Eradicate, an Ironman + Avengers Crossover fanfic

Story Info

Title: Eradicate

Author: Del Rion

Fandom: The Avengers & Iron Man (MCU)

Era: post-Iron Man 3

Genre: Drama, angst

Rating: M / FRM

Characters: Bruce Banner (Hulk), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Happy Hogan, J.A.R.V.I.S., Harley Keener, Pepper Potts, James "Rhodey" Rhodes (War Machine), Steve Rogers (Captain America), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor. Brief cameos: Nick Fury, Tony's bots (DUM-E & U)

Pairing: Pepper/Tony

Summary: In order to overcome his anxiety issues and worsening nightmares, Tony repurposes Extremis and proceeds to eliminate memories he can do without. However, treading the line between 'enough' and 'too much' is difficult, and Tony begins to lose touch with the things that are essential to his life.
Complete.

Written for: Marvel Bang 2013.
Also fills the "amnesia" square on my card on Trope Bingo's Round 2.

Artist: viviantanner (banner: viviantanner . livejournal . c0m / 14227 . html)

Warnings: Some canonical violence, language, PTSD, selective amnesia. Spoilers for Iron Man 3.

Disclaimer: Iron Man, Avengers and Marvel Cinematic Universe, including characters and everything else, belong to Marvel, Marvel Studios, Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Johnston, Louis Leterrier, Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Universal Pictures. In short: I own nothing; this is pure fiction created to entertain likeminded fans for no profit whatsoever.

Beta: Mythra

Feedback: Much appreciated and welcomed with the burning heat of Extremis.

About Eradicate: The premise for this story was simple enough: Tony, still plagued by his nightmares after the encounter with Aldrich Killian and AIM, comes up with a solution to get rid of them. Only, there are drawbacks, and Tony's never been good at stopping before it's too late.

I'm not entirely certain if this story represents all that I wanted it to, from character interaction to the angst and fear of losing a person you know and love. However, I hope people enjoy this story and find subtle notes of desperation and sadness within the text.

Story and status: Below you see the writing process of the story. If there is no text after the title, then it is finished and checked. Possible updates shall be marked after the title.

Eradicate

. . .

Written for Marvel Bang 2013. Also fills a square on my Trope Bingo's Round 2 card (square: "amnesia").

Eradicate

The darkness curls around him, more suffocating than a tightly drawn blanket; it steals his breath and presses down on his lungs with more pressure than the depths of the ocean. Ice breaks through his skin, seeping in, freezing and killing him inch by inch – unless he does something.

Unless he burns hotter than the cold.

The only thing that exists between him and the icy darkness is the fire, and he breathes into it, fills his lungs and lets it burn, to rage deep within his body, growing until it's strong enough to breach the ice and the darkness, to drive it all back in an assault that will leave him free of the fear and –

Burning.

Something was burning.

"SIR!"

The voice – J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice – wasn't coming from the bedroom, but somewhere much further off. Tony tried to breathe, to properly wake up, and then he realized he was sitting in a cocoon of fire, the flames licking up the walls.

"Pepper!" Tony jumped up, not feeling the heat – not with his body generating more of it in a frantic attempt to push away the darkness that wasn't even real. "Pepper?!" he looked around frantically but couldn't find her. It was like an entirely different nightmare – one of hers, to be exact, before Tony had found a way to stabilize the Extremis in her body.

"Sir, Miss Potts has been evacuated from the building," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice reached him again. "I suggest you do the same, sir. The fire department is on its way."

Tony's chest rose and fell rapidly as he stumbled out of the inferno that was their bedroom. Outside, the sprinklers were working tirelessly, the hallway a drenched mess, but for some reason the same wasn't happening in the bedroom. One last glance at the burning room told him why: the ceiling was burned and melted, the sprinklers along with it.

"Sir," the AI started again, the speakers much closer this time, "perhaps some clothes?"

Tony looked down at himself. He had been wearing a tank top and shorts upon going to bed, but now he was naked, not even the smoking remains of his clothes clinging to his skin. Nodding, he veered to the side and found the laundry room. He stood there for a moment, his skin steaming as the high temperature met the cool water from the sprinklers. With effort he managed to pull back the heat, to stop himself from radiating it, then grabbed a dirty pair of sweats and a hoodie, pulling them on and moving to the front door.

Outside, a crowd had gathered. Pepper stood nearest to the door, her hands covering the lower half of her face; relief appeared instantly on her face when Tony walked out, and she gave him a brief, tense hug before Tony pulled away and sat a good distance away from the people, trying to work through the lingering effects of the panic attack that still tightened his chest.

Off to one side, Pepper greeted the firefighters and managed the situation, leaving Tony to battle his demons.

Pepper had been woken up by J.A.R.V.I.S.

The instant she was awake, though, she knew why: heat radiated from beside her in bed, and Tony's skin was aglow with orange-tinted light. She didn't waste time trying to wake him up from his nightmare: she simply scrambled up, took her clothes, bag and phone, leaving the bedroom. She stopped in the hallway to slip into her clothes, heart hammering in her chest, and behind her the bedroom went ablaze with fire.

Several instincts told her to scream, to shout – to go back for Tony.

Rational thinking and J.A.R.V.I.S.'s firm urging kept her moving towards the door, though, as the sprinklers were activated. She could see smoke once she stood outside, the inferno intensifying behind the bedroom window. Even though she knew J.A.R.V.I.S. would try to wake Tony up and the man would probably be fine, she was still afraid.

This wasn't the first time this had happened, but it hadn't gotten this bad in the past. Perhaps that was why the AI had wanted her to leave the premises; J.A.R.V.I.S. must have known it was worse, somehow.

The bedroom window exploded from the heat.

People were gathering, murmuring. Someone asked Pepper if she was okay, and she simply nodded. She kept looking at the doorway, waiting – telling herself she wasn't terrified, that she was simply pressing her hands to her face to keep herself from inhaling all of the smoke.

Eventually Tony stumbled out of the door, skin no longer glowing. He looked nothing like himself in the rumpled, dirty clothes, his face still haunted. Half his mind was probably still in the dream, and the panic attack that was sure to echo in its footsteps.

Pepper had to hug him, briefly, to make sure he was in one piece. It wasn't what Tony needed right now, though, so she let him go and managed the situation as fire trucks arrived, telling them the flames were contained and how to best get to them. Now that Tony was out, she felt calm and collected, in control, and aiding in the fire extinguishing gave her a job to do.

Every once in a while her eyes moved over to Tony, who was sitting on a wooden bench under a nearby tree. The hoodie he had grabbed on the way out was open at the chest, unzipped, showing smooth, untarnished skin where the arc reactor used to be. His expression was tired and defeated, his fists balled up and shoulders tight. It hurt her to not be able to help him through this, but they had tried before and it just made them both feel worse.

So, Pepper left him to it, until the situation was cleared up and she could go back to trying to talk Tony into sleeping in bed with her. It would take days before he would agree, all the while cracking mirthless jokes that he would be better off sleeping in the tub.

Pepper had been the same, while Tony had worked on stabilizing the Extremis in her system. She knew what he feared most.

'I have to protect the one thing I can't live without.'

Tony looked up, briefly, meeting her eyes. An apology sat there, invisible to anyone else – anyone who hadn't feared that their next nightmare would set the bed on fire and their lover with it.

"Fire-retardant sheets. What a fucking joke," Tony snorted and kicked his chair across the room. The bots looked at it go and quickly made themselves scarce.

"I believe the sheets were not designed for –"

"I know, J," Tony sighed, pressing a hand to his face. "I know the math. I know the temperature limits. I know a goddamn dream triggers enough heat to bake an entire town's fucking Thanksgiving meal!" He wasn't really mad about the fire. Okay, so he was, because he and Pepper were in between actual homes and he had rather liked that place. Now the bedroom needed to be re-done, the structures to be checked for fire, heat and water damages, and they were going to spend more time in a hotel. Not that Tony had anything against that, but in all honesty he would have preferred his own bed – and workshop, because even his private work area at Stark Industries' headquarters felt wrong.

The real problem wasn't the bedroom, the hotel, or even the room he was currently standing in, equipped with sufficient tech to do whatever the hell he pleased. The real issue was that Tony couldn't sleep, and when he did, he had nightmares.

"What goes around, comes around," he murmured.

"Sir?" J.A.R.V.I.S. asked.

"Nothing," Tony waved the AI off and walked across the room to fetch his chair, grabbing it and pulling it back to the computers. The wheels barely made a sound on the smooth floor, but the chair creaked slightly as he sat on top of it.

He really missed his old shop, in his old house. All the stuff…

Tony felt a tightness atop his lungs, where the arc reactor used to sit. Now, it was a signal of something else, and he cleared his mind of the debris of the past. He had survived all that. He had come to terms with a lot of things, about being Iron Man and what the armors meant to him as a person. He had faced off against the demons he had created and survived more or less unscathed. In the process he had gotten Pepper hurt, but he had also gotten her through it, and she was okay now. She was also still with him, for some unfathomable reason – even now that he was starting to regress to being as much of a mess as he used to be.

The problem was that where he used to simply toss and turn and moan, now the Extremis that Tony had injected into himself was acting out, just as it had last night. Tony wasn't going to go 'too hot' for his body to handle, but he sure as hell went too hot for anything else.

Tony opened a heavily encrypted file, logged in and decrypted it, then stared at the lines of data. He could possibly tweak the Extremis a little, to lessen the chances of another fiery nightmare, but that was simply a matter of extinguishing the symptom. Everyone always talked about dealing with the problem – the illness – and Tony knew what that was.

For years now he had tried to cope with experiences and memories no one should have to carry with them. He was tired of all the shit and the barely contained terror that was literally making him lose it. He'd thought panic attacks were the last straw, but even they could get worse and it was starting to affect his mental state in ways he didn't like.

Pepper had told him to go to therapy.

Happy and Rhodey had agreed with her.

Hell, Banner had told him that talking to him wasn't going to do the trick.

Tony supposed telling people to get themselves some therapy was an easy way to sidestep a problem and wash their hands of dealing with it. However, he wasn't going to start pouring his problems out to a stranger. Most of his issues? They were like the encrypted Extremis data, so secret most of them weren't even written down in a file somewhere, locked away from prying eyes. Who was Tony going to tell about Obie, Afghanistan, the arc reactor, a wormhole in the sky or an alien invasion? Who was going to take him seriously when he talked about people burning up from the inside but who were most certainly not dying from that?

Sure, maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. would have someone qualified enough, but Tony had a distrust of the organization on the best of days, and he wasn't going to sit down with one of their best and brightest and pour out the darkest secrets of his soul in an attempt to find a way out.

Besides, talking about the problem was still about managing the symptom, not the origin.

Tony narrowed his eyes at the partial Extremis code in front of him. "J.A.R.V.I.S., open the old armor data banks and any bio-scan feeds you have from any of my freak outs. Let's get some comparisons going."

"Freak outs, sir?"

"Panic attacks, partial ones or the whole shebang. Also, any data we have of the last flight of Mark VII." He wouldn't say 'wormhole' or 'New York', because those still caused him some nasty sensations.

"What are you looking for?"

"Readings. Heart rate, blood pressure – brain activity. Go as far back as when I got back from Afghanistan. I want to track down this son of a bitch and take it down for good."

"Sir…"

"What, J?"

"Perhaps you should have a few more hours of sleep before starting a new project."

"Trust me, J.A.R.V.I.S.: if I'm onto something here, I'll never have another night of undisturbed sleep in my life," Tony enthused. He was a genius, and he had just thought of a way to remove the problem.

After a few days, he had his epiphany – after which it was all just a matter of making that epiphany into reality.

"Alright, you ready?" Tony asked You, who was holding the camera.

The bot let out a sound of assent.

