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ronearoundblindly · 6 months

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The Stark Legacy (26)

Tony Stark's daughter (OC) x Bucky Barnes epic slowburn

Capacity, part of Book III: Power (see previous or series)

Summary: Tony works with Namor to pay Lil'Sam's debt.

Warnings for canon-level violence (hunt for an enemy). Also, this was originally written way before MCU's version of Namor came to screen, and the character is more like the comics' version. Rated Teen/15+ ONLY, please. WC 2.5k

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—April 2039

I do not want to die here. I will not die out here, Tony repeated again, watching Namor emerge onto the tiny island beach with a fresh catch of kelp in hand, and for once, a surprise of actual fish. As a superhuman, Namor understood very little about nutritional requirements for ‘surface-dwellers.’ Protein from fish was a treat that night.

Tony had never gone that long in space. Now on Earth, he felt pummeled towards the ground at all times. His muscles struggled; his lungs grew tired. ‘One step at a time’ became a mantra he repeated over and over. Namor, surprisingly, allowed Tony his time to physically recuperate as long as his mind remained in spitfire condition, which was no easy task while cut off from radio contact on a remote island.

The buoyancy in the water helped. His muscles needed the rest. Tony abhorred eating in front of Namor, the challenge being to lift the weight of the food and repetition of minute motion without any aid from his suit, but the King of Atlantis seemed unimpressed by Iron Man’s shaking hands or slow rehabilitation in normal gravity.

Friday used low-power mode to ignite the pile of wood he’d assembled then minimized his suit for his daily physical therapy, using his own muscles instead of his iron-aid. His initial fear of dying due to dehydration evaporated when Namor summoned clean, fresh water out of nowhere into a stone jug solely for Tony, but the island fruit, kelp, and odd fish diet left much to be craved. However, he was alive. Score one for Tony.

“This mother fish had a good life, and I feel you will appreciate her death so you may live.”

Yes, old lady fish sounds scrumptious. “I do appreciate it—her sacrifice,” he replied instead, “thank you.”

Unlike many other nights, Namor joined Tony by the fire, staring into the flames, the stars obscured by thick clouds. Tony would never get even the simplest signal through that mess.

Every so often, Friday caught a transmission from Banner at HQ, but this pathetically remote, square-mile island couldn’t consistently ping any satellite. If Tony got Friday to boost the signal, he risked lowering his power supply. Namor had made it clear that he should be prepared to leave at any moment if the King received word of Tigershark, and Tony did not want to be stuck deep in the ocean, fighting water-breathers, when his O2 level went critical with little power. Within the last two weeks, there had been three sightings, but the pair had arrived too late.

Tony flipped the fish on the hot stone inside the flame, nibbling on yesterday’s dried kelp.

This was the first time in recent memory that Namor stayed top-side long enough for his hair to dry, curling gently around his ears. Despite the appearance of black locks and black eyes, when dressed with sufficient light on dry land, both were more chestnut, not so different from Tony’s before his hair had gone gray, before he started dying it back darker to stop references to ‘salt and pepper.’ Tony felt close to a panic attack every time someone uttered that phrase.

“I recognize him now,” Namor tossed into the fire. “I know why Tigershark came to Atlantis.”

Tony’s interest peaked though the king decided to extend the drama of reminiscing over a dance of gold and ember. He coaxed the seaman on, “and…”

“Todd Arliss, the sniveling, arrogant, swimmer from your country, regularly swam feats of endurance across unsafe waters. He caused dozens of other, weaker swimmers to attempt the same and fail. For months, areas of the seas were littered with bodies of men, women, and some children who died trying to emulate Arliss, yet he continued. One particular day, during some sort of human warrior show, a boy fell off a ship. That idiot Arliss stopped a professional team from rescuing the boy. He believed his show of strength was worth more than a minute of breath for the boy dying in the water,” Namor scowled while reciting his tale. “I sent a current to stop him. I snapped his spine against the ship and kept the boy afloat until a real rescue team came for them both. I should have drowned that fool.”

Tony remembered that feeling of regret so vividly. “So you made a demon and he haunts you. Been there.”

“You did. You made him, and now you know what—”

He forgot his cover. “Okay, first of all,” Tony blurted, too hungry and tired to hold his tongue, “I didn’t do anything to or for Arliss. That pompous—” He caught himself. “I’ve never met him, but I am partly, indirectly responsible for the technology that was stolen to change him, maybe. And second, he could not have become a water-breathing mutant on his own. We need who he’s working with. That’s the real evil.”

