Clea and Wong both froze when the doorbell suddenly went off one day, the old chimes echoing eerily thoughout the Sanctum Sanctorum. They hadn't heard the sound in months, not since the SRA had passed and Stephen had started working in secret.
The two remaining residents wordlessly met in the foyer, where two shillouettes were faintly visible through the frosted windows of the front entrace.
The sorceress quickly scanned them. "It's two humans, no traces of magic." she said, looking over at Wong. "Should we answer?"
It was a difficult question. The passing of the SRA meant they were both fugitives of the law, and could potentially be arrested at any given moment. So far no one had been brave enough to try and target the Sanctum directly, but they both knew that could change in an instant.
However, this was still the home of the earth's Sorcerer Supreme. It was their duty to assist anyone who came in search of aid, especially with the difficult times they were currently living in.
"Yes, we should."
That didn't meant they shouldn't ensure their own safety first, however.
Clea pressed herself against the wall, out of view of the open door, but still within arm's reach of Wong if these 'visitors' decided to become hostile. Her hand hovered over the sheathed dagger on her thigh, her body temsed and ready for a fight.
The front door, once open, would be their only entry point into the Sanctum; the dozen or so specialized wards that surrounded the old brownstone would prevent them from trying to enter elsewhere, or breaking the door down once it was sealed. So, in theory, all she and Wong had to do was keep them on other side of it.
The sorceress had learned from her own rebellion, however, that things rarely ever happened according to plan. She really hoped the humans hadn't figured out how to break past their wards, otherwise this situation was bound to get far messier than they wanted it to be.
Clea nodded to Wong and he nodded back, before slowly opening the door of the Sanctum. He kept it partially closed, his body blocking the theshold.
Cruelty to the winner, Bishop tells the King his lies
Maybe you’re a mourner, maybe you deserve to die
They were crying when their sons left, God is wearing black
He’s gone so far to find no hope, he’s never coming back
They were crying when their sons left, all young men must go
He’s come so far to find no truth, he’s never going home
Soldier Side >> System of a Down
The heat assailed him the second he stepped out of the Humvee. From all sides. In every way – in the natural, oppressive thickness of desert air – in the red hot swirling fires from just-happened explosions – in sprays of bullets – his hammering heartbeat.
Infernal. The boys at boarding school had been mean-spirited, but intellectual, they used to twist poetry into horror stories and one time they’d scorched a particular verse into Tony’s impressionable memory, something about how Lucifer’s breath could spread fires with the same ease with which a just man could blow out candles: they’d told him that on his seventh birthday, when Jarvis had sent in a cake and Tony had trouble blowing out all the candles at once and so there must have been something evil incinerating his soul. He still didn’t know where the verse was from but he knew he’d just walked right into the poem.
Blood on the sand. He tripped over a body on the ground when he grabbed a machine gun, a ghost weapon belonging to a ghost man. Or woman. There’d been a woman.
Tony’s jacket had been tailor-made to comfortably fit the bulletproof vest he worn under his silk shirt, but it still didn’t allow enough arm movement for the kind of situation that would require a bulletproof vest. The idiocy in it. The M240 was jammed. He dropped it along with a curse word. Maybe this was why the original weapon-bearer had died, because it was jammed.
What the hell, jammed machine guns. He was too smart for this. He was processing too much at once but nothing of real substance. All those abstract factoids were ringing in his head as they collided with reality right in front of him: battlegrounds smell of blood and sweat. And urine and feces. People’s bladders and intestines empty out after they die. Weapon grips must be designed for sweat-slick, grimy, bloody hands. The sounds and tastes and smells of 4th of July celebrations and barbecues remind some people of gunfire and – and – those were brains, not raw hamburger patties. Burned meat, but it was someone’s forearm.
Tony leaned his side against the Humvee. Was this still the Funvee? He didn’t know how much he’d walked.
One wreckage ahead, Rhodey was manning the M60 on top of the – ha – Humdrumvee.
“Rhodey!”
“Get down!”
He didn’t move. He was scared. There was something terrifying about Rhodey on battlemode.
“Rhodey!”
God, he didn’t know what else to do –
“Get down, Tony!”
Another explosion. Fire, and another burning gush of air. Tony ran in the opposite direction, toward a bed of large rocks that might provide some cover. Bullets ricocheted against it as Tony pressed his back against stone. Was he a target? All he had was a five-hundred-dollar haircut, a cell phone with number keys too small for his stiff fingers, and a mind full of revolting and pretty much delirious ponderings on poetic justice –
An RPG landed not far from where he was curled up. USM 11676 Stark Munitions. He knew the blast range and detonation time and he could estimate the distance between himself and his Frankenstein’s monster, and those numbers crashed together in his head. He was screaming before the explosion ever came to be –
“Tony!”
He tried to stand. Hit his head. There was something flat over his head.
“Tony! Tony, hey, look at me –”
Rhodey. The name caught in Tony’s throat, but he reached for Rhodey’s shirt with one hand.
“Tony, you’re in New York – Tony, look at me –”
There were red spots on his tie. Tony screamed again.
