Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony Stark saw the helicopter before he heard it.

He'd walked for what felt like miles - battered, burned, and broken in body with a mind still processing that he'd escaped into an empty desert where he might not be found. He was sure that the ruckus he'd made, with fire and explosions and smoke in a clear sky, would draw the US military to him - would bring Rhodey, safety, rescue his way. Time had moved differently in the caves, with the darkness and lack of sleep, though he was fairly certain he'd been there for at least a month, closer to two. Maybe three, if he was really off. Since his body hadn't been found, he'd thought they would still be searching, watching, looking for any kind of signal, and he was right.

Maybe he hadn't walked miles. Maybe the sun hadn't moved the way he thought. Because there was a helicopter. There was rescue. There was Rhodey.

(He couldn't be imagining it. He couldn't.)

He kept going, his flickering hope growing into an inferno as he prayed it wasn't a mirage, wasn't the dehydration tricking his sharp mind. After so much, it couldn't be failing him now. Not his mind.

The hum of the propellers reached his ears.

He picked up the pace, trying to run but only managing a jog, waving his good arm and shouting with a throat that burned for water. The helicopter got closer and closer, Tony's heart soaring up to meet it, and-

That wasn't a United States military helicopter.

He could tell by the design. Close, but not right. There was jerryrigging, nothing the US military would use on a rescue mission. Nothing that would pass the code. He stopped, kicking up sand in a skid, and froze in place as his hope shattered and his heart slammed into his ribcage, fear fueled adrenaline flying through his system. He should run. He could see a man leaning out the window, dressed in black. If he squinted against the glare of the sun, he thought he saw a gun aimed at him.

He should run, but where would he go? There was nowhere to hide in the sand. No way to defend himself. He was barely able to move as it was. Too battered. Too burned. Too broken.

And yet he still tried. He started backwards, hand shielding his eyes as he scrambled for an impossible way out, only for pain to shoot through his shoulder. When he looked, he saw a dart embedded in his red skin.

Paralysis spread - from his shoulder to his torso to his legs until he was on his back, darkness pulling him down no matter how hard he fought it. The blinding sun from above did nothing to stop the wave. In his peripheral, he saw the helicopter land not far away and men in black with a symbol on their uniforms that he hadn't seen since going through his dad's old files so many years ago.

HYDRA.

His eyelids shut, too heavy to hold up, and he distantly felt his arms being grabbed, rough hands digging into his bruises and burns that he wasn't sure would get the chance to heal. They spoke a language he couldn't understand - Russian, he was sure, why hadn't he learned it, why hadn't he learned any of the languages he heard in that cave before he ended up there - as they dragged him along the sand, his makeshift head covering falling away. He wanted to fight. He wanted so badly to fight. He wanted to go home.

It didn't matter what he wanted. The darkness won and he slipped into an oblivion that was anything but sweet.

_________

He woke up to pain.

Fire in his veins.

Clamps on his limbs.

Voices slamming around in his brain.

He tried to speak, tried to see, tried to focus-

Pain.

A million sparks on his skin.

Words dug themselves into his head, his brain, his mind, leaving holes that he couldn't fill.

Faceless people, covered in masks and black leather.

They yelled at him. Demanded answers. They wanted his name.

Did he ever have a name?

He knew he should. He knew that beyond the pain, the screaming, the sledgehammer taken to every thought, that he should have a name. Maybe he'd said it. Maybe that's why they kept making the pain worse. Maybe he didn't have one. Maybe he was wrong.

He should have memories.

But he couldn't think.

He couldn't feel.

He couldn't remember.

They tore holes in his mind, his body, his soul and let him pour out. They replace his insides with pain. With cold. With an emptiness that filled him up and broke his brain all over again. There was space in his head that shouldn't be there. There were glass fragments on the floor - or maybe that was his mind, shattering under the pressure.

He didn't know how long it'd been when it all finally stopped. He had a vague idea that it had been a long time. So long. His head pulsed. His heart screamed, pounding against his ribcage to be let out. His lungs begged as he yanked in oxygen and tried to see through the sting of eyes that were too dry to cry.

He couldn't feel.

He was so cold.

(Did he really have a heart?)

A hand brought his chin up roughly and he met the eyes of a man with cropped black hair and a scar down his nose. His eyes were blank. Emotionless. Empty like his entire being. Was he a being? A human? He didn't feel like one.

