TONY

Tony sat in silence as Howard joked with the soldiers in the Humvee. He just stared out of the window, ignoring Howard talk about his numerous affairs and laughing around. One of soldiers asked to take a photo, and Howard joked more and then –

The car in front of them blew up. Gunfire rattled the Humvee. Tony's head snapped up.

"What's going on?" Howard asked, alarm growing across his usually calm face.

Soldiers rushed around them, and they fell to the ground, lifeless as ragdolls.

A moment later, a bomb struck them.

Tony stumbled out of the Humvee, knowing he needed to find better shelter. He dove behind a rock. He pulled out his phone, to try and call someone, anyone. A bomb landed a few feet away. Tony's eyes widened. The label read, 'Stark Industries.'

Tony tried to dive away from the bomb, but the explosion pushed him to the ground, pulling away his dress shirt to reveal a bulletproof vest underneath. Blood was seeping through it. Tony winced, and then the wave of pain hit him, and he fell into darkness.

He didn't know how much time had passed. He vaguely remembered voices yelling in languages he didn't know. He remembered blood. And he remembered pain, a lot of pain. He remembered hearing screams, not quite realizing they were his own. He remembered faces, staring down at him. He remembered darkness.

Tony woke groggily, blinking away the dust around his eyes. The first thing he realized is that he didn't know where he was.

The second thing he realized was the pain, a constant pain in his chest and arms and all over and he couldn't breath and there was something in his lungs and he was drowning suffocating –

A man ran over to him, patted him on the back, whispered soothing words and slowly, slowly, Tony began to calm down. He didn't know how long it took, but after a while he opened his eyes and stared at his surroundings. He was in a cave of some sort, with weapons and tools everywhere.

"They want you to build the Jericho missile," the man said, "Your father was killed when he refused to do so. "

So he told them he would build the missile. Instead, he built a suit. A suit that could make him fly, set off explosions, help him escape. It was not a suit of armor. It wasn't meant to defend him. It was meant to set him free.

And it did. He was free, but Yinsen was dead and he was in the middle of a desert and he'd been walking for what felt like days and he just wanted to sleep but he couldn't he had to keep walking and – He paused, pulling his shirt over his head to block out the beating sun. He kept going.

The sun was high in the sky. He'd been walking for an eternity, the ever-present heat beating down on his skin. He'd started hallucinating early on. He'd seen images of Jarvis, telling him he was a disappointment, leaving him alone in the endless desert. Yinsen, turning around and leaving, giving him up to the Ten Rings.

He thought he was hallucinating when the helicopters appeared. He'd looked up to the sky and seen them and heard them, but he could have been imagining it. It wasn't until he felt the sound of the helicopters rattling through his chest – and boy was that a bad feeling, with the arc reactor in its metal casing – that he realized it was real, and that he might have a chance at getting out of here.

He waved his arms as best he could, with the exhaustion and the pain in his chest, but they saw him and landed. The soldiers ran towards him, and he had one moment of crippling fear at the thought that maybe it was them, and they'd found him. Until he saw the American flag, and he collapsed into the arms of the nearest soldier.

"Thank you," he muttered, "Thank you." Over and over again.

STEVE AND BUCKY

When he'd told Bucky that he'd wanted to join the military, in 1943 at age 14, Bucky nearly shot him. All of his illnesses made his age a bit ambiguous, so all he had to do was lie on the enlistment forms, say he was 18 and get drafted for the army. Simple. Bucky'd managed it, after all. Bucky was only a year older than him, but he looked like he was 23, and boy did that cause a lot of confusion. But then again, Bucky was gone now, off in a training camp somewhere, and Steve was stuck in Brooklyn with nothing but a drafty apartment, a chip on his shoulder the size of New York State and no Bucky to keep him there.

The next time he tried to sign up, Dr Erskine found him.

And then he was part of the super soldier program.

And then, by some miracle, he became Captain America. At age 14.

Bucky was going to be so pissed at him.