“Tony, hey!”
He looked.
“We’re at the Morimoto in Manhattan. It’s a Japanese restaurant. You’re under our hibachi table.”
“Rhodey,” he breathed.
“See, you’re holding a fork.” Tony looked at his right hand, the one that wasn’t clawing at Rhodey’s shirt. “Let it go. Cool? Let it go.”
Tony opened his hand, and the fork clinked against the ground.
“I’m gonna loosen your tie now, all right?”
Tony’s right hand was still suspended mid-air and shaking and his fingers curled up into a fist. He watched as Rhodey’s hand slowly reached for the tie knot. Tony realized the red spots were part of the pattern on it.
Rhodey pulled back. Tony let go of his shirt.
Now, that was blood.
“Oh, my God –”
His left palm was bloody.
“That’s a glass cut. That’s a glass cut. Your glass broke.”
Tony swallowed, and looked at Rhodey again.
“It’s a glass cut.”
He didn’t say anything. He tried to slowly push himself back and then stand but he hit his head again.
“This is why we ask for a warning before the fire show!” Rhodey said, looking over his shoulder.
Tony laid his hands flat against the floor. Cold. He saw the floor tiles. Then he looked behind Rhodey, he could see well-dressed people’s legs. There were shards of broken glass and china on the floor.
“The whole reason why we come here, and not anywhere else, we’ve already talked –”
“Jimmy.”
Rhodey immediately looked at him.
(That’d actually referred to another Jimmy. He was dead.)
“Jim.” That was for Rhodey. “Jim. Rhodey.”
“I’m here.”
“Jim.”
“I’m right here. You’re safe.”
“It’s fine. He warned. He nodded.” Their hibachi chef. He was new. Tony swallowed, and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “I didn’t leave. Me. It’s fine.”
“Let’s get you out there.”
Tony agreed to take Rhodey’s guiding hand, but he still stepped out from under the table quicker than he should have. It gave him a vertigo. The place was eerily silent compared to the gunfire hellscape in his mind, but that was because everyone was watching him, and he wasn’t too comforted by that. He’d broken his plate and glass and he’d kicked back his chair during this episode, apparently.
He turned to the family who’d been sharing the table with him and Rhodey. Two kids. Fuck.
“I’m sorry… for this, I’ll – I’ll cover – your – I’ll pay…” He closed his eyes after he saw the slices of beef and shrimp on top of the grill mounted to the table. “I will… I’m sorry, where’s the, uh…”
He ended up curled over the toilet. They hadn’t started really eating yet, so there wasn’t much for his system to expel, just soup, and salad.
“Donnie and Sasha,” Tony said, as soon as he could muster anything.
“Already handled,” Rhodey said. “I told them that even superheroes get scared sometimes, told the parents what it was. They’ll explain it to them.”
Tony was dry-heaving for a couple more minutes.
“He didn’t warn you.”
“He did.”
“I would have caught it.”
Tony waved a hand in surrender. Rhodey was right.
“He’s new. There were kids at the table. Iron Man and War Machine. He was nervous. And talking, and making an impression. It’s. It’s fine.”
There was no need to get the guy in trouble. After this damn display, Tony was pretty sure he’d remember to warn anybody who asked in the future, before setting the grill on fire.
“It’s fine, it’s my fault.”
“See? That’s what –” Rhodey clicked his tongue, then dropped on one knee to rest a hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tony was glad the stall was so large, because he didn’t want to be crowded but he didn’t want to have to push Rhodey off either. “It’s not your fault.”
Technically, it kind of was. Maybe not the flashback, but… Given the fact that sudden bursts of flame were a known trigger for him, then a Hibachi lunch had been, from the offset, a foolhardy August 5th idea, and the idea had been his.
Rhodey had found him in the desert on August 5th, 2008.
“How bad was it?”
“Don’t dwell on it.”
“You know I’ll work my way into camera footage if you don’t tell, and I’d really rather not have to watch.”
Rhodey sighed. “You stumbled back. Broke some things. Pushed yourself under the table.”
“Did I scream? Did I call anyone?”
Fuck, he hated this. It was like giving strangers a VIP ticket into the mess of his memories.
“Yeah. You wanted a gun.”
“Why didn’t my undersuit come out?”
“How should I know?”
Tony dropped back, and pushed himself away from the toilet. Rhodey was the one who waved a hand in front of the flush sensor.
Tony liked hibachi restaurants. It combined Japanese food and spectacles. He liked watching other people’s – in this case, the chef’s – showmanship if the same wasn’t expected of him. Back before captivity, he used to demand to have the whole table for himself, or his party. In 2010, he went to one of those restaurants for the first time in years and that time he shared a table with a family of Iron Man fans as a bucket list kind of thing, because he thought he was going to die and he thought willingly sharing a table with complete strangers sounded like a rather quaint one-off deal. He’d had sex with strangers, so having dinner with them seemed like a step-up on the decency ladder as far as last-ditch attempts at human connection went.
