Whumptober 2023 ~ Marvel Edition

'I Tend to Deflect When I Feel Threatened.' - Tony

Day 18:

"I tend to deflect when I feel threatened."
Blindfold | Tortured For Information | "Hit them harder."

~~~

Though his heart rate was through the roof with anxiety, Tony was doing an impressively good job at keeping his expression neutral. He didn't want to give his captors the satisfaction of knowing that they scared him. Maybe if he played his cards right, he could get out of there before anything too bad happened.

Now, if only he could see where he was; that would help immensely. The piece of cloth covering his eyes made it so that not only did he not know where he was, but he hadn't seen the way in, either. This was going to make coming up with an escape plan a lot harder. Not impossible, but more difficult than he might have otherwise hoped.

"I will ask you again," the man, who had previously introduced himself as Powell, said to him. "Where is Pepper Potts?"

"I told you; I don't know," Tony replied.

"See, I have a really hard time believing that," Powell remarked. "Your girlfriend is turned into one of the most powerful people on the planet and you just...don't make sure you know where she is?"

"I mean, I guess I kind of do," Tony said. "Lately it just seems like she's been all over the place. I know she loves me, but I can't help but feel like maybe she holds a little bit of a grudge over everything that's happened in the last month or so, and honestly I can't really blame her. I kinda sorta almost got her killed twice - once because I accidentally sent a suit after her in my sleep and-"

"Oh my- will you please just shut up? No one cares!" Powell interrupted his rambling.

"Oh, I'm sorry; you meant where is Pepper physically speaking, not emotionally, didn't you? That's my bad," Tony said sarcastically, and if his hands weren't bound to the chair behind him, he would have placed his fingertips to his heart. "I tend to deflect when I feel threatened."

Tony heard the sound of someone shuffling a few feet away from him.

"Hit him harder," Powell instructed.

Tony chuckled nervously.

"Fellas, let's just-" he began to say, but was cut off by the shocking pain of a fist connecting with his stomach, and he let out a groan. Not long after, he felt a shoe press against his chest, and suddenly, Tony felt himself and the chair fall backwards. His eyes widened, and within seconds, the air left Tony's lungs as his back and head made contact with the ground.

Tony groaned again and his vision blurred from the impact of his head against the ground.

"Now was that really necessary?" he asked sarcastically, however his voice was a bit strained from still being in a decent amount of pain.

Tony felt the same foot - or was it the same foot? It was hard to tell with being blindfolded and all - that had kicked him get placed atop his chest, and slowly started to feel a growing pressure where it sat.

"You're going to tell us where she is or I swear I will make your life hell," Powell growled.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I'm kind of already there," Tony smirked. "I've survived three months in captivity in Afghanistan, palladium poisoning, an attack from a literal god, the void of space, and now, a monster of my own creation who wanted to kill me and turn my girlfriend into a weapon. Trust me when I say, I've got enough PTSD to last a lifetime. You want to add to the list? Be my guest. But I'm not telling you where Pepper is."

Powell let out a low groan of frustration, and Tony couldn't help but smirk. There was nothing he loved more than to piss off the people who tried to hurt him by simply being himself.

"What I will tell you is that even if you were to find Pepper, you won't find what you're looking for."

"And why's that?"

"Because she doesn't have Extremis. Not anymore," Tony informed them.

"And how could that be?"

"Because I fixed her," Tony said simply. "It's gone. Poof. Like it was never there."

Powell pressed his foot further into Tony's chest, causing Tony's eyes to bulge out - or at least, they were behind his blindfold - and the air to forcefully escape his lungs. "You know the research then. Help us figure out what we need and we will consider letting you go in one piece."

"You know," Tony said, strained. "That's a really tempting offer, but..." As the familiar noise of his machinery entered his ears, Tony began smirking once more. "...I think that's my ride."

Immediately after the words left his mouth, Tony heard glass shattering, and he could only assume a window was broken by the way the light shifted over the veil of darkness the piece of cloth over his eyes provided.

"Tony," he heard the sweet sound of Rhodey's voice call out to him. "Are you okay?"

Tony had never been so thankful to be a paranoid bitch in his life. After his time in Afghanistan, he had made the decision to implant software into his arc reactor for fear of being held captive again, and he refused to relive that experience, so into the programming that tracker went. He kept it active for some time, but when he made this new arc reactor out of the new element he discovered, he left the sub programming in, in case he changed his mind, but ultimately decided that he didn't want to be able to be tracked - especially for cases like when he had a terrorist after him, because that wouldn't have been good.

Apparently, someone had managed to find the subroutines and switch them back to active, because how else would Rhodey have been able to find him?

Tony smiled wide and tilted his head towards the direction that the voice came.

"I'm great," he said. "It's good to see you, buddy."