Namor considered Tony’s words without moving.

“Third,” Tony started again more calmly this time, “let’s review what we know.” Which would be a lot easier if I could talk to Banner. This is one of those times where listening would come in handy. If he hadn’t been off-world for so long, he would know the lay of the land better.“Actually, what do we know?”

“Tigershark—Arliss is not intelligent enough to do this alone. If you did not transform him, who did? No being in the ocean would dare give him that power.”

“If I could be on land, civilization land to speak to—” but Tony was stopped by the blazing eyes that met his.

“You will pay your debt, Stark.”

“Yes, but we need info. So bad guy on land needs to be tracked as we do on land. The fish haven’t produced any bubbles of wisdom have they?” Namor bristled, but Tony kept going. “Let me do this my way, and we can both get what we want—” he slapped the cooked fish onto a different rock to cool “—and some fries would be great.”

Honestly, Tony was relieved that things progressed so quickly once he and Friday had access to what Banner and the team knew. He may not have had much time to chit-chat about, say, Sam, but that would have proved a distraction and possibly ruined the advantage of their freshest intel. Banner always had a way with tracking energy signatures; Tony called it ‘romancing the wave.’

Knowing the previous places Tigershark had been in the last weeks, Banner tracked anomalous weather buoy movement around coasts to narrow the mutant’s landfall location. From there, lacking social media or conspiracy theory postings about a shark out of water, he found city sewer plans for runoff pipes, dismissed pipes too small for a man-sized shark to wiggle through, and produced a short-list of convenient spots, such as abandoned warehouses or sparsely populated neighborhoods. Tony had never been so grateful for the well-oiled, well-funded machine that was his team.

Namor loathed hunting on land or spending any significant stretch out of the water. Tony loathed following a scantily-clad water-dude around. The man needed a super swimsuit with a lot more coverage, even climbing out of the tropical waters in between Belem and Sao Luis, Brazil. They didn’t have far inland to go and only four suspicious locations.

Incidentally, the first location was correct, which left the two shocked and off-balance, scrambling when the door to the condemned building flew off its crooked hinges. The rusted metal smacked Tony’s suit in the jaw, making a toe-curling scraping noise all the way up the helmet.

Tony’s visual feed flickered. “Wild guess, we found ‘em.”

The once golden-haired Olympian emerged tall, now crowned by a sharp protruding fin atop his skull, ribbed faintly up the length of his back. The taut, thick grey skin covering his streamlined swimmer physique peeled away at the mouth to reveal three rows of tiny razor teeth. Arliss was disgusting, but while Tony picked apart Tigershark’s mutant puzzle, the man-creature rushed him with two outstretched arms tipped with heavily webbed fingers and thick nails.

A high-pitched scream rang out from the open doorway. Namor bolted inside, leaving Tony with a ravenous monster from the deep lunging toward him.

Arliss’s flat jaw, squared full of extra teeth and a shrunken, useless tongue, chomped at Tony’s face. Tony clamped his Iron hands against each end of his mouth while Slippery Todd latched around his waist.

Tony wondered whether Sam had seen Todd like this and if she’d been scared. Had they threatened her to help them? Hurt her? Perhaps they lied, and Sam had no intention of turning a man into this…thing.

His boot thrusters forced them off the ground a few feet, and without traction from his smooth skin and partial wet suit, Tigershark began to slide. Tony forced his legs into a slingshot arch that slammed the dangling, foreign weight to the ground.

The transformation must have added flexibility to Arliss’s bones. He slithered upright with teeth bared again.

“Namor,” Tony called. “You want a crack at this guy or what?” Tigershark was gone by the time he turned back around. “Shit,” he mumbled. While he tracked the low body temperature of the retreating mutant, his display warned of more than just Namor and his betrothed inside. “Friday, send a heat-seeker and a track-dart for good measure.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Inside, Namor battered his trident against a cage. Two doors in lay the blue-skinned body of a similarly slippery-suited woman. Tony blew the locks between Namor and Dorma until something far stronger blasted him against the opposite wall. Right, Beach Boy doesn’t know how to secure a damn building. Good news though: Friday confirmed nothing was broken.

A lanky, middle-aged man with a fierce widow’s peak in a white lab coat flaunted a comically giant gun, one heavy enough to require both hands and balancing on his hip. The white coat bore a slice across the chest, red at the frayed edges; Namor had gotten a strike in. Rambo waltzed right past the Atlantean king. Sparks zapped across the gun’s wide muzzle. Energy weapon, origin unknown. Friday searched for analysis.