He’d had a problem with the sudden burst of flame and heat. Not a full flashback that time, but still enough to kill something in his eyes and twist him up until he ended up in the bathroom, convinced never to come back. It reminded him of the ambush and the escape from the cave.
He started trying again on late February of this year. Sudden burst of recovery confidence, he guessed. He was adamant about warnings, so he could leave the table during the critical part. He always asked the hostess to join him with a party that had kids, as long as the parents were fine with sharing the sable with a famous person (not everyone was comfortable). He didn’t mind waiting for a good match. He liked signing paper napkins and having superficial, but animated conversations with people who wouldn’t ask deep questions but asked him a lot of fun and common ones. It was good for him, a sort of Friday Night high without the actual high. He got to vent his pent-up extraversion and watch kids marveling at the food and knife acrobatics of the chef assigned to their table.
He was comfortable in his skin in those moments, as Iron Man, maybe even as Tony Stark – he’d become friends with most of the staff at this particular restaurant and he knew he’d become a surprising, happy chapter in the lives of many families.
This time, Tony had chosen to come here because he thought having strangers at the table would force him out of his captivity anniversaries gloom while ensuring he and Rhodey wouldn’t have to go through any tense silences. They treated those days like any other, but Tony knew the cloud hung over Rhodey’s head as well as his – or he assumed, anyway, he’d never actually asked Rhodey, he just found it suspicious that Rhodey called him for random reasons every May 3rd and August 5th.
Then again, Rhodey always called.
Tony eventually asked, “Did I call for you?” He was looking at the ground and that was as close as he’d ever gotten to acknowledging Rhodey’s presence in the ambush, after the fact.
“You did,” Rhodey admitted.
There was something weighing down his tone. Tony still didn’t look.
“I was just…” He swallowed. His breathing had stabilized since he’d let go of the toilet, but now it was starting to act out a bit again at the memories. “That day. I didn’t call you because – because I needed you to help me, I was just, I was worried. About you.”
He didn’t know if that was true, he couldn’t remember it like that. He just wanted to extend a white lie, or ambiguous half-truth as comfort. Rhodey had been there as well. Rhodey had lost people.
Tony didn’t even know what would happen to him if somebody had dragged Rhodey away from him like that. He didn’t even know, he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“Tony, you don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t blame you.”
It was hard for him to get it out. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it came heavy with the unspeakable weight of whose fault Tony knew it was – his own. It was his own fault. For dismissing Rhodey to the other Humvee, for insisting on Afghanistan instead of Nevada against all reasonable advice, and in a macrocosmic sense, for fueling the terror systems that came to claim him as a victim.
His forehead dropped onto Rhodey’s shoulder when Rhodey pulled him into his arms.
“You didn’t leave me,” he said.
He felt Rhodey’s pulse throbbing under the skin of his neck. He knew death was the only thing that could take Rhodey away from him, and he knew death had already tried.
Don’t leave me, he wanted to say. He didn’t.
He hoped to God he would never have to ask this of him again.
The Wedding at Cana | Thor & Jane’s Wedding Reception
(I DO | Hank & Jan)
“Don’t lose hope so fast,” Tony Stark used to say. “Liquor will always be provided to those of faith, it’s biblical.”
And indeed, no matter how dry a party was, he would always find someone to turn water into wine for him.
He never planned on putting this particular talent to use on Thor and Jane’s wedding reception, of course, but somebody else had. Tony could tell Jan was drunk when he heard her laughter ringing from across the room. She was fooling around with Fandral, engrossed in more than conversation.
“None of your business…” Rhodey said, when he noticed what Tony was looking at. He and Rhodey were both sitting at their assigned table. Sitting arrangements had placed them side by side, but of course, it wasn’t just those that had kept them together during the whole party.
“If you had a single drop of anything in you, you’d already be all over their business.”
“Well, I don’t have a single drop of anything in me.”
“He’s taking advantage.”
Tony used his fork to draw meaningless patterns on the sauce left on his plate.
He was starting to develop a bit of a Fandral problem. A personal problem. Too much of a mirror of him.
“You know what.” Rhodey cleared his throat. “I am going to look away for a second.”
Tony chuckled.
“Then if you decide to do something brash and super-heroic, I won’t know, and I won’t have to report you to Ross.”
“That was almost funny.”
Tony didn’t need to do anything extreme, Jan was pretty willing to switch from one set of arms to another, as long as one of her hands was free so she could hold the glass of… sparkling Asgardian alcoholic something that she had with her. He had no idea where she’d gotten it, but ancient wisdom did hold that there would always be a drink to anyone who was willing to search, and possibly humiliate themself long and hard enough.
“You promised me a dance,” she pouted, settling herself on Tony’s lap as soon as he sat on the bench again.
“As soon as you’re steady on your feet.”
“It’s these dreadful heels.”
“Good Lord, what is that?” Rhodey nodded to the glass she was holding. Tony understood what he meant, he could smell the damn thing from here.
“A fundamental human right, that’s what it is.” Jan grew defensive at that. Tony was sure he and Rhodey couldn’t have been the first ones to comment on the drinking. “I was dry for sixteen months! You don’t know –”
“Nope, wouldn’t know,” Tony flashed her a shallow smile. “Eight months behind you.”
