A little angsty

"Tony, it's too late!" Steve hollered out, trying urgently to hold him back from leaping out of the jet as it began to ascend. "You're gonna get yourself killed and that won't help anything!"

"I can't leave without her!"

As Clint pulled the jet towards the sky, the motion shifted Tony and Steve, toppling them both and sliding them towards the open door while Natasha struggled to close the broken mechanism on the battered plane. Tony was more than willing to fall from it if it meant being any closer to you and the Hydra men who had taken you, but Steve was determined to keep him there. As Stark fell from the gate, Steve reached out just in time to catch his foot, holding on with a desperate grip to the side of the bulkhead with his other hand; Tony was dangling in mid-air with no thought to his own life that was literally hanging in the balance.

"Not today...Tony..." Steve grunted, readily welcoming Bruce's assistance in pulling their friend back in. The three men landed in a heap on the jet floor, but Steve refused to release his grip until Tony agreed to stay in place. Natasha finally got the door closed when Tony relented and slunk away into a darkened corner away from everyone, closing himself off to the people who so readily wanted to help.

"We'll get her back," Natasha whispered with a gentle hand on his arm that he angrily swatted away. She looked to Steve for help, but he waved her off, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded and his posture nearly as defeated as Tony's. "You guys, you have to believe that we'll find her. You have to."

~~~

Tony sat in the darkened lab at the tower and stared blankly out the window, his phone pressed to his ear, replaying that scene from five long years ago in his mind, punishing himself just as he did on every anniversary of that mission. This year, however, he was allowing your mother to punish him even more so than he had already done on his own.

"I'm aware that it's all my fault," he agreed. "Yes, I am a terrible father. You're absolutely right, I'm a complete failure in finding her. No, I haven't done all that I could. Yes, I agree, it should have been me. Yep, worthless. That's me."

"Tony, hang up the damn phone," Bruce snapped, pulling it from his hand and tossing it aside with a loud bang on the steel workstation. "It would serve her right to hear a few choice words that I have for her, you know. She can't keep saying things like that to you, Tony. They aren't true."

"Of course they are."

"Right, I've forgotten just how good you are at destroying yourself."

"What do you want, Bruce?"

The doctor pulled up a seat next to Tony and removed his glasses, carefully turning them over nervously in his hands as he spoke, "we know what today is, and we thought that maybe it would do you some good to get out of the tower for a bit. We're going out to dinner and we'd like you to join us."

"No thanks, not hungry," he replied, standing quickly and returning to the work he had laid out across his table. His hands began to move over the instruments, but Bruce recognized that the actions weren't serving any purpose other than to avoid the conversation. "You guys go. I'll be fine."

"Tony..."

"I said go," he hissed, looking up at Bruce with a fire in his eyes that warned him not to push back. Tony held his gaze, unmoving, until his friend finally turned away and left him alone without another word.

~~~

"He's alone," you relayed to your commander through your comm, scaling the side of the tower until you reached the floor where Tony was working, waiting at the window before making your move. "I'll have the target secured soon, be ready to accept the package."

Tony turned away and grabbed a few more tools for whatever it was that he was working on, and you knew you had your opportunity. With your new powers of metal manipulation given to you by your captors, you raised your hand to the glass and moved the instruments in his hand to mold around his wrists, holding them firmly secured. You pushed back from the glass, swinging into it with enough force to shatter it across the lab floor, landing directly in front of Tony. "Mr. Stark, you'll come with me, please."

"As inviting as that sounds, sweetheart, I don't think that's how this party's gonna end," he replied with a heavy sarcasm, trying to pry his hands from their restraints. "That's a cool party trick you have there. Let me guess...Hydra? They gave you some nifty powers that you thought would be fun to try out on the first date?"

"You can either come along quietly, or I can make this much more difficult for you."

"Quiet isn't really my thing," he smiled. "Hey, J, you know what to do."

One of Tony's suits powered up in the robotics lab directly below, thrusting itself up through the glass in the floor and shooting a blast that threw you into the far wall. Before you could gather yourself and stand to retaliate, the suit had set him free and he was now inside controlling it.

"Stay down," he said coolly with his hand extended, "final warning."

It was the first time you had encountered him as Iron Man, but you had learned a great deal about the suit before you were sent to take him; with a slight movement of your hand that was too faint for him to catch, you tried to manipulate the casing to bend and drop him to the ground, but it wasn't working.

"It's a gold-titanium alloy. Maybe you can't work much a fancy metal? Aluminum more your speed?" he smirked.

"They told me that you were cocky," you smirked back, changing your focus to the inner workings of the suit. His repulsors began to sputter and finally fail, dropping him into a heap on the floor, the eyes of his suit going dark. "But cockiness won't get you very far with me, Mr. Stark."

"JARVIS," he groaned, "call for back-up."

"Already done, sir."