(What did being a human feel like?)

"There is a name for someone who rises from the ashes as you have." The man said. He spoke Russian. His brain twisted the words, pain throbbing at his temples as words and their meanings were forced into place like warped puzzle pieces. "For someone who burns so bright when they should be dead by their own flame." He let go of his chin, yet he couldn't draw his eyes away, transfixed on the words pouring from his mouth even as every muscle screamed. "Phoenix, you are called. HYDRA's Phoenix. A symbol. A sign." His lips drew into a smile that didn't fit on his face. "A hope for the righteous who have been relegated to the shadows for far too long."

He stepped back, still grinning. He turned his head, speaking to someone in the darkness that he couldn't see. "Light him up one more time."

The pain came back. His breath was knocked out of him. His brain - so empty yet open, like it had been filled at one point - was torn apart all over again. It went on and on and on until he couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think-

Strawberry red hair and the blurred face of a woman.

Two names he didn't know.

One for her.

One that spilled from her lips, so distorted that he couldn't make it out.

He grasped for her, reached out with what little mental strength he had-

Whatever he'd been searching for slipped away.

There was too much pain.

It stopped - it was an eternity, but it stopped. His lungs burned. Everything burned. The heart he wasn't sure existed pounded loudly in his broken brain.

"Who are you?" The scarred man asked when he had gasped a full breath, his eyes boring into the soul he didn't have.

There was only one answer.

One thought.

"Phoenix." He replied, voice hoarse, and maybe he'd been the one screaming.

The name tasted like acid on his tongue.

(Why?)

"Correct." Again, that smile. Those dead eyes. A man who knew something he didn't. "Welcome home, Phoenix."

Chapter Text

Phoenix didn't understand.

He didn't understand why they had to stick him with needles and ply pills down his throat. He didn't understand why he felt strong even when he didn't eat for days or why he didn't need sleep every night. He didn't understand why they insisted he shaved his facial hair a certain way, why the guards laughed while he did it. He didn't understand why he was put in the Chair whenever he asked a question. He didn't understand why his head hurt all the time. He didn't understand why pain had to be a constant for him.

They placed computers in front of him. His Handler - the scarred man - tells him what to do. Code this. Make that. Design this. Parts were thrown at his feet in what becomes his workspace - a corner of a large room, packed with screens, old keyboards, and papers, all stacked on three desks made into a U shape. Build a weapon. Create this. Help us.

"You're our Phoenix," Handler said, voice dripping with false niceties as two guards wrestled him into the Chair for asking why he had to do all this, what his purpose was, what he was helping to do. "You're ours. You do as we tell you. You will make us rise as you have."

(How did he rise?)

Then the pain came. He learned not to ask anymore questions after that.

When he was permitted to sleep, it was in his workspace, under one of the desks. It made him feel better even as he shivered - being somewhat hidden was better than laying out in the open, though there was a camera on him at all times. They had given him a uniform at one point, he couldn't remember exactly when. The HYDRA emblem emblazoned both shoulders of his black jacket. He had pants, a shirt, and shoes in the same color. The outfit didn't do much against the biting cold. He would pillow his head on his arms as best he could, desperately trying to ignore how uncomfortable he was and the distinct impression that he hadn't always been uncomfortable when he slept, that there had once been an incredibly soft mattress under him with warm blankets.

Most of the time, his sleep was light and fitful, his body and mind always aware, always ready for when a guard would barge in and start yelling at him. When he did drift off completely, he dreamed of red hair, of blue eyes, of a voice that wrapped him up in foreign warmth.

And then he would wake up, gasping, reaching out for whatever it was that filled his dreams, and his head would be in severe pain for hours. He didn't dare ask about it.

(He wanted that feeling - that image - all to himself. He didn't want the pain to take it away.)

There was a hunk of metal in his chest. It made it harder to breathe sometimes. In the rare few minutes he got to not do anything, he would pull his shirt away and look at the comforting blue light. The edges of it were inflamed. Maybe from injury, maybe from the electricity, he wasn't sure. They had to have put something over it to not kill him from the inside, or maybe it had a casing that kept the Chair from killing him. Calculations flew around his brain when he focused on it. A larger one existed, he thought. Or maybe hoped. Maybe he would see it one day.

(Sometimes, a blurred face would fill his head - a balding man with glasses and kind eyes, saying something to him. It would fade before he could truly grasp it.)