"Okay," Tony took a deep breath and looked at the camera, checking its angle from a monitor next to him. "The following test… a procedure, has a very simple goal: to stop the brain from being triggered by traumatic experiences. If I'm right, the Extremis has the capability to recognize and isolate fear patterns associated with certain pre-disclosed parameters. Stopping those signals will erase their effect long before any actual physical responses manifest, exempli gratia, a panic attack." He looked to the side, pondering for a moment what to say next. He hadn't actually prepared a speech – he rarely did – but now that he was here…

"In the event that something goes wrong," he went on, looking at the camera again, "there is a reset button. Or, a code, which should reboot the Extremis, so to speak, and make it forget it ever learned this nifty trick. However," Tony added forcefully, "I don't see how this could become a problem. A trauma needs to heal, and if it cannot, things will just get worse. So, I'm blocking it. I deserve to be able to sleep at night; to go into the city I grew up in and be able to look up to the sky. I want to be able to not be afraid all the time." He swallowed, voice growing a bit thicker, then stood up.

You moved along with him, keeping him in the camera's view as he moved closer to the bot.

"If something does go horribly wrong," Tony noted as an afterthought, "I want Pepper to know I love her. I'm doing this for you. For us." He moved his hand to switch off the recording and plucked the camera from You's grip, placing it on a table.

"Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up, "the machines are ready."

"Good," Tony nodded, trying to remove the uneasy tremor from his voice as he stripped off his shirt.

"You don't need to do this."

"I think I do," Tony told his AI and looked up at the nearest camera that served as one of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s many eyes. "I want to get better, J, and to do that, I need to be unafraid." He stepped over to a table, sat down on top of it and placed a specially designed helmet on his head. It tightened around his skull and Tony lay down, trying to relax. "Commence reprogramming," he ordered and saw one of the screens by the table light up.

Needles plunged in at the back of his neck and he grimaced against the pain, then relaxed as a sedative was injected into his system for the duration of the procedure.

Happy knocked on the door of Pepper's office and entered. The woman looked up and gave him a smile, standing up from her desk. "Happy," she smiled and crossed the room to meet him half-way, embracing him quickly.

With an uneasy shrug, Happy straightened his suit jacket when she pulled back. "How are things?" he asked. "I hear you had a… fire at the apartment." It had become necessary to be tactful about such subjects in the past: at first it had been Pepper's issue with the Extremis, and now Tony was going through the same thing. On most days, Happy didn't understand why his former boss had willingly injected himself with the thing that almost got them all killed. Sure, he understood Tony's need to get the shrapnel and the arc reactor out of his chest, but this seemed a bit extreme.

Pepper gave him a small smile that hid the uneasiness the subject raised. "Minor damages. We were prepared."

Which meant they had been expecting it. Happy didn't know how they lived with that kind of fear in their daily lives. "Tony's okay?" he checked next.

This time there was no hiding the uneasiness. "He's been locked in his lab for over a day now. I've tried to get him out, but he's on lock down."

"Do you need me to get someone to open the door?" Happy asked. Tony's current shop was in the Stark Industries R&D building, and as the Head of Security, Happy had the right to get in there if need be.

"I don't think it's as simple as opening the door," Pepper smiled wryly. "He might be on the premises, but he's fortified that place by now and no one's getting in without his express command, you know that."

Happy guessed she was right.

"I had hoped you might go down there and try your luck," Pepper went on.

Happy nodded. He wasn't sure it would work, seeing as he and Tony… well, it was complicated – had been ever since Happy woke up at the hospital. The events following his incident at the Chinese Theater had been recapped for him, but he didn't need a translation for the look of guilt that sat on Tony's face whenever the two of them were in the same room. Tony might not have been directly involved this time around, but he blamed himself for what had happened to Happy. It had strained their interactions ever since, but that guilt might just be enough to leverage him out of his workshop.

"I'll let you know how it turns out," Happy promised.

Pepper smiled at him and watched him leave her office.

Happy took the elevator down to the restricted research level and headed out to Tony's corner of the building. It had been a while since he worked within the SI headquarters and people were still getting used to that. Mostly Tony was still a recluse and his workshop just happened to be situated on the premises.

As Pepper had guessed, Happy's access code didn't work, nor was there any response to his buzzes and knocks. Not even J.A.R.V.I.S. replied to his queries. "Tony!" he eventually shouted, guessing that even if he wasn't letting anyone in, Tony might be listening. "Pepper's worried." When that got no reply, he looked up and down the empty hallway then faced the door again. "Don't make me blow up this door. It will come out of your paycheck." That was a ridiculous threat, but he was the Head of Security and Tony had better respect that –

The door opened with an almost inaudible hiss and Tony poked his head out. "Happy!" he grinned. He looked sweaty, hair poking up in all directions. "Come on in."

Happy didn't believe for a second that his threat to blow up the door had worked, but he slipped inside and walked further into the lab as Tony closed the door behind them. There didn't appear to be any projects lying around – no super-secret tech that Tony wanted to hide from the world until it was done. A suit of armor stood on the far wall, powered down – there was no way Tony would ever not have one of those lying around, arc reactor or no – and eventually Happy looked at the man he had been responsible for once upon a time.

"What's up?" Tony asked casually.

"You tell me," Happy deflected the question.

"You look good," Tony went on, circling Happy and getting himself a bottle of water from the fridge. "I'm glad you're here, actually," he went on before Happy could comment on the half-assed compliment. "I could use your help."

"On what?"

"A test."

Happy looked around again. "What kind of test?"

"Oh, nothing like that," Tony came back over to him and sat down on a table. "I just want to talk."

"About?"

"I don't know," Tony shrugged, then immediately went on talking: "New York, maybe."

That set off warning bells ringing in Happy's head. "You never want to talk about New York. You get a shade paler whenever someone just mentions the city – or the state."

Tony pursed his lips, not appreciating the comment, but shrugged again. "Well, we can talk about that, or maybe Killian and the whole AIM business. Did we ever tell you the whole story?"

"Yeah, you did," Happy snapped. "What's going on?"

"I'm conducting a test," Tony explained. "I was hoping you would help me and not be cantankerous on purpose."

"I'm not being… cantankerous!" Happy argued. "I'm worried about you. Everyone is."

"Well, you can stop with that because I'm fine. Better than fine, I think. That's why we're doing this test, right now," Tony motioned between himself and Happy. "Help me out, will ya?"

"How is talking about New York going to help you?" Happy challenged, purposefully throwing the much avoided word in there.

Tony inhaled, as if to better ingest the question, then smiled. "Just like that."

Happy didn't get it, but at the same time he noticed Tony wasn't getting tense or nervous; he sat there, calm and smiling as if he had just gotten the keys to the kingdom. "Are you high?" Happy asked, suddenly suspicious.

"Better," Tony grinned. "I'm cured."

It worked.

Well, of course it worked because he had made sure it would, but theory and practice were often two very different things and there had been certain concerns…

The fact was, though, that Tony could talk his own ears off about New York City and he didn't need to go la la la in his brain because a mention of the city was no longer threatening to pull a trigger next to his temple.

To make sure it wasn't an accident, he went over scans and readings of the wormhole the Tesseract had opened above Stark Tower on that fateful day that the Avengers got together to fight Loki and the Chitauri, and none of the images, readings or facts thrown at him caused a single twist or flutter in his stomach.

Tony was completely calm for the first time since the Battle of New York, and it almost brought him to tears.

Seeing Happy had been a bit harder than Tony had expected, but he had turned that into another test – which had been a sound success; it had proven that he could broach previously painful topics with other people.

Of course a friendly chat hadn't been what letting Happy into his shop had really been about; ever since Happy had almost died, Tony had been riddled with guilt. The memory of his friend lying in that hospital bed, possibly to never awaken again… it had been hard. It had fueled his actions while he looked for the Mandarin, badly clouding his judgment at times, and even after Happy got better and life resumed, Tony had still had a hard time looking the man in the eye and not feeling responsible for the scars he would carry for the rest of his life.

That guilt had colored his nightmares for months, playing out in different scenarios, some too vague to be recognized as what they truly were, but now all those nasty little sensations were gone. Tony was rationally aware that Happy had almost gotten killed because of him, but he no longer felt the overwhelming and unnecessary terror and helplessness because of it.

He was able to move on, finally.

Wasn't that what life was all about?

Everyone could see Tony was a changed man. Not just because he had a glowing disc missing from his chest, but because of the fire that was missing from his eyes.

Clint understood it, though: a man did anything he had to in order to cope. Sometimes that meant deadening yourself against the world. No one knew the extent of the trauma Tony brought back with him from the wormhole – and not from lack of trying either, because S.H.I.E.L.D. felt like that sort of business was their business – but it had obviously left its mark on Tony.

A mark he was now trying to cover up.

He was doing a good job of it, too; Clint was a bit of an expert on dealing with traumatic experiences, the worst of them all having taken place shortly before Tony's impromptu visit to the other edge of space. If Clint hadn't been who he was, he might have asked Tony for pointers.

The Avengers hadn't been in the same room together since their post-battle Shawarma meal, and had last seen each other in Central Park when Thor and Loki took off with the Tesseract. There had been small disasters here and there, keeping individual Avengers busy, but Nick Fury had finally gotten the idea that everyone should sit their asses down for a friendly chat, and so they were all dragged up to the Helicarrier.

Even Thor was present, having recently arrived back on Earth, and perhaps that was why Fury had chosen this time for the Avengers to meet. It was a small miracle all of them showed up, although the only real wild card had been Bruce Banner, yet the scientist arrived with Tony as if the two of them had been in touch. It was entirely possible that was the case, seeing how cozy they had been from the moment they met – according to Natasha; Clint, obviously, hadn't been there to see it.

Everyone milled around the room, greeting each other – rather, Thor was making his way around, loudly, while Clint and Natasha had sort of huddled on one side with Steve, watching the situation unfold. The Asgardian had halted beside Bruce and Tony, who were in the middle of some kind of argument. It sounded like they had been at it for a while now:

"You're just being a prickly bear because I had the guts to change the game," Tony was saying.

"I've told you I understand why you decided to inject yourself with the Extremis. I've also told you that I understand why you underwent the surgery. What I am trying to tell you is that what you're doing now is dangerous, Tony!" Bruce snapped. He looked like a man uncomfortably close to the edge. "Have you looked at yourself lately?"

"Right before I left the men's room," Tony replied snidely. "I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for the latest tweak –"

"Shouldn't that tell you something?" Bruce raised an eyebrow. "I told you to talk to someone – a professional."

"I talked to you!"

"I'm not that kind of doctor!"

"Oh, so you're just pissed because I head-shrinked myself instead of pouring thousands of dollars into the pockets of some greedy psychiatrist?"

Bruce lowered his face and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache. "You're being obstinate because you know I'm right and you don't want to admit it."

"Yeah?" Tony's eyes narrowed, just a little.

"My friends!" Thor intervened at that moment, so loudly that the scientists couldn't dismiss him. "It is good to see you."

"Sure," Tony said facetiously and turned his attention back to Bruce, who was looking at Tony with a tired yet alarmed expression.

Thor cleared his throat, loudly. "We –"

"We're in the middle of something here," Tony snapped, pointing at himself and Bruce.

"Actually, I think we're done," Bruce argued, softly this time, and took a step away from Tony.

For a moment Tony looked like he might lunge at Bruce, but then he took a deep, steadying breath and nodded. Clint wasn't sure but it seemed like Bruce was seeing something the rest of them weren't.

"What's all that about?" Steve asked in a low tone.

"After the AIM mess, Tony injected himself with nanotechnology called Extremis," Natasha supplied. "It enabled him to get rid of the arc reactor and get the shrapnel removed from his chest. What else it does is anyone's guess."

"What do you think it does?" Steve asked her.

"Let's just say there have been reports of fires in some of the locations Tony's been staying at, and you've probably seen S.H.I.E.L.D.'s file concerning AIM's experimentations."

Steve nodded. It looked like he was going to need to keep an eye on Tony, just in case – not that it changed anything from before.

Clint wondered what all that had to do with Bruce's obvious distress. Tony looked like a man who had his life in order, but he was also a person of many faces, which meant it could be a front. A damn good one, though.

"Should we get started?" Steve offered.

"What did we come here for, cookies and lemonade?" Tony turned around, as if for the first time realizing there were people in the room other than Bruce.

Steve's lips tightened at once. "We're here because Fury asked us to come."

"So this isn't that different from a play-date."

"Yet here you are," Steve shot back, and Clint couldn't help a small smile.

"Here I am," Tony said flatly as he selected the chair closest to him and sat down – then promptly lifted his feet onto the table and leaned back.

"Get your feet off the table," Steve ordered.