Bucky was so pissed at him. He'd turned up, all tall and not ill and strong for such a skinny guy, saved Bucky's ass (as well as the rest of the 107th), and then carted them off back to base. They'd had a little time to talk on the march back. Mostly they'd just been happy to see each other again, that neither of them were dead. They'd barely touched on the topic of Steve's sudden health and strength, but that was okay because they were both alive and relatively safe and together. Bucky didn't really take in much of what they'd talked about. He'd felt terrible, with all the drugs he was pumped with. He didn't tell Steve.

They picked a couple of guys from the 107th, tentative friends that Bucky had made in the training camp, all young, strong fellas. There was Jim Morita, Gabe Jones, Dum Dum Dugan, Montgomery Falsworth and Jacques Dernier. They were all pretty young, for soldiers, but Bucky and Steve were still the youngest.

They became the Howling Commandos, blitzing their way through Europe, setting Nazi bases ablaze. They raised hell.

They weren't always setting off explosions though. They spent most of their time trekking through woods, walking or by motorbike, complaining about the rations, planning, and having a laugh. It didn't take long for the Howling Commandos to realize how young Steve and Bucky were, but it didn't matter to them.

"What the hell are we doin' here, Stevie" Bucky muttered, in the middle of the night, when they were on watch, somewhere in the depths of Nazi occupied France.

"I dunno, Buck. I honestly don't know."

"Fuckin' hate the cold," Jacques grumbled, shivering in his over-large boots.

Bucky turned to Steve, looking at the zip line they'd rigged, "This ain't payback for the time I made you ride the Cyclone, is it?"

"Now why would I do that?" Steve asked, grinning.

Gabe was on Radio, Monty on binoculars.

The train grew closer.

"We got about... a ten second window. We miss that window, we're bugs on a windshield."

"Mind the gap," Monty added dryly.

"Better get moving, bugs," Dum Dum said with a cheerful grin, winking at Bucky and Steve.

Steve rolled his eyes and hooked up the zip line equipment and waited for the signal.

"Maintenant!" Jaques announced and Steve pushed off, holding on tight to the zip wire.

The roaring of wind in his ears was overwhelming, and he fought the urge to look down in the chasm below. He landed lightly, and along with a rush of screamed expletives Bucky joined him.

"That was fuckin' terrifying, Stevie. Don't ever make me do anything like that again, you hear me?"

"Fuckin' freezin', Cap. Why the fuck did we decide to this?" Gabe said as he joined them, and they all began to crouch against the wind. They made their way inside as quickly as possible, trying to get out of the cold.

But, the car was empty. Silent. A trap.

"Fuck!" Steve and Bucky rolled behind some boxes to escape the enemy fire.

They fought for what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes, seconds.

"I had him on the ropes," Bucky grumbled.

"Sure, Buck."

He looked over his shoulder and shoved Bucky behind him. "Geddown!"

The blast caught them off guard, hitting the side of the train and blowing it into the canyon.

Bucky grabbed Steve's shield and put it up in front of him, shooting at the armored man.

It all happened in a second after that, but to Steve, it felt like years.

An energy beam hit the shield dead center.

The shield when flying off to the side, and Bucky…

Bucky fell straight through the hole out into the abyss below.

In slow motion, Steve saw Bucky's face go from determination, to horror to endless fear. The snowflakes falling through the window froze in midair, stopped falling, for one brief eternity. And then, suddenly, he was gone, the snowflakes kept falling, and time resumed. Steve grabbed his shield and threw it as hard as he could at the armored man, but he didn't give him a second thought as he ran to the opening in the wall.

Bucky was there, dangling from a broken rail on the side of the train.

"Bucky!"

He reached out, trying to grab the rail, Bucky's hand, anything.

Bucky looked into his eyes one final time, and whispered so quietly Steve could barely hear "I love you," and oh so slowly Steve saw the rail bend, begin to shear, break, and Bucky was falling again. Falling down, down, down.

Steve didn't even hear his own screams. All could hear was Bucky whispering those three words.

