A/N: Well, this is my first foray into the Avengers fandom, even though I've been reading for it for at least a year now. I've kind of always been obsessed with fem!Tony, so here's my attempt. Hope you all enjoy! (Oh, and if you ship Stony, then you can read this as pre-ship.) I'm thinking about a sequel, but only if you guys really like it.
Toni was afraid to answer the phone.
As if slowly dying from palladium poisoning wasn't enough, Fury and Phil (who, by the way, never died in the first place) had basically locked her up in the Malibu Mansion. One call, Fury had said. One call, in or out, and then she was disconnected from the outside world until she was dead or no longer dying.
Toni sighed, and turned the transparent StarkPhone in her fingers, devoid of their usual immaculate manicure. It abruptly stopped ringing. The caller had hung up. She leaned back in her swivel chair and flicked her hand at the hologram desk. "Mirror, JARVIS."
"Yes, Miss." JARVIS had been unusually quiet lately, possibly due to the fact that she was basically a dead woman walking...Again. She looked, Toni decided, like Death itself.
Or at least like she was dying…which she was.
Damn.
The black lines of poison were starting to work their way up her neck. She frowned, and her reflection frowned back.
Suddenly, her phone lit up and began playing "The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan". Steve again. Only the third time in the last ten minutes, Toni thought.
She tossed the transparent gadget onto her desk, scattering the mirror holos. If she had to explain herself to Steve right now...it might not end so well.
The phone went silent and dark. Steve had hung up again.
"Good riddance," Toni muttered at the phone. She didn't want to talk, and maybe now the officious goon would get the hint and leave her alone.
You don't mean that, a little voice which sounded suspiciously like Pepper announced from the back of her head.
"Yes, I do, actually," she snapped at it, too exhausted to register that she was talking to herself.
…no, you don't. If not Steve, who are you going to talk to? The voice retorted. Toni considered it. After everything in the last couple weeks, telling Pepper now would just be adding another hit to a long list of low blows she'd dealt the woman who was her best friend. Rhodey…well, he hadn't been talking to her since the birthday party incident shortly before the Avengers came around. He was out of the question.
Toni closed her eyes. It was a good question. If not Steve, who? Once upon a time, Obadiah would have been an option, back when he was Obie and everything was solved by a few notes on the piano and a slice of New York pizza. Not anymore, however.
In her very crappy version of a life, Toni Stark had trusted exactly three people. Now, one had tried to kill her, the second took off with one of her suits, and the last told her to leave. The first she had killed, the second she had set up in the first place, and the third she had walked away from.
As much as she hated to admit it, Toni was left with no one but…who? The Avengers? She scoffed at the idea. She stood up and grabbed a wrench, heading over to find something to fix on her cars.
The Avengers were better off without her bothering them, Toni tried to tell herself.
They were a group she was not part of. A category she could never fit into. A team she wasn't technically on. A family that Toni Stark could never have.
She had exactly one call, and no one else to make it to.
Toni threw her wrench across the workshop. There was nothing wrong with her cars except, now, the dent from the wrench.
She was ready, Toni thought bitterly. Well, no one was ever really ready to die, but she was as good as it got.
She had already made arrangements for Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and the Avengers. Pepper was inheriting the company and Happy could stay on as security chief indefinitely. The designs that Toni had planned out, ones that were up to a hundred years advanced, she figured, would keep Stark Industries ahead of the game for at least a century.
Rhodey would keep the War Machine, and a couple plans for some upgrades to advance the suit along. The rest of her suits, her pride and joy, would be self-destructed the instant JARVIS detected Toni's last heartbeat. She was Iron Man, and Iron Man would die with her.
The Avengers got the ten floors at the top of Stark Tower which they were already occupying, the ones right above R&D. One each, customized to live in, a normal gym, a giant training room that took up two floors (Hulk-proofed) and was complete with many weapons and an archery range, a pool floor, and the very top floor as the community floor, or the Avengers' Floor.
Toni specifically detailed in her will (a recorded video) that they were to continue living in Stark Tower—to be officially renamed Avengers Tower on her death; she'd never bothered to fix the lone A, and it worked—and that the one remaining floor in the ten, the one that was to have been Toni's floor, was to be converted into whatever they wanted. They could go on paying for all expenses with her money. The Avengers were to be funded by Stark Industries until such time as the group no longer existed and/or every member was deceased.
The point was, she didn't need to do anything else. She would be fine dying here. But not even her, the great Toni Stark…not even she wanted to die alone.
Toni walked over to her desk, took a deep breath, and began to dial.
Steve was afraid that Toni wasn't going to answer the phone.
Again.
He held the receiver to his ear, listening to it ring and feeling the weight of the team's expectant eyes on him. Finally it reached voicemail and he hung up. Steve tossed the phone onto the couch next to him with a sigh.
"Well?" Natasha questioned, probably more for the others' benefit than hers.