Tony just snorted. He was probably only doing it in the first place because it would get on Steve's nerves – which it did, because Steve stepped forward and forcibly swiped Tony's feet off the table. In a heartbeat Tony was on his feet, facing Steve, and Clint knew he didn't imagine the brief, intense lightshow that took place in the brunette's eyes. "Want me to get in the suit, Captain?" Tony asked. "Go a few rounds?"

"Tony," Bruce said from the side.

"Stark!" Fury bellowed from the door, striding in. "Captain," he added, less loudly. "I see we're getting acquainted. Again."

Neither man stepped back. Clint had a feeling he was getting a glimpse of the rather infamous argument that had taken place while he was still under Loki's control. Not a time he liked to think about, and for that reason he assumed Tony wouldn't either, but it wasn't the same for them.

Steve was standing tall, towering half a head above Tony, determined to see this one to the end. The challenge was accepted head-on before Tony suddenly frowned and the lights seemed to move from his eyeballs to the skin of his face before disappearing entirely. The frown vanished as if it had never been there, Tony's facial muscles relaxed, and he blinked as if coming out of a reverie. He also stepped back as if finding himself in another person's space without intending to be there, then took a few steps and selected another chair to sit in as if nothing had happened.

Their leader blinked in confusion and stared after Tony, then swiftly looked over at Bruce, as if expecting an answer from him. Perhaps Steve was onto something because Bruce looked far more worried than he had during his argument with Tony earlier. "What was that?" Steve asked in a low tone.

"This is what we were arguing about," Bruce nodded at Tony, who raised an eyebrow back at him, as if not remembering the whole ordeal. "He's playing with fire and refuses to see the dangers in it."

"I'm fine," Tony stated from the table, expression serene.

Clint decided that Tony was lying – and the worst part of it was that the man himself no longer knew that.

Tony hadn't remembered it being this easy with the Avengers. Sure, at first it was like being tossed into a small room with a group of people he couldn't stand and didn't trust, but it got easier and eventually Tony could no longer remember what the problem had been in the first place.

He was on a team led by Captain America – which was something he had childishly dreamt about for most of his schoolboy years. There was also an honest-to-god alien demi god present who wielded a hammer whose power Tony was still trying to figure out and fit inside some kind of understandable parameters. Of course there was also a man of intellect rivaling Tony's own – who transformed into an unstoppable force when provoked – and a couple of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s finest agents.

It was like a club with the coolest of weirdoes, and Tony had never really been part of any club where he could be himself.

He didn't even care that Fury didn't have a mission lurking in the shadows; Tony might have dragged his feet in coming here, but the fact was that he was an Avenger, and only five more people in the world shared that title with him. Sure, there was only one Iron Man, but some things were greater than a man in a can.

As Fury went on about some general goals for world safety, Tony looked at his fellow superheroes. Most of them pretended to be listening, but Tony would bet half his fortune on the fact that they were yearning for physical stimuli. Bruce was drawing physics notes on a piece of paper, instead of taking actual notes from Fury's speech; Thor was perhaps the most obvious of all, gazing out the window on the far wall; Steve was looking at Fury but appeared to be counting the threads on the black shirt beneath the customary leather jacket; Clint and Natasha were both checking their weapons.

Tony's eyes lingered on the only female in the room – a woman he had once tried to trust, but which had… backfired a little. He frowned and tried to recall that moment, committed to memory with venom on his tongue. He recalled the morning after his birthday party, the box of doughnuts in his lap and Fury's voice barking orders at him. He remembered the small pang of betrayal when he realized 'Natalie' was actually working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and had gotten so close to him and his personal life, but there was something else, too…

The memory of a needle jabbing deep into his neck, the burn brief and then gone. The memory vanished; a moment of unpleasantness which was then scrubbed clean.

Natasha looked at him, feeling his eyes on her.

Tony gave her an easy half-smile.

The burn of betrayal subsided into a low throbbing, the painful scratch-marks gone; the Extremis smoothed away the distrust that had bothered him ever since that meeting at the diner.

Natasha knew the S.H.I.E.L.D. files didn't contain all there was to know about Tony's current condition. There were pages and pages' worth of psych evaluations done from a distance and mission reports from the scuffle between Iron Man and AIM. There was even a completely separate file about Pepper Potts' involuntary time spent as an Extremis test subject.

Tony Stark was notorious for his unwillingness to let strangers into the details of his life, even as an Avenger and a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. That forced every entry to remain rather vague, filled with a lot of guesswork – and if someone hit too close to home, there was a danger of getting hacked by Tony and having all that data removed or edited.

The files told one version of a story. Natasha had heard another; she still stayed in contact with Pepper, more so recently than right after Tony's struggle with the palladium poisoning. She had even kept tabs on Happy Hogan, to follow his recovery in exchange for a few notes of intel; Happy was protective of Tony and Pepper both, but Natasha had once been an ally, and sometimes Happy liked to have a confidante.

Fury would have liked Natasha to include all her gathered information in Tony's files, but she knew better. Not only would Tony see it as a threat and a breach of his privacy, but they were both Avengers now and Natasha had to carefully evaluate her loyalties.

She had decided, early on, that she would rather take Fury's dark looks than to be on Tony's bad side – not to mention all the people who backed Tony up.

However, this new development was more alarming than random fires triggered by Tony's nightmares, and Natasha wasn't certain she was aware of all there was to it – which begged the question of whether others, including Pepper, were aware of what Tony was up to. It was clear something had happened, recently – something that Bruce knew about, and which made him concerned.

It was the very thing that made Tony stand up to Steve one second and then back down the next, as if none of it had ever happened; as if Tony and Steve were the best of friends. The change wasn't that glaringly obvious, of course, but Natasha had made leaps in her career just by watching people, and she had watched Tony longer than most. She could tell from his body language alone when he was comfortable, and she had never seen him relax around Steve – or the rest of the team, Bruce being an occasional exception.

Her biggest clue was the smile Tony gave her. Natasha knew that Tony had never forgiven her for the needle incident, and while he was fine with them being in close quarters and fighting on the same side, there was still an impenetrable wall between them, raised to defend him against the threat she posed. That wall was suddenly gone and Natasha felt deeply uneasy.

She looked to the side and met Clint's gaze. Clearly these things weren't lost on him, either. However, Clint didn't seem all that concerned, and for good reason: he was still struggling to come to terms with what Loki had made him do, and perhaps he viewed Tony's issues as a similar experience to his own. Clint would give Tony so much leeway that the harm would be done before Tony knew he should stop. Natasha didn't blame Clint for that, but it was starting to feel like she would have to watch both men, to make sure they didn't make a mess of themselves while trying to cope with their personal demons.

Fury finished talking, perhaps clueing in to the fact that no one was really listening – not even Steve. The Avengers were not a team of highly disciplined soldiers, and perhaps this little meeting was an attempt to simply get them into the same room for a few hours.

Tony's phone chimed suddenly, snapping most of them out of whatever reverie they had fallen into. The man pulled the device from his pocket and stared at the screen, then pressed a finger against his ear. "Yeah?" he answered and listened for a bit. His face darkened.

"What is it?" Bruce asked from across the table.

Tony didn't answer; he kept listening, then pushed his chair away from the table and stood up.

"What's going on?" Steve repeated Bruce's question and stood as well. Whether he was going to follow Tony out or stop him from leaving the room remained to be seen.

"The Tower's under attack," Tony informed them distractedly. "Pepper's caught in the crossfire. They're trying to get her…"

Natasha stood as well, as did everyone else.

Fury's comm beeped an instant later and he must have received word of the events because he nodded grimly. "Get going," he ordered, smartly not trying to suggest an alternative approach.

"We'll be right behind you," Steve added and looked at the rest of them for confirmation before the Avengers filed out of the room. Tony broke off from the rest of them, pocketing his phone and ordering someone – probably J.A.R.V.I.S. – to prep the suit.

"They're getting a Quinjet ready for us," Clint noted as Tony veered to the right to get to his suit.

Steve nodded and told his team to go suit up and meet at the aircraft.

Natasha hoped the situation didn't escalate before they got there, but anyone who planned an attack on the new Avengers Tower was asking for trouble – and had probably come prepared for it.

When Tony dodged past the last building to get to the Tower, the nearby streets were filled with chaos: police cars were stuck amidst other vehicles and people were running and screaming.

Tony flew past them at top speed, finally getting visual of what he was most concerned about, which was the building opposite from the Avengers Tower – where Pepper and her entourage had escaped to when the attackers realized she was there. The data J.A.R.V.I.S. had already sent him suggested that the attackers had been aiming for the Tower when Pepper's car stopped beside it, and they seized the new opportunity. They had failed to capture her, but right now hundreds of civilian lives were being put at risk while the Stark Industries security, a security detail from S.H.I.E.L.D., the police and the attackers were exchanging shots.

Readings from the weapons appeared on the HUD. Tension tightened in Tony's stomach because this was what he feared most: Pepper becoming endangered because of their relationship. Rationally, Tony knew this would have been the case with or without a personal relationship, but when the world knew he and Pepper were together… so did the villains.

Well, he was about to teach them not to shoot at the lady, and to stay the fuck away from his property.

Tony dropped down in the middle of the street. Smoking ruins of cars lay haphazardly around him and he shoved one of them out of his way, sending it skidding to the side, colliding with another car which turned from its side back onto its tires.

On the other side of the street, the attackers noted his arrival. Their weapons, which stood on sturdy tripods, turned away from the building they had been firing at and the HUD warned Tony that he was being targeted. He could see that for himself and selected target-seeking explosives, then painted the biggest weapons and fired.

A cloud of tiny projectiles shot out of the armor's shoulders, spreading and then swarming in, each finding their appointed targets. Tony watched with wry amusement as a few of the villains attempted to remove the explosives once they were attached to the weapons, but soon decided it wasn't worth it and jumped back just before Tony detonated them.

The explosives were designed to turn inwards, to destroy whatever they were attached to with minimal harm to the surrounding area. The flashes were bright and then subsided, leaving smoking piles of metal on the asphalt where the weapons had been.

With the biggest threats eliminated, Tony moved in, tracking down the six hostiles. He raised his right arm and shot two of them before they had even properly raised a pair of smaller weapons in their defense. Next he turned towards the remaining four – three of whom rushed him, which was perhaps the stupidest move he had seen for a while; they weren't getting through his armor with the guns they had left.

Tony didn't turn down a fight. He was in a bad mood and punching a couple idiots in the face couldn't make him feel any worse.

They shot at him, bullets bouncing off the armor. One of the guns had specialized bullets that actually dug a bit deeper into the outer layer of the suit, but Tony barely felt it. He stepped forward, grabbed the strongest gun by its barrel and twisted, probably spraining the arm attached to it, then hauled back and punched the man in the face. A cheekbone crunched and the man went down.

Tony was already feeling better about this whole mess.

The other two men looked at each other and then turned around, starting to run, but Tony rocketed after them, engaging the thrusters long enough to jump over to them, then grab them by the shoulders as he landed again and slam the two men together, dropping them in a groaning heap on the street.

One left…

Tony looked around, trying to spot the remaining attacker. Perhaps he had turned tail as well –

The armor's sensors picked up motion at his four o'clock and Tony whirled around just in time to hear something lock onto his armor. "We were going to put this inside your Tower," a voice informed him, "but this works just as well, Stark." Tony came face to face with a man who was strapped into some kind of device – which was also attached to his suit. Tony's armored hand yanked at the cables but they refused to let go. With enough force and the right angle, he could remove the magnetic lock holding them in place, but then he noticed the device the man had wrapped himself into and scanned it, a countdown clock appearing on the HUD: a bomb.

A quick analysis told him that the blast would threaten the nearest standing structures – his Tower and Pepper among them – and while the suit could take the blast in general, it might have difficulty withstanding the detonation when it happened right in front of his face.

The man standing in front of him grinned. Either he hadn't thought this through, or he didn't care he was getting blown to kingdom come along with Iron Man.

Tony took another quick glance at the material and mechanics of the bomb, then made up his mind. Fear was an immediate follow-up emotion because this was so close to the darkest source of his recent nightmares, but Extremis smoothed the sharp edge of terror and left his mind in a serene state.

