[SEADLA] Chapter 11/24: Cell

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Marvel’s MCU
SERIES: SEADLA Verse, version 2.0
RATING: Mature
WORDCOUNT: 4 626
PAIRING(S): -
CHARACTER(S): Tony Stark, Nick Fury, Clint Barton.
GENRE: Jail time sucks.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): This chapter contains an instance of Tony drinking alcohol against his will, even though physical force is not technically used. Ther are also brief and non-graphic instances of self-harm. (Check the AO3 listing for a glimpse of what’s to come).
SUMMARY: In which things suck a lot, but at least it gives Tony time to think.

DEDICATION(S): As always, to the first version’s readers, to the people who leave comments on the fic three years after its last update, and to 2012!me, who needed to write this fic a lot.

SEADLA ON TUMBLR: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7] [Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10]

SEADLA ON LJ: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10

SEADLA ON DW: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10

Tony’s legs scream with protest when he speeds up, the battery in his arms dragging him down and tearing at the edges of his skin with agonizing slowness. He trips on a swiss knife hidden in the desert sand, and plummets down toward New York.

 

Tony startles awake with a gasp, wincing when the harsh light of his cell pierces at his eyes. He screws his eyes shut and waits for a few careful seconds before he tries again—the light still sort of stings, but it’s bearable now, and Tony sighs. He scans the glass wall for his guard’s position—she’s about on the opposite side of him—and makes a show of yawning and stretching so he can shove his hands under his pillow in a way that won’t make him look suspicious.

Loki’s knife is still here.

 

He thought it was a trap, at first. It was in his pocket when he was taken, that’s true, but somewhere between his fight with Steve and the moment he woke up for the second time, Fury’s goons changed him into something achingly similar to hospital scrubs. It took Tony a couple of seconds to notice it when he first woke up, but the panic attack was almost instantaneous. Who knew what else had happened while he slept, right?

The chip turned out to still be in place though, digging against his insides as soon as he got up to pace, which was a relief in more ways than one. First of all: the chip is still there. His most precious possession, and it’s not lost. Second, its presence meant no rectal search, X-rays, or deep searching procedure was used on him. Good news for his body integrity, and an argument about the knife’s presence being a trap, which was useful to cling to when Tony found it under his pillow as he shoved his face in it to hide his relief.

 

Logically speaking, S.H.I.E.L.D can’t possibly be unaware of its existence. It was right there in his pants pockets. There’s no way nobody noticed it.

Question is: why put it in his cell? Fury has ostensibly taken precautions against suicidal tendencies—irritatingly impractical precautions, but still. Why would he get a knife in Tony’s cell when it runs contrary to his official motives and would lead at least to come silent question in whoever was tasked to put the knife back under Tony’s pillow…unless Fury placed it himself, but that would still be a stupidly risky move.

 

(The more optimistic part of him keep bumping on the idea that there is a spell on the knife, but Tony’s been listening to his guards talk as they rotate. No sign of Loki anywhere since Tony was put into forced custody. Not exactly reassuring.)

 

Loki isn’t the only topic of conversation in the prison, though. Hearing the guards talk about the aftereffects of Jarvis’ and other various Stark-owned servers is…well, it’s painful, really, because Jarvis is gone, but it’s also a little vindicative. There’s something satisfying about knowing you’ve made you captor’s life a little more difficult, even if it’s just by forcing them to go back to books instead of the internet for information.

Besides, thinking about Jarvis is painful, but it keeps his mind off the sobriety.

 

Truthfully, the sobriety itself wouldn’t be a problem, quite the contrary. But between the stress, the lack of sleep, and the general upending of his life, Tony has been itching for a drink for days. What he assumes are days.

It’s not a physical ache—apparently, he’s either slowed the drinking down enough since his suicide attempt to avoid that, or he’s just a lucky bastard in that respect—but it itches and scratches at his brain, like a sick sort of Jimminy Cricket trying to convince him his life would be a lot better with a glass in his hand. Tony knows it’s a lie, of course, but that doesn’t mean he’s not tempted anyway.

 

He’s kept himself busy so far, alternating between mourning Jarvis and trying to think of an escape plan—anything to either gain contact with the outside world or get himself out—but event that is getting harder as time passes and offers no new solution.