Today was the 19th, he was completing eight months in a couple of days.
“Oh,” Jan covered her mouth with one hand, then shifted so she could place her glass on top of the table behind her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
She looked at him again, then placed both her hands on his chest.
“I was going to ask how you manage it but I really don’t want to be insensitive.”
Tony actually smiled at that, and Jan smiled back. It had been a while since he’d last talked to her, the SRA frenzy had cut into the time he usually allotted for their weekly coffee dates.
“Hello, Colonel,” she said, reaching to squeeze Rhodey’s shoulder.
“I think she might have even less of a drunk concept of personal space than you do,” Tony pointed out to Rhodey.
Jan laughed. “Are you two like, an item? Is that why you’re not kissing me yet?”
Tony cleared his throat.
“God, Tony, don’t go with it,” Rhodey said.
“Have I ever told you about Spring Break, 1987?”
“So, what is it this time?” Rhodey was already caught between aggravated and amused, and Tony hadn’t said anything yet. “Did I wake up naked tied up to the flagpole outside our dorm, what?”
“Well, it was inside the dorm, and it was my flagpole –”
Jan laughed, and Tony laughed along with her when Rhodey winced.
“Jim. You set yourself up.”
“You’re an item with at least five other people as well,” Jan continued. “I’m starting to feel left out.”
Tony turned his head to look at Jan when he felt her fingers playing with the hair on the nape of his neck. (The nape of the neck was, admittedly, his weakness.) She didn’t look hurt, just coy.
He was thinking about how, technically, he wasn’t an “item” with anyone anymore. He and Karla weren’t together. He hadn’t told anyone yet, he didn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sure there are rumors about us too,” he said.
Another shallow smile. There were always rumors about him and everyone.
“Is that why you stopped talking to me, Tony?”
“She’s gonna need some food,” Rhodey said.
Tony nodded, a little absently. His gaze darted to Rhodey when Rhodey stepped away, and then back to Jan.
“No,” he answered Jan’s question. There was still a smile ghosting her lips, but Tony himself wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Then why was it?”
He swallowed. He wanted somebody to come and turn back the clock and stick him back into his pre-June 6th routine. He’d been happy. He’d been this close to knowing peace.
“I miss you,” he admitted. It didn’t answer any questions but it came out anyway.
“You didn’t grow bored of me, did you?” Tony closed his eyes just as she touched her forehead to his. She’d still sounded coy, but then, more serious when she insisted, “Did you?”
“Of course not, dear,” he whispered. “That’s impossible.”
He was only half-expecting the kiss, and when Jan’s lips touched his, his neck stiffened and his eyes opened and he was going to use his hands to push her away – and then he didn’t. He could taste whatever it was that Jan had been drinking. And for one crucial second, he was every inch the man who’d been contemplating downing a bottle of mouthwash last month, because his defenses melted away and he leaned into the kiss, let Jan’s tongue push past the weakened barrier of his teeth, and that was that. He was equal parts loneliness and craving.
She pulled away first.
“No hands,” she said, taking Tony’s hands and placing them firmly on her shoulders. He’d been half trying to push her away, and half tugging at her dress to pull her closer.
“Okay,” he nodded, still looking at her lips. He didn’t want to stay untouched long enough to think about any of this.
“I mean it.”
“Right.” He looked into her eyes to offer a confirmation. And then he looked to the side. His gaze landed on the glass on top of the table. “You should finish that.”
Jan looked over her shoulder. “The drink?”
“Don’t let it sit there, it’s making me edgy. Please.”
Jan pushed the drink across the table, as far off as she could, but not before taking one last sip.
“Better?” She asked, leaning in toward him again.
“No,” he said, before kissing her anyway to try to catch what was left on her lips. “No, drink it, I want to taste it on –”
He could barely register what happened next. Awareness came back to him on stages.
Jan was hauled off him, he had to catch his breath, and cover his mouth with a shaky hand.
Screams. Broken glass. Stingers. Force fields. Sue and Vision held Hank back.
“What is wrong with you?!” He stood up. His eyes were stinging, and his throat was raw from crying out that one question. “She’s drunk, she doesn’t know what she’s –”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you to notice, Stark!”
Tony wanted to strangle him. If you cared about anything other than your ego, you would have punched me, you fucking –
“Oh, no,” Tony laughed. Security was going to escort the two of them out, Jan and Hank. Together. “Oh, no, you’re not gonna take her, you won’t keep him anywhere near her!”
“Stay out of it, Tony!”
It was Sue that spoke. Somebody pulled Tony by one of his arms when he tried to step forward, and he turned to look at who it was. Rhodey.
“Sit down, Tony –”
“I was handling it!”
“Sit down!”
He did. He grabbed a hasty forkful of whatever it was that Rhodey had brought for Jan, just to get the taste off liquor off his mouth. It didn’t take the craving off his thoughts. He folded his arms and leaned them on top of the table, then buried his head in them.
