𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬

The air was thick in the Quinjet, with Steve piloting and Bucky sat behind him. The Barnes man was clearly uneasy, both because of their team and the crazy 'psychologist.'

"What's going to happen to your friends?" He asks, Steve's expression stony, but he was clearly upset about leaving his team.

-

"Ava!" Pietro shouted as they were surrounded by govenment officers, guns pointed at all of those who were still standing. Pietro and Ava had been separated when the officers arrived.

"Piet!" He heard her scream back, and caught a glimpse of her bright ginger hair. He started running, but was soon forced to his knees as they shot him with a tranquilliser.

Ava watched as he fell, her eyes burning as they glowed brightly, being reminded of the Battle in Sokovia.

"Pietro!" She screamed, running to get to him, but she was quickly grabbed by a large man who secured his arm around her middle.

Ava thrashed in his grip, screaming and crying like a toddler with a tantrum. "Let me go, let me go, let me go!" She continued to scream, her throat becoming raw from all of her shouting.

She tried to blast some spikes through the ground, but she couldn't without touching it.

"Somebody get another tranq!" A woman shouted, watching the large man slowly lose his grip on Ava, with her tears falling all over his arms.

Just as he was letting go, somebody shoved a needle in her neck, and she was dropped to the ground.

-

"Whatever it is... I'll deal with it." Steve replies, feeling nervous and terrible for his team. He didn't know what was going to happen to them... and he really hoped they'd be okay.

Bucky appears to be deep in thought, before he speaks, "I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve."

Steve disagrees, "What you did all those years... it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice." He tells his best friend, but he can't stress the facts enough. Bucky won't believe him.

"I know. But I did it."

Rhodey lay still inside a CT scanner, dressed in a blue hospital gown.

Vision stood outside, watching the man with a blank expression. After all, it had technically been his fault that Rhodey had fallen.

Tony paced up to Vision, devastated and angry all at once — who could blame him? This was his best friend, the man who had stuck by him through thick and thin. Despite how annoying they called each other, they were family.

"How did this happen?" Tony asked, staring at Vision for a second.

"I became distracted." Vision replied, almost simply. It was clear that he was talking about Wanda Maximoff — the two had something going on there, but most people didn't really know what.

"I didn't think that was possible." Tony admits harshly, before turning on his heel and leaving Vision stood looking in on Rhodey.

He walks down the hallway, seeing Natasha with a rather concerned expression. The two Avengers stand on a balcony, looking out towards rows of trees.

"The doctors say he would've shattered L4 through S1 if Ava hadn't gotten there in time. We're probably looking at some partial paralysis." Tony informs her, and she can easily hear his underlying anger at her.

"Steve's not gonna stop. If you don't either, Rhodey's gonna be the best case scenario." Natasha tells him, and it was especially clear now — with Ava being locked up along with the rest of them...

"You let them go, Nat." He says, as if she doesn't already know — and it might've been a mistake, Rhodey had gotten hurt... but she was sure she was doing the right thing.

"We played this wrong." She replies, nearly softly.

"'We?' Boy, it must be hard to shake off the double agent thing, huh? It sticks in the DNA." Tony snaps back angrily, knowing about the woman's past — and he had trusted her despite it.

"Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?" She asks him harshly, a large change from her previous tone.

"T'Challa told Ross what you did, so... they're coming for you."

His words don't faze Natasha, as she replies with, "I'm not the one that needs to watch their back." Before she turns and walks away from him.

Tony activates a holographic image from the device on his wrist not long after, and furrows his eyebrows. "What am I looking at, Friday?"

"Priority upload from Berlin police." FRIDAY quickly replies, and an expression of realisation spreads across Tony's face.

"Fire up the chopper."

Below the helicopter was a dark sea — colour changed by the raging storm. Tony couldn't help but think that the weather was fitting after everything that'd happened.

Surveillance images are pulled up on a computer, and Tony was looking at them intensely when FRIDAY spoke. "The Task Force called for a psychiatrist as soon as Barnes was captured. The UN dispatched Dr. Theo Broussard from Geneva within the hour. He was met by this man."

"Did you run facial recognition?" Tony asked the AI.

"What do I look like?" FRIDAY asked sassily, and Tony barely paused before he responded... which was unsurprising.

"Uh, I don't know, I've been picturing a redhead." He suggested.

"You must be thinking of someone else." FRIDAY replied, although it was pretty unclear about who she was suggesting.

"Must be."

"The fake doctor is actually Colonel Helmut Zemo, Sokovian Intelligence." FRIDAY informed, and Tony quickly projected the image FRIDAY had given him.
"Zemo ran Echo Skorpion, a Sokovian covert kill squad."

Tony's eyebrows raised at this new information, before he asked, "So, what happened to the real Broussard?"

"He was found dead in a Berlin hotel room. Where police also found a wig and facial prosthesis approximating the appearance of one James Buchanan Barnes." FRIDAY supplied, shocking Tony even more.

"Son of a bitch! Get this to Ross, now." He told the AI, as he now realised they were in the wrong about Bucky.

"Yes, boss."

Soon after, Tony received a message in the chopper, "This is Raft Prison Control. You're clear for landing, Mr. Stark." The guard told him, and he lowered the chopper as a giant fortified circular structure came into view, rising from the churning sea.

Two large doors open, allowed the chopper to land on a helipad as the doors above close with a clang.

