Title: Left For Dead
Fandom: MCU
Rating: M
Length: 1009 words
Content notes: Ending of Civil War. Not Team Cap friendly
Author's notes: Also fills my Whumptober prompt "Left for dead"
Summary: Abandoned in the bunker, Tony has nothing to do but think. The others might not like the outcome.


Tony barely heard it over the blood roaring in his own ears, but he was too attuned to the sounds of engine noise to miss it. They had taken off in some kind of small craft — probably the quinjet — and left him here. If it had been anyone but Steve, Tony might have thought that they were going to get help, but after what had just happened... Why would Steve bother? You didn't try to kill a man and then go fetch him help.

Sure, the Captain America in those old comic books would do exactly that, but if there was one thing that had been made abundantly clear to Tony over the past decade, it was that the makers of those comics didn't know shit about Steve Rogers. Either that or the ice had never completely thawed from his brain.

Tony almost laughed at the idea, except it turned into a weak cough that tore at his chest. That was quickly followed by the familiar feeling of his lungs filling with liquid. He tried to remind himself that this was blood, not water, but it didn't really help. The familiar crushing weight of his broken chest did nothing to help Tony differentiate between his memories and the present. Knowing it was pointless, Tony still tried again to raise his AI.

"F— FRI? You there, baby g— girl?" he asked.

Nothing but static came through the suit's coms. The fight was a bit of a blur, and Tony wasn't sure exactly when he'd lost his girl. But it had definitely happened during the fight, and not before, because he'd been hearing worried things from her for a good while into it. Since the suit had gone dark, her protocols called for FRIDAY to summon the cavalry, and Tony had no reason to think that she wouldn't have.

Of course, Tony had done his due diligence by the Accords when he came here hunting down St— Rogers and his pal. The Russians knew Tony was in their airspace, and roughly where he was headed, and they were supposed to be sending their own ground crews to clean up any resulting damage. So between the Russians already in transit, and whatever updates FRIDAY had managed to send out, it was highly unlikely that Tony was going to die here.

Not that Rogers knew that.

No, as far as the sainted Captain was aware, he had just abandoned Tony to die in this bunker. At least most of Tony's enemies would've aimed for the head or neck, once his helmet was off. A quick end. But no, not Rogers. He'd chosen to crush the arc reactor in the suit, instead, disabling it within minutes. So, instead of the clean kill, Tony was left here in a coffin of scrap metal, unable to activate the release mechanisms, let alone move to an area of the bunker that was less exposed to the snow and wind.

Tony coughed again, hating the wet sound and feel of it. He tried to remind himself that he was in a different place, a different time, but those old memories of being waterboarded, of weeks spent freezing from blood loss even when he was standing over a furnace, of being surrounded by dark, damp walls... they wouldn't leave his mind. The next time Tony opened his eyes to look around — hoping to see the Russian cavalry — he couldn't tell if he was in a bunker or a cave.

"F— FRI?" He tried again.

It was useless — about as useless as those promises of friendship, trust, and honesty from Rogers — because he would have heard FRIDAY himself the moment she re-established the connection. Tony wasn't in the habit of doing useless things, just as he wasn't in the habit of lying down and waiting for death to take him.

He thought— Dammit! He thought he was done being betrayed by those closest to him, who had claimed to be his family. He thought he was doing being abandoned and left for dead… in a cave, without the reactor, in a mansion toppling into the sea… and now in a bunker. Tony was fucking done with people using him, lying to him, and then sucker punching him when he wasn't looking.

If he survived this… if Tony made it out of this c— bunker… then he'd show them all. People like Romanov accused him of being selfish and arrogant? They hadn't seen anything yet. Rogers had the nerve to say that Tony was evil for making the exact same weapons as Howard? That he needed to atone for something? He hadn't see the fucking Merchant of Death yet. Rhodey had been taken out by these assholes as well; he wouldn't be stopping Tony this time.

The so-called Avengers had manipulated him, blamed him, and lied to him for the last time. Tony was done with all of them. Let's see how they liked living in a world without "not recommended" Tony Stark. Without the uniforms, weapons, intel, and salaries that Tony provided. Without state-of-the-art housing and training facilities. Without Iron Man backing them up in the field and fighting at their side. Without SI's legal team and the dozens of changes they'd been pushing through the Accords to make them more palatable.

They had abandoned Tony — not just here in a Russian bunker, or in an airport in Germany, or in a fight in Malibu, or in a hearing on Ultron — they had abandoned him before they ever met him, because not one of them thought that the real Tony was worth knowing. They'd preemptively abandoned him, and then done their best to make Tony think it was all his own fault.

Well, they'd be regretting that for the rest of their lives, if Tony had anything to say about it. He might have been left for dead, but he wasn't in the ground yet. And Tony hadn't even begun to get his payback.