After all this time, still part of inebriated party scandals. Fucking unbelievable, he’d say, but no – this was, of course, completely predictable.
He didn’t look up until the band had started playing again, and Rhodey grabbed his shoulder.
“What the hell happened?”
“Don’t do that,” Tony snapped. “Drunk, married woman half my age, and me, you know me, you know exactly what happened –”
He kicked back his bench and stepped away from the table.
“Tony!”
“I have to go there and make sure –”
“Stand down, you being there is not gonna help anybody!”
Yes, he knew that, objectively –
“Sue’s with her.”
“Well, if I can’t, then you – you gotta go there, and make sure he won’t – because it was my fault, all right, and I’m not –”
Tony stepped back as Rhodey took a step toward him.
“—I’m gonna go, I’m gonna – get some air.”
The night air was good for him, but it didn’t equal privacy. There were a lot of people out in the balcony as well. Tony sat down on one of the benches and buried his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.
“I think I’m drunk,” he said, as soon as someone sat next to him. He guessed it was Rhodey. He certainly talked like it was.
“You’re panicking.”
Tony strangled a sob until it came out as a cough.
He knew himself. He was off the deep end even within the alcoholism spectrum, he was the type who would, if caught on a bad day, lose all his sense with the smell of a drink, let alone with a few drops of Asgardian liquor.
“It’s happening all over again,” he said.
He was at this party with a drunk woman half his age, while in a whole other dimension, the United States pretty much exploded in a political crisis that really only existed because, once again, Tony had spent too many months too absorbed by his own shit to pay attention to what had been happening and where it was going to take them –
Tony moved his hands to push his bangs back and away from his tear-stained face, then he pressed his hands against his ears, until his fingers were tangled in and pulling at his hair.
He needed a drink. He desperately –
“Oh, God, I’m doing it all over again.”
“The self-flagellation isn’t helping anybody here,” Rhodey said. “Neither’s the panic. Hey, Tony. Hey!”
Rhodey had been trying to take one of Tony’s wrists. Tony relaxed his grip on his hair, then he let Rhodey take his hand and entwine their fingers.
“First, we’ll ride this one out. Focus. All right? We’ll ride it out.”
Tony swallowed, and nodded. His eyes were still closed. He held Rhodey’s hand with both of his, grateful to have something warm, firm, and responsive to physically cling to.
He eventually straightened his back, lifted his chin, and opened his eyes. Then he closed them again when he saw the stars. He knew that if he launched himself into space right now, no matter how much he traveled, he would never get back home. Never. He wasn’t home. And he was scared of going back there.
Jan was lonely. Tony knew what lonely looked like.
“You know,” he started, opening his eyes. He looked over at Rhodey. “This, all of this – this is exactly why we need oversight.”
He shouldn’t even be there. Every fiber of him knew it. And not only was he there, he was there being – being –
Stark had been in the office when JARVIS informed him that there had been an unauthorized take-off from the Avengers Tower. He instantly knew what it was about, or at least who it was about – there was, of course, only one person whose Avengers clearance could override the security redundancies Tony had set – and despite the fact that he’d seen something like this coming months ago, Tony’s immediate reaction still was to take the first satisfyingly heavy item his hands could reach (one of the silver airplane models decorating his desk) and throw it against a wall.
It left a mark. Tony regretted it, but after allocating minimal effort into assessing the damage, he ended up with his back against that wall, eyes closed, fingers massaging his temples.
He snapped out of it the second Rhodey came in. Tony put him on speaker.
“Hey, Tones –”
“I did say Steve would not waste a single opportunity to make this more difficult than it has to be, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s fucked, but listen –”
All the lights inside his office had already dimmed, doors locked automatically, every window lit up with screens displaying tactical information.
“—you and I both know why you gotta sit this one out –”
“Oh, why, because I’m an addict?”
When would people just stop treating him like a grenade –
“What – no, Jesus, because it’s Steve.”
Tony swallowed.
“I know who it is, I think we established that. I’m coming in.”
He didn’t have the fucking clearance yet, but he was putting in the request.
“I’m just saying, you’re not at your most objective around the guy, plus –”
“I’m sorry, but how many times --”
“— plus, excuse me –”
“—do I need to be right about Steve before you –”
“PLUS – there are gonna be fires to be put out on the PR front, and I’m sorry, man, but that’s kinda your thing.”
In-fucking-deed, JARVIS was already talking to Ross, which at least bought Tony some time to 1) kick one of the legs of his office desk, and 2) figure out just how in the hell he was going to explain this.
“All right, he’s chasing after something,” Tony said, walking to the screens. “Please tell me you have any idea what it is.”
Steve hadn’t actually logged any data besides the coordinates.
“Look, I’m about three minutes from landing.”
Steve was alone, going after God knew what, and now Rhodey had to go after him, in the dark –
“Hang tight, and just –”
“Why didn’t he tell me, Rhodes --” Tony carelessly loosened his necktie knot and popped open the top button of his shirt, he was starting to have trouble breathing. “—we have this entire damned support structure, why didn’t he just –”
“I know, man. Too bad he didn’t just register. Stay close to your comm.”