He pulled the device out once, saw how it went so deep into his sternum, felt how pressure and pain built up in his chest within a minute. He didn't take it out again, but he understood one thing - he would die without it.

He couldn't remember how he got it. When he tried, all he got was the sound of an explosion, a ringing in his ears, and screaming, along with a fresh bout of pain - in both his head and chest.

His hand itched to write down the schematics, the math and design that flew around in his brain whenever he thought about the arc reactor - that's what he called it - as a technological marvel, but he didn't. Handler hadn't asked for it. He knew he would go back in the Chair if they found he did something he wasn't ordered to do.

(There was a tiny little part of him that screamed how they couldn't find out, how the device couldn't fall into the wrong hands, that it was his and only his.)

(But if asked, he would have to hand it over, no matter his inevitable death.)

It was a month into his existence - how had he only existed for so little time, there had to be time before that, right? - when a knife was put in his hand and he was introduced to Soldat, the Winter Soldier. He had a metal arm, his hair was longer and darker than Phoenix's, and his eyes were about as dead as Handler's.

"You will spar." Handler said. The Russian language movements of his mouth were still foreign to Phoenix's brain. He shouldn't understand it, he subconciously knew. When he heard or read a new word, the meaning of it would poke his brain, digging itself painfully into his understanding. "Begin."

He didn't make it thirty seconds before he was pinned to the ground, his head pounding from the impact with the concrete.

"Again."

He hit the ground a second time before he could get up from the first round. The dagger went flying, clattering against the cold floor.

"Again."

He was slammed into the wall. His ribs screamed.

"Stop."

Phoenix blinked through the spots in his vision, arm wrapped around his chest as he wheezed, sitting on his knees. He wanted to cry, but crying was a weakness. Crying would put him in the Chair. Letting out any sound of pain would only bring more of it, he knew. It happened once, when he cut his hand on a piece of metal when he got dizzy, and had let out a tiny yelp. It hadn't taken but a minute for him to be back in the Chair, Handler lecturing him about controlling his pain, his weakness.

Handler spoke to Soldat: "You will train him. Teach him to fight. Give him a gun. Demand perfection. Nothing less."

And so it was.

Day after day, hours would be set aside for him to train with the Winter Soldier. When a gun was first put in his hand, he was surprised how familiar it felt. His hands held it correctly without instruction. The Soldier barely batted an eye, just redirected him to a target across the room. Phoenix didn't have to think about it too hard - he hit the bullseye.

The fact that he knew how to shoot was less concerning than the blueprint that flew across his brain for the exact model of the gun.

Sparring didn't come near as easy. When he had proven perfect use of a gun, Soldat taught him hand-to-hand. He distantly recognized the stance he was put in, had a brief recollection of thick gloves on his hands and a gruff voice, before he was punched square in the chest and sent to the ground. Pain pulsed through him, around the reactor, and he had to look down to make sure the glass hadn't cracked. It hadn't.

There was blood in his mouth from how hard he bit his tongue to keep from letting out a sound.

"Pay attention," Soldat ordered, yanking him up by the forearm. He rarely ever spoke. It startled Phoenix when he did. "Hands up. Copy me."

It went on like that. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Every day, he was knocked down more times than he could count. He was taught how to fight with a knife, taught a dozen ways to kill someone, taught how to keep going even when his body was giving in despite whatever chemicals they were putting in his system. Handler shifted them from training to sparring, and every day they would be in one room, fighting each other while he watched. Some days, it was only fifteen minutes before they were stopped. Other days, it went on for hours. If Phoenix was defeated too early or too many times, he went in the Chair.

When he wasn't sparring, he was working. Sinking himself into coding helped to forget the aches of his body, to ignore the throbbing of a million bruises, to not focus on his bones as they healed too fast with one injection. He wasn't sure how he knew coding, only that it came as easy to his fingers as a spider weaving a web. There were times he thought he heard the distinct lilt of a British accent in his ear, a comforting hum that moved around his head without words before fading out. Building was a similar story. Parts clicked together easily. He knew exactly where each wire went, how parts went together, what every tool did. Sometimes, he heard something he identified as rock music, tingling up his spine as the bass reverberated in his head. It was brief, as fleeting as the British tone, and both offered him ghosts of what might have been a life before.

(But that was impossible. There was no Before for Phoenix.)