He didn't really register anything else from then on. He tried to drink his sorrows away, but the serum stopped him from getting any more than slightly warm inside. It didn't help. He always felt cold now that Bucky was gone. All he saw when he tried to close his eyes was Bucky, staring at him, with death below and nothing but one final "I love you". When Peggy sent him on a suicide mission, he didn't care. Like he said to Peggy, his last words over the radio: "It's ok. I'll be with Bucky again". All he could think of when the ice was filling his lungs and turning him cold was that he'd see that sunrise smile again.

NATASHA

Designation: Black Widow

Age: 8

Kill count: 0

She'd never killed before. Not people, at least. She'd killed animals, of course, as practice, but she'd never killed a person. But she knew the sight of lifeless eyes staring up at her, the light fading from them. She remembered as if it were yesterday, (faded green eyes staring up at her, "Run, Natshka", blood and burning, fire, but ice in her veins, heart ready to shatter, fire, and everywhere bloodbloodbloodblood), but she shook her head. Now was not the time for memories of lost family.

She took a deep, steadying breath, and entered the building. The plan was to clamber through the air vents, enter the targets room while he was sleeping, eliminate the target, then leave via the air vents. Mission complete.

It was simple: something she'd practiced a million times.

So why was she so nervous?

She shook her head, tied back her hair, and pulled herself up into a vent. She slid through it near silently, removed the grate at the other end, and slipped into the targets room. He was unconscious; her peers in the Red Room had slipped a sedative in his drink earlier that evening. She pulled out the needle from the pouch at her belt, and weighed it in her hand. It felt heavy, even though it must have only been a few hundred grams. She'd gone over this in planning. Inject the poison into the neck. Leaves no traces, but can only be given in a lethal does through injection.

It wasn't until she was shimmying back through the air vents to the exit that she realized what she'd just done. The thought made her sick, that she'd just killed a man, stopped his heart. Did he have a family? She'd never know. She almost threw up right there, but quelled the feeling and kept going.

For Russia, her instructors had reassured her. For the Red Room.

Designation: Black Widow

Age: 8

Kill count: 1

A gunshot to a head in Washington D. C. She barely felt the nausea in her gut. Only the blank, unfeeling that the Red Room wanted, needed her to have.

"I did it for the Red Room" she muttered, "For the Red Room"

Designation: Black Widow

Kill count: 2

A stab wound to a woman's heart in Paris. For the Red Room.

Designation: Black Widow

Kill count: 12

A slit throat in a hotel room in Moscow. Blood everywhere. She didn't care anymore.

It was all for the Red Room.

Designation: Black Widow

Age: 14

Kill count: 36

She didn't want to do it for the Red Room anymore.

CLINT

He was so excited. He was on the way back from getting his first pair of hearing aids, and he could actually hear for the first time in months. His hearing had come back slightly, in the months after the accident, but not enough for him to get by. So he'd got hearing aids, and for the first time in months he could hear Barney's voice calling, hear his parents telling him how patient he'd been with them, hear the hum of the cars engine instead of feeling it. He could hear them talking, and it was amazing.

His father turned round in his seat to face Clint, giving him the brightest smile he could, and his mother looked away from the road for a single second, and in that single second a tractor came out of nowhere and slammed head on into the car.

Clint could hear it, in perfect clarity. The tractor hitting the car, and the crumple of the metal of the hood. He could hear his parents bones snap as their seatbelts crushed their ribcages. He himself jolted forward, feeling a bone snap, and then pressed back into the seat. And then, suddenly, the car was on its side and Barney was wheezing beside him and he couldn't breath and he couldn't hear his parents breathing. And suddenly, he hated his hearing. He wished he hadn't got hearing aids. Because then he wouldn't have had to hear his parents' shaky breaths stop in front of him, hear Barney try to reassure him that everything was ok.

It was Barney who dragged him out of the wreckage. They had to wait an hour before an ambulance arrived. Their parents were pronounced dead on the scene.