With the rest of the team on the way now, you needed to hurry to get him out and to your transport. You quickly melded the frames of the door together to lock them out if they arrived before you could get him out of the suit and out of the building.

Tony struggled to move in the dead suit, reaching up to pull the mask away, but you hurried forward and pushed his hand aside. You didn't see his other hand reaching out for you; he caught the edge of your own mask and yanked it away to reveal your face to him. "Jesus," he gasped. "(Y/N)?!"

"Who the hell is (Y/N)?"

"You are," he replied with a look of sheer horror across his face. "You are (Y/N). What did they do to you?"

"Tony!" Steve called out from the other side of the door, banging on it with all of his strength to break through. "Clint, go below and see if you can get in!" Steve turned back and looked through the window at you with an expression that matched Tony's, as if he were seeing a ghost. "It's her," he mumbled, renewing his efforts to break through the barrier between you.

"You're my daughter," Tony tried one last time to get through to you, "they took you from me, and turned you into this. This isn't you. Listen to me, (Y/N), please. I'm your father."

You paused for a moment, finding nothing in your mind for him other than the directive you were sent in with. With a deliberate slowness, you removed his mask and looked at him with a coolness in your eyes that tore at his heart and removed any hope that he had suddenly felt in getting you back. The last words he heard before you knocked him out took away any drive that he may have felt to fight you, accepting his fate that allowing this to happen may be the only way for him to be with you now.

"I don't have a father."

Part 2

"Tony!" Steve called out again, still unable to break his way through the door to get to him and watching helplessly as you pulled his unconscious body from his suit. "JARVIS, can you stop her?"

"I can try, sir, but I am limited."

The sounds of Tony's robots came to life around you, their metal appendages swinging across the room and towards you in an attempt to grab you and slow your progress, but you were able to quickly fuse their joints and immobilize them. "Is that all you've got, Captain?" you called out to him through the glass, watching him struggle but making no headway in breaking in.

"No, he's got me," Clint announced from behind you, having crawled up from the hole that had been shot through the floor. He pulled a long power cord from around his neck and wrapped your wrists tightly, throwing you onto the ground at his feet with a hard thud and pressing his foot into your back to keep you in place. "Stop moving, (Y/N)" he commanded. "I know how to hog tie, so let's not tempt me, alright?"

~~~

Tony sat outside of your hospital room, staring blankly through the window at the doctors who were trying to talk to you, trying to break through whatever brainwashing that Hydra had done. He didn't know what to feel anymore, after so many years of just being angry all the time and not seeing past his own self-hatred; self-hatred that was only fueled now by the sight of you right in front of him yet still so far beyond his reach. Now, Tony was more convinced than ever before that this was his fault.

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asked quietly as she approached as to not startle him, gently pressing an ice pack to the back of his neck.

"I feel like there's a rave going on in my head."

"I thought I saw a glow coming out of your ears," she smirked, pulling up a chair next to him. They sat in silence for a few minutes when he didn't say any more, and when she didn't know where to begin. She watched the doctor question you, recognizing the wall you had built in your mind as one that she had possessed herself at one time, and her heart began to feel heavy in her chest. For the first time, she believed that you could be truly lost. Natasha hesitated for only a second, but then reached over and rested her hand atop Tony's, breathing a sigh of relief when he didn't pull away.

"What if this is it?" he whispered. "What if she's gone, Nat?"

"She's not."

"Please don't lie to me. Not about this."

Natasha turned in her chair to face him, tugging on his hand to get him to look her way. "Hey, I'm not lying to you. It looks pretty bleak from here, and yeah, I worry that we're too late. But right now, I have to believe that she's not gone, because I care about her. I care about you, Tony."

"Okay," he mumbled, pulling away and turning his gaze to his lap, watching the nervous energy in his hands and his inability to steady them. He had wrung them together so tightly and for so long that his fingers were reddened and aching, but it didn't slow him. "Thanks," he nodded to her with a grim smile. "I appreciate that."

Clint was next to arrive, taking a place to watch silently along the wall, followed by Steve and Bruce, each of them saying nothing as they waited for any word on what the doctors had learned from you. They had been working with you for almost twelve hours, and the group was more on edge now than they were when they first saw you in Tony's lab.

"Hey," Steve nodded towards your room, "doc's on the way out."

Before Tony could stand, he startled at a voice echoing down the hall, cringing at the recognition and shooting a quick glance to Bruce when he heard his friend groan at the simultaneous realization of who it belonged to.

"I've got her," Bruce said to Tony as he backed away. "You get an update and I'll find a way to stall it...um, her."

"You sure about that?"

"I'm the Hulk," he smiled. "I've got this."

"Who are they talking about?" Steve whispered to Clint, though his gaze never left Tony.

"(Y/N)'s mom. Nothing she loves more than ripping Stark apart," he replied, moving to join Natasha so he could hear what the doctor was going to say. "Smart to send the Hulk, if you ask me."

Your doctor stepped into the hall and closed the door gently behind him, taking a spot next to the window so that he could keep you in his sights, reaching out to shake Tony's hand before beginning. "Mr. Stark, am I free to discuss (Y/N) in front of everyone?"

"Everyone here is family," Tony replied matter-of-fact, eagerly accepting Natasha's hand as it slid into his.

"Very well. (Y/N) is...inconsistent. And it's becoming more apparent as each hour passes."

"Okay?" Tony pressed, "what does that mean?"

"I can ask her a question at the top of an hour, and by the next hour the answer is different. Her recall of both long and short term memory is fluctuant." The doctor slipped off his glasses and gently closed them in his hand, sliding them into the pocket of his white lab coat as he opened your file on his tablet and handed it to Tony. "Every hour I've stated three different items for her to remember, asking her to recall them an hour later before I give her three more. Only now is she remembering them, and just now she's repeated all thirty-six items that I've said over the last twelve hours."

"So she's getting better," Steve offered, stepping up next to Tony. "Is her memory coming back?'

"It's really too early to know for sure, Captain, but from what we have seen so far, it's very possible. Whatever Hydra was doing, it may need ongoing treatments to keep her true memory suppressed, and the longer that she's away from them, the more it wears off." The doctor nodded to Tony and returned his hand to the door, taking one last look around the group. "She has the benefit of a very active mind, and she's still young. Her brain is always fighting whatever they were doing. She's fighting it. There's still hope, Mr. Stark."