He grabbed the smug villain by the front of his battle uniform, then engaged the thrusters and propelled them both into the air. Pushing the armor to the max, Tony watched the altitude counter on the HUD. A few alarms flashed in front of his eyes but Tony knew his armor could take it.

In the unyielding grip of the armor, the man shouted in terror, then screamed for a brief moment before going silent. Tony pushed through the clouds and higher still, the temperature dropping around them. The bomb stuttered within its casing as the pressure and temperature changed, then eventually malfunctioned.

Frankly, Tony had been waiting for a blast, but he preferred this option. He halted the ascension, hovering in the air, then dared to look down. He hadn't flown this high in months. Even when he guided the nuclear missile into the wormhole, he hadn't come this high.

"Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. prompted, "the exosystems will hold out for another seventeen minutes at this altitude."

Tony just hummed in response, signaling that he was listening. He felt so calm he didn't want to talk. There was no fear of falling, or a terror of the darkness hovering above him, lit by thousands of stars. He looked down again, then at the man hanging from his clutched fist; the body was frozen, retinal hemorrhage leaving the wide eyes bloody red. The man's mouth was still open from his last scream before he had died, some time during the flight.

He was certain he should have felt something, looking at the corpse, but Tony didn't feel anything at all.

Rhodey arrived on the scene a few minutes after the Avengers' Quinjet had landed. Police cars, ambulances and a few S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles were already present, and Pepper was surrounded by Happy, Black Widow and a couple EMTs.

Pepper looked up as he landed, the War Machine armor clanging heavily against the broken asphalt. He counted two bodies laid out between vehicles, covered with a tarp, but it seemed the report he had gotten was accurate: minimal casualties.

"Rhodey," Pepper called out, standing up. She looked shaken but okay.

"Where is he?" Rhodey asked. He knew Iron Man had arrived on location before the Avengers. He also knew the fight had been over quickly, which meant Tony hadn't wasted any time getting things sorted out.

Pepper pointed towards the Avengers Tower. "He and Dr. Banner are in the sub-level garage with a bomb team from S.H.I.E.L.D. Apparently the attackers planned on planting a powerful explosive in the Tower."

"Is it still going to blow?" Rhodey frowned. He would have expected some kind of evacuations if that were the case.

Pepper shook her head. "No. Tony took care of it – at 300,000 feet." She tried to sound calm, like it was just a couple feet here or there, but Rhodey knew better. He also knew Tony, and knew what kind of problems he'd been having with high altitudes after the Battle of New York.

"I'll make sure he's okay," Rhodey promised and ordered the armor to open, then strode across the street and to the open doors which led to the garage. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent stopped him before he could enter, which pissed Rhodey off. "I'm here to see Tony," he noted.

"Please wait outside," the agent demanded.

"Either you let me in, or I'll go back, put on that suit, and we can start this conversation from the beginning," Rhodey threatened matter-of-factly, nodding towards the War Machine armor.

The agent took one look at it and let him pass.

It didn't take long before Rhodey located Tony: the man was sitting on top of a sports car that had to be one of his, fingers folded and pressed against his lips in a thoughtful expression. Bruce Banner and what had to be the bomb team from S.H.I.E.L.D. were on the other side of the garage, poking at what looked like the remnants of some kind of machine. Rhodey assumed it was dead and harmless and strode over to his friend. "Hey," he called out, to not startle Tony.

The brown eyes moved to his face and Tony unfolded his hands. "Fancy meeting you here," he replied.

"I was in the neighborhood," Rhodey admitted. Well, he had been half-way across the country when the first call came in that the Avengers Tower was being threatened, and while he knew he wasn't going to be needed in between the actual Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., he had still flown here at top speed.

Tony gave him small smile, as if he knew exactly how nearby Rhodey hadn't been. "Good to see you," he said instead.

Rhodey nodded, looked at the carcass of the bomb and then back at Tony. "You okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Tony shrugged one shoulder.

"Pepper told me you took a trip up to the mesosphere."

"Oh, Colonel Rhodes! Hearing you use technical terms makes me all tingly," Tony teased him, then eased the smile from his lips. "I made an educated guess – which was the correct one – that the bomb wouldn't handle heights very well. Neither did the guy attached to it." His tone didn't waver, not one bit. Rhodey wasn't certain which concerned him more: the fact that Tony had almost flown into space and wasn't rattled by that, or that he had dragged an unprotected human being up there with him. He guessed it had been one of the attackers, but it still seemed harsh compared to Tony's usual methods.

"You sure you're okay?" Rhodey pressed. "I know Pepper's worried –"

"She shouldn't be," Tony snapped. "I told her I fixed it. I've told you, haven't I?"

Yeah, Rhodey recalled a message Tony had recorded on his phone when Rhodey couldn't answer his call. Part of him had assumed Tony was just drunk or sleep-deprived – or both. "You don't just fix stuff like that," Rhodey told him. "If that were possible, you would have sorted it out years ago," he added. Rhodey knew Tony had been carrying a lot of baggage since Afghanistan – they all had – and every time he thought he had seen it all, he was reminded he was merely scratching at the surface of Tony's traumatic experiences.

"Before Extremis, I couldn't," Tony informed him. "Did you listen to that message I left you?"

"Most of it didn't make any sense."

"What part of 'I'm cured' didn't you get?" Tony snorted. "Whatever. That's not…" He got a dark, pensive look on his face. "Pepper could have died today," Tony went on after a bit, looking to where Bruce and the S.H.I.E.L.D. specialists were still working, but Rhodey had a feeling he wasn't really seeing any of it. "We got lucky; Happy was alert, directed them away from the gunfire. I… It wouldn't have mattered if I had been in the city or not, if she had died when the first shots were fired."

Rhodey could see this fact upset the other man. "Look, Tony, you can't be around her all the time. She's the CEO of your company. She's gotten into trouble before, but you can't put her into a protective box and lock her away –"

"I know!" Tony snapped at him and jumped off the car, pacing angrily. Orange lines appeared on his skin. Rhodey still had a hard time looking at him when that happened, even though he knew it was what had saved Tony's life during and after the surgery. "As long as she's involved with me and my company, she's going to be in danger. I'm responsible for that. She got Extremis because of me. She could have died, strapped into that…" He stopped pacing and closed his eyes. The orange lines intensified and then faded. Rhodey hoped it was because Tony forced them to recede. "The last time I talked to Happy, before he almost got killed, he told me she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. He was right. I have to protect her – and for the most part, it's me she needs protecting from."

Rhodey wasn't certain whether Tony was talking about the incidental fires or the day's events. "You're still worked up from the fight," he offered. "Let's sort things out here, then go upstairs. Go to bed early. Hold her, and listen when she tells you this wasn't your fault." Because Rhodey knew Pepper would tell Tony those things, over and over, but his friend just chose not to hear them.

Tony nodded slowly, opened his eyes and offered Rhodey a small smile. "You'll stay the night?"

"Might as well," Rhodey shrugged. "I flew all the way over here; I'm not looking forward to getting back into the suit and flying back to California."

Tony's expression brightened a little and the two of them moved back towards the door to fetch Pepper. By that time most of the street had been cleared, the bodies taken away and the S.H.I.E.L.D. officials were sorting out the technicalities with the local authorities. Pepper looked relieved at the sight of them and came over, Happy a constant shadow behind her; Happy had been patched up a little, but there were only a couple scratches here and there, probably from flying debris. Pepper was mostly unscathed, save for a bandage on her shoulder.

"Let's go inside," Happy urged. "We're sitting ducks out here."

"Relax, Hogan," Tony ordered. "The danger's passed. Besides, the Iron Patriot is here," he added, clapping Rhodey's shoulder.

"It's War Machine, and you know it," Rhodey snapped and started towards the suit, but Tony's hand tightened on his shoulder.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. will handle that," Tony told him, and a second later the armor perked up on its own, turned and strode towards them and past them, into the building, disappearing inside.

Rhodey frowned. "You know I don't like it when you do that. It's my suit."

"One day, you might thank me," Tony deadpanned. "Besides, technically, it's my suit."

"Get over it," Rhodey muttered, but followed the others inside, Tony's hand a constant pressure on his shoulder. He took strength from it, knowing that Tony was alive and well, although possibly not as okay as he pretended to be. Whatever Tony had done to himself to become convinced he was 'cured', Rhodey didn't want to know, but he had a feeling he should find out before it blew up in his face.

They went up to Pepper and Tony's floor, ordered dinner and sat down. Tony fixed them drinks and didn't have more than a few himself, which was very moderate. Rhodey didn't comment on it, though, because he considered it a good change from Tony's usual alcohol-fueled coping mechanisms.

The food arrived a while later and they settled down to eat. Happy suggested briefly that maybe he should go, but Pepper gave him one look and he sat his ass down. Pepper also asked Tony to open a bottle of wine, which he did, and Rhodey let himself relax a little.

"Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up after a while, "Captain Rogers requested that you be informed that the Avengers have decided to spend the night at the Avengers Tower."

"Consider me informed," Tony replied.

"Very good, sir."

"Should we invite them over?" Pepper asked.

"No," Tony replied at once, then added a bit more softly: "I can hang out with the super-friends another time." He gave Happy a discrete look as if he were supposed to understand something the others didn't.

Happy simply pursed his lips but poured himself another glass of wine as if he agreed with Tony's statement.

During the night, Rhodey didn't really get a chance to talk to anyone. Sure, there was a lot of chatting involved, but none of the topics circled even close to Tony's current state of mind. Either it was on purpose, or no one wanted to ruin the mood by dragging the cat out of the bag.

Pepper took Tony to bed at eleven, which left Rhodey and Happy in the living room, opening a case of beer. "There are guest rooms prepared for you both, in case you actually want to sleep," Tony threw over his shoulder as Pepper was leading him away.

Rhodey toasted him with the beer bottle, then looked at Happy. "You wanna go to bed?"

"I'm too pumped-up to sleep," Happy stated and they clinked bottles.

"Hear, hear," Rhodey murmured then took a sip. "Have you noticed something's off with Tony?" he asked then, now that he was finally able to.

Happy snorted with passion. "Off? You mean that speech about how he's fixed himself?"

Rhodey nodded.

Tony's old bodyguard looked at his bottle for a moment, tilting it from side to side thoughtfully. "We all know he's been through some serious stuff," he finally said, looking at Rhodey – who nodded again in encouragement and agreement. "Those events have left their mark. On and off, we've… seen it, I guess. More so after New York and that whole thing with the wormhole. Then the whole Mandarin thing went down and he got Extremis, and… I don't know what to think anymore. Pepper said he slept well after the surgery, but then the nightmares came back with a vengeance. Then a few days ago Tony told me he had done something to stop that and… I'm not saying it works, but we're at ground zero of his worst nightmare," he gestured at the Tower around them. "He's talking about New York – he's in New York – and he's fine with it."

"What do you think he did?" Rhodey asked with a frown on his face. Tony must have done something, that was for sure, but knowing Tony's methods when he felt pressured to get something done…

"I don't know, but I bet it has something to do with Extremis," Happy said darkly and took a swallow of his beer. "And all I know about Extremis is that it's trouble."

While Happy's opinion may have been a little biased, Rhodey could still agree with most of it. He settled back on the couch, drinking and thinking about it, wondering if they might catch a break, just once, and this would end up being a good thing. After the palladium poisoning, though, Rhodey no longer trusted Tony enough to take his word on anything.

They ended up sitting there until the morning hours. Rhodey supposed he should have gone to bed, to get some rest, but his next meetings were a day away and he would just report back to base that he would be staying in New York for an extra day. The attack on the Avengers Tower would be all over the news and no one would be asking twice about why he was staying over.

It was past four o'clock when voices rose from the direction of the master bedroom. Rhodey looked towards the disturbance then glanced at Happy, who had dozed off, snoring a bit as he lay on the couch opposite from Rhodey's. The voices rose again, and Rhodey got up, alarmed, because if this was another nightmare episode…

"Colonel Rhodes, could you please go to the master bedroom?" J.A.R.V.I.S. requested a second later, startling Rhodey a little, but he nodded and picked up the pace.

The bedroom door was unlocked when Rhodey got to it and he pushed it open. Part of him expected flames and heat, but instead he came across Pepper standing by the bed, hands covering her face, while Tony sat rather awkwardly on the mattress. Both of them looked at him coming in and Tony's expression shifted over to relief. "Rhodey! I'm glad you're here. I'm not sure… Look, miss, could you please stop crying?" he said to Pepper, who let out a sharp gasp and almost sank to the floor as sobs wracked her body.