Stark covered his eyes with his hand for a second, grasping at the remnants of his stability, then he looked up at one of the screens again. Rhodey’s coordinates were currently blinking in the map.
God, what was he walking into –
“He’s underground. Of course he is.”
“I mean, of course, if you’re gonna stress me out, might as well stress me all the way out.”
“I’m gonna lose you here in a minute.”
Tony folded his arms across his chest, his expression betrayed his concern.
“Be careful, Jim.”
“I will.”
Tony remembered the sight of Rhodey’s lifeless body, the day Vision had attacked them.
“And I’ll be careful with him, too, I guess.”
“Oh, no. Him, you can punch.”
Was this a joke? He wasn’t really laughing.
“You can punch him. Just you. Nobody, or nothing else. Nobody else touches him – Jim?”
Nothing.
Ross wanted to talk to him in person. Stark guessed he would pick some government building as a venue – and he did.
The New Avengers Facility.
Which was, Tony guessed, a government building now. They were alone in one of the conference rooms, Rhodey had reported back to Ross a few minutes ago.
“And you didn’t know who he was after. Or what he was doing.”
“No, sir. He just used our systems to triangulate a set of coordinates.”
“And to access one of the Quinjets. And to breach the airspace of several countries in an unauthorized, heavily armed, stealth aircraft.”
Stark didn’t say anything, but the grip of both his hands tightened against the back of of chair he was holding on to. Ross was standing on the other side of the round table.
“And you’re telling me that at no point, you could have stopped him. Anyone can just grab a Quinjet and fly off.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Secretary,” Stark let go of the chair and rose to his full height when he noticed Ross circling the table to get closer to him. “Steve Rogers is hardly anyone.”
“But he’s someone without clearance to access your offensive technology. Isn’t he?”
Tony had gotten rid of his tie, but not the suit jacket or the vest.
“Isn’t he? Mr. Stark.”
He still felt like he was suffocating.
“Are you suggesting that I’m –”
“I am not ‘suggesting’ anything,” Ross snapped, and Tony couldn’t help flinching. “This is very clear to me, you’re either in cahoots with Rogers, or you’re criminally incompetent, you can take your pick.”
Tony folded his arms across his chest.
“Either way, that means I have a problem with you just as much as him – why did Rogers still have an Avengers clearance?”
“The Registration grace period isn’t over yet. I was planning to have his documentation straightened out by the first week of October.”
“Yes, that’s what you told me, and then Steve Rogers told the whole of American media that he had no intention of signing.”
Tony swallowed again.
(See, this was exactly the brand of unadulterated Steve Rogers idiocy that Stark just knew –)
“Stark, if I can’t trust your objectivity…”
The statement hung in the air, unfinished.
Tony knew how it ended. He was replaceable. If Ross couldn’t trust him, then he was going to be replaced. He didn’t even want to know what that could mean to the next Steve Rogers situation.
“I already said that you can,” Stark assured, as if he hadn’t given Steve the JARVIS masterkeys back in the day, exactly because he was scared of his own judgment. “There will be consequences. Captain Rogers will be thoroughly debriefed, he –”
“He most definitely will,” Ross said. His cold and calmness was unsettling. “At the Raft, and certainly not by you.”
“That’s premature.”
Tony’s voice had faltered for the first time. Ross was officially close enough for Tony to have to look up at him, which felt inexplicably oppressive.
“It sends a message.”
“I hope so, yes.”
It felt like looking at Stane. Or his dad. Stark pulled up one of the chairs and sat down, so that looking up would feel more like a practical necessity than a power imbalance.
“Having him by our side sends a better message,” he said, as levelly as he could muster it. “Captain Rogers hasn’t done anything a registered Avenger wouldn’t do. If you give me 24 hours, I can talk to him, figure out his paperwork, the whole thing will be legitimized.”
Ross leaned a hand against the table. Stark had to put in a lot of effort not to be the one to break eye contact, his shoulders and neck were starting to ache with tension.
“Twenty-four hours,” he repeated. “Guaranteed.”
“The full, signed documentation.”
Tony nodded.
Ross was silent for another torturing second.
“Twelve hours,” he said eventually. “From the moment he’s fully checked in at the Raft. One minute after, we start preparing for trial.”
If the intent was to send a message, then Stark knew the trial would be a mere formality.
“Thank you, sir.”
Ross turned out to be the first one to break eye contact. His gaze dropped to Tony’s hands. They were trembling against his lap, and upon realizing it, Tony moved them and held on to the armrests of the chair.
“Twelve hours,” Ross repeated.
This time, Tony just nodded, and after Ross walked away, he wasted his first five minutes being unable to stand.
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Maria was hesitant about signing. Not because she didn’t believe in what the bill stood for, but because it meant that everyone in the government would know about her abilities. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to keep them, but she would. If she chose this life, it meant she had to deal with everything that came with it. Hank had been helpful - she’d been laying low, by his suggestion. She wasn’t getting herself into trouble or speaking out. She wanted to; she supported this bill when it was first introduced back when Shield was around. She even had a say in the original draft, though it had changed a bit since then. In the past, she would have been a mouthpiece for this from the beginning, but given her whirlwind of a year, she was happy to be taking a temporary backseat.