“Welcome, Mr. Stark, “the creepy doctor, assuming from the clothing, drawled in a thick accent. “I’ve been dying to know. How is our Harvard girl?”

Tony cocked an eyebrow, but Iron Man’s face gave nothing away.

“I was pleased to hear that moron of a king not only failed to kill her, but that my gift has borne the fruit of—”

“Your what now?” Tony half-listened, aiming a bullet at a tiny spot clear of the power source and the magazine within. He didn’t want to blow the whole place with a bad shot. “Look if ‘gift’ is a euphemism for,” an Iron arm swung past his crotch, “then you’ll have to book with a different therapist. Freud is available in hell on Tuesday. Please see the assistant.” Tony pointed, firing a small-caliber to disable the triggering system.

The doctor’s gun died, sputtering an electric swan-song before dropping. His target remained unfazed by the loss of his weapon, and less fazed still by Namor bolting out to the sea with Dorma in his arms.

The doctor grabbed his chest wound. “Oh please, Stark. Do you really not know? Are you that out of touch?” The bright white of his smile stood out against dark features.

Tony ignored him, dispatching two magnetic cuffs at Dorcas’s wrists. He recognized the face now, vaguely, from when Agent Hill handed him a file in a room above the Earth. Doctor Lemuel Dorcas, known associate of Harvard professor Simon Marshall. Sam? She really met Tigershark? She really is mixed up in all this.

“I’ll give you a hint,” the doctor continued, “What burns at 3000 degrees Celsius? What could stop a tsunami?”

This guy was the link, the connecting puzzle piece. The glow in Bucky’s arm. Sam has Extremis. Sam is infected with Extremis? No broken bones, no healed fractures.

The toothy grin shifted in thought. “You know, in a way, I have supported young Samantha’s development more than you yourself have. Does that make me a better father?”

Tony grasped Dorcas by the throat, but the doctor wouldn’t stop talking, spitting a few drops of blood with every few words.

“You fathered her, yes, but I gave her a way to leave you behind. I made her what she is now.”

Tony’s helmet popped open. “The hell you are—”

Spit flew red. “I gave her what she needed.”

“You gave her a virus. You made her sick.” Tony shook Dorcas, pulling against the magnetic restraints.

“I saw her potential, and I encouraged it,” Dorcas gurgled a laugh. “We helped her. Sam has friends now.”

“You sick son of a bitch, you put her in danger,” Tony screamed so close to Dorcas’s face he could rupture an eardrum. “Now I’m gonna put you in the ground.” Iron Man’s palm pressed into the doctor’s gut with bruising force. “Slowly. Painfully.” He fired, the ringing of the steel bars behind his target echoing off the walls. Tony released his grip on the man’s throat and let the body drop to the floor like a wet sack of potatoes.

Dorcas slumped, hands high and pulled at unnatural angles by the cuffs. His gurgling stopped, and Iron Man left him there to die.

Tony’s ears rang. A sharp pain stabbed him behind the eyes. His head throbbed. There was no sign of Tigershark aside from a tracker inside a chunk of flesh that appeared to be bitten off. Tony dutifully returned to the beach, but he did not go back into the water.

No one was around.

His mind turned over and over, his idea of his daughter being rewritten by the second. Child? No. Harvard? Not that type of student. His? He wouldn’t have done this. Would he?

The truth stung him deep inside. Tony absolutely had done it. He put toxic metal into his body, told no one he was dying, injected untested trackers under his skin, instigated a genocidal robot that almost wiped out the planet. He had done all of it in the hopes no one else would have to hurt—that was the lie he told himself. The motivations muddled and shifted: because it helps others, because you can, because it’s cool, sounds fun, challenges you, doesn’t challenge you, makes you impressive, saves lives, puts someone out of business, embarrasses someone. Vanity tied with charity in a bow. Philanthropy, indeed.

Tony watched the water with unseeing eyes.

“If I were an observant man, I would think you had an investment in this beyond my threat.” Namor returned from the sea to stand beside him. When Tony didn’t reply, the king relinquished, “go home, Stark. You have paid your debt.” Namor walked back to the surf, diving smoothly beneath the foaming crests.

“No, I haven’t,” Tony whispered to himself. His helmet shot back up over his face. “Friday, we’re going to headquarters.”

“Flight plan established.” The suit and Tony left the beach.

“Show me all files on Samantha Stark.”

“Yes, Boss. What year would you like to start with?”