TITLE: As Plans Go... (This One Sucked)
Iron Man (movie)mixed with comic-verse
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are....
FEEDBACK: Loved

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Tony was breathing hard. Every muscle hurt. Every thought hurt! The armor felt heavier than it should and together with the headache it was a clear sign just how badly he had been hit. And how badly the Extremis had suffered.

The blast had more or less collided with him. It hadn’t felt like all the countless times he had been shot before. This had been like an eighteen-wheeler running over him multiple times. He and his brothers.

Something heavy was resting on him. He felt like he was trapped underneath a building, with no leg room. He tried to move, but his muscles no longer obeyed and he was crashing heavily, physically as well as mentally.

He had defended himself purely on automatic. He had gone down, but he hadn’t been out for the fight. His armor had suffered, but it had been functional. So he had battled on, receiving two more volleys until the others had finally managed to take out the tank-like construction.

Tony smiled dimly. That had been the plan. He would distract the thing, the others could neutralize the threat. He hadn’t thought that the blasts would be this bad or that the rest of the Avengers would have such trouble taking it down.

“Jarvis?” he managed.

“Yes, sir?”

“Status?”

There was a poignant silence. “I believe the word would be ‘totaled’, sir,” the AI finally replied.

“Yeah, probably.”

The HUD was down. He only had the limited view through the helmet’s slits and the muffled sounds coming from the outside to get a bearing of his surroundings. The Extremis was like a raw open wound in his mind and just the thought that he could use satellite imagery to get an idea of where he was and what was happening hurt. He would probably black out if he moved too much.

“Scan,” he whispered roughly.

“Most of the external sensors are down, sir,” Jarvis told him calmly. “But from what I can gather you crashed into the building site and got lodged under steel beams and concrete plates.

So a building had fallen on him. That explained the general misery he was in, coupled with agony and some really interesting problems like the tightness in his chest, the pounding in his head, and that he couldn’t really feel much of his left arm. It was better than constant agony, but no less worrisome.

“Radio?”

“I’m currently trying to contact Captain America. It seems that the enemy has employed scramblers and I can barely get an interference free frequency. But I think the team is looking for you.”

Tony closed his eyes and bit his lower lips as a surge of pain from the Extremis had him whimper.

“Sir?”

The pain rose and he moaned as his brain was trying to liquefy and evaporate.

“Sir!”

It was as if he felt every little nerve ending in his body. Tony screamed in pain as something inside of him seemed to tear apart. He was aware of a voice calling his name, then there was suddenly nothing any more.

The pain had subsided from agony to tolerable levels and he groaned in relief.

“Tony!”

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, sir.” The AI sounded relieved.

Tony smiled dimly. The raw open wound feeling was gone, but that only meant that Extremis had shut down to reboot or something. Hopefully. He prayed it was just that.

“I received an affirmative from Captain America,” Jarvis informed him. “He and the rest of the team are currently devising a strategy to get you out.”

“That bad?”

“Sir, you are underneath a building,” Jarvis told him, sounding a bit disturbed.

“You told me so.”

“A building where the structure was already complete.”

“Oh.”

Tony concentrated on his breathing. Did the air taste stuffy and metallic?

“The Avengers are working as fast as they can. Your relative position has been determined.”

“Good,” he coughed and immediately regretted it. Damn, that hurt, too.

The dizziness he felt wasn’t so promising either.

“Tell Cap… to hurry,” Tony whispered.

“He already is.”

“Oh.”

Vertigo hit him. He was laying down and still he felt like he was falling. Shit… so not good.

“Tell them to hurry,” he managed faintly.

“I will. I already have.” Jarvis sounded worried. “Sir?”

“Not feeling too good.”

“I can’t tell what might be wrong,” the Ai responded. “The Extremis has shut down.”

“I noticed.”

It was getting really stuffy now, despite the fact that the armor had ventilation and oxygen support.

“Jarvis…”

“Sir?”

He couldn’t talk. It was increasingly hard to even think. He was crashing hard and fast.

“Sir? Sir! Tony!”

He almost smiled. Twice in one day Jarvis had ignored protocol and called him by his first name.

Then even that thought sluiced off into the abyss he was hovering about.

And he fell.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It took two weeks. Despite the Extremis, it took Tony two weeks to recover, to regain his strength and to use all his limbs again. Steve had never been more scared of losing him than the moment they had gotten him out from under the collapsed building. There had been too much blood, too many signs of broken bones and internal bleeding, and the paramedics had been unable to do much without cutting the armor off him – which had been near-impossible. Steve had unlocked it with a voice command, but the helmet had stayed on until a trusted medic had arrived. The paramedics had been frustrated by it, but they had understood the whole secret identity matter.

Tony hadn’t been flown to a normal hospital. They had whisked him off to a SHIELD facility where he had been thoroughly examined.

They had told Steve and Fury that Tony had been lucky to have survived.

It wasn’t luck, Rogers knew. It was the Extremis. Without the nanotubes Tony would already be dead.