But she registered the first day. Then she got a call from the Secretary of Defense - someone she hadn’t spoken to since before her trial. Because of her work with Shield, and her current position in the superhero community, they wanted her to help design prisons...for the superheroes they would inevitably be capturing.
After a very tense conversation, she agreed. She also discovered James Rhodes would be helping as well. Knowing she wasn’t in this alone was mildly comforting, though based on her conversation with the Secretary, she wondered what he was holding over his head; if anything at all.
Maria found herself at the New Avengers Facility. She got a strange feeling like she didn’t belong there, knowing what she had agreed to do. No one knew yet, it was just her and possibly James. She walked through until she found one of the meeting rooms, he was walking out along with a few others.
“Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes,” She said, briefly stopping to salute her superior. “May I speak with you? It’s --” She stared at the politicians walking past her down the hall. “It’s a bit of a private matter.”
Tony had been defaulting to the Hamptons place whenever he needed a break, which was a lot, recently. It was his first time back there since the retrieval of Vision.
He had trouble differentiating between necessary rest and straight-up selfish self-indulgence. He had always been bad at resting in any healthy definition of the word, and he couldn’t help but to associate stasis with less-than-pleasant moments of his life – or moments he would not like to repeat, at any rate. He kept telling himself that it was fine, as long as he was keeping up with his responsibilities and getting enough sleep.
(He was still notably bad at getting enough sleep.)
So yes, he was fine, all things considered. Decidedly better than he had been.
He just had to repeat that a lot to himself the day he watched Rhodey addressing the Vision debacle on television, and he was still repeating it a few days later, waiting for Rhodey to come over on Saturday.
“You’re offended,” Rhodey commented, following Tony into the kitchen. Tony had very “casually” brought up the subject as soon as Rhodey planted his feet in the house.
“I’m not offended,” Tony said. Lied? “I get it, it’s understandable.”
He really was making an effort to sound flippant, in the non-petty way, as he poured some water for himself.
“Tony.”
“My current situation makes me a public liability, I know that, I’m not blaming you.”
“I didn’t do it because of your…” Hesitation. “Current situation.”
Tony put down the bottle of Perrier, and looked up at Rhodey.
“Not in a bad way,” Rhodey conceded. “It’s not about not trusting you.”
Tony shrugged.
“I was sparing you. Is that beer?”
Tony had opened the fridge to put the water away.
“Yeah, do you want some?”
Rhodey looked at him.
“I can be around this stuff, Rhodey.” (He was currently testing that theory.) “It’s for guests. Plus –”
“You hate beer,” Rhodey completed carefully. “I’ll pass.”
Tony held up a bottle to him anyway. Rhodey took it (just to get that out of Tony’s hand, he supposed). He didn’t open it.
“Anyway,” Tony started, picking up his glass of water from the table on his way out of the kitchen. “It wasn’t Vision’s fault.”
“At no point did I say…” Tony could hear Rhodey’s sigh coming all the way from the kitchen. He quickly made his way to the living room as well. “Have you been talking to Rogers?”
“Have you been disagreeing with Rogers?”
Tony eyed Rhodey for one quizzical moment. Then he chuckled.
“Ha, boy,” he said. “I know a victim of the Look when I see one.”
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
(Tony noted Rhodey had left the beer bottle in the kitchen.)
“I told you, slices right through you.” He circled Rhodey so he could get back to the couch. “Makes you feel bad for the white lie you told when you were six.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Rhodey joined him on the couch. “It just made me feel like he’s very sure he’s right.”
“You sound very sure you’re right.”
Tony tried to smile at him. He was making little of the situation because the whole thing made him nauseous.
“I never said Vision was at fault,” Rhodey continued. “I just also emphasized –”
“You don’t need to defend yourself, I agree with everything you said. I’m with you on the argument.”
“You don’t know what the argument is.”
“Oh, please.” Tony leaned back so he could rest a foot on the center table. “Steve and I have had every version of every possible argument. I know exactly where this one went.”
(And judging by the justifiably palpable public unrest – he knew exactly where this argument was going to go next as well.)
“How did he phrase it? It was a baseball thing.” He spun the water glass in his hands, trying to remember. It was almost noticeably hard to swallow back his growing nervousness. “Yeah. A kid throws a ball, the other swings the bat to avoid having their skull broken, and the ball breaks a window. Whose fault is it?”
Rhodey didn’t answer at first, but he did, eventually: “Certainly not the guy who made the ball,” he observed. “Or the bat. Whoever you think you are in this scenario.”
(Funny how he could be the guy who made the weapons for the good and the bad guys.)
“There’s an irresponsible adult somewhere,” Tony continued. “Who should have been paying attention when two kids decided to play ball close to a glass window.”
Rhodey was silent.
Tony stared straight ahead.