Clint sat up in his bed with a start. He hated that dream. He flopped back onto his bed, and waited for his breathing to slow, for his heart to stop beating it's way out of his chest. He rolled out of bed silently, trying to be as silent as possible on the creaky floorboards of his foster home. The foster-dad would get angry if he made any noise. The foster-dad was not a nice man.

Barney always talked about getting out of there as soon as possible. They didn't really have a reason to, and it was a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. They both wanted to go, though. They wanted to leave and never return.

Clint got to the kitchen, silently opened the fridge, and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it as quietly as possible, and made his way back up the stairs, skipping the creaky fifth step.

Another day, he thought, just another day. Then they'd be gone.

It wasn't until they had gone out exploring one day, and come back late, that they ran. The man had tried to hurt Barney and Clint, and Barney had told Clint to get on his bike and keep going until they couldn't go any more. They'd gone for so long that Clint thought he was going to fall over and sleep for a year, but then they found something.

It was colourful and magical and loud and lively and everything the foster-home wasn't. He was entranced, and so was Barney.

They were so lucky that the circus took them in.

After a while, they fell into a routine. They would wake at 6am, to Clint's chagrin, eat breakfast, train until 3pm, and then they would open the attractions. At 6pm there would be the main event in the tent, and then at 8pm they would pack away, eat dinner and go to bed. They stayed in each town for only a few days, never the same place twice, and before Clint and Barney new it they'd travelled across half of America.

It was a complete accident when he picked up a bow, but he was a natural. He liked the feel of the arrow between his fingers, and the bite of the string against his fingertips. He quickly grew strong with both hands, and so accurate he could split a straw in half. He became part of the circus attraction: the Archer, never missing a shot. He became one of the acts in the tent, firing arrows at a woman who span on a wheel, firing from a trapeze. After a time it became easy, second nature.

But it wasn't all fun and games. The only way they could make money at the circus was to steal from the people who watched their shows. Clint hated it, trying to ignore the dark side of his new home. Barney, however, reveled in it. He quickly learnt how to lie and cheat and pickpocket and steal. After a time, Clint had to pick up the skills as well. He hated every minute.

But then, over 3 years after they'd joined, Barney went a step too far, stealing from one of the circus itself, and ran away. Leaving Clint alone.

The lone archer.

It wasn't long before he ran away as well, when they were close to New York City. It wasn't long before he was found by the child protection services and put back into the foster system. He hated it. He went back to school, for the first time in 4 years. He half wished that he hadn't left the carnival, but every time he thought that he would shake himself, and remind himself that he had nothing there.

But then again, he had nothing in New York.

BRUCE

Robert Bruce Banner's mother had died when he was 7 years old, He never found out how, or why. All he knew was that his mother walked him to school that morning, with her kind words and sunny smile, but his father came to pick him up that afternoon, face like a thundercloud.

He didn't understand why his father started hitting him, not really, but he was a smart child and he knew it had something to do with his mother's death. All he knew was that when he got hit, he'd fall back into the depths of his mind and something else would come out. It took his pain for him, protected him, but it wasn't enough. He still woke up every morning with an empty stomach, and bruises all over his body.

He didn't know how long it kept going. He'd wake up every morning, try to cover up the bruises, then go to school and try to pretend that nothing had happened, that he was ok. Every day was the same.

Until his father pulled him out of his bed one morning, shoved him into the back of the car, and started driving. He drove them to the middle of the wilderness, and then got out. Bruce was going to ask why they were there, what were they going to do, but he thought better of it.

His father pulled him out of the car, and put him down on the ground. He told Bruce to go look for sticks, and as Bruce turned around his father leapt back into the car and drove away without a word.

Bruce tried to run after him, put his short legs were no match for the car. He stopped running, falling to his knees. He didn't understand why it had happened.

After a time, he stood again and followed the path that his father had used to drive into the woods. He followed it for so long he felt like his feet were about to drop off, but he kept going.

And going.

And going.

Until he fell to the ground and everything went black.