Sitting on the couch, Tony’s head pillowed on his lap, Steve was watching the latest news. It was quiet in the mansion and while Peter was around, he tip-toed through the rooms or across the ceiling with an ‘You don’t see me, you can’t hear me’ expression. MJ was at a casting, Aunt May had decided to visit an old friend, Logan was… somewhere, and Luke had joined Jessica in a sparring session in the training rooms.

Steve ran gentle fingers through the dark, longish strands of hair. Tony was sleeping. The Extremis had repaired the damage done to the human body, but Stark still ached. He would hide it, but he was in pain. The broken bones had mended, the open wounds closed, but the healing took its toll. Two weeks after the terrible accident Tony looked fine on the outside, but Steve knew he was far from fine on the inside.

Tony made a soft noise and shifted a little, stiffened from pain, and finally sank into a more relaxed position once more.

Steve had gone onto a mission without Iron Man the day before. They had fought about it. Tony was convinced that he was fine and could handle himself in any given situation.

“I’ve been through worse!” was his standard argument.

“You’re not going and that’s final,” had been Captain America’s stony reply again and again.

He was the team leader, even if he mostly shared the responsibility for the team and the mission with Tony. They had a good partnership; they were equals. But times like these Steve wished Tony wasn’t so stubborn and independent and set on proving himself again and again and again. There was nothing to prove.

So they had gone without him. And Tony had been angry when Cap had returned. The anger had fueled him throughout the evening and the night, until it had run its course, and Steve had found him in the workshop, exhausted.

He couldn’t remember every word of the argument that had ensued, but it had been vicious and Steve had won it, but at a price. Tony had not given him another look for the rest of the day. Today… today everything was better, but Steve was still angry at Tony.

Angry that he still didn’t see how much he was loved by his friends.

Angry that Tony didn’t see his own value.

Angry that he, Captain America, was unable to give a friend the reassurance he needed that he wasn’t the fifth wheel.

Angry…

Steve sighed and tried to let go. Anger wouldn’t accomplish anything. It was a momentary emotion that shouldn’t be kept. It should be worked through and released.

He looked at the other man so close to him and was surprised to see alert eyes watching him.

“Hey,” he said softly.

Tony turned onto his back and reached up with one hand, touching Steve’s cheek.

“Funny how you keep beating yourself up every time I screw up,” Stark remarked, voice low.

“You didn’t screw up!” Steve immediately replied forcefully.

“Oh?”

“No.”

“You called me an idiot.”

Steve smiled humorlessly. “Because you are one.”

“People call me a genius,” Tony pointed out.

“People don’t know you. And just because you can string together complicated equations and make a machine out of them doesn’t mean you’re brilliant.”

“The scientific community begs to differ…”

“Screw them.”

Tony looked downright shocked and surprised at the two words. Or maybe it were the words coupled with Steve’s expression.

“You run yourself into the ground! You make yourself a target! You think nearly fatal injuries that don’t heal within the day make you weak!”

Tony winced and Steve was suddenly aware of tightening his hand around Tony’s arm. He released it with an apologetic look.

“You’re not superhuman, Tony. You’re human and you need to recover, and it’s never a weakness. We all need that time, emotionally or physically. It’s never easy, but we don’t want to be perfect. No one needs to be perfect.”

Tony averted his eyes and made moves to sit up. Steve didn’t stop him, was ready to help should it be difficult, but Tony managed and he remained sitting on the couch. Head bowed, looking at his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

“Tony…”

He took one of those hands. Strong and agile and clever and fascinating to watch when Tony worked on whatever tickled his fancy.

“We’re a team. We look out for one another. You included. And I… I love you. I don’t want you to think I don’t because…” Steve shook his head. “I don’t care what powers you have or don’t have. I never fell for Iron Man. I fell for you.”

“I’m Iron Man.”

Steve raised his brows in mock surprise. “Oh really?”

Tony shot him a dark look. Steve grew serious again.

“We all have strengths and weaknesses. Aside from Logan and Luke, we all can get seriously hurt. We know it. We live with it. I doubt I’d survive a building falling on me without a scratch or a broken bone. It doesn’t make me weak.”

Tony sighed.

“And just because you have millions to spend doesn’t make you any different from us either,” Steve pointed out. “There are others out there with money, too.”

“Not money made from selling war machines.”

“You changed, Tony. Everything changed.” Steve squeezed the hand he was holding. “You changed the world in more ways than one.”

Stark was silent, still staring at the floor. Finally his eyes rose and he met Steve’s calm gaze.

“Idealist,” he said softly, without malice or mockery.

“Idiot,” Steve answered in the same tone of voice.

Tony smiled.

Steve leaned forward and their lips brushed against each other, the kiss almost chaste.

Yes, he was an idealist. And Tony was an idiot. For thinking he didn’t matter. For believing his contribution was worth next to nothing. But Steve would never tire of showing him just what he meant, to him and to the team, but mostly to him. Because he meant a lot.

A whole lot.