There are at least two security cameras in his cell, on top of the one outside that faces the glass wall. His guards have irregular shift changes—as far as he can judge without real mean of measuring time—and so far there hasn’t been a single repeating face. Tony got hopeful, at first, when it seemed there was a sizable blind spot in the surveillance system above his bed, but knowing Fury the thing might as well be here on purpose to lure him into a false sense of safety.

(The thought rings strangely hollow, like a decayed tooth, but Tony hasn’t been able to put his finger on why yet.)

 

Even leaving aside the fog of alcohol craving battering at his brain, Tony’s situation would be enough to numb anyone’s mind, and thinking about his allies—or lack thereof—from outside doesn’t help all that much.

Steve has apparently bought Fury’s story in full. Bruce probably hasn’t, but his options are limited at the best of times, and this is definitely not the best time. Clint and Natasha are as much of a mstery as ever, mainly because Tony hasn’t seen or heard from them since this whole ordeal began, and has no way of knowing if it’s because they don’t care or because they decided to make a run for it. If she got his message, Pepper is probably trying to help, if she even can. If she believed him. Hopefully. Rhodey might try and lend a hand but what can he do from his camp? Not much is what. The two of them have moved mountains before, but S.H.I.E.L.D. is kind of a Mount Everest in and of itself, nothing says it’ll let itself be moved.

So all in all, Tony is on his own, whip a plastic box in his ass that’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore, an enchanted swiss knife that has yet to be useful in any way, and the vague hope that one of two Norse gods will not only get his but back to New York but also care enough about him to risk capture and bust him out.

 

Well, that, and the mother of all alcohol cravings, but he’s trying not to think too hard about that one.

 

He paces instead, listing the people he can’t count on or hope for help from as he counts how many steps he can take in his cell and tries not to scratch at the itching patch over his arms. The need keeps growing though, presses at his chest and whispering terrible things in his ears. ‘What’s going on outside?’ it asks—Tony comes up with dozens of possible answers, all more terrible than the one that came before, and when he reaches the end of his reasoning, which is that none of this would have happened without him and he should probably refrain from doing anything in the future lest he ruins someone else’s life, the temptation is back.

 

Just one glass. Just to take the edge off. Just to forget the smear campaign Fury is probably waging against him right this minute.

 

Damn, he needs to get out of here. He needs to drink something, too, but he needs to get out of here first, and then clear Iron Man’s name. The company has Pepper now, it’ll survive, and so will Howard’s legacy—the parts Tony hasn’t trampled on already, that is. As for his own person, eh. It’s not that important. But Iron Man? It has to come back. It gives hope to too many people—Tony himself included. He can’t let it die like that, not when it is undoubtedly the best thing he’s ever made.

So, he needs to get out of here. That means he needs to focus—he needs a way to shut down the craving, and keep his head as clear as possible. Failing that, he needs to figure out how not to go too crazy until he either gets rescued or finds a way to get out.

Problem is, there doesn’t seem to be one.

 

{ooo}

 

He’s just about ready to burst out of his own skin when the realization comes that he’s been sitting on an enchanted knife this whole time—he resists the urge to slap his forehead and draw attention to himself before he leaves the corner of the room he’d settled in and goes back to the bed with a fake yawn.

Slowly, trying his best to look like a man getting ready to sleep, he settles down on his side, with his arms safely tucked into the cameras blind spot. If Fury does know about the knife—there’s no way he doesn’t, but at the same time, if he did, why would the knife even be here?—Tony acting like he thinks he’s got a secret to keep can’t hurt, right? Besides, it would feel weird, doing that in plain view.

 

He’s not sure he’s supposed to feel that relieved when he cuts the first line into the flesh of his forearm.

 

{ooo}

 

The pocket knife lies, forgotten, by their side as Tony feeds Pepper a slice of strawberry. She bites into it and her face starts melting off her bones, and Tony stands there, paralyzed by terror as she reaches for his throat and starts choking him.

 

Tony wakes up with a start, to a hand pressing at his throat—he throws his fist in the air before he thinks about it in full and hears someone grunt when he makes contact with thin flesh over bones. The hand on his throat leaves, and before Tony manages to wake up in full both of his wrists are tied to the bed, and he ends up staring into Clint’s pinched-neutral face. He bends down next to the bed—Tony contorts to try and see what he’s doing, but he’s bound in a way that makes that impossible—and comes back up with a pitcher full of what is definitely alcohol. The strong kind.

