"T'ny,"a slurred voice rang around in my head. I felt dizzy and shaken and couldn't even place where the sound was coming from. "T'ny w'ke up!"
The sound started to get louder and clearer as the awkward buzzing in my ear died down and my vision became less fuzzy. Suddenly, a jolt of fear shot through my body as I quickly sat up straight in my seat, finding out that I fell asleep over my work.
Fuck.
How long was I asleep?
How much time did I waste?
"Tony I need to calm down. Come on, breathe with me," a feminine voice beside me. I turned around to see the red-haired assassin seated on a circular spinny chair beside me, guiding my breaths. I took a minute to copy her breathing pattern, long enough for my rapid heart rate to die down.
"Shit, Natasha, how long was I out? Are there any updates? Found a location? Have they tried to contact us? Is there, like, I mean, anything new? Any—"
"Tony. No, we're still stuck," she said, her voice sounding like a slab of concrete being thrown at my chest.
"Well then why are you just sitting here!" I shot back, my voice slowly rising into anger. "We can't afford to waste more time! We need to find them! It's already been a week. God knows what can happen in that period of time! Natasha, where is the rest of the team. Fuck, we need to get our shit together!"
"You also need to stay alive. Rest, Stark. You've been working nonstop for the past 83 hours. You literally just finally passed out. I thought all that caffeine was going to kill you."
"All that work Natasha and I made zero progress. I've got to get back."
"As much as you're working hard, so are the rest of us. We all want to find Peter and Bucky. I get it, Peter is your son and you already lost him once. But you need rest. I can't have you sick and possibly dead before we get them out. Peter would want to see you alive and well when we find him."
Her words sounded foreign to me, a stupid logical answer to the problem when all that was running through my head was unrealistic expectations. My head told me that taking a nap was the best thing to clear the fog out of my mind, but my stomach gnawed at me and anxiety ripped through my gut, telling me I needed to work a few more hours.
Forcing myself to swallow down the nausea, I nodded.
"Yea... yea thank you. I'll take a nap. Five hours though. That's all you're getting. Then I'm straight back to work, you hear me?"
"I wouldn't ask for anything more," Natasha responded, giving me a rare, small smile. She placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a comforting squeeze, reminding me that she will always be on my side.
As much as my relationship with Natasha was weird and extremely secretive, she was a supportive friend. Fiercely loyal.
I forced myself to get out of my lab and over towards my room.
"Friday, set an alarm," I called out, surprising myself as I yawned and gravitated towards the bed, excited for some rest after trashing my nervous system with shocks of caffeine at odd hours.
Closing my eyes, I passed out into a harmless sleep for sometime, before I was flashed with nightmarish scenes of what they could possibly be doing to Peter there.
All the stories of what he had told me – what he was comfortable sharing – rang through my head and replayed as something that was currently happening. I saw the way they treated him so cruelly, like an animal, and forced tortures and experiments on him.
How do the best of people get the worst fate?
Peter didn't deserve anything that was thrown his way. Once he gets back to me, I'm going to make sure that he never leaves my sight again.
I swear it on my life.
How could I have let him be kidnapped right under my nose again? Will Peter even ever trust me? This is the second time he was taken from me. What if he thinks it's because of me? What if he doesn't feel safe at the tower anymore and wants to leave?
And Bucky. As horrible as it sounds, I'm glad at least Bucky is there for him. Or, well, at least to Peter, James is there for him.
Bucky and Peter have a strange relationship carved by trauma and fear. I guess living in a tiny cube like cell for a few primitive years would do that to someone. As much as it irked me that Peter found someone else to be his father during his absence, I was still immensely grateful he had someone in his short, miserable life to love him.
And it also doesn't mean I don't have time in the future to work towards becoming his dad again, I forced myself to think. It's what kept me going.
Despite the nightmares, I fully slept the entire few hours I allowed myself to rest before a soft melody from Friday's speakers told me it was time to wake up.
Cracking my sore, old bones, I got up and over to the living space, only to see the rest of the Avengers working over a pile of papers and screens, doing their best to find Bucky and Peter's location. My heart swelled in gratitude to how much they were helping.
I clapped Steve on the back, giving him a soft, knowing smile. I can't even imagine how much pain he is going through right now, seeing that he also lost Bucky.
"Okay guys, where we at?"
We're going to find them. No matter what, I will never, ever, stop looking.
YOU ARE READING
Not Anymore
FanfictionS-20 has only ever known one thing, Hydra, until one man came into his life and showed him that there was so much more. That man was his first friend. His older brother. But after one night, the two were ripped apart and S-20 cannot even remember hi...