When he woke, he wasn't in the woods any more. He wasn't in his bedroom either. He was on a bed in the middle of a room, with a man sitting at the end of his bed. He looked up as Bruce began to stir.

"Oh good, you're awake." He said, "Now we can begin."

A horde of doctors streamed into the room, surrounding him and making him feel scared. The doctors strapped him to the bed with rope that hurt his wrists. They stuck needles in his arms and took measurements and he didn't know what they were doing and he was scared and afraid what was going on –

They injected something into him.

Their hands vanished.

The bed vanished.

All there was was pain. A fire burning through him, lighting up every nerve like tinder, setting him ablaze. It was like he was being rewritten, word by word, parts of him being ripped out and replaced again, piece by piece, until all that was left was… anger. And darkness.

When he woke, he was sitting in the remains of a building, with nothing but rubble around him. His clothes were in shreds. He stood, and made his way out onto the streets. He didn't know it, but he was in Calcutta, India. Slowly, he began to pick up the local dialect of Hindi. He became apprenticed to a local doctor so that he didn't have to live on the streets. He had a kind of calm happiness there.

It took three years before someone found him.

They took him as he was walking back from the market, snatching him up and injecting him with something. He saw his skin turn green slightly, then fade back to it's normal tone. He saw the red octopus insignia on their clothes. He had barely enough time to think "What?" before he was falling into unconsciousness again.

They put him in a box. Trapped him. He could feel the anxiety growing, building within him, pulling the monster within him out, shoving the real him away.

When he next woke, he was on a shore, wearing only his ripped trousers. There were pieces of the airplane he'd flown in lying washed up on the shore. The growing noise of a helicopter came from behind him, and he stood up and turned around to watch the plane land.

A one eyed man dressed in black stepped out.

"Robert Banner?"

"I prefer Bruce."

"I'm Nick Fury, head of SHIELD. I'm here to help clean up this mess."

For the first time in over 4 years, Bruce finally felt relief.

MATT

It was the muffled screams, the pleas for help, the suppressed punches and the silent kicks that kept him up at night. He'd been in Hell's Kitchen all his life, but this had only started bothering him recently, when he'd been able to hear it. He lay in the orphanage bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to flinch every time a car horn honked loudly on the other side of the block, or when a woman six alleys away got brutally beaten up by a gang of thugs.

It wasn't right.

He had to help, dammit.

But he couldn't, not just then. He had to wait, and plan.

One month later, he'd gathered enough equipment to be safe on the streets. He'd stayed up late every evening for two weeks to figure out the sister's schedules. They never checked in on him after he'd gone to bed, so he could do whatever he wanted between 10pm and 6am.

So one night, he snuck out of the window and fought crime.

He had to be careful though. He got a lot of cuts and bruises from fighting muggers in back alleys, and he had to work hard to keep the sisters from noticing. Mostly he managed to get by. It was winter, so all he had to do was wear long-sleeved clothing. The long, scratchy fabric of winter jumpers hurt his over-sensitive skin and dug into the many cuts that littered his arms, but he sat through the discomfort. He was a Murdock. He wouldn't be brought down by a jumper.

Some days, hardly anyone was out, and Matt was able to go home early and sleep. But other days, he could hear three robberies going on at once and had to decide which ones to help. It was difficult. It hurt. But it also helped people.

After two months, he sat at the breakfast table one morning, eating toast and listening to Sister Maria tell him about the weather that day.

"It's sunny," she said. "Not quite winter any more, I should think."

Sister Abigail was reading the paper, when suddenly she exclaimed, "Oh goodness!" She began to read that morning story aloud.

" There's a new vigilante in town. Starting two months ago, Police have reported that a number of in-progress robberies were stopped a mysterious man in black. Clips from various security cameras in the area, as well as eyewitness reports, show this man stopping the robbers using physical force and brutality. In a complete 180, he's also seen protecting victims and helping them to their feet after a robbery. He often returns to them money or personal items, then vanishes to the rooftops to look for his next fight. Media outlets around town are starting to call him 'The Devil of Hells Kitchen'. Who is this man in the mask? Is here to help us, or something more?"