~~~

"(Y/N)?"

"Hmm?" you murmured, lifting your head from its rest on your folded arms over the table, squinting as your eyes readjusted to the harsh light of the room. "Oh, sorry. I must've drifted off."

"Well, you've been at it for about thirteen hours now. I'd be exhausted, that's for sure," Tony smiled weakly. "May I?" he asked, gesturing to a chair on the other side of the table from you. "If you're tired, I can come back...?"

"No, sit," you said with a long yawn. "I could use a little stimulating conversation. All I've done is psych evals, memory tests and weird trivia questions that weren't even a challenge."

Tony sat down with a small laugh, leaning forward to rest his crossed forearms over the table, though the proximity to you now was strangely unsettling to him. "Uh oh. Stimulating conversation? That's a lot of pressure on a guy who's been doing nothing but stare at you for those thirteen hours."

"I see that Cap took your place?"

"Cap?"

"Steve?"

"No, I wasn't correcting who it was," Tony clarified eagerly. "I was wondering about your choice of name. Cap has a certain air of familiarity."

"And Steve doesn't?"

"Well," he sighed, "I suppose it does, but Cap is a little more personal." Tony turned in the chair slightly to look over his shoulder at Steve but quickly returned his focus to you. "It just wasn't what I was expecting, I guess."

You furrowed your brow and searched your mind for what he might mean by that; wondering why it was so important to him to know why you chose to call the man Cap rather than Steve, or Captain America, or Captain Rogers. He needed to know where your mind was and he was now looking at you with a desperation in his eyes that you felt a strong urge to pacify.

"But he's my friend."

Tony felt his heart skip and begin to pound so hard that he believed that he could probably see it banging against his chest if he looked down. "Yes, he is." He straightened in his chair and reached his hands out to take yours but hesitated, leaving them open and rested on the table top. "Do you want him to come in? Would that make you more comfortable?"

"I'm comfortable with you."

Your focus shifted and your eyes moved to look over Tony's shoulder, seeing your mother arrive and standing next to Steve, who looked like he was suffering through the interaction and trying to keep a pleasant demeanor in front of her. "Has she been mean to you, Mr. Stark? My mother is pretty awful and can be quite the handful."

"You remember her?" he gasped, spinning around to look at her and then back to you. "(Y/N), tell me. Do you remember her or do you know her because they've told you who she is?"

"Has she been mean to you?" you repeated.

"No. We're okay."

"You're lying," you whispered with a shake of your head, a pain beginning to pound across your forehead in a relentless rhythm. Leaning forward onto the table, you rested your head in your hands and tried to rub the pain away with no success. "Your left eye twitches when you lie. That's how I always knew when you lied about why you missed my birthday parties..." you paused, searching your mind through the memories that were beginning to barrage you. "And prom...and graduation..."

"(Y/N)...?"

"...Dad," you said plainly, closing your eyes to allow your mind to catch up with the flashes of images and memories that you couldn't interpret for as fast as they were appearing. The events of that final mission with him finally played out in your head, leading up to the last moment that you knew who you really were; a version of yourself that you might never see again, but one that you were getting a little closer to being. "So tell me," you said with a very small curl of a smile at the edge of your lips forming as you watched the sparkle come back into his eyes, "what took you so long?"

"This is amazing," Tony mumbled, "I can't wait to tell your mom that you're back because even Hydra couldn't make you forget how big of a bitch she is."