Chapter Text
“Tony can you hear me?”
“He did it again.”
“Is that his or…”
“It’s of them all.”
“Shit I got burnt!”
“How many times do we have to tell you not to touch him at these moments!”
“Then how do we…”
Red.
In the eyes. In the head. On the hands.
Wet. Sticky.
Hot metal.
Voices. Lots of voices. Sharp. Different. Blue? Anxious.
Anxiety – blue?
Figures. Moving… a threat?
What’s happened?
Cold. So cold around him. Or is he..? Hot. Too hot.
Who is he?
“Stark, dammit, come back already!”
“We need to get him out of here.”
“We need Barnes, his arm can handle it.”
“And where is he? And where is Cap?!”
What?
Voices. Too many. Too different. Can’t understand. Familiar.
Names.
“Tony!”
Red starts to have shades. Lighter. Darker. Colors.
People.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fuckin’ NOT!”, someone growls beside him. In front of him?
Close.
Is he on his knees? He is. The suit… not the armor, the other one, new. To withstand high temperatures.
He sees. Red on his hands. In blood. People around him. Lying on the ground. Enemies. Uniform.
“You did that, you did it again, why?!” The same voice. Growls.
“There were too many”, his lips are moving like automatically.
He looks higher, sees black, not red, but black, then metal, the metal of the arm and then skin, a face, eyes.
Blue. Light blue.
Blue – anxiety?
“We could’ve handle this, fuck, this shit is for critical situations only, why the fuck you went here first and alone you idiot?!”
“I can’t be an idiot.”
Short laugh.
“Looks like he’ll be fine. Hey, Stark, colder already? Won’t burn again?”
A voice. He turns at it.
“Yes. I’ll walk myself.”
“You won’t.” A new voice. Familiar too. “Bucky, take him to the quinjet. We need… we need a team from the headquarters. To clean… all this. And you take him to Banner asap.”
Someone takes him and lifts from the ground. Looks like the must not do that. Dangerous. He usually hurts.
Cold touch. An arm. The arm.
“Barnes.”
“Shut up”, that growl again. “Shut up or I’ll kill you.”
Looks above the metal shoulder. Behind, a bit far already. A round shield with a star on it. A person. Red around him.
Red. Because of him.
He closes his eyes.
Stark wakes up in the Tower’s med bay. Banner sits hunched on the chair right next to his bed.
“Brucie?”, he calls and Banner turns and looks at him closely. He’s tired, very tired and worried, He knows Banner is.
“You activated it again. The seventh time.” He speaks quietly, but accusation is clear in his voice.
“I had to.”
“And Steve said you had not. That you could’ve managed without it.”
“No.”
“Tony…”
“No, we couldn’t”, Stark rejects and tries to sit. Nothing hurts, there is no pain at all, he feels no physical damage at all – a typical situation after every activation. “Why am I here? I’m fine and you know that.”
“Physically? Absolutely.” Bruce stands up and looks at the monitors. “Mentally? That is a big question every time.”
Stark frowns. “I’ve told you I’m fine. The Earth is not flat, gods don’t exist except our asgardian friend here, I am Tony Stark, Iron Man and I’m not going to walk outside the Tower and start to kill everyone I see so what else do you want from me?!”
“And do you remember”, Bruce asks looking straight at him again. “What have you done?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, no, I never remember any of that!”
“Then watch”, Bruce points at the pad on the bed next to Stark, shrugs and turns to the door. “And then tell me if you still think so.”
“Shit, if you mean all those killed – that was fucking HYDRA, they all should go to hell!
“Watch”, Barnes repeats and leaves the room.
Stark stares at the closed door for a few seconds and then grans the pad and opens the camera records from the last mission, translates them to holograms around him – from his suit’s camera, from the buildings, streets, just every camera that caught him at that moment.
He sees himself, sees how he gets out of the armor, how he goes through the corridor, his skin starts to glow and red lines appear all over his body…
Cameras didn’t catch his next moves cause they’re too fast. But then there he is standing in the middle of the enemies’ group and…
Stark stops playing a few seconds later when he’s already on his knees, dead bodies torn apart all around him covered in blood and his mouth was opened like he was laughing though the records don’t have the sound.
With the pad in his hands Stark gets up from the bed, takes off al the sensors from himself, leaves the room wearing only sweat pants and walks straight to the workshop.
Someone is clearly watching him through the cameras and he can’t forbid that or just shut the cameras down because they’ll be suspicious then.
Actually he didn’t need to watch the camera records.
Actually he remembers himself laughing, surrounded by all those brutally torn apart corpses and blood and gore.
Actually he remembers his wish to break and to hurt and to kill and to have more, more red and screams and fear and pain.
Actually Tony Stark doesn’t have any memory loss.
Actually it is him who goes mad every time.
*
He locks down all the workshop floor turning on full isolation protocols, sits down with a bottle of whiskey and just drinks himself until he just blacks out on the couch.
He dreams of red, the smell of copper and the sound of breaking bones, fire instead of blood and orange venom in his head.
He wakes up what looks like a day later in the same silence which is always so strange for his workshop. He sees dawn through the wall-height lab windows.
“Friday, give me the analysis of the last activation.”
“Total Extremis activation time – four minutes seven seconds, forty seconds longer than the previous activation. Total deactivation time – twenty three seconds, six seconds longer than the previous activation. Maximum body temperature – one thousand sixty degrees, seventy degrees higher than the previous activation. Total enemies killed – twenty seven. Total enemies injured – none. Total enemies encountered – twenty seven. The post-activation aggression level – above acceptable. Heart rate…”
Stark listens to the reply while standing up and walking towards one of the tables. He takes a big flat metal plate and looks at his reflection.
Raven-black hair with no sign of grey. Much less wrinkles than he can remember for years. His pupils are narrowed to almost invisible dots and his iris lighter with red and with red gleam.
It will stay like this for a day more plus a couple of minutes or so if his calculations are correct.
They are always correct.
Seven activations.
How many more are left?
“Sir, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Rogers have left you a message.”
“What time was it?”
“Three minutes ago, sir.”
“Delete it.”
He is not usually disturbed for a first couple of hours. Barnes is too freaked out and angry and Rogers is around him to prevent any possible consequences.
It Is better to stay that way.
They don’t need to see this.
Stark holds the plate with one hand while pulls up his tank shirt with the other and watches the skin around the arc reactor – around the tech in his body. The scars are still red and the red glowing lines are still there too disappearing slowly and like unwillingly.
He can still sense and feel every tech in the workshop. Bright spots in the darkness, lines of floating data and calculations. He can’t understand them as during the activation yet and he can’t concentrate but he can feel.
This is new.
“Add the ability to feel the tech after – how long did I sleep? – to the seventh activation report.”
“Done, Sir. Should I make this addition available for Mr. Banner?”
Stark pulls the tank shirt down and drops the plate back with a loud noise.
“No.”