The nuns around Matt burst into chatter. He caught the words "devil", "sinner" and "evil". Sister Abigail turned to Matt. "What on God's good earth do you think is going on, Matthew?"

"It's a good thing though, right?" Matt said, "He's helping people. The way he's doing it is very wrong, but he's saved a lot of people."

Yes, Matt thought, he was wrong. But he was helping the people of Hell's Kitchen. He was protecting his city. And that's what mattered.

He was the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Its protector. Nothing was going to stop him.

RHODEY

So military school sucked. It was in the Middle of Nowhere, New Jersey. There were strict hours for everything, he couldn't use his computer unless he asked permission, and worst of all they'd taken away one of his projects because they thought that he was trying to make a bomb.

He'd been trying to make a Wi-Fi router, thank you very much.

On the upside, the next month was going to have a whole bunch of universities visit to show off and attempt to get him to sign up. It could be a little fun, maybe, a little. He could probably make it fun, right?

He could not, in fact, make it fun.

The entire thing was just a bunch of dull lectures about what each university offered and how great they were. It was so dull and he hated every minute of it. He itched to make something, anything, if only to keep his hands busy and elevate the boredom of sitting around in lecture halls all day.

He pulled out his homework and started on the physics equations, just as the dude at the front of the room announced that the next university would be MIT, and some other boring stuff that Rhodes didn't listen to. He kept doing his homework, not looking up or even listening that hard.

Well, until Tony bloody Stark stepped up to the podium.

How had he forgotten that Tony freakin' Stark went to MIT?

It didn't matter anyway. The Stark kid, who was only 14, proceeded to give a funny, engaging, and mostly off topic lecture about MIT and the shenanigans that happened there. James stayed enraptured for the entire thing, not missing a word. The rest of the hall was silent as well. Every single teacher, student and organizer was caught in the kids spell.

With a final wave, Stark finished his lecture and stepped off the podium. As soon as he left the room, the entire audience started talking. Rhodes just sat at the back of the room, thinking. The next lecturer stood at the podium, and Rhodes turned back to his homework, once again bored.

He escaped the lectures as quickly as he could, practically running to be first out of the room. He was ahead of the crowds, so he headed to the science department to check on one of his pet projects and maybe start a new one with the ideas he'd come up with during all the boring-ass lectures.

He walked into the tech room and was halfway to his station before he realized that someone else was in there.

"Oh shit, sorry. I got lost and… Who am I kidding; I didn't get lost. Those last few talks were so boring I sneaked out to build something. You know, this place has a pretty decent tech department."

Rhodes stared.

And stared some more.

"What the fuck."

Tony snorted, "Yeah, I tend have that effect on people."

"What the hell is Tony Stark doing in my science room?"

"Well I was, ugh, fiddling with wires here to see if I could make anything interesting. I think if I reconfigure one of my robots to use this set of wiring instead the one it has now, it will have better efficiency and maybe be a bit faster. I dunno, he's a slow bugger anyway and- wait, am I rambling again?"

"Yes. It's chill. Keep going."

So they sat there for an hour, debating how to better improve the systems in some of Tony's bots. By the time Tony's bodyguard found them, Tony and Rhodes had a sheaf of notes each and grins the size of Texas.

"Sorry, what was your name again?"

"James Rhodes."

Tony muttered the name under his breath, and nodded. "Well, James Rhodes, it was good to meet you."

Rhodes grinned, "Good to meet you too, Stark."

"Bye!" He yelled over his shoulder as his guard escorted him away, leaving Rhodes standing in the middle of the room, with a sheaf of notes in his hand and a sudden emptiness in his heart.

Until, a week later, an interactive watch appeared in his mailbox with a note reading:

Rhodey,

I forgot to ask your number.

You know who I am.

He gazed down at the letter, then the watch, and grinned.