Won't Wave My White Flag

CHAPTER FOUR:

Tony could immediately see the impact his words had had on Tonia, could see the spark of fear in her familiar eyes, recognised the way she'd subtly curled into herself, and he didn't need FRIDAY's alert through his earpiece for his suspicions to be confirmed. "You're like me, Tonia," he told her, meeting her anxious, fearful eyes with a steady gaze. "We don't run from our problems, we never have, which makes me think there's more to you running to my universe then you're telling me."

Tonia visibly flinched and Tony felt the grim satisfaction of knowing he was right. No version of Tony Stark— or Tonia Stark— would ever run from danger while leaving behind people who needed help. Tonia wouldn't have left her universe without good reason, no matter how broken it was— they were mechanics, engineers, builders; they fixed broken things, and working for Hydra or not, Tony didn't doubt for a second that Tonia had to be part of whatever resistance must exist, or that she was prepared to do whatever it took to help restore America, help restore the world, to its former, Nazi-free glory. If she'd been forced to run, he knew it must have been the absolute only option available to her.

"You're right," Tonia murmured, speaking so quietly Tony could barely hear her. "Of course you're right, you're me, we know our own hearts, but the truth... the truth is so much more dangerous than the cover that I just ran. Leaving my universe was the hardest choice I've ever had to make, but it was the only one left to me."

"Tell me," Tony urged, leaning forwards, keeping steady eye-contact between them. "If there's anyone in the multiverse that could understand, you know that it's me, so tell me."

Tonia's hesitation was obvious, a wary skittishness to her now that hadn't been present before. "You couldn't ever tell anybody," she said warningly, her nails tap-tap-tapping anxiously against the table. "If I tell you, you can't record it and you can't ever let anybody know, it's too dangerous."

It was the honest urgency in Tonia's voice paired with the desperate fear in her eyes that convinced Tony. "You have my word," he told her, glancing up at FRIDAY's visible camera in the interrogation room and nodding, prompting the red light to flicker pink before blinking off. Tonia's eyes tracked his, and her tense shoulders loosened slightly. They both knew it could be a feint, that FRIDAY could easily still be recording, but Tonia took a deep, shaky breath and clearly decided to trust him.

"Since Führer Hitler died," she said softly, "there has been a power struggle within the Third Reich's government. Nazi Germany has been locked in a cold war with the Japanese Empire for decades, and those with power are split between wanting to prevent open war, or wanting to start World War III in order to become the world's sole super-power, creating a global Nazi Reich.

"In preparation for the seemingly inevitable war, I was conscripted along with a select number of other hand-selected Hydra scientists into a research team dedicated to making into reality Doctor Zola's dreamchild, the most terrifying of all the weapons he'd ever come up with over his years as Hydra's head scientist and its leading weapon's designer under Johann's leadership until his death in 1980.

"It was... it was pure evil, Tony," Tonia said with a shudder, her face bone-white and sickened. "It would have ended World War III before it could even begin, but at the cost of billions of lives, of innocent people, and that's not an exaggeration. I knew I couldn't let it ever be built, that I couldn't let it ever be used— it would have been unforgivable of me, as a human being, to ever allow such a monstrosity to become reality. And so... I made a choice, a horrible, awful choice, but the only choice I had— to sabotage the entire project by whatever means necessary.

"Together, my partner and I, we planned an attack, enlisting the American branch of Aunt Peggy's resistance group to help. In one night, every scientist involved in the project was murdered and the facility where we were developing it was blown up while I launched a digital attack that erased every single trace of the schematics for the superweapon. I had planned on faking my death too, but Nazi soldiers found me at my home and took me into protective custody before I could. I was so lucky that PEGGY, my A.I., had the foresight to wipe my computer systems of all evidence of my involvement with the digital attack.

"Officially, I was put into protective custody following the attack, but it was more a form of house arrest. I was assigned quarters at the Hydra Institution of Scientific Knowledge And Research, where I was kept under full-time guard and expected to recreate the designs for the weapon. I was prepared for this possibility, of course, and I'd attempted to make sure I wouldn't be able to remember the plans. Hydra has this memory suppressing device that's supposed to be capable of erasing memories, and the night before the assassinations and sabotage, I had my partner use it on me."

Tonia visibly shuddered at the memory, and Tony barely held back a shudder of his own, her brief description bringing to mind the device used on Barnes, according to the files FRIDAY had dug up for him after the return from Siberia. If Tonia had had the Chair used on her willingly— well, she clearly had even bigger stones then he'd thought... despite not actually having stones at all, and fuck if that wasn't still weird.

"It was one of the most awful experiences of my life," Tonia confessed, her familiar dark eyes utterly haunted. "And it didn't even work," she added with a harsh, self-deprecating sound that was almost a laugh, but at the same time nothing at all like a laugh should ever sound like. "Not completely, in any case. I still see glimpses of the weapon schematics in my dreams, enough that I know I could recreate it— that I could improve it, even, and I just... I couldn't let them use me to do that, I couldn't, I'd die first.