Rhodey stared at her, moving over to support her, then glared at Tony. "What the hell, man? What did you do?"

Tony looked taken aback by his tone. "Okay, I may have been a little hard on her, but I told her, as gently as possible, that I don't do mornings well, and I probably told her that last night. I even apologized that I don't remember her name!"

Silence followed Tony's statement, broken only by Pepper's uneven breaths. Rhodey looked at her and the obvious distress she was in, trying to make sense of all this.

"Could you just show her to the door?" Tony begged from the bed.

Rhodey looked at his best friend and for a moment he wondered if this was some kind of sick joke he wasn't getting. Well, by the looks of it, Pepper wasn't getting it either. "Tony, why would I need to show Pepper to the door?" he asked icily. "She lives here – well, technically I don't know where the hell you two are living right now, but that's beside the point."

Tony frowned. "No, that's not… We're at the Tower, right? I checked with J.A.R.V.I.S. –"

"Sir, you are being illogical and appear to be disoriented."

"I'm feeling fine! Stop arguing with me!" Tony snapped in the general direction of the ceiling. "I know this all seems very horrible, but honey, I've done this song and dance many times, and none of the others have ever put up this much of a fight when I told them to leave," he added in Pepper's direction.

Pepper drew in a long, shaky breath and tried cleaning up her face. She looked at Rhodey, eyes wide with something that was pure fear. "He doesn't know who I am," she finally stated, voice shaking just as badly as her entire body was. "He woke me up and asked me to leave – like I was one of his one-night stands!"

Rhodey's first instinct was to go and punch Tony in the face, hard. Then he took a look at the somewhat helpless look on his friend's face and tried to put the pieces together in some way that would make sense. "Tony, do you know who she is?" he asked slowly and carefully.

At first Tony shrugged, then frowned. "She seems familiar – but that doesn't mean anything!" he added hastily, as if that would somehow aid Pepper's cause more than his. "J.A.R.V.I.S. called her 'Pepper' and 'Miss Potts', so I guess there's a name in there somewhere."

"Tony, she's your girlfriend," Rhodey stated slowly and a bit forcefully. "She's the love of your life!"

Tony blinked at that and his hands tightened on the sheet he was clutching to his lap, as if to cover himself although he was wearing underwear and a tank top. "I don't…"

"Remember?" Rhodey snapped. "How the hell do you go to bed together and then wake up not remembering her?!"

In his arms, Pepper fell into another fit of gasps, and Rhodey pulled her to his chest, giving her all the comfort he could muster at the moment.

Tony opened his mouth and closed it, looking a little worried. "I don't…"

"Did something happen during the night?" Rhodey demanded. "Some weird attack?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary has been recorded in this room, the building or the surrounding area," J.A.R.V.I.S. clarified. "However, the Extremis readings have been high throughout the night."

"The what?" Rhodey blinked.

"The Extremis," Tony murmured, then pressed his face into his hands as if that would help him think better. "I remember… I know what day it is. I remember meeting with the Avengers on the Helicarrier. I remember flying back because there was some kind of situation, and…"

"And then what?" Rhodey tried hurrying him up.

"I went to bed," Tony went on slowly. "I think I remember her being there." He looked at Pepper, as if that would help. "Does she work for SI?"

"She was your PA before you made her CEO," Rhodey explained, unable to believe Tony's mind had somehow wiped Pepper's existence clean in a matter of hours.

"CEO?" Tony's frown was back.

"Yeah, when you were dying. Remember that?"

The silence Tony gave him was more terrifying than all the other things combined. "I think so," the other man finally replied, but with a sort of detachment that people used when talking about something that didn't directly affect them – like world hunger while you were eating in a five star restaurant.

The woman he had woken up in bed with – Pepper Potts – had avoided him for most of the morning. After Rhodey had thrown Tony out of his own bedroom, in order to give Pepper some privacy, Happy had stirred on the couch and soon enough the other Avengers were milling around as well, most of them not pleased by the early wake-up call.

Rhodey didn't care about anyone's lost hours of beauty sleep: he went over the morning's events quickly and efficiently, which left Tony feeling like a dick and the other Avengers looking at him like he had grown a second head.

"How could he forget Pepper?" Natasha asked, voice tight.

"Beats me," Rhodey shrugged and looked at Tony for an explanation – which he didn't have at this time.

"I think the more important question is why," Bruce said from the side. He had procured a cup of tea from somewhere and was pouring all his nervous energy into stirring the drink with the spoon. He could have probably made a smoothie out of it with the right ingredients.

"Why would he forget the woman he loves?" Steve rephrased the question, as if thinking that someone needed to do it.

"I sense no traces of magic," Thor declared, frowning at Tony.

"It isn't magic," Happy finally snapped from behind them. He was probably hungover, judging by the several empty bottles of beer around the living room, and in a foul mood. "It's Extremis." Happy went on muttering about how no one in their right mind would have injected themselves with it. Tony didn't bother getting into that argument with him; he vaguely remembered doing that before, and if Happy hadn't changed his mind by now, he probably wouldn't start today, either.

"I thought the purpose of this Extremis was to aid him with his demons?" Thor mused. "Lady Pepper does not seem like a threat to him."

"That is kind of confusing," Clint agreed.

Silence settled heavily upon the room. Tony tried to put the missing pieces together for a moment and then gave up because it was easier to let it go rather than to linger on the teary face of the woman he was supposed to know and love.

"Maybe that's it," Rhodey suddenly perked up. "Yesterday, after the fight was over, Tony told me it was his fault Pepper was in danger in the first place."

"Doesn't take a genius to figure that out," Clint commented, then sat up and looked piercingly at Tony. "So, what, this is a fucked up way to protect her from him?"

"It might be," Bruce agreed with the archer. "Logically, it makes just as much sense as it doesn't. Extremis has been affecting Tony's emotional responses for days now, suffocating and removing certain triggers entirely. It doesn't matter what the threat is, as long as the biological fear response is similar."

"So while he's trying to protect Pepper, his brain is being protected against the potential pain that her getting hurt or killed might create?" Natasha guessed.

"Something along those lines, yes," Bruce agreed. "I cannot say for sure before I see exactly what Tony did –"

"No," Tony said at once. "There's nothing wrong with my programming. If… if I forgot Pepper, it was because it's necessary."

"Necessary how?" Rhodey glared at him. "For you to be happy?"

"For me to function," Tony snapped back at him. "I put a lot of thought into this. Nothing was done on a whim."

"Yeah, because you always admit it when you've made a mistake," Rhodey took a step towards him. "How can you sit there and claim this is okay?!"

"Because he doesn't remember," Natasha and Steve said in the same breath, then looked at each other. Natasha was the one who kept talking: "If his Extremis has erased any personal attachment to Pepper, he doesn't feel like he's lost anything at all. A human brain adapts remarkably well, filling in the blanks or completely ignoring them, and right now Extremis is working to smooth over any conflicts that might be left. Isn't that right, Tony?"

Tony looked at her, wondering if she knew what she was talking about, then glanced at Bruce, who looked expectant. "I would assume so," Tony admitted.

"But you're not sure?" the scientist asked.

"I didn't reprogram Extremis to erase entire people from my life, although I think I would benefit from not remembering a few," Tony pondered. Come to think of it… "Generally speaking, it works just as I designed it to. This might be a hiccup – or a purposeful removal of something or someone whom I'm better off not remembering being part of my life." It boggled him, though, that he would forget someone he loved. Someone like that shouldn't be that big of a threat.

He thought of Pepper again, and the rude awakening in the early morning. She had been shocked, angry and heartbroken, while Tony himself had felt little if anything at all. Even now, it was hard to bring himself to care for someone who might as well be a stranger.

"How do we undo this?" Rhodey asked next. Tony opened his mouth to argue, and Rhodey took another step towards him, hands fisted, body poised to attack. "If the next words coming out of your mouth aren't relevant to solving this mess, shut up," he ordered. "You might not see it, but I'll have to go in there and talk to Pepper," he pointed angrily towards Tony's bedroom, "to tell her it's going to be okay although you're not giving a flying fuck about any of it!"

Tony flinched a little at his tone; he couldn't remember the last time Rhodey had exploded at him like this.

"Forgetting is not the same as overcoming your obstacles," Thor said as Rhodey started pacing, breathing hard through his nose.

"I would gladly forget a few things about my life," Clint mused.

"But where do you draw the line?" Bruce asked and his eyes locked with Tony's. "When the worst of it is gone, can you stop? Will you?"

Tony guessed that was a fair question – but it wasn't enough for him to start regretting what he had done.

Bruce had known Tony for a while now. He had known the man to be a genius even before they shook hands on the Helicarrier, but learning just how close to the edge of insanity that brilliance teetered… comprehending that seemed to take a little longer.

Tony was damaged goods; from a childhood of neglect to his kidnapping and becoming Iron Man, he had been through a series of traumatic experiences that had left their marks. When such issues became too much to handle, piling up, a human being was prone to either folding under the pressure or finding an outlet for those feelings.

One might have said the Hulk was Bruce's personal outlet. On most days he even believed it.

Tony, however, had waded through the accumulating crap, trying to outrun it, but eventually it all caught up with him, and Tony's blessed genius became his pitfall: he thought he could tamper with something that should have never, ever been tampered with.

From the moment Tony told Bruce, rather excitedly, that he had modified the Extremis to handle his stress signals, Bruce had heard the distant sound of an avalanche approaching. Now that he and Tony sat in one of the labs at the Avengers Tower, he couldn't help but come to the decision that they weren't going to outrun this one.

Tony sat on top of a table, swinging his legs – not an examination table, but an actual table where Bruce liked to conduct some of his experiments. The surface was empty right now, save for one genius-billionaire-former-playboy-philanthropist. Bruce failed to see Tony's success and instead debated whether he was looking at a broken clock or smoking ruins. Neither description satisfied him, though, and he kept pressing the side of his hand against his mouth, staring at Tony, who had long since grown bored.

"Are we doing this or not?" Tony asked, filled with impatience and already on the offense.

For the past few days, Bruce had tried figuring out Tony's condition. First he had tried to do it sneakily, stealthily, but little got past Tony and eventually Bruce threw all caution to the wind because it was slowing him down while Tony was getting worse, and the other man already knew what he was trying to do.

What Tony presumed Bruce was going to try to do next was to try and trigger him; to bring forth a fear so sharp Extremis could not compensate. So far, there had been no such luck, but Bruce was convinced getting around Extremis would serve two purposes: it would show him Tony was still capable of responding to certain stimuli, and Tony would have to face the fact that he was dulling his senses.

"Maya Hansen," Bruce started. "You were there when she died."

"Yup," Tony replied casually, like they were talking about the fine weather outside or what they were going to have for lunch.

"Do you recall how she died?" Bruce pressed.

Tony stopped swinging his legs for a bit. "Sure. Killian killed her." There had been a minor delay in his reply.

"How did she die?" Bruce repeated.

Tony's brow furrowed. Either he couldn't remember the actual details – or he did and the Extremis was glossing over the more horrific parts. Bruce knew, from what Tony had told him before all this, that Aldrich Killian had shot Maya Hansen in front of Tony, out of the blue. Tony may have been angry at Maya for her recent actions, but that didn't take away the shock and hurt of witnessing her death.

"She was shot," Tony finally said. It hadn't taken all that long for him to find the words. Sometimes, when Bruce got close enough, Tony would go catatonic as Extremis responded to the memories Bruce had managed to raise. "Is this relevant?" the other man asked after a bit, legs swinging again. The motion was agitated rather than relaxed.

Bruce allowed himself a small sigh. He was running out of things that he knew bothered Tony on a deeply personal level; his first choices had been to talk about the Battle of New York and the wormhole, but those had been the memories Tony had wanted gone. He recalled the events, more or less, even though Bruce could detect parts were missing.

His next bet had been Afghanistan, but that must have been Tony's second least favorite memory in the world – which meant Extremis had already dealt with it. Tony remembered even less about his kidnapping than he did of the first battle the Avengers fought together. After that Bruce had tried getting creative, but Tony's emotional responses became less and less sharp as days passed.

