Chapter Text
The wind brought frigid air into the bunker. The snow continued to fall as Tony leaned against the wall. His broken arc reactor had failed an hour ago, FRIDAY had gone quiet after Rogers had slammed his shield into it. The bite of the cold left him shivering and his vision was blurring around the edges. He felt consciousness slipping away with every moment he sat there, alone.
He had no idea if FRIDAY had gotten a distress call out before she fell silent, but he knew even if she did that no one would make it in time to rescue him. He had minutes, not hours before the bitter frost caused his heart to stop. His suit was just cold metal without the arc reactor powering it - a cold metal coffin.
As his vision started to black out he felt heat return to his extremities, a burning heat so unreal, he knew it was the end. He was going to die at the hands of a friend, one he had trusted with his life mere days ago. One he wished he’d killed while he had the chance. Even in his distress and anger, he hadn’t used his suit to its full capabilities. He may have wanted the Winter Soldier dead, but he didn’t want to kill him. At least, he hadn’t then.
Now as he felt himself dying, he wished he would have done what everyone who feared him expected of him; he wished he would have killed the super soldiers who didn’t seem to care that they left him for dead. As the raging heat overtook him and his vision faded, he thought, if he had a second chance, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
What he didn’t see was the gold sparks that encompassed him as he fell down, down, down…
Dr. Stephen Strange hated people. It wasn’t a new thought, but it was at a new intensity as everyone around him did stupid thing after stupid thing. He couldn’t believe he was surrounded by such incompetency.
He walked past his office, where he knew Dr. Palmer was likely waiting for him to berate him about something or another, and headed to the surgical suites. He needed five minutes where no one bothered him, so he went into surgical suite 5, which wasn’t up to standards and had been unused for two months. It was his safe haven on days like today. He heard a thud inside the suite before he could enter and almost turned around, assuming there was cleaning staff inside. He doesn’t know what compelled him to enter anyways, but he did and what he saw shocked him.
There, lying on the ground in the suite was a man covered in red and gold metal armor. He got a closer look and saw the blood covering the man’s face, his blue lips and the way the blood in his hair was frozen. Without approaching the man, he turned and paged Dr. Palmer to the suite along with several nurses. He kept the man’s name off the hospital comms, because it wasn’t just a man, it was Tony Stark, and the man looked dead.
Out of the corner of his eye, Stephen saw a bald figure disappear around the corner that led to the washing stations. Before he could think to follow, he heard Stark gasp in a quiet breath. Stephen’s eyes widened and he dropped to his knees to begin to assess the situation of Stark being hypothermic in a warm New York hospital. Seconds later, Dr. Palmer and several nurses entered the suite, and he started barking orders.