"I was going to escape the facility and go on run, go into hiding with the resistance and keep multiple fail-safes on me at all times so if I was ever captured, I'd be able to commit suicide before anyone could torture the schematics out of me. But before I could, I learned that Aunt Peggy's resistance had put a price on my head— apparently," she spat bitterly, "they considered my knowledge to be too dangerous and wanted me dead. They'd even purposefully leaked information to Imperial spies, so that the Japanese put a target on my head too. I had nowhere I could run and hide where I wouldn't be hunted down and either killed or be forced to commit suicide to prevent myself from being used to create Armageddon— that's what the weapon was nicknamed," she clarified, seeing his look, and Tony nodded.

He could only try to imagine how Tonia had felt; he remembered with a terrible clarity that would never fade how the Ten Rings had tried forcing him to build them his most destructive weapon (that the public was aware of, anyway— he had a number of designs that even in the worst of his Merchant of Death days he'd kept buried deep, deep down in JARVIS's servers, never to see the light of day). He'd always known, however, throughout his horrifying ordeal in the Afghan desert, that if he escaped he would be safe— Tonia, even if she escaped, only faced death at the hands of her allies.

"I had nowhere in my universe I could run, and I couldn't let anyone use me to build the weapon," Tonia whispered, wrapping her arms around herself again, though being careful not to dislodge any of the electrode stickers on her skin. "And then I thought of the Tesseract. I'd spent two years studying it, I knew of the potential it held. It took me months to finish the theoretical calculations for the creation of a wormhole that would lead to a universe we'd be safe in, but for the first time since I'd laid eyes on Doctor Zola's design I was actually hopeful. But I hadn't realised just how closely I was being monitored— they were suspicious of my lack of progress, probably had been suspicious since I'd survived when no one else had, and we were attacked while enacting our escape plan."

Tonia grew visibly choked up, her dark eyes filling with tears, her hands clenching tight. "My partner died protecting me, shot by a gun I'd designed for those bastards. He died giving me the chance I needed to escape, to get to the Tesseract."

Tony reached out with one hand and Toni grasped onto it like a lifeline, holding so tight that her nails nearly broke his skin, while her entire body shook with sobs.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," he told her quietly. "And nobody will ever learn from me why you ran. I promise."

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Even after her emotional explanation of Armageddon and his promise to keep it a secret, Tony still had more questions for her. Tonia didn't blame him, she couldn't, but it was still exhausting. He was interested in PEGGY, which wasn't surprising considering his FRIDAY, and with his obvious understanding of A.I., insightful questions and clear academic interest in the only other true A.I. he'd ever heard of, even if PEGGY existed in a different universe, it wasn't as much of a hardship to boast about her precious creation to him. Tonia found herself going into far more detail then she had anybody else, including, after a nearly hour-long technical discussion of how she'd 'raised' PEGGY from a user interface (UI) to a capable woman in her own right, albeit one consisting of coding and servers, not flesh and blood, the story behind PEGGY's name– or rather, PEGGY's namesake.

"Aunt Peggy was one of the founders of the Resistance group," she explained to Tony, hiding her grief with the skill cultivated over a lifetime. It helped that the technical conversation she'd just had had left her in a far calmer state. "She was this– this beacon of good in my childhood," she continued explaining, in the face of Tony's obvious curiosity. "She was my idol; she snuck me all sorts of banned books and told me stories about before the war and taught me to question what we were taught in school. Howard knew what she was and he passed on secrets to her, trying to make up for betraying America during the war— not that Aunt Peggy ever found out about that. Not that I knew of, anyway. I'm pretty sure she would have shot him if she had. Peggy and Howard were arrested when I was sixteen. They were both executed. Madre wasn't, her Italian citizenship saved her, but she died in a car accident when I was eighteen."

Tony flinched violently at that, his face visibly paling as one of his hands reached automatically to press against the centre of his chest, on level with his heart. "She died in an accident? Are you sure?" He asked harshly, and Tonia laughed, the sound bleak and empty of all humour.

"Oh, not at all," she said, in a voice just as flat and miserable as her laugh. "I was conveniently eighteen, Madre was the only true obstacle in Johann's way, if he wanted full influence over me, and considering she was an Italian citizen, they couldn't disappear her or arrest her, they couldn't even deport her because I have dual citizenship and I would have followed her. They very likely did kill her–" hell, it could have even been her lover, James, who'd been their chosen assassin, he was one of their best, "–but I never looked into it. I felt alone, I felt afraid, and I turned to the only adult left in my life who I'd ever felt cared about me."