When Bruce didn't give Tony an answer, the man swung himself down from the table and headed for the door. "I'll go eat. If you come up with another topic to throw in my face, I'll be in the kitchen," Tony told him without looking back and exited the lab.

Bruce sat still for a moment, feeling as if Tony's words were a direct taunt from the Extremis, telling him to try harder, to be better, in order to defeat it. Anger mounted inside him and finally Bruce sprang to his feet, grabbed the heavy table Tony had been sitting on and flung it to the side. The table crashed against a cabinet beside it, cracking the reinforced glass, then fell over.

His chest was heavy and Bruce closed his eyes, centering himself again. He felt tempted to let the other guy out and see if that got a response out of Tony, but the other man hadn't feared the monster when they first met, and it was unlikely he would start now.

Bruce was at an impasse.

He hated himself for not being able to get a rise out of Tony. It was as if that accursed nanotechnology in his friend's brain were one step ahead of him all the time – and if it wasn't, it still didn't really matter because Bruce couldn't fight something that had control over Tony's brain.

Well, not complete control, but he feared that if he drove Tony in the wrong direction, that would happen.

"Dr. Banner," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up.

"I'm good," Bruce replied, guessing the AI was concerned about his outburst of anger.

"I can see that," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied and didn't sound like he cared about the overturned table or the cracked cabinet door. "I was wondering whether I could be of assistance in your attempts to… reach Mr. Stark."

That was surprising – mostly because J.A.R.V.I.S. was Tony's AI and couldn't, most likely, directly intervene. "If you can turn off the Extremis in Tony's body for a few hours, that would be helpful," Bruce noted dryly.

"That is not within my capabilities," the AI replied. "However, I have been tracking your attempts to create an emotional conflict in Mr. Stark and I think I may have a solution."

It made sense J.A.R.V.I.S. would know dark secrets from Tony's life that no one else did. "Please, anything," Bruce looked up eagerly, although that wasn't necessary; J.A.R.V.I.S. had eyes everywhere and nowhere, but Bruce felt like making eye-contact with one of the discrete cameras the AI used to track the events that took place in the building.

"Harley Keener."

"I'm sorry?"

"Harley Keener is a young boy Mr. Stark met in Rose Hill, Tennessee," the AI explained.

"Ah, yes," Bruce nodded, then frowned. "How is that going to help?"

"I have a feeling it might," J.A.R.V.I.S. replied cryptically.

Whether J.A.R.V.I.S. was acting outside his jurisdiction – jurisdiction set by Tony – or just liked not answering Bruce's question to the full extent, he didn't know. What Bruce did know was that he was running out of options, and possibly time, and if Tony's AI made the effort to tell him to consider contacting a pre-teen boy in Tennessee, Bruce was ready to take that leap of faith.

How Bruce had convinced everyone that they should go to Tennessee, Tony wasn't sure. Perhaps no one just said 'no' to the man who turned into a Hulk.

If anyone had asked him, Tony could have told them exactly what they would find in 'the Volunteer State', but since he was being dragged along like a piece of luggage, he opted to keep his thoughts to himself.

Since they were all in New York City when Bruce reached his new epiphany, they opted to drive south-west instead of flying. Whose idea that was, Tony wasn't sure – he wasn't consulted on that one, either – but it was possibly the crappiest road trip of Tony's entire life. He tried alternating between the two vehicles they had, but neither one offered him entertainment: the other Avengers were quiet and cranky in various degrees, and Rhodey, who had joined them on this venture, was silently suffocating the life out of Tony with his dark looks and tight jaw-muscles.

Still, Tony kept ending up in the same car with his best friend, mostly because he couldn't listen to Thor's attempts to educate him on the Asgardian remedies for nightmares and impaired memory – nor did he want to linger in an enclosed space with Natasha when she was mostly scowling at Tony as if he were going to stab her in the back. After all, Tony still had the vague feeling she was usually the one doing the back-stabbing, although whatever hurt must have caused that notion wasn't bothering him all that much anymore.

Out of all of them, Clint's silent, knowing stares were the easiest to bear – mostly because he was the one who got Tony's decision, out of the whole lot. That didn't mean the archer agreed with what Tony had done, but at least Clint was allowing it to play out.

Steve was fairly subdued about the whole ordeal, although every once in a while he found it in himself to confront Tony, mostly about his lack of appropriate responses. He had called Tony 'cold' more than once, which was a bit harsh, but Tony tried not to get into a fight with him. After all, Steve was the leader of the Avengers and Tony respected him… all of which Steve didn't seem to accept, for some strange reason, as if Tony should have been fighting with him.

Bruce had stopped trying to provoke him after they left New York. The man mainly sat in the same car with Rhodey, splitting the driving duties with him, and they often conversed in low, conspiring voices. Whenever they thought Tony wasn't listening, though, they talked a bit more freely.

Tony was half asleep in the back seat, more on the side of dozing than awake, when his brain started paying attention to the muted conversation going on in the front seat:

"Did you talk to Pepper?" Bruce was asking. The name still didn't ring any special bells in Tony's mind.

"No," Rhodey replied. "Happy said she's been going to the office, putting on a brave face, but she's a mess. If this doesn't help, I don't know what we'll do."

"So far, no one knows?"

"I think it's better the government and military don't get wind of this just yet. Knowing Tony, it will just get worse before it gets better." Rhodey was quiet for a second before speaking again: "I have no idea what I'll do if we don't get him back."

Tony felt like telling him 'he' was right there, but kept feigning sleep.

"How much farther do you think it will go?" Rhodey spoke up when Bruce didn't. "How much more will he forget?"

"Honestly? I have no idea. The big issues have been taken care of, clearly, but forgetting Pepper changed the game. It isn't an irrational assumption that he might, eventually, forget that he's Iron Man."

Rhodey made a noise in his throat, much like the one Tony felt like releasing. He couldn't imagine not being Iron Man, and he refused to see why Bruce thought he might forget it. Sure, it put him in danger, but that wasn't what the Extremis modifications were about; that was for all the crap that came with being in danger, and surviving said danger.

"I just keep thinking," Rhodey spoke up, voice desperate in a way he never was around Tony, "that the next time he wakes up, maybe he won't remember me. There's so much shit between us, in the past. Before, I thought putting distance between us would be good, but he's been my best friend for so long… I can't cope with the idea that he'll look at me like he looked at Pepper."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Bruce said softly, although not as encouragingly as may have been appropriate. "After all, if he forgets you, I don't think the rest of us are that far behind."

Tony pressed his eyes tightly shut and refused to open them until the car stopped the next time.

"Is this it?" Rhodey asked.

"This is the address J.A.R.V.I.S. gave us."

That explained things for Tony, somewhat. He would have a long, thorough talk with his AI about telling his team about Harley when he got back. Why they had come all the way here, Tony couldn't yet completely grasp, but if it had been J.A.R.V.I.S.'s idea, perhaps the AI thought Harley could help 'fix' Tony the way the kid had helped him with Mark 42.

"Okay," Rhodey said and turned off the engine, then shifted in his seat. "Tony? We're here."

Tony opened his eyes, still pretending to have been asleep. "Are we there yet?" he asked in his most annoying voice.

"Yeah," Rhodey confirmed, not suspecting a thing.

"Where's 'here'?" Tony asked next, although he knew the house the moment he saw it.

"All you need to know is that it's important," Rhodey told him and opened the door, getting out of the car, leaving Tony and Bruce to follow. Their second car was already neatly parked a couple feet behind theirs, the other Avengers standing outside, looking around the quiet neighborhood.

Tony's eyes moved from his fellow heroes onto the faded red door of the garage he had sought refuge in many months ago. The memory was sharp although he couldn't recall the pain and desperation that had surely been there. That was a strange mix – remembering and not remembering – but it was one that Tony had grown used to since he reprogrammed the Extremis in his body, and it bothered him less and less each time it happened.

"What's our next move?" Steve asked, as if he weren't used to leading them in the field – well, all of them but Rhodey, who was still on the military's payroll.

"Perhaps we should have called ahead," Rhodey mused.

"And say what? That we need a kid to shrink Iron Man back to sanity?" Clint scoffed, watching the house with sharp eyes.

"We can't tell anyone about what's happening to Tony," Natasha noted.

"So what are we going to tell the kid?" the archer challenged her words.

Tony left them to it, already tired of their argument: he walked across the lawn, now free of the snow, and approached the red door. Last time he had broken in, but now he tested the handle, just in case – and found the door open. There was only one thing to do after, and Tony pushed the door wide open, stepping inside, then stopped to look around.

The garage looked better than the last time he'd seen it in person. He could spot several of the things he had gotten for Harley, as well as unfamiliar gadgets that no doubt were the kid's newest projects. Tony invited himself in and rounded a table, poking at stuff, noting that his gifts of appreciation had been fully utilized.

Suddenly, he sensed someone looking at him, and raised his head. In the doorway stood the kid, with a plate of three sandwiches in his left hand. Harley's eyes were nailed on him, as if he had for a moment hoped he had a potato gun to point at the intruder.

"Tony?" a voice called from outside a second later, and Harley whirled around so fast he almost dropped his plate.

Taking a few steps to the side, Tony could see Rhodey and the Avengers approaching the garage door. By then they had spotted Harley, who was gaping at them, and Tony waited for the inevitable yet predictable exchange that would soon follow.

"You must be Harley," Natasha said, voice a bit softer than normal – her 'I'm talking to a spooked kid' tone.

"Who are you?" Harley asked, suspicious.

"The Avengers," Tony stated before they could start with the 'we're Tony's friends' bullshit; Harley was smart and he would only have to stare at Thor for about five seconds to put two and two together. Besides, everyone knew Rhodey was War Machine.

Harley whirled to look at him again, and Tony stepped forward to save his plate of sandwiches. He looked at them critically, then picked one up and dug in. "What are you doing here?" Harley asked, dismissing the food thievery in order to try and corner Tony against the wall. He sounded excited.

"Ask them," Tony mumbled from around a mouthful of sandwich and moved back over to Harley's work desk to look at what the other had been up to in his absence. At least he wasn't building a suit of armor. Not that Tony would have been offended, because his suit was awesome.

"We require your help," Bruce volunteered and led the way until the superheroes were all somewhat awkwardly crammed in at the front of the garage.

"My help?" Harley repeated.

"Yes," Bruce nodded.

"With what?"

"With him," Rhodey noted, nodding at Tony, who gave the others a cursory glance.

"What's wrong with him?" Harley asked, making it sound like Tony was a faulty engine. Tony gave him a dirty look for that. Harley just cocked an eyebrow and looked back at the others.

"It's a long story and we can't tell you most of it –" Steve started.

"You're Captain America!" Harley interrupted him.

"Duh," Tony rolled his eyes.

"This is so awesome," Harley kept grinning, then looked at Tony as if he had made this happen. Well, he had, sort of, but it hadn't been intentional.

"Uh, sure," Steve searched for words, clearly trying to get back on track. "The thing is, I'm not sure how much Tony told you when you first met…"

"Everything," Harley volunteered.

"I did not," Tony disagreed, although he was growing weary of this slow pace. "You remember the glowy Extremis creeps?"

"Yeah," Harley nodded, a bit more serious suddenly. "Are they back?"

"No," Tony replied. "Well, not as far as I know. That's not the point."

"Can you remember what the point is?" Rhodey asked, and Tony was tempted to tell him to fuck off.

"I'm not demented," Tony said instead, because Rhodey was his friend and although he was annoying, he meant well. Probably.

"That's debatable from where I'm standing," the other man snapped right back.

"Well, perhaps you should move; that might help!"

"You know well enough what would help, and it has nothing to do with from where I'm looking at this shit move of yours." As soon as he said it, Rhodey must have realized there was a kid in the room. He looked at Harley with embarrassment. "Sorry," he murmured.

"So… what's the problem?" Harley asked carefully, looking from Tony to the Avengers.

"He's forgetting things. Important things," Bruce started.

"So he really has dementia?" the kid dared to ask.

"More like amnesia," Clint offered. "The selective kind."

"What does that have to do with Extremis?" Harley frowned. Tony felt weirdly proud of him, for not having forgotten what had been said earlier, and for making the others squirm a bit at the fact that Harley knew about Extremis when most of the government was in the dark about it.