A noise of protest escapes Tony’s throat before he even thinks of making it, and he pulls against his restraints when Clint takes a step closer to the bed.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says while Tony clenches his teeth together, “but against Loki’s hold it’s this or a blow to the head, and this is less risky.”

 

Tony doesn’t make the mistake of saying he’d rather take the blow to the head. Either he’d get it, or Clint would use the occasion to shove the alcohol at him, neither of which are things Tony wants. He sinks into the bed, pushes himself deeper into the mattress, and tries to muster anger when Clint’s features shift to sympathy over him—but it doesn’t come, kept at bay by the sick burn of terror at the pit of Tony’s stomach, and the damn manacles that won’t give even an inch—

 

“It’ll hurt less if you just take it,” Clint says, resigned. Then, when Tony doesn’t manage a sarcastic quip, he sighs and says: “Stark. I don’t wanna make this any shittier for you than it already is.”

 

Tony sags back against the bed almost against his will, the fight evaporating out of him faster than he’d have thought possible. He doesn’t cooperate exactly—leaves Clint with the task of raising his head to the brim of the pitcher—but he doesn’t struggle either, and opens his mouth with the liquid—vodka, it soon appears—touches his lips. What’s the point in struggling, anyway? Like Clint said, it’s not like it’ll change much to the end result.

It does come as a surprise when Clint angles away from the surveillance cameras and whisper-grunts:

 

“We got new weapons today. Shiny, Hydra-issued relics for everyone.”

 

In his surprise, Tony swallows wrong and starts coughing on the vodka—Clint upend the last quarter of the pitcher on the pillow as he straightens up, gives Tony impressively terse well wishes, and takes the manacles out in practiced gestures before he exits the room.

Tony, who knows better than try and move fast after drinking that much in one go, thinks he hears Clint say something about truth and mashed potatoes before the shocked buzzing in his ears overpowers the rest of the world.

 

{ooo}

 

When Tony wakes up, dried drool pulls at his cheek, and a part of him is grimly amused to realize his hangover doesn’t seem to be that bad yet. Might grow worse fast, but he’s still a lot more functional than he expected himself to be, even as his skull makes a decent impression of being an echo chamber for a drill concerto in hammer minor. He turns to his side and lets his head hang over the side of the bed for a while anyway, just in case he needs to evacuate something fast. Then, when it seems like he’s not going to vomit just yet—a little surprising, but not unwelcome—Tony opens his eyes.

 

He’s not coherent enough to think yet—his mind stays focused on the terrible taste in his mouth, an eerily vampire-like distaste for light and ow. Mostly the ow part. Through it all, though, something stirs in his memory when he finally understands that the mushy thing on a tray under his nose are mashed potatoes. There was something about mashed potatoes—Clint said—he said—damn it. It’s right there, right at the tip of Tony’s tongue—or his thoughts, whichever—but he can’t seem to grasp it, like he’s a cat running after a laser, and someone’s keeping the red dot just out of his reach…he’s going to have to clear his mind if he wants to do anything productive. With a grunt, Tony rolls back onto the bed and, tucking his hands under the pillow, he fumbles with the knife until he can open the blade and run the tip of his fingers over the metal.

The pain probably shouldn’t feel like this. It doesn’t just cut—ha—through the fog in his mind it also makes things less…intense, somehow. Like Tony was about to explode with too much to think about, too much to feel about, and the cuts are letting some of it out and allowing him to go back to regularly scheduled existence. It’s odd and unfamiliar and a small, worried part of him wonders if he’ll keep doing this, later. If he’ll have to explain odd scars and habits, if he’ll lose people over it.

Most of him feels relieved.

 

Pressing his fingers against the pillow to stop the worst of the bleeding—he really should have picked a better place to cut—Tony tries to remember what Clint said about the potatoes exactly. The words are a blur—will probably pop back into existence way too late to be useful, if Tony’s current luck is anything to go by—but the urgency and stress in the words is easy to remember. Whatever it was, Clint wanted Tony to remember it.

Problem is, Clint is still a spy. Even waddling through a hangover—the only thing keeping his craving at bay—Tony still realizes the man is paid to double cross people on a regular basis. Who’s to say that’s not what he was doing…whenever the vodka episode was? Sure, he also mentioned Nazi superweapons coming out of storage when they were supposed to be destroyed. That’s probably not something Fury would want Tony to know. None of that means Clint isn’t trying to lure Tony into a trap.