"Schmidt," Tony murmured, and she nodded, giving him a wretched smile.

"Schmidt."

It was in the wake of that harrowing confession that the 'interview' finally concluded, at least for the day. Tonia wasn't an idiot, something she'd said had resonated badly with her other-self, something more than just hearing about how alternate versions of their parents had died, and Tony needed time to compose himself. She wasn't complaining, she needed time too, desperately, and she'd take it any way she could get it.

She was escorted by Tony and Vision back to the bedroom she'd spent the night in, the golden cage with its gilded bars that she was informed she'd be staying in until her house arrest was over. "I'm not going to apologise," Tony said with a bite to his voice she was mostly certain wasn't aimed at her, a suspicion that solidified as Tony then explained the necessity of the house arrest, that it was for her benefit as much as it was regulation– she wasn't a citizen of the USA, wasn't a citizen anywhere in this universe, in fact, and so she lacked any of the protection that an official status would give her. She technically didn't exist, and until she did in some legal capacity or other, the safest, most well-protected place for her was her comfortable prison.

Tonia had spent time under house arrest before, and on more than one occasion. This was the first time its purpose was to actually protect her and keep her safe, and despite the fact she didn't particularly like it, she hadn't argued– after all, there was a stark difference (pun absolutely intended) between both her previous house arrests the jail cells she'd spent time in, back in her universe, and the penthouse of Tony's luxury Tower. Plus, she got the feeling that Tony was already bending those quoted regulations for her– containing a potential threat was one thing, but keeping them contained inside a personal residence? That seemed the opposite of what regulations would demand– and she wasn't about to spit in the face of his efforts keeping her safe in his universe.

Tonia appreciated that the time alone in the bedroom of her new quarters also gave her time to think over everything she'd just shared with her other-self. She wasn't sure how she felt about telling Tony the truth about why she was seeking asylum in his universe. Telling the truth was not something she was accustomed to doing, how could it be m when it felt like her entire life was one composed of carefully layered lies? She honestly couldn't remember ever not having a looming 'enemy' of some sort, one that made honestly impossible, be it Howard in her youth, the other children when she started school, the politicians she'd been forced to mingle with as she grew older, the soldiers that patrolled the streets...

Some of her enemies were clearly defined in their status as such, her dear departed father being one of them, while others were less so, such as the children encouraged to report any anti-Nazi, pro-America sentiment they'd witnessed, be it from their fellow students, their teachers, their friends, or even their families. The best way to survive had been to never trust anybody, to never give anyone your real truth, and that was the world Tonia had been born to, had grown in and survived. She'd learned the consequences of failure young, learned it from the back of Howard's hand against her face, learned it from the tears of her classmates as their family members were forcibly "disappeared" or executed for being dissidents, learned it from watching Aunt Peggy swing by her neck on a noose alongside Howard while her Madre had lied-lied-lied to keep Tonia and herself alive and free.

Tonia had already been a student at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München when her father and Aunt Peggy's resistance activities had been discovered. If Maria hadn't been Italian, and Tonia half-Italian and under Johann's protection, they would have been hung alongside Howard and Aunt Peggy, or faced the firing squad, or even one of those special prisons nobody talked about due to the sheer scale and extent of the atrocities that were committed there. As it was, Maria had tearfully denied all knowledge of her husband's treasonous activities (lies) and had very loudly and repeatedly publicly denounced both him and Aunt Peggy.

Honesty was a threat to survival. That was the universal truth... of her universe. But this wasn't her universe. And the one person she never lied to, the one person she couldn't lie to, was herself. And apparently, that included her other-self, and so she'd told them, him, the truth about why she'd run to this, his, universe.

Armageddon, the 'cute' little nickname the project had been given, was exactly as the name implied; catastrophic, on a near-biblical scale. Like she'd explained to Tony, to allow its construction would have been unforgivable as a human being. The other scientists, they'd lacked the horror she'd felt, too focused on the challenge and prestige– and in return, she'd lacked any true guilt at their deaths, at the inarguable knowledge that their assassinations had been brought about on her orders. Not that Winter, James, had required much 'ordering'– abused dogs eventually fought back, and the man who'd been assigned to be her guard dog had been kicked by his masters one too many times. Whoever had made him her sanctioned stalker had been an idiot of the highest degree who'd practically handed over to a weapon's manufacturer such a damaged but still dangerous and deadly weapon.

Thinking about James hurt. Loss was a familiar pain, violent loss even more so, but that didn't make it any less emotionally devastating. The urge to curl up in bed with the covers over her head and lose herself to that grief, at least for a little while, was undeniably tempting, but she knew better than to surrender herself to that urge. She might not ever leave the temporary sanctuary of her bed. She could, however, politely ask FRIDAY to play her the newsreels showing the Allies victory in 1945, and that certainly went a long way towards cheering her up.

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