Chapter Text
Tony crashed through the hallway ceiling right in front of the cell door, watching via infrared as the men inside reacted to the noise. In an instant FRIDAY had locked onto their heat signatures. Tony fired, the targeted tranquilizers punching through the wall and door and dropping the men like flies. Tony spared them no attention - that would come later - and blasted open the door.
He stepped into the room, and froze.
The first face-to-face impression Tony had had of the Winter Soldier had been the sheer size of him; the footage from the fight on the bridge in DC the day before the helicarriers came down did little to capture exactly what it was like having that imposing figure walk steadily towards him, eyes devoid of emotion, strength and violence clear in every line of his body. Tony remembered the shocking pain of being slammed to the ground in Berlin, remembered the terrifying inhuman power of the metal arm, remembered how Barnes had been relentless, powering through the others' attacks like a human battering ram. Then, Barnes had been huge, unstoppable, unshakable.
The man now lying half-curled and naked among the prone bodies of his torturers was disturbingly thin, ribs clearly visible beneath the grime of old and new blood and bruises, the knobs of his spine pressing against the thin skin of his curved back. Almost impossible to believe that it was Barnes at all, if not for the twisted mess of metal that was his left arm, ending raggedly at the upper arm where it had been severed. That hadn't happened during the airport fight; someone had done that to Barnes between then and now. Tony didn't want to know whether the arm was wired into the nervous system. He thought back to the sounds Barnes had made when the stun baton was pressed to the exposed wiring, and knew the answer to that question.
Up until that moment, Tony hadn't fully believed that what he'd heard and seen had been real, had been inflicted on a real human being, regardless of their crimes. The audio analysis was a basic tool, all things considered: useful in the absence of visual information, but incapable of capturing details. Incapable of preparing Tony for the scene laid out before him, for FRIDAY's voice, quiet in his ear, relaying the extent of damage visible through her scans, for the stink of piss and blood and burnt flesh filtering through the protective layer of the suit as he lifted his faceplate and crouched down behind Barnes, for the way Barnes’ throat worked but no sound came out as Tony reached for the baton and, following FRIDAY's directions, carefully, carefully eased it out of Barnes’ body. The noise it made as it slid free was obscene, the metal slick with blood and what looked like---like---come. Jesus fucking Christ.
Tony swallowed down bile, letting the baton clatter to the floor, trying not to look at the mess between Barnes’ thighs or the thing they’d attached to his knees to force his legs apart. Instead his eyes grazed over the seemingly endless horrorshow of Barnes’ skin: boot-shaped bruises everywhere, deep gashes all over, raw burns marking up his back and thighs and feet. His right shoulder was nearly black with bruising, the joint swollen and out-of-socket; dislocated, if not broken, the skin at his cuffed wrist shredded from the force of his struggles. Impossible not to see the horrifying brutality of what had been done to him. Impossible, too, not to see the added violation: come smeared on Barnes’ thighs, his back, staining the hood covering his head.
Moving across the room to kneel in front of Barnes, Tony reached for the cloth over Barnes’ head. He paused midway to identify himself, in case Barnes hadn't been able to tell from the sound of the blasters and the heavy footfalls of the suit.
“Hey,” Tony tried. “Hey, Barnes, it’s Tony. Stark. I’m here to---I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Barnes didn’t respond, didn’t give any indication that he’d heard, the fabric over his mouth fluttering silently with every ragged breath. The HUD had showed that he was still conscious, if only just; silence could mean a lot of things: shock, injury, vocal chord damage--he’d sure screamed enough for that--possibly brain damage. Barnes’ skin was a roadmap of the kind of devastation a baton like that could inflict on the surface. Tony'd watched as they alternated between shocking him both inside and out; there was no telling what kind of damage it could inflict when inside someone like that. Jesus, what if he was completely fried?
“I’m gonna get this hood off, okay?”
Barnes still didn't react, unmoving as Tony carefully removed the hood. The characteristic long hair was missing. It looked as if it had been hacked away with a blunt blade, judging by the amount of dried blood and half-healed cuts littering Barnes' scalp. Barnes' eyes were resolutely fixed on the ground, not meeting Tony's gaze.
Tony debated what to say and settled for listing his plan of action.
"I'm going to free your hand and your legs, find you something to wear, and then we're getting out of here and getting you somewhere safe, okay?"
Using a laser on the suit's fingertip, Tony sliced apart both the wrist cuff and the belt it was attached to. As his wrist came free and his ruined shoulder shifted, Barnes made a low, animal noise of pain and convulsed, vomiting a thin stream of blood and--Christ--what looked like come. A few more heaves brought up some more blood--and other fluid that Tony didn't want to think about-- and then nothing at all. Barnes slumped down face-first in the pool of red he'd made, body shaking all over, his chest heaving unevenly as he drooled blood onto the cold concrete floor.
Tony finished cutting away the bar between Barnes's knees and quickly moved to Barnes' head to make sure he wasn't about to choke. He tore off a clean piece of fabric from the clothes of one of the unconscious men--feeling grim satisfaction at the sight of the mouth-sized hole in the blood-stained lower leg of the man's pants-- and, after a moment's hesitation, carefully cupped Barnes’ chin and wiped his bloody mouth and nose clean as gently as he could. This close it was clear just how tenuously Barnes was clinging to consciousness; his breathing had subsided into a rasping wheeze and his skin registered as shockingly cold through the sensors in Tony's fingertips. Ideally, Barnes’ vitals would have stabilized a little bit more ahead of flying him out of there, but time was running out; according to FRIDAY they had less than two minutes until the base’s security arrived.
Extracting the suit's rescue kit containing supplies for emergency rescue situations, Tony removed the expanding mesh blanket and set the size parameters large enough to cover Barnes up. As it prepared itself, he tried to get a response.
“I’m going to get you covered up with this, and then I’m gonna pick you up, and we’re getting out of here.” When Barnes remained unresponsive he let out a long breath and crouched down until they were eye level. "I didn't know, Barnes," he said quietly. "I didn't know they---that this was happening. You can hate me for it later, but right now I need your help getting out of here. Can you do that for me?"
The rhythm of Barnes' breathing changed. His gaze flickered from the floor to settle briefly on Tony's face before shifting away again. After a long moment, he nodded.
"Good," Tony managed to get out past the dull ache in his throat, "okay, here we go," carefully he draped the blanket over Barnes, covering him from shoulder to calf, before helping Barnes to ease himself onto his side until the blanket had firmly secured itself around him, trying not to wince as the fabric settled over raw abraded skin. Barnes didn't make a sound, just let himself be moved and then lifted into Tony's arms--God, he was so light--his head lolling against Tony's shoulder after a few seconds: unconscious at last.
“Okay,” Tony said, giving the room one last look around: the fresh and dried blood and come smeared and pooled on the floor, the severed restraints Barnes had been kept in, the blood-slick stun-baton, the unconscious men who'd kept Barnes in here and done this to him. There wasn’t time to deal with them now, but if Tony had their faces and identities, had copies of whatever information was stored at this base, evidence of what had taken place here, no-one was going to be getting away unpunished.
"You got everything?" he murmured as the faceplate settled over his eyes.
"Got it," FRIDAY responded, her voice like steel, the meaning clear: we’re going to fucking destroy these bastards, and then we’re going to come back and burn this place to the ground.
“Okay, let’s do this,” and then he was blasting a hole in the ceiling, and tightening his grip on Barnes, and they were up in the air, they were getting away, they were gone.