache, it was disturbingly reminiscent of a hangover.

Tony closed his eyes and slumped against his lab bech, rubbing at his temples with both hands, and tried not to wish for the alcohol that part of him was still convinced would make the pain go away.

He heard the scuff of a shoe on concrete, and groaned. "Clint, I told you to go away," he snapped.

"I'm not your ex-Avenger buddy, Stark."

Tony's eyes snapped open, and he looked up to see Schultz standing over him, looking down at him with folded arms and an irritated expression. Damn, he was slipping. He should have known it wasn't Clint; Clint wore boots.

Tony suppressed the impulse to sigh, and straightened up. "Is there something I can help you with, Schultz?" The other scientist had avoided Tony completely thus far, not even bothering to offer his opinion on Tony's morals and ethics, or general lack thereof, as almost everyone else had.

"Yeah," Schultz said, unfolding his arms and shifting his facial expression to something slightly friendlier with what looked like actual effort. "Everyone says you're some kind of genius, and since you built the Iron Man armor, I guess it's probably true."

Tony nodded warily. There was no real point in denying it, but he was fairly sure that Schultz was also a volunteer, rather than a captive -- not that there was much difference between the two, at this point -- which meant that his motives were not to be trusted. There was a decent chance that he was spying on fellow scientists for the Argonians. Why else would he be asking questions about Iron Man?

He should have known Tony Stark's open sponsorship of Iron Man and the Avengers would eventually come back to haunt him.

"If you had to build a vibrational dampener out of the materials available for use in this pit, how would you do it?"

"If I-- what?" Tony blinked at him, his tense expectation of disaster derailed into confusion. "You're working on pieces of the engines for their in-atmosphere fighters. That doesn't have anything to do with vibrational dampeners."

"Let's call it a side project." Schultz leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I'm pretty sure that," he nodded at Tony's work bench, "is part of one of Iron Man's repulsor ports, which, the last time I checked, didn't have anything to do with spaceship hull alloys." He voice was very quiet, and perfectly calm, but with an edge of menace that confirmed that yes, he was in fact some kind of supervillain, if not anyone Tony actually recognized. Some kind of supervillain who'd figured out that Tony was secretly building himself a pair of repulsor gauntlets.

"What do you want?" Tony asked, as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. If Schultz told the Argonians, Tony wouldn't be the only one to suffer for it. Clint would be charged with treason right along with him, and they would see to it that he took hours to die.

Damnit, he should have hidden the pieces of the gauntlets better, should have been more careful. Now they were both going to die, and it would all have been for nothing.

"I want your help building a vibrational dampener." Schultz frowned, staring at him with the same 'what's the matter with you, weren't you listening' expression that several of Tony's exes had been particularly fond of. "I'd tell you the frequency of the vibrations, but that's... let's call it privileged corporate information."

Something about his voice was vaguely familiar, but that might just be because they'd both been stuck down here together for over three months, and Schultz's voice had become part of the background drone that Tony did his best to tune out while he was working. It didn't help that the other man was so utterly unremarkable -- average height, average build, mid-thirties, brown hair and brown eyes, neither particularly attractive nor particularly un-attractive, no scars, no moles, no distinguishing marks. He could have been anyone, including one of Tony's less memorable ex-employees.

Tony racked his brain anyway, and came up with an utterly frustrating nothing. If he knew who the man was, he'd know how to deal with him, how to manipulate him. As it was, the best thing he could think of to say was, "Why?" Why do you need one? Why aren't you turning me in? He wasn't sure himself which question he was really asking.

"Because I'm not going to tell the alien fox-things about your little side project, which means you owe me one."

Tony blinked. Well, that was direct. Then again, Schultz's main source of human conversation over the past few months had been the Rhino, which probably left one out of practice at things like subtlety. "And how do you know I'm not going to tell them about yours, whatever it is?" He tried to match Shultz's quietly threatening tone, and, judging by the way the other man's jaw tightened, succeeded.

"Because you used to fund the Avengers. People like that don't sell other humans out to the aliens." The flat statement was as much a challenge as an explanation, and Tony wondered if it rankled for the man to admit that anyone connected to the Avengers had any good qualities. "Look, just a couple of suggestions would help." He offered Tony a half-smile, adding, "Come on, I wouldn't rat you out anyway; I owe you one for testing Alexei for radiation poisoning. Plus, if they have reason to suspect one of us, they'll start taking a closer look at all of us."

Tony found himself nodding. It was a good point; it served them all well to keep their heads down. "Give me a few hours to think about it, and I'll see what I can come up with," he said. It wasn't as if he had any choice; Schultz had him over a barrel, and they both knew it. "You still haven't told me why you need it."