"Nothing," he confirmed.
Clint huffed indignantly, slouching into the love seat next to Natasha. "What is the point of her giving us an emergency number to reach her at if she doesn't even answer?" No one deigned to reply.
Bruce sighed and shifted uncomfortably in his armchair. "If Toni wants to talk, she'll call."
"And anyhow, she's a Stark. She'll be fine." Natasha insisted, glaring at everyone as if to cement her point.
"But what is wrong in the domain of our fellow warrior?" Thor asked. "What could rattle her so that she would not speak to us, her friends?"
"Thor, I'm not sure she really considers us her friends," Steve replied sadly. "Although I can't imagine why." Bruce gently hummed in agreement.
There was a beat of silence. And then two. And then it was suddenly broken by Black Sabbath's Iron Man.
Toni's ringtone.
Steve's cellphone, lying forgotten on the couch, was lit up. The song played expectantly.
"Well, whatdayaknow." Clint drawled. "Speak of the devil. Put it on speaker phone. We all want to hear what she has to say for herself." Bruce looked at Clint, and then at Steve, before nodding. Steve answered the phone on speaker.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Cap." Toni said tiredly. Natasha raised an eyebrow in the direction of the phone. The genius sounded like she hadn't slept in days…as a matter of fact, Natasha mused, she probably hadn't.
"Listen, um…I have to ask a favor." Toni made the words sound like a question. "Can you and the team come out to Malibu?"
Steve exchanged looks of surprise with the others, frowning at the phone. "Toni, what have you been doing lately? You've basically disappeared off the face of the earth. It's not like you."
Possibly not the best choice of words, Bruce reflected. A bit too accusatory, in retrospect. Steve's tone did not sound pleased, even if he was just worried about Toni.
Toni sighed. "Okay, let me rephrase that: I need you and the team to come out to Malibu."
The hint of desperation coloring Miss Toni's voice was definitely a bit shocking, Thor decided, as well as her use of the words I need. Warriors, he thought, were seldom partial to letting their friends know when help was needed, and for one as proud as Antonia Stark to admit to such, the circumstances must have been dire.
Steve grasped at straws, trying to find the right thing to say. "Look, Toni, you can't just go disappear and expect us to drop everything and come running without any explanation."
On the other end of the line, Toni shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration to keep a tear from slipping out. "Look, I know it's been bad lately, but I…I just keep getting worse, and I know—" she swallowed hard "—I know I'm just a consultant. I'm not really part of your team. But I can't—I can't do this. I can't do it alone."
The team was listening in shock. Only Clint could read the dismay written all over Natasha's face as anything but indifference. Thor frowned at Bruce, but Bruce shrugged. He had no idea what was happening.
Steve shook his head. "Toni, what's going on? What's happening?"
"Steve, I don't—I don't think you understand." Toni took a deep breath. "I'm dying."
In the silence that followed, she started talking so fast that it sounded as if she thought he would hang up, Steve thought numbly. Dying…Toni, dying?
"I—I can't tell Pepper, it would kill her, and I don't want to see her be so disappointed in me again, and Rhodey's gone, and…and I don't think I can ever get him back now. Fury's got me basically locked up over here." Toni almost sobbed across the line.
"He told me one call, in or out, and there's no one else, but I can't do this alone, and I'll—I would understand if—if you didn't want to come, but…I have some stuff for you guys, and I swear I'd be fine if you didn't—God knows I'm used to being alone, but I just…." She stopped shakily.
"God, Steve. God. If I have to die, I don't want to die alone."
"Of course," he said without thinking, in the cold, cold silence that followed.
"…what?"
"Of course. Of course, Toni. How could you think we wouldn't? We're coming. You send us the house's coordinates, and we're getting a quinjet. We'll be there in two hours, max." Steve assured her. "We're coming, I promise. We'll be there. You're not going to die."
A sharp intake of breath followed his last sentence, and Toni's voice cracked. "No. Just—please, don't say that. I'm…I'm ready, I'm okay with it, I just…I don't want to do it alone."
"Okay. Alright, fine, I won't say that. Just…hang on until we get there, okay? Don't…do anything. We're coming."
Don't go anywhere, he had been about to say. Every person there heard the unspoken words, and how he swallowed them down before they could come out.
"Okay. Okay…I'll be here." She breathed into the phone.
Even the normally stoic Natasha winced at the relief and obvious surprise in Toni's voice. She had obviously called with no expectation that they would even listen, let alone come when she needed them.
As the line went dead, the team exchanged glances. They rose in unison and went to grab a couple of necessities before hightailing it out the door to commandeer a quinjet again (it wasn't the first time).
Toni Stark needed them, and they would answer the call.
On the opposite side of the country, Toni let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and the tears that she knew she had.
For once in her life, even if at the end of it, maybe she wouldn't be alone.