The Villain Within
It was five long months after The Avengers defeated Loki, Tony sat in his work area twirling a pen between his fingers, baffled by his latest work on his suit. His back was stiff and his muscles still ached and pinched from the last high altitude run he took the suit on, in which the metal in the legs began to crush in on him. His cellphone buzzed and nearly fell off the table before he snapped back to reality. "Call from: Steve" the phone's display read. Tony was exhausted, having not slept in a couple of nights and was barely able to comprehend his hands answering the call and slowly raising the phone to his ear.
"Hello?" he said softly, his cheeks were red and warm with sleepiness.
"Uh, hello, it's Steve, Steve Rogers?"
"I know who you are, Cap, what's up?"
"Well, I was wondering if you wanted company?"
"Uh… Not tonight, Cap – I"
"Ah! A night cap, that sounds perfect, I'm waiting downstairs"
"You're, wait, what?"
"Come on already, it's cold"
Tony got to his feet and stumbled to grab his jacket and head outside. Outside his mansion he saw a smiling Steve, his sweet child's face beamed at Tony in the dim outside light. Steve popped the collar on his brown leather jacket to guard his neck from the oddly chilly October wind, and for a brief second Tony found himself admiring Steve's sense of style.
"Hey Tony, how's it hangin'"
"Cap no. Just, no."
"What, am I being too bodacious for you?"
"If you're going to try and be hip-" Tony did air quotes around hip "-at least get the century right."
"Bruce made me watch a Ninja Turtles Marathon" Steve said, a goofy grin on his face. "They're the best"
"How the hell did you get in here without Jarvis telling me?" Tony said, ignoring his friend.
"I asked Jarvis not to tell you" Steve said, a little bit upset at being ignored.
"How's that phone working for you? I tracked down the simplest one I could find for you" Tony said, ignoring Steve again.
"It's good. It's strange though, being in touch with people at all times. I want one like yours now, I think I could take it on."
"Steve, are you joking? You're using one of the first cell phones that isn't the size of a briefcase, it doesn't even have a display on it, and you think you're ready for a phone like mine? A phone with a bigger, more advanced processor than most modern computers? A phone with more advanced software than all modern computers that aren't made by Stark Industries. You're ridiculous, I mean, look, Cap I get it, you're trying be cool and hip and to fit in but how about you just take a look at yourself, you're an old man, you don't belong here with all of this technology, all of these people in the age of the internet, a concept which you can't understand because you can't see it, you belong in a geriatrics ward somewhere, Steve. Not walking around with a cell phone that can, and has, taken down an empire by itself" Tony's rage quickly fell as he looked at his friend's face. Steve looked as though Tony had beat him, here he was just trying to be Tony's friend, just joking around and trying to have a good time and Tony had to go and shout at him.
"I'm sorry Cap, it's just… I'm trying to get the suit working and it's tried to kill me twice, and Pepper won't quit nagging me about Stark Industries, and about this fund raiser and that one, and this appearance I have to make, and this dinner that she doesn't want me at, and then the SHEILD agents showing up in my bathroom at odd hours of the night to tell me about a mission that they actually don't want me to know about." Tony stood still and took a deep breath, then playfully hit Steve on the arm. "I'm sorry, Cap" Tony looks around on the road leading up to his mansion, then to Steve, who is standing in the center of the road, his eyes look full of pain.
"Cap… I didn't mean it, alright? I've got a lot going on, you know?"
"Tony. Shut up. You're right—"
"I am not! I was just being dramatic! I didn't mean it!"
"Tony! Quiet. You're right, I don't belong here, but I never asked to be here. I served my time, and I was to die a valiant death. I didn't go looking to be frozen and brought back in a time that makes no sense to me. I didn't go looking to be part of a superhero task force where everything that they do involves some kind of technology that I can only explain by assuming witchcraft." Tony turns his back to Steve, unable to look at him when he's so upset. The two pause, the silence between them nearly tangible.
"Tony, Look at me." Steve says after a long moment. Tony slowly turns to look at his friend again. "You aren't the only one with problems, okay? You aren't the only one with a lot on their mind. Tony, I was there too, I fought along side you, remember? I know how you think, I know that you are holding all of the damage and all of the death on your shoulders, you are blaming yourself when in reality, you are the hero of this story, you risked your life to save everyone, and you came back, Tony, that says a lot." Steve takes a deep breath, surprised by all that he said. "Tony, you're my best friend, please, for tonight can we just pretend that everything is normal?" Tony stares into Steve's eyes for a moment before Steve breaks eye contact and starts walking into the mansion.
"Are you coming?" He says, not looking at Tony.
"Wait, where's your car?" Tony asks as he jogs to catch up.
"I walked" Steve says quietly, almost embarrassed. Tony stares after his friend in astonishment and then catches up with him again.
"You know, I'm going to have to go through my security protocols again and figure out how you got in here. Jarvis won't even let me in here sometimes."
"He likes me more I guess"
" You do know that Jarvis is a computer, right?" Tony asks with genuine interest. Steve stairs at him for a moment, the gears turning in his head quite slowly.
"Y…. Yeah I knew that."
Tony and Steve walk back into the large mansion and into the kitchen, where Tony pulls out a bottle of whiskey and two short whiskey glasses. Tony pours the whiskey slowly, avoiding eye contact with Steve.
"Jarvis, tell me how Steve managed to get in here without my knowing" Tony says to the room.
"He asked me not to tell you, sir" Jarvis replies in his calm voice.
"And since when is that all it takes to let people in?" Tony says back, handing a glass to Steve and setting the whiskey aside.
"There was no perceivable threat, sir."
"Yeah, famous last words, eh?"
"Sir, as I recall it Mr. Rogers did offer to take me out to sushi if I let him in"
"Jarvis, you're a computer, how are you going to go out to sushi with Steve?"
"I'm sorry sir, I was so flattered that I didn't think it through."
Tony looks at Steve who is blushing slightly.
"Well don't let it happen again" Tony says and takes a long swig of his whiskey. Steve sips off of his own whiskey despite his inability to get drunk. Suddenly, his face changes from a mixture of guilt, pain and embarrassment to excited.
"So did you hear what our next assignment is?" Steve asked, hoping that Tony didn't know what he was talking about, which was more likely than not.
"Something about an orphanage in Germany?"
"It's not an orphanage, and it's not in Germany. It's a Russian compound where they did experiments on people, I read about it a couple years… A while ago. They were trying to imbue men with different abilities of animals like flight and underwater breathing"
"Kind of like the super soldier program?" Tony asks, folding his arms with sudden interest.
"Yeah kind of, only they didn't have a panel of the best scientists in the world. In fact they were shut down because the subjects kept dying, but apparently when they did a clean up of the lab some of the drug they were producing leached into the water supply or something and a bunch of people got sick, and then they started having children shaped like giraffes or all together unrecognizable, so the government rounded up all of the affected people and put them in a big facility and blew up the lab" Tony stares at Steve with a blank face.
"So, what do they need us for?" He asks, unfolding his arms to refill his glass. Steve swallows down the rest of his own whiskey and pours himself some more as well.
"I don't know, we're all supposed to get together for a meeting tomorrow at the HQ…" Steve says, swishing the whiskey around in the glass and taking a sip. "Guess we'll find out then?"