Schultz smirked nastily at him. "You think your Avenger friends are the only ones who want the aliens gone? The people who really run this city are losing business every day that they're here. Who do you think's been supplying Captain America's resistance with guns?"

He left while Tony was still trying to think of an adequate reply, Argonian-issue grey lab coat flapping behind him.

So, the Kingpin had people down here as well. He shouldn't have been surprised, really; the Kingpin generally had people everywhere.

Wonderful. Now he got to look over his shoulder twice as often, and try to sleep with the knowledge that his cover would be blown the moment Wilson Fisk decided Tony and Clint were more useful to him captured and dead.

He had to complete the gauntlets before that happened, before Schultz sprung whatever piece of sabotage he was planning, because chances were he wasn't going to give Tony and Clint a heads up before he brought the wrath of the Imperator down on them all at the Kingpin's behest.

He had been stalling, Tony realized, working more slowly than he could have. He should have started working on the gauntlets, earlier, much earlier; it ought to have been the first plan in his mind from the moment he'd realized that he'd been put in the same chamber as the shield. He'd known from the start that he was in a position to take out the Argonians' power source and the best part of their defenses in a single blow, and had wasted time passing handfuls of mostly useless information to Steve.

He didn't want to die. More than that, he didn't want to be responsible for the deaths of everyone imprisoned down here with him, didn't want to die with the blood, suffering, and death of hundreds on his hands. He also didn't have a choice. Looked at objectively, the life of one man, or even several hundred men, was nothing compared to the fate of all humanity.

Tony picked up the half-finished repulsor port and started carefully winding another layer of wire around the main ring -- it wouldn't be as solid as a ring of metal cast specifically for the task would be, but it only had to be fired a handful of times. It was ironic, really. He had said nothing to Steve about how he really felt about him, spent years trying never to let his feelings go beyond friendship, and now that he'd been forced to realize how much the other man truly meant to him, now that he knew there was a chance Steve might be capable of some day returning his feelings after all, it was too late to do anything about it.

He was never going to see Steve, or anyone else he loved, again.

***

"Good evening, New York! Coming at you live from an undisclosed location in Manhattan, this is Daily Bugle Free Radio.

"I'm your new temporary celebrity host for the evening broadcast, Johnny Storm, better known to the ladies as the Human Torch. In a break from our usual procedure, we're going to be playing you some music in addition to reading you depressing news stories about aliens. But first, some news stories about aliens. Take it away, Ben Urich!"

*sound of someone clearing his throat*

"Thank you, ah, Johnny. The ongoing conflict between Argonian forces and the human resistance movement has escalated in the wake of the Argonian execution of Jacqueline Kurtzberg, a pharmacy owner whose drug store was discovered to be selling supplies to members of the resistance. Two of Mrs. Kurtzberg's employees are still being detained by the Imperator's troops, after being arrested earlier this week by Argonian security forces under the command of Sub-Captain Zarek.

A wave of retaliatory attacks have spread across Manhattan and the Bronx, similar to the outbreak of violence that followed the execution of New York City police officer Sumerak this fall, ranging from anti-Argonian slogans spray-painted on walls and bricks thrown at patrolling Argonian troops to the brutal execution of , a human security guard working for the Imperator. Security forces under Sub-Captains Zarek and Kammani have suppressed the outbreaks with brutal force, leading to the deaths of over a dozen people from plasma burns. Stay tuned for more news at the half-hour."

"Thank you, Ben. And I'd like to take a moment to let the, um, the families of Mrs. Kurtzberg and her employees know that we -- I mean, the Fantastic Four, and the resistance -- value and honor their bravery and sacrifice. I..." *a long pause* "I probably wouldn't still have two legs if she hadn't been willing to sell us medical supplies. So I'd like to, um, to thank her.

"And, um, right, we were going to play music, weren't we? Okay, first up, courtesy of my iPod, is "Let's Get it Started" by the Black Eyed Peas." Just to make it clear for posterity, we don’t actually have permission to play any of these, and no one is getting any royalties. So if anyone from the RIAA is listening, I know you guys aren't going to let a little thing like aliens taking over the world stop you from suing people, so you can send all your lawyers to the Baxter Building. It's the one with the giant forcefield around it that's been under siege by the Argonians for four months."

*a shuffling noise, followed by a whispered but still audible argument about which button to press on 'this stupid thing,' and then the opening bars of a song begin to play*

***


Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty (a) | Chapter Twenty (b) | Chapter Twenty One