 

Let’s assume, Tony tells himself, that Clint was telling the truth. The assumption is probably going to come back and bite him in the ass but, well. He has to believe some things can turn out well, doesn’t he? Yeah, he does. Anyway.

If Clint was telling the truth—if Fury really was stupid enough to outfit his organization with Hydra’s old weapons in the middle of a trust crisis—it lends credence to the possibility of someone using Tony to frame Loki. This is, after all, a blatantly stupid move, certain to raise at least some questions, right? And Fury doesn’t usually do that, even when extremely pressed. Combine that with the apparent weak spot in the surveillance—Tony could have missed a camera, somewhere, that’s true. Even so, the idea of a blonds spot in the videos, even a fake one, doesn’t sound quite right. Not when you add the non-discovery of his chip on top of it, not when he’s been hiding a knife and bloody scars from S.H.I.E.L.D. like they’re regular people and not highly trained super spies.

So, Fury might actually be manipulated, probably to get at Loki.

 

Question is, who on Earth would be crazy and smart enough to do that?

 

Tony grunts, pressing his fingertips harder against the pillow, increasing the pain to keep his mind out of the fog and off the strengthening need for another drink. If he stops thinking now, he’s never going to get to the end of that reasoning, and that is not something he can afford. So, theoretical framework: Fury is being manipulated by someone who has the smarts to trump him and the resources to silence embarrassing questions inside S.H.I.E.L.D. That someone, for some reason, is trying to make Loki sound even worse—but somehow, dumber—than he really is. This can give way to at least three different interpretations.

One, Loki knows what’s happening, and he doesn’t care enough about Tony to help him. Sure, Coyote and Anansi sounded like rather close friends—the kind you introduce people who count to—but then again Loki has been entirely unheard of since the beginning of this clusterfuck. Including after fairly extensive use of a knife that’s supposed to alert him if Tony hurts himself. Emotionally speaking, Tony is already about three quarters of the way in believing that one entirely, but he still needs to consider the other two, just to be sure.

The second option is that Loki knows what’s happening, but he’s bidding his time before he intervenes, for reasons Tony doesn’t have the energy to guess at. The thought of being worth planning and waiting for is…well, it’s not unpleasant. However, that implies whoever is behind this is impressive enough to make Loki cautious, and that, on the other hand, is not pleasant at all.

Third—and last that Tony can think of—Loki doesn’t know what’s going on. Depending on when he slipped off the surface of the Earth, he might not have heard about this. Plus, since Thor is also MIA, there’s always the possibility that they’re locked in some kind of intergalactic siblings war somewhere and forgot anything exists outside of it. Tony thinks he knows both of the gods well enough, by now, to asses that as a perfectly valid theory.

 

Common point between all these theories: there’s nothing to expect from Loki’s side. Not for a while, at least. Meaning Tony’s escape plans are back to square one: hope Pepper—and maybe Rhodey, and maybe Clint—figures out a way to help him.

In the meantime…oh, who’s he kidding? It’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t end up begging for a drink before the end of the day. If it’s even day time—honestly, he has no idea. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can call—nothing but think back on easier times and hope things will go for the best.

 

In the midst of wishing for a drink he knows he can’t afford to ask for, Tony suddenly find himself wishing for Lorna.

 

She might have been a lie. There is, after all, a small possibility that Fury is in the right, and Tony is just imagining the conspiracy theory to escape a painful truth. If he believes that, however—if he does anything more drastic than pretending Lorna wasn’t Loki at all—there’s nothing left for him. If he assumes Lorna was a lie, his main support becomes nothing more than a shadow.

If he believes that, there’s really not much point in fighting anything at all anymore, really.

 

{ooo}

 

The strings around Fury’s wrists and ankles are hard to see—they’re almost translucent, only shining when the light hits them right. The blue silhouette though—the one that pulls the strings—is easy to see, and Tony flees from it with supernatural speed. The swiss knife lies in the grass when he rounds a corner, and Tony dives for it.

 

Ice water to the face never becomes less of a horrible way to wake up, and tony doesn’t hold back his spluttering, let alone his curses as he tries to shake some of it off his head. His brain bangs around the sides of his skull as a result, and Tony has to stop or get sick right here and now.