Things were bad, on the public superhero front. Worse than they usually were. Urgent enough to prompt Rhodey to speak, stressful enough to make him want to spare Tony.
The sound of Tony’s breathing was soon the only sound noticeably filling the silence, as he grew more and more unsettled thinking about it.
“We’re one mistake away,” he noted, then looked down, biting into his bottom lip. His breathing was making him self-conscious. “From something really bad.”
“It’s all hypothetical.”
“You know it’s not. Stop trying to protect me. I can handle it.”
He felt Rhodey looking at him. He tried to ignore it at first, but snapped quickly enough.
“I’m not going to stress myself right into an alcoholic coma, Jim, I’m telling you I can handle it.”
“All right.”
“I’m taking care of myself.” He swallowed. “I’m not going to let it be my mistake.”
PRESENT
It was his fault.
He was sitting at a table in the common lounge, his elbow was partially covering the New York Times’ headline about the disaster involving Wanda. His hand was covering his eyes and he didn’t look up when he heard the elevator doors opening.
“Print newspaper,” Rhodey noted.
“I have a headache.”
Tony dropped his arm. When he looked up, Rhodey was already standing across the table, leaning both hands on the surface.
“That bad, huh.”
Bad enough for him to feel the need to come in person.
“I’ve been getting calls,” he said. “A lot of calls.”
Tony cleared his throat.
“I know,” he said. “They’re calling it the Superhuman Registration Act.”
Rhodey immediately let go of the table, rising to his full height.
“Tony, if there was ever a time to refrain from illegally hacking into every database –”
“The President told me.”
Rhodey paused.
“The President.”
“Uh-huh.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down. Tony looked at the open newspaper under his elbow again.
He’d been so caught up in his head, and then these things happened right under his nose. It was functionally no different than the time Stark Industries slipped right through his fingers when he was too busy diving into his own shit.
“Have you been talking to Steve?” Tony asked eventually.
“What does Steve have to –”
“I wasn’t called because I’m reliable or logistically useful,” he snapped. He was impatient. “They’re fishing for charisma, and Steve might not know it but that is a game he’s more than equipped to play if he decides to.”
(This is going to split them right in the middle.)
“It’s not just your charisma, Tony.” Rhodey leaned forward to support his arms on the table, touching his index finger rhythmically against the surface for emphasis. “Eyes. Open.”
“What?” Tony leaned back defensively as Rhodey leaned forward.
Officially, Jim was still on bed rest, though he hadn’t been very diligent about resting in an actual bed since he managed to check himself out of the hospital. He wasn’t flying back to Malibu any time soon – not until Tony was in the clear – so he was, for the time being, an unofficial resident of the Tower, taking power naps on one of the communal couches when no was around and accepting food from Steve when he was around long enough to fix him something more complicated than a ham sandwich. The bulk of his time he spent following news feeds, trying to track the Vision, while simultaneously trying to coordinate weapons development over the phone from across the country. The painkillers weren’t making focusing, much less developing feasible defenses against a density-shifting robot, very easy, and Jim could only keep at it for a few hours at a time before either falling asleep or needing to walk around.
This time, he decided to walk around. The floors above the communal ones were mostly private, so he wandered downstairs toward the labs instead. They were technically also communal, which is probably why they didn’t look familiar to Jim at all; they were tidier, more sterile than Tony’s private labs had ever been, even when Tony’s “private lab” had been not much more than his side of a dorm room. The impersonality of the labs didn’t interest him half as much as the person inside, though; someone was in there, and it looked like they were working hard at something. That should have been reason enough for Jim not to intrude, but a not-so-small part of him was curious to meet more of Tony and Pepper’s super-friends, especially anyone who could end up sharing lab space with Tony.
(Not that he was overprotective or anything.)
He made sure to knock on the doorjamb as he entered so as not to startle the guy inside.
“Hey. Hope I’m not interrupting anything. Saw you were down here and thought I’d introduce myself.” He walked – well, maybe hobbled, but only a little – across the lab and offered a hand in greeting.
“Jim Rhodes.” He nodded at the displays floating around them. “You with the Avengers or SI?”
Peter looked up at the knock, a smile of greeting on his face. Anyone up here would have sufficient clearance to be up here, or not reading as a friendly. So he didn’t have a lot of qualms about pulling out another chair to offer it to the newcomer.
The slightly stiff movements generated the impulse to offer the other man a place to rest. “You aren’t intruding, taking a bit of a break anyways. Already had the mental vomit of information all over the place,” he replied. “I’m Peter Parker, and the answer to your question is yes.”
Plenty of reasons for him to keep his secret identy, well, a secret. Staying in the habit of crafting careful half truths and outright lies is what will keep his Aunt safe. With more super powered villians showing up, he had to be careful about making sure the fight never came to Aunt May’s doorstep. “Some of my work has applications for the Avengers. Some of it for wider market.”
His gaze flicked back to the monitors a slightly pensive look forming on his face. “I just got back from sort of a leave of absence. I wanted to show Tony . . well show him that I haven’t been idle, I guess.”