He built weapons. His code weaved itself into all of HYDRA. Eventually, he was allowed control of most servers - if only to steal and corrupt the data of others, others who would impede HYDRA's goals.

(Once, he saw a logo. The name Stark Industries burned his brain. When he tried to access it, his screen went red and his Handler grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, appearing as if out of thin air. He had long since stopped fighting this walk to the Chair - it just made his stay in it longer.)

(He forgot what it was he was punished for.)

When the computer was dark as it booted up, sometimes he would look at his reflection in the screen. His hair was long and curly, stopping not far above his shoulders and getting longer every month. He was allowed cold showers every few days, but they didn't do much to help it. When he touched it, he had a distinct feeling that it had never been so long. When his bangs got so out of control he kept having to push them away while he worked, he was permitted to cut them. That was it. His facial hair was a goatee - he wasn't sure how he knew that word. He had given up understanding why the guards laughed.

And his eyes... they were as blue as the screens around him.

When he blinked and kept them shut for a second too long, he could see his reflection in clear glass, a grin with ruffled, shorter curls and deep brown eyes.

The image faded. He forgot. He hated the emptiness that came with forgetting.

(Frustration had long passed. There was no point in being frustrated. It just made things worse.)

One day, roughly seven months into his existence, he was in the middle of coding a particularly complicated section when the door slid open. Expecting his Handler, he stood at attention, only to stop when he saw the Winter Soldier. In his right hand, he held a tray of Phoenix's standard food for when they remembered to feed him - a few slices of bread, butter, some sort of meat, and a handful of fruit that tasted a tad sour - and a glass of water. Water was his only constant nourishment. He had a bathroom to himself, a faucet of unlimited cold water.

(He didn't like the cold.)

When was the last time he ate? He found that he couldn't remember.

What was of more concern to Phoenix was the man himself. His robotic left arm hung, limp and dislocated from its socket, held there by only a few frayed wires. He put Phoenix's tray on the edge of the desk.

"Soldat?" He asked. Russian came easier than it had in the beginning, now rolling off his tongue, and yet it was always foreign. His mouth shouldn't be making these shapes when he spoke. "What happened?"

He glanced at his arm. "Mission," he stated simply. That must have been why they didn't spar yesterday. The Soldier had been gone from the base. It was a somewhat common occurrence. Phoenix wasn't privy to what he did.

"I'll fix it. Sit." He pointed to his stool. He'd received it four months ago from Handler, as a prize for his proven loyalty. The ache in his back from bending over was far better than standing for hours on end. When Soldier hesitated, Phoenix pointed more insistently. "Handler would want you fixed where your arm won't break easily. Sit. Now."

He sat, his wide and muscled body awkward on the little stool. Phoenix grabbed up the necessary tools and started working, trying not to look at the camera in the corner that was trained on them. He had to be right. This was for the betterment of HYDRA. He had to be permitted.

He worked on him in silence, replacing wires and reinforcing the arm itself before reattaching it. No one came to stop them. They'd stopped stationing guards in his work space, instead keeping them right outside the door. It somewhat helped that their eyes weren't constantly trained on him.

Phoenix kneeled to fix a broken spot on his wrist, his tongue twisting with the desire to speak. He wanted to fill the silence, fill all silences, despite knowing he wasn't allowed. It was a want he had broken down over time, yet it still reared its head at the worst of times. It had gotten him in trouble more than once for speaking out of turn.

Instead, he kept his mouth shut until he finished fixing the arm. He stood, done, and met the eyes of the Soldier-

A black and white picture. Two men, one with a shield and the other laughing, their arms slung across each other's shoulders. A man's voice, telling him a story. Red, white, and blue, the colors of a flag with stars and stripes-

He shook his head a little to clear it, covering up the action by pushing back hair that was getting too long again. "Good?"

Soldier flexed his arm, bending all his fingers and straightening them back out. He nodded and got up from the stool, walking by.

Quiet, so quiet he almost didn't hear it, the Soldier spoke: "Thank you."

Phoenix made sure not to react, watching him leave. It would get them both in trouble if he did. Still, he kept those two words close as he got back to work, trying to make up the time to meet the deadline set for him.

(He did it. With only forty-seven seconds to spare, he did it. Handler made no comment on his actions.)

