@toucalliope said “trust me, your ego will mend.” ( to tony from natasha )
“You know,” Tony frowned, looking through the crowd of geniuses in their shiny best. The shrimp cocktails. The actual cocktails. The band. The intolerable men waving him over to ‘talk shop’. “I’m not sure it will.” This had once been Tony’s scene, and he still knew well how to play the game, how to schmooze and flatter and talk bad people into doing the right thing, all just to end up with his picture on the front page of the morning paper with a headline questioning his motives and blaming him for a crime committed on the other side of the country for something he knew nothing about with people he’d never met.
That wasn’t the problem. The ability to slip on a mask and tolerate bad company for a greater cause was something he and Natasha had in common. If their motives were frequently misinterpreted, so be it. That he’d come without the suit--his wrist feeling uncomfortably empty without the watch to call his armor at a moment’s notice--wasn’t ideal but had been planned for. After a string of disappearances all involving brilliant scientists and engineers who specialized in sub-miniature electronics command systems, using Tony as bait had just made sense. He didn’t love the idea of being a sitting duck, and he was so used to having Iron Man on call that he felt like he’d come without a limb, but he trusted Natasha to have his back. He’d never met anyone more capable or less in need of his help. That wasn’t the problem either.
The problem was Norman Osborn and Justin Hammer had also been invited to this little shindig. “One of them better be the one behind the kidnappings,” Tony hissed to Natasha. That Tony could imagine: Hammer and an underground bunker of imprisoned geniuses to make everything he couldn’t make himself. Osborn was already running a looney-toon circus with a company that should have been declared a national threat years ago. At least that was one person Tony didn’t have to pretend to like tonight; Osborn knew full well Tony hated his guts. But if Hammer was a target too, if someone out there thought he and Hammer were in the same league, then Tony was no longer flattered to be at risk. Or remotely worried.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Tony said, snagging two plates of appetizers from a passing waiter and handing one to Natasha. “But if I die in a cell with Justin Hammer, I will find a way to haunt you for all of eternity.”