Tony walked up to Ross, his left arm in a sling from the fight, and spoke, "So? You got the files? Let's reroute the satellites, start facial scanning for this Zemo guy."

Ross scoffed, "You seriously think I'm gonna listen to you after that fiasco in Leipzig? You're lucky you're not in one of these cells!"

The two start walking, entering a large metal door with two armed guards on either side. Inside the room, there are around a dozen men in uniform, and Tony approaches one at a desk.

He stares at the man's security camera footage, his expression one of hidden horror. There Wanda say, hunched over in a dark blue prison outfit. She glances towards the camera, as if sending his presence, and Tony feels a pang of guilt.

He glances towards the guy, before walking through another security door, coming in contact with the prison cells.

At his entrance, Clint claps, almost mockingly. "The Futurist, gentlemen! The Futurist is here! He sees all. He knows what's best for you, whether you like it or not."

"Give me a break, Barton," Tony tells the man as he walks up to the man's cell. It was a wall full of bars, and they had no privacy. "I had no idea they'll put you in here. Come on."

Clint spat, before speaking angrily. "Yeah, well, you knew they'd put us somewhere, Tony." He says, angry at his former friend.

"Yeah, but not some super-max floating ocean pokey. You know, this place is for maniacs. This is a place for..." he trails off, not continuing his sentence.

"Criminals?" Clint asks, before he stood up and faced Tony through the bars. "Criminals, Tony. Think that's the word you're looking for." He eyed Tony, "Right? That didn't used to mean me. Or Sam. Or Wanda. Or Ava. But here we are."

Tony is almost thrown by his mention of Ava, but refrains from immediately searching the chamber of cells for her.
"Because you broke the law." Tony retorts, almost angry at the blame they're putting on him.

"Yeah."

"I didn't make you." Tony says.

"La, la, la, la, la," Clint chants childishly as Tony continues to attempt to defend himself.

"You read it, you broke it."

"La, la, la, la, la..."

The Stark was quickly annoyed by Clint's childish behaviour. "Alright, you're all grown up, you got a wife and kids. I don't understand. Why didn't you think of them before you chose the wrong side?"
He questions harshly, before turning and walking away.

"You gotta watch your back with this guy. There's a chance he's gonna break it." Clint spoke harshly as he pushed his hands against two pillars loudly.

"Hank Pym always said, you never can trust a Stark." Scott spoke up, leaning towards the horizontal bars in front of him.

Tony spared him a glance, saying, "Who are you?" As he walked away.

"Come on, man." Scott sighed, shaking his head.

Tony made his way towards the cage Sam was kept in, leaning against a wall. "How's Rhodes? Sam asks, concerned.

"They're flying him to Columbia Medical tomorrow, so... fingers crossed." Tony replies, looking down for a minute before looking back to Sam, who faced away from him, shaking his head.
"What d'you need? They feed you yet?" Tony asked  as Sam slowly turned around to face him.

With raised eyebrows, he asks, "You're the good cop now?"

"I'm just the guy that needs to know where Steve went." Tony replies quickly, staring intensely at Sam.

"Well, you better go get a bad cop, because you're gonna have to go Mark Fuhrman on my ass to get information out of me." Sam snapped — just because he cared about Rhodey's health didn't mean he was about to jeopardise Steve and Bucky's mission.

Tony tapped away at his watch, "Oh, I just knocked the 'A' out of their 'AV.' We got about thirty seconds before they realise it's not their equipment." He tells Sam, who looks doubtful and slightly confused.
Then, Sam looks around his little cell, not knowing where Tony was going.

"What did you do? Get it back up!" Secretary Ross tells one of the workers, who scrambles to fix everything.

"Just look." Tony tells Sam calmly, "Because that is the fellow who was supposed to interrogate Barnes." He brings up a picture of the, now deceased, Doctor Broussard. "Clearly, I made a mistake, Sam. I was wrong."

It was rare to hear a Stark admit they were wrong — which was probably why Sam was so surprised hearing it. Frankly, they all were.

"That's a first."

"Cap is definitely off the reservation, but he's about to need all the help he can get. We don't know each other very well. You don't have to..."

"Hey, it's alright. Look, I'll tell you." Sam says quietly, interrupting Tony. He sees Pietro huff opposite him, but continues. "But you have to go alone and as a friend."

"That's not enough!" Pietro interrupts angrily, before Sam can reveal anything to Tony. Tony turns on his heel, staring down the taller man. "You need to get her out of here."

Tony's expression clouds with confusion, before he turns to the direction Sam and Pietro look — there he sees another cell, looking exactly the same as all of the others. Walking closer, he's surprised at what he sees.

"Ava?" He questions incredulously.

She was curled in the corner of the cell, the blue outfit too big on her small body. There was a piece of machinery wrapped around her neck, looking painfully tight and sore.

Her ginger hair was matted around her, splayed over her arms which rested around her knees. She didn't look up when Tony called her, just kept her haunting blue eyes staring at the metal ground.

Suddenly, Tony realised everything had just become a lot harder.

author's note!—

hi. thought I'd get this chapter out there for you guys.
with everything going on right now, please please remember to be safe. especially if you're involved in protests. i love you all a lot, please be careful. there is a lot of information about how to keep safe when protesting, so please don't ignore it!!!

(on another note, you guys aren't ready for the next few chapters :/)