Sparring resumed. Phoenix knew he was getting better with every session. He could hold his own. He'd long since figured out that he couldn't beat the Soldier head-on - he was extremely strong, far stronger than a human should be, from what he understood - and had to resort to trickery among the hits and moves he'd been taught. He could flip, slide, trip, jump, propel from walls - if fighting didn't always end in injuries or the Chair - or both - he might have found it exhilarating. Fun, even.

He didn't win - until he did.

Weeks after he fixed the arm of the Soldier, he saw that same arm coming toward him in a punch. He jumped to the side, caught his wrist, and used the other's own momentum against him. Phoenix's arms and legs barely held up as he spun and sent him into the ground, his knee against his back. He waited to be thrown off, to become weightless until he hit the wall, but nothing happened. When he looked closer, he saw there was blood. His own ran cold, far colder than the room, colder than anything he'd felt before.

Handler laughed, clapping his hands. "Well done, Phoenix." He grabbed him by the back of his jacket collar, yanking him to his feet as guards came in and picked up Soldat, carrying his limp form away. "Well done." He clapped his shoulder. Phoenix barely felt it. He was too numb.

He didn't remember being ordered back to his work table. He didn't remember when he received his next list of tasks. He let his conciousness and what little control he had slip away, losing himself in the numbers that flew across the screen as he tried not to think at all about the Soldier - about anything but his purpose.

(Was he dead?)

(Did Phoenix kill him?)

(Was that the point of the sparring?)

Three days later, the door opened. When his body automatically snapped to attention even as his mind stayed behind, it took him a solid few seconds to realize he was looking at Soldat. His forehead was bandaged. He brought his food tray to him, settling it to his left.

Phoenix's mind rebooted. If he could cry, he was sure he would. A lump in his throat kept him from speaking.

The Soldier stared him down, dark eyes emotionless, his back to the camera.

Then his lip quirked up in the barest of smirks. "Good move," he mouthed. "Very good move."

Phoenix didn't react. He couldn't react. He didn't move until Soldat was gone and he was staring at the tray, unsure if what he'd seen was real even as the proof stared back at him.

(The next day's hit proved that the Soldier was, indeed, real. His right eye hurt for a while. He was too relieved to think about the pain.)

(Relief. He hadn't felt that in so long.)

Phoenix didn't understand why, but things changed in the eighth and ninth months. His workload increased. He received more injections and pills that made his brain spin and his body hurt. Sparring lasted longer. He received less time to sleep and a little more food. The Chair stopped having a correlation. He could get everything done, do everything right, and still get marched to it. Guards spoke in unison while he was in it, Russian words washing over him with the electricity, driving through those mental holes in his head. His mind buzzed with fuzzy thoughts afterward. Emotions became fewer until he could feel nothing. He followed his objectives no matter what. Trying to think outside of what he needed to do pained him deeply until there was no point in trying.

He didn't think he could get any colder. It was physical and mental, increasing with every day that passed. His chest was a chasm from more than the reactor. All he wanted was to feel warmth again.

(What did warmth feel like?)

That red hair still appeared in his dreams. On rare occasions, there were other faces and faceless voices. He hated sleep because he woke up with a pounding migraine every single time.

It was late in the evening on February 12th - why did that date feel so important - when his Handler entered his space, lips pressed into a thin smile. He carried a plate with double the food than usual. "Tomorrow will be a big day for you, Phoenix." He said. "As a treat, you can eat this and go to sleep." There was a glint in his dead, soulless eyes, almost excited. He dropped the food off on the table and left, the door sliding shut behind him.

Phoenix knew that 'can' meant 'will.' There were no options. Ever. He saved his data and shut his computers down before eating the food. He washed it all down with the glass of cold water, ignoring the shiver that swept through his frame. He was used to them now.

He laid down under his biggest desk, knees bent and head pillowed on his forearms. He shut his eyes, breathing the sharp, dusty air, and willed himself to fall asleep. If tomorrow was a big day, then he needed energy.

Those images filled his dreams. Broken, distorted images that made his heart pound so hard that it echoed in his sleep.

"Tony!"

He woke up, drenched in freezing sweat and looking for that woman's voice. No one was in the room but him. He gulped down air, his heart and brain hurting. No matter how desperately he tried to hold on, his dream slipped out through the holes in his mind, leaving his memory.

For the first time in a long time, he desired something other than what his Handler wanted.

He wanted to go home.

Except he didn't have a home. This was his place. His purpose. His reason for being alive. There was no need for a home. A home for him didn't exist.

(Did it?)