Nick Fury, sitting at the foot of the bed, doesn’t move during any of this. In fact, once tony gathers enough wits to properly look at him, he looks no different from the man who tried to recruit Iron Man in a donut hole. Behind him a stranger—short, stocky, Greek or Italian-looking, with a caducei hanging from his left ear and wiry muscles clearly visible under his long-sleeved shirt—is trying very hard to be unnoticeable. He’s kind of failing, but that might be because Tony is developing a new helping of healthy paranoia.

 

“We’re still without news from Thor,” Fury says before Tony can ask about the newcomer.

 

A wince, and then Tony reaches for the familiar mask of self-assured unconcern he’s used most of his life and says:

 

“Sorry, haven’t managed to check my texts lately.”

 

Fury’s irritated silence gives Tony an excuse to shift in place and land on his pillow, cutely aware of how Loki’s knife and his own chip dig into his flesh with painful angles. At least that way, there’s no risk anything is going to slip out of its hiding place at the worst possible moment.

 

“We need to locate him, Stark,” Fury explains after a long, searching look at Tony’s face, “if you’re compromised, Thor might be as well. We need to make sure he’s still safe.”

 

Tony barely holds his snort in at that, but something of it must show on his face, because Fury frowns. That should be worrying, maybe, but the last vestiges of Tony’s hangover must have vanished during his surprise nap because the only thing he can bring himself to care about at this point is the overwhelming urge to drink, and the absolute certitude that he can not ask for any alcohol right now.

He stays silent for a long moment—both Fury and his brand new shadow wait him out, but after a handful of seconds have gone by, Fury’s eyes dart to the tray of mashed potatoes by Tony’s bed. The untouched tray. And just like that, Tony remembers what Clint said.

 

There’s truth serum in the potatoes.

 

Had Tony known that, he’d have at least tried to fake eating some of it. It might have been enough to keep Fury off his case for a while. As it is, he can’t do much except hope his sudden realization didn’t show, and Fury will think not eating anything was an accident.

 

“Look,” Tony says after a while, mostly so he can appear a little more cooperative, “I have no idea where either of them is. Even if I did, I’m not sure it’d have helped.”

 

Fury doesn’t look at the potatoes again—too much of a professional for a second slip up. Usually, too much of a pro for the first one, but the more Tony thinks about this, the more convinced he is that Fury isn’t quite in his right mind. Nevertheless, the more he can keep to himself, the better. He’ll have time to figure things out later.

 

“Do you have any way to contact them?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Tony answers without missing a beat.

“And neither of them contacted you?”

“No.”

 

Both of Tony’s visitors frown at that, and he has to refrain from smirking at the sight. They were probably hoping for something more useful—or for Tony to sound a little more dejected, maybe? But Tony doesn’t have any useful answer to that question, even if he wanted to help them. Not that he wants to—he would love to be lying through his teeth right now.

Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure he’s been here at least three days by now, and Loki has yet to be heard from.

 

“For your sake,” Fury says, sounding irritatingly—and worryingly—sincere, “I hope we find them soon. I’m starting to think this might be the only way to get Loki out of your head.”

 

Tony tries not to gape as he watches the two men rise and walk out of the cell.

He’s been talking with Fury for a while now, long enough that he’s seen the man express a fairly varied range of emotions—irritation, exasperation, fatigue, anger, and the occasional bout of disbelief at Tony’s more childish behaviors. Up until now, concern has never been one of them.

It’s not just concern, either—there was an undertone of determination there, not unlike the way Steve sounds when he starts on yet another crazy mission to do The Right Thing no matter the cost. What the blatant slip in control means exactly is difficult to parse—it would probably require a more personal knowledge of Fury—but Tony is fairly sure it doesn’t herald anything good for him.

 

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Tony lies back down on the bed, hands behind his head, and closes his eyes. He replays the conversation in his head over and over again, gives himself another dozen play-by-plays of his reasoning, tries even the silliest theory he can come up with, but none of it seems to make any kind of sense, even a strange one and, after what feels like a few hours of useless questioning, Tony decides to let go of his dignity.

 

I don’t know if it’s gonna work, but Loki if you could lend a hand here—

 

“Well,” Loki says in an openly exasperated tone, “it took you long enough.”

.
.