"I took it, fixed it up and put it into by body, to get rid of the anxiety issues. Obviously, it worked," Tony supplied.

"Yeah, so well that he's forgetting things left and right – including his girlfriend." Rhodey just couldn't stop coming back to that.

Harley cringed at Tony. "Seriously? You forgot who you're dating?"

Tony narrowed his eyes at him. "It was for the common good."

"I bet," the kid had the nerve to say, and it was clear he didn't believe Tony for a second. "How come fixing your PTSD led to forgetting your girlfriend?" he asked next, navigated over to Tony and stole one of the remaining sandwiches from the plate.

Thor, never to miss out on food when it was being offered, strode over and took the last one, nodding his approval as he bit in.

"First of all, I didn't have PTSD," Tony started, looking at Harley.

"You totally did," the kid disagreed.

"Okay, maybe. But, everything's working as it should."

"Clearly not if they brought you here," Harley pointed at the Avengers, then frowned. "Why are you here?"

"We were hoping you could help us make Tony see his mistake," Steve replied.

"A mistake in the Extremis?" Harley asked and took another bite of his sandwich, looking thoughtful.

"There's nothing wrong with my Extremis," Tony huffed. "I've told you, a hundred times: it's working as it is supposed to."

"By making you forget Pepper?" Natasha deadpanned.

Harley nodded along with her.

"We think the process can be stopped, even reversed, with the right incentive," Bruce ventured. "I've been trying to trigger a certain response in him for days, but it's not working. Then Tony's AI suggested that we should contact you."

"J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Harley grinned. "How is he? All fixed up, I hope." He looked at Tony. "How about the armor?"

"J.A.R.V.I.S. is okay and I blew up the armors," Tony shrugged, feeling only a small pinch somewhere inside his chest at that distant memory. The kid frowned at his answer, as if not getting it, but Tony didn't offer to explain it further.

"So, what kind of reaction are you looking for?" Harley asked Bruce next. Seeing as he had enjoyed agitating Tony in the past – for some reason, Tony remembered that fact about Harley – it wasn't strange that he jumped at the idea.

"Fear would be good," Bruce answered. "However, Extremis is blocking his fear response, so anger would be another option. A way to trigger an unpleasant memory would probably be the best."

"But those are the ones he's trying to get rid of, right?" Harley guessed.

"Yes."

The kid looked at Tony again. "Is that why you forgot your girlfriend? I'm sure she was really unhappy about that."

"Shut up, kid," Tony groused at him and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, buying himself some time.

"I kind of like him," Rhodey dared to murmur from across the room.

Meeting the Avengers was cool. Seeing them in full armor, battling some villain, would have been even better, but Harley knew they hadn't come to visit him just to show off their awesome powers. The least they could have done would have been to bring at least one suit of armor with them, but apparently Tony had destroyed his and the guy who was War Machine seemed so grumpy that Harley didn't dare ask about his armor.`

After the weird moment in the garage, Harley supposed he should put himself to good use and lead the superheroes outside and into the streets of Rose Hill.

"Where are we going?" one of the Avengers asked. He had to be Hawkeye.

"Some place special," Harley offered and kept walking.

"Special how?" War Machine – Rhodey – asked. Well, Tony called him Rhodey, but Harley knew he was really called Colonel James Rhodes.

"You'll see," Harley offered as cryptically as he could, to not blow the surprise.

Tony walked beside him, looking about. He looked the same, talked the same, but something was totally off about him. He wasn't even giving Harley as much of a hard time as he had the first time they met.

Not a lot of people were walking around, but those who did took a second look at their group. Harley knew they probably didn't recognize the Avengers, who were in their normal clothes, looking like anything but a team of superheroes, but after the mess with the AIM soldiers, everyone had been a bit more cautious.

Harley remembered that night well. Not only because he had saved Tony Stark's life, which was awesome, but because so much destruction had been dealt in such a small amount of time that it took weeks for it to really settle in. Harley had had his own share of nightmares, but they, too, had passed.

He led them between buildings and one of Tony's steps faltered, just a little. Harley smiled. They approached the crater in the ground, still surrounded by flowers and notes – and the five shadows painted on the walls. Tony hovered over the edge of the broken earth, toeing at it, but looked rather serene, considering.

"You know what this crater reminds me of?" Harley tested him. Tony just looked at him, like he didn't care. "The wormhole in New York," he offered, waiting to see a response.

Nothing happened. Tony's lips twitched, as if he was bored, and he shrugged one shoulder. "I don't really see the resemblance," he finally said.

Harley jumped at that small detail. "So, you remember it? The wormhole?"

"I guess," Tony replied nonchalantly.

"And going into space? Do you remember how you got out of the wormhole?" Harley didn't ask just because he had been requested to make Tony edgy; he really wanted to know. People all over the world had been asking that question ever since the Battle of New York.

Tony's eyes met his, steady and unwavering. He wasn't even sweating. "I fell. There's no gravity in space, but as the wormhole collapsed, it sucked me back in. Approximately two-hundred milliseconds slower and I would have been stuck on the other edge of space until…" Tony halted and his expression changed for a moment – then about two seconds later it all neutralized, back into the mask of calmness.

"Until you died," Harley supplied. "Did you know you were going to die?" This time he asked the question because it might upset Tony. He didn't want to think about Tony resigning himself to the fact he might die. He was a superhero, so it wasn't fair he'd have to go through that. However, this was real life, not comic books, and in real life people disappeared and died way too easily.

"It was a rather likely statistical possibility," Tony replied, as if he didn't care either way.

"I'm glad you didn't die," Harley offered, taking a step towards Tony.

"Me, too, although that's kind of obvious."

Harley dismissed that. "After all, if you had died, I never would have learned that one thing about us."

"That we're connected?" Tony asked, voice a lot softer than it should have been. He didn't make fun of Harley. He didn't tease him and threaten to run him over. If Harley hadn't already known Tony wasn't himself, he would have known it now.

"Yeah," he mused quietly, rethinking everything. "You know that you're not okay, right?" he asked Tony. "Everything you've been saying and doing… it isn't you."

"You don't know me very well," Tony countered.

"Maybe," Harley threw back at him. "Or maybe I know you too well and that's what scared you. That I was so much like you. I bet you got bullied at school, too, but no one gave you a high-tech weapon to deal with that." Beside them, the Avengers exchanged somewhat nervous looks. "I bet your dad left you, too."

"That's the sob story of every brilliant kid who ever lived," Tony told him.

"I bet people have told you to tough it out all your life, when you're having nightmares. So, you took the easy way out and got rid of the nightmares. Then something went wrong, but you can't remember what, and that's better than asking for the help no one was willing to give you before."

"You need to work on your pep talk skills," Tony countered, but his mask was slipping, just a little, as if Harley had managed to pry a corner loose.

"Maybe," Harley admitted, "but at least I'm being myself. Who are you? You're not Tony Stark. I met him, and you're not him. You're just some guy, pretending to be one of the Avengers – pretending to be Iron Man. You can pretend to be cool with everything, with New York and aliens and wormholes, but those memories created the Iron Man I met, and I would rather have him a hundred times over compared to you!"

Orange lights appeared under Tony's cheekbones, out of the blue. "Yeah?" Tony hissed. "Well, too bad, because that man is gone, and he's staying gone because neither I, nor the world, have any use for him!"

"You can't decide that!" Harley shouted back at him. In the next moment he felt heat on his face, then a tight, bruising grip yanked him back, clear off his feet and to the side. After Harley caught himself again, he found himself positioned behind Captain America's body as Tony sank to his knees on the edge of the crater, skin aglow with the orange light Harley had seen on that man and woman who had attacked them when Tony first visited Rose Hill.

"Tony?" the man called Bruce exclaimed. Harley wasn't sure who he was, but if he was one of the Avengers, the only option left was that he was the Hulk. Only, he wasn't big and green right now, and looked a little afraid to approach Tony as the man clutched at his head and groaned in pain.

"Were you looking for this kind of response?" Rhodey asked, also cautious.

"I didn't dare to hope for this," Bruce murmured, then looked at Harley, who was trying to see what was happening although Captain America kept holding him back. "Harley, how would you feel about coming to New York City with us?"

Harley blinked. "To the Avengers Tower?" he clarified.

Bruce nodded.

Harley knew grinning at this moment was inappropriate, seeing as Tony was still on his knees and looking rather pained, although he had stopped groaning and the glow was slowly receding. "Yeah," Harley nodded. "Hell yeah!"

Captain America – Steve – gave him a slightly disapproving look, as if he didn't care for the language, but Harley paid him no mind. He was going on a trip with the Avengers.

Well, as soon as his mom said yes.

She had to say yes.

Tony had the worst migraine of his life for the next two hours that it took them to get back to Harley's house, find his mother and ask for Mrs. Keener's blessing that the kid could come with them to New York.

For reasons Tony couldn't fathom, she said yes.

Not that he cared: while his skull felt like fracturing itself from the inside out with spikes of hot pain, Tony cared very little for what was happening around him.

"Are you sure he isn't going to set the car on fire?" he heard Clint ask.

"Fuck you," Tony muttered.

"It's a valid question," Rhodey agreed with the archer.

"We could wrap him in a fire blanket," Harley suggested.

Tony flipped him the bird, at which Steve made a disapproving sound, but eventually they all got into the cars and started the long drive back to New York. Harley, for the time being, had been placed in the second car, and Bruce drove with Rhodey beside him while Clint sat in the back with Tony, regardless of his earlier concerns that Tony might cause a fire.

When no one disturbed him, Tony tried going over what had happened at the crater. Harley had gotten to him, surprisingly. It hadn't even been anything special. He supposed the kid had a gift for making him come unglued.

Extremis had taken control soon after Tony started to go to a bad place, but instead of a subtle caress, it had been violent and vicious, leaving him feeling as if someone had stuck his head in an oven. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, to have his brain cook with heat that wasn't natural, every nerve ending on fire.

It was getting better now, slowly, as if it hadn't happened at all, and part of Tony wanted to forget it. He wasn't mad at Harley, either. If he wanted to be pissed, it would be at his team for dragging the boy into this, making him an instrument in their effort to prove a point to Tony – a point he still refused to see: as much as he had supposedly lost, Tony was still functioning perfectly. Save for this little hiccup, Extremis was working as it should, efficient, quick and quiet as it prevented him from becoming the wreck he had been prior to proceeding with his plan. Sure, forgetting his girlfriend wasn't a class act, but if that was the only real problem… Tony still held onto the possibility that forgetting Pepper Potts wasn't a mistake at all.

They stopped only a few times on the way to New York. Harley was hyper, and clearly he had taken advantage of being stuck in the same car with Thor, asking him all kinds of questions about Asgard and the other Avengers. It seemed the others had long since stopped telling Thor 'no' and just listened as the god of thunder went on about his exploits, as well as those of the other Avengers. He even allowed Harley to try lifting Mjolnir in the parking lot of the first gas station they stopped at to refuel the cars and the people in them.

As they finally entered New York City, it was late evening. They got stuck in traffic momentarily but finally made it to the Avengers Tower and entered the relative peace and quiet of the private parking garage. Happy and Pepper were waiting for them when they got out of the vehicles and started towards the elevators.

"Harley, meet Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan," Natasha introduced.

As the two adults looked at the kid in confusion and fascination, Harley gaped at Pepper and then glanced at Tony. "That's your girlfriend?"

Tony cringed a little, seeing hurt flash over Pepper's face. "I, uh… Yeah. I mean, she was."

"Dude," Harley told him, "she's way more beautiful in person than in the papers! How are you okay with forgetting her?"

"That's something we would like to know," Happy noted from Pepper's side, clearly in agreement with Rhodey that Tony was an asshat for letting this happen.

Pepper gave Harley a small smile. "Thank you, Harley."

In a move that was probably supposed to ape Tony, Harley moved over to Pepper, took her arm and pulled her towards the elevators. "We'll make him better," the kid promised the tall woman, leading her along. It was clear Pepper was completely enamored by him. "And if not, well… I'm single."

Pepper actually dared to laugh and pressed the button of the elevator. As she and Harley got in, she gave Tony a look with a cocked eyebrow, as if challenging him to fight for his place by her side.

"That's gotta hurt," Clint noted from somewhere behind him. "A 10-year-old is stealing your woman."

"He's a mini version of me," Tony defended Harley's success. "Of course she's…" He cut himself off. It felt strange, talking like he cared when he really didn't – which was kind of bugging him, because maybe he should have cared, after all. People told him, continuously, that he would never have chosen to forget Pepper in the past. Even J.A.R.V.I.S. had promised to dig up surveillance material of their 'private moments'. For some reason Tony felt like those tapes didn't contain sex, which was even scarier, because sex he would have understood. Sex was something he remembered. This attachment he supposedly had for Pepper? He didn't know how to deal with that.

"Are you coming?" Rhodey asked, moving towards the elevators.

"Yeah," Tony nodded and joined the others in the elevator, staring at the smooth wall on the ride up.

For the next few hours, everyone was busy settling in. Tony took a long shower, enjoying the privacy of the room he was using – one of the guest rooms because Pepper was still in his master bedroom. It was strange how he still knew the room was his, that he had shared it with Pepper from the day they first moved into the Tower. How could he forget someone who had been a big part of his life for the last decade or so? His PA; his confidante; his lover…

It had to be for a reason.

After changing into a fresh batch of clothes – comfort clothes, with ragged old jeans and a worn band shirt – he ventured out into the shared quarters and found Harley in the kitchen, being catered to by Steve. The kid had a bowl of sugar-coated cornflakes in front of him and was thrusting them into his mouth in small handfuls, crunching on them happily while Steve was preparing some meat next to him.

"Are you hungry?" Harley called out when he spotted Tony.

"No," Tony shook his head and ventured over to get himself a drink at the bar.

"Maybe you could show Harley around while I fix us some supper?" Steve suggested.

"You know we could have that delivered, right?" Tony pointed at the meat and vegetables.

"I know," the blond nodded and pointedly kept going, placing the meat in the middle of a pan, after which he slid it into the oven and then went on chopping vegetables to probably add them to the pan once the meat had cooked for a bit.

"I wanna see the roof," Harley declared, so Tony shrugged, picked up his drink and led the way to the elevators, leaving Harley to follow. The kid came along fast enough, hurrying into the elevator and then out once the doors opened on the top floor. Tony veered to the left, to the small flight of stairs that led them to a door and through it to the roof.

Harley stepped out cautiously and after a second's debate rushed to the side, making an excited sound. "We're so high up!" he exclaimed, as if he hadn't realized it earlier. He looked this way and that over Manhattan, while Tony calmly sipped his drink and enjoyed the breeze on his skin.

After Harley had circled the roof a half-dozen times, he halted and glanced around. "So, they opened the wormhole from here?"

Tony nodded and pointed towards the exact spot. "Right there."

Harley looked at it, then up to the sky. "And that's where it was?"

"Yup."

They looked at the unassuming spot in the sky, the clouds covering the darkness beyond. The sun had already set below the horizon.

"Doesn't it scare you, being here?" Harley asked.

"Not anymore," Tony reminded him. He couldn't remember being afraid, which made it all a bit harder to grasp. Perhaps eventually he wouldn't remember he had ever been afraid. Tony was fine with that. No one needed that kind of fear in their lives.

"Don't you feel hollow without it? Empty?" Harley challenged, still looking up. His neck had to be hurting from the angle. "You did something brave and you can't even remember it."

"I remember flying the nuke up," Tony corrected him.

"But if you can't remember the fear, it's not the same."

Tony was about to tell Harley he was just saying that for the sake of the argument, but there was a point, however small, in the kid's words. "I would still choose not to remember," he decided.

"And when you start forgetting other kind of stuff – less scary stuff? When all the big fears are gone and you want all of it to go away?" Harley looked at him, brown hair wild after being blown around in the wind. "Animals survive because they know what to be afraid of. Humans, too."

"I'm Iron Man; I don't need to be afraid in order to survive," Tony told him flatly, but a small, nagging doubt chewed on the edge of his conscious mind, as if he were lying through his teeth.

Tony told that doubt to go fuck itself and leave him be.

In the days after their visit to Tennessee to meet Harley Keener, Steve sensed a change at the Avengers Tower. It was a welcome one: Tony was frequently on edge while Bruce and Harley tried to find a way past his defenses, to talk sense into him.

Steve wished they would come up with a way to do it faster. He appreciated the fact that he and Tony weren't constantly at each other's throats about stupid things. However, Steve would have liked that to be part of a natural growth into a team rather than this scientific intervention. That Tony didn't talk back to him nearly as much and treated Steve as if they had been friends from the start was a firm reminder that Tony wasn't himself.

That was before the emotional stuntedness; Steve could ignore a lot of things, but he knew how easily people became compromised under pressure. He needed to know his team and their reactions, and frankly, how Tony reacted to things these days sent alarm bells ringing in his head.

Steve had always trusted his gut to guide him through hard times, and all his instincts told him that Tony could not be trusted while he was like this.

Perhaps he was the same, and perhaps he could function in a fight, but Steve wasn't about to gamble with the safety of the rest of his team. Tony was a wild card right now, and while Steve often played against the odds, he never did so if it felt wrong – and everything about Tony felt wrong right now.

He was on his way to the gymnastics area when he happened to walk past one of the many lab areas on the Tower's top floors. Even without his enhanced hearing, Steve would have heard the voices from the inside – especially when every Avenger was primed to listen whenever Bruce Banner started to lose his cool.

"I don't care, Tony! Just look at this rationally! How is this a normal response to anything?!"

"It doesn't need to be normal, as long as it works!" Tony shouted right back at him.

Steve stopped to keep listening, seeing the door ten feet in front of him, standing ajar.

"I'm starting to agree with Rhodey that this is the palladium poisoning all over again; you don't know when to stop. You were too addicted to the suit to stop using it when it accelerated your condition's progress, and now you just keep erasing layer by layer all the things you would rather not think about." Bruce sounded like he was at the end of his wits, and Steve resumed walking, going to the door and pushing it further open.

Harley started where he was sitting on a table, his body tense; clearly he sensed the tension in the air.

Bruce and Tony were standing face to face, ignoring everything else.

"They are my memories," Tony was saying. "If I wanted to wipe the whole slate clean, it would be my business and no one else's."

"I know for a fact that you would never say that if you were in your right mind."

"So I'm crazy now?"

"They've locked people away for less," Bruce snapped.

"Yeah? Maybe we'll get a nice, cozy, padded room together," Tony hissed, inching a bit closer, and Bruce was starting to look a little green.

Steve turned his attention back to Harley and nodded at the door. "Go. I'll deal with this."

"What if Dr. Banner… you know, Hulks out?" Harley asked.

"I'll deal with that, too, but it won't happen," Steve promised. "Bruce has it under control." Well, normally that would have been the case, but Tony's condition was taking a lot out of all of them and Steve knew he needed to find the brakes and hit them.

Harley nodded slowly and slid off the table, then left the lab and closed the door behind him.

Steve squared his shoulders – something he really didn't need to do anymore, now that he actually had shoulders to speak of, but some habits died hard. "Gentlemen," he said loudly. "How about we all take a breather?"

"Fuck off, Rogers," Tony said without even looking at him, eyes never leaving Bruce's.

"I'm going to ignore that," Steve stated dryly. "Bruce, I think you need a moment."

"I do," Bruce admitted and took a step back, then another.

"Are we making any progress?" Steve asked, to not let silence stretch for too long; that was never a good option when Tony was one of the occupants in a room, because he had a compulsive need to fill the void with something.

"None," Bruce confessed with a tired exhalation of air. "Would you like to take a shot at him? Maybe go a few rounds."

"I don't see how that would be helpful," Steve observed and looked at Tony. Before all this, they had still been an explosive combination. It wasn't as bad as before the Battle of New York, but Tony still liked to mouth off to him whenever he got the chance. Steve had tried not to give him so many opportunities, but right now he would rather take that than the strange comradeship Tony was trying to create between them – or rather, Tony's brain was, and whatever Extremis was doing to it. Steve would happily be his friend in the future, but only when Tony was being himself.

"Just get out," Tony suggested. He didn't sound as snappy as before, though, as if he were yet again making an effort to be nice to Steve.

"Why?" Steve asked, taking a step closer to Tony. "You're part of my team. Right now, though, you're a liability to all of us because we're not sure what you're going to do – or forget – next." Something like hurt flashed in Tony's eyes, immediately replaced by a golden burst. It spurred Steve to try a bit harder. "At the rate you're going, I'm not sure if you're a friend or an enemy. Who's to say you won't forget us – or whose side you're supposed to be on? How long before you forget you're Iron Man, and you let someone get their hands on your armor and technology and don't even care? Everything you've been and fought so hard to become will be extinguished to nothing."

"Kind of like you, if someone took away the serum," Tony murmured, yet he was having a hard time holding Steve's eyes with his own. The golden, burning tendrils were almost a constant on his eyeballs and continued to the corners of his eyes and across his temples, disappearing in his dark hair.

"At least I would remember what it was like, to be a real hero. You? You'll just keep on remembering some empty version of Tony Stark who is of no use to anyone." It was nasty and Steve had no idea if things would ever go so far, but it seemed to be working: the burning lines intensified on Tony's skin and his lips tightened.

"You have no idea who I am, or what my life is like," Tony finally snapped back, but it was a weak comeback from him, and Steve knew he had won this round. In the past, Tony would never have let it end here, but now he didn't seem to know what to do with himself.

"I think I have a better idea than you, right now," Steve informed him, then looked at Bruce, who nodded at him, and Steve left the lab. Hopefully he had pushed things in the right direction, because he had no idea what else he could do.

"Sir?"

"Not now, J.A.R.V.I.S." Tony had been locked away in his workshop for the last eight hours and he wasn't ready to emerge just yet.

"The other occupants of the Tower are concerned."

"Tell them I have food and water, and then tell them to get off my case," Tony grunted, attempting to slightly adjust the closing mechanism on the armor's left arm, but instead the entire section got jammed and Tony was ready to tear off the pieces and start all over again.

From a safe distance, the bots peered at him cautiously, and Tony gave them a look, challenging them for commentary.

"Sir, I believe their concern goes much further than your self-appointed confinement to your workshop."

"Gee, you think?" Tony snarled at the AI and frowned at the armor.

"I had a talk with Colonel Rhodes earlier."

"That's nice."

"He is truly afraid of how your condition will progress from here."

"Maybe it wouldn't progress any farther if they stopped bugging me about it!" Tony shouted and threw the precision tweezers across the room. The bots chirped loudly and hid further behind large pieces of machinery. Tony glowered at them because none of his teammates were here to bear the brunt of his mood.

"Sir…"

"J.A.R.V.I.S., I don't want to get into an argument about it with you."

"I understand, sir. However, it is my purpose to look after your wellbeing, to the best of my ability. This has gone on long enough. I should have acted after the incident with Miss Potts."

Tony knew the AI was referring to the rude awakening where he no longer remembered the woman he supposedly loved. "What are you going to do, seal me in the armor and tell me to be a good boy from now on?" Tony asked.

"If it would help, I might. However, it does not seem a likely solution to your problem."

"There is no 'problem'," Tony growled in frustration.

"Do you remember your main motivation for re-programming Extremis?"

"Other than getting a good night's sleep?" Tony rolled his eyes. "Do you want the list ordered by significance or alphabetically?"

Instead of answering, one of the screens beside him switched on and Tony found himself looking at his own image – only he looked like hell, wearing the 'I haven't slept in weeks and burned the house down last night' look he had sought to erase from existence.

"If something does go horribly wrong," the man on the screen said to the camera, "I want Pepper to know I love her. I'm doing this for you. For us."

The video froze as Tony's hand reached for the camera, and Tony blinked, mulling it over.

"You did all this for Miss Potts, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up. "Not just for yourself. If you cannot remember her… what is the point of all this?"

Tony chewed on the inside of his lower lip, feeling tension growing inside him. "Shit," he finally muttered. He knew he could dismiss it, easily. He had been in a bad place, and that that moment caught on film had been some kind of half-assed farewell if he died during the procedure. Tony didn't even remember saying that.

The nagging doubt was back, though, and Tony kept staring at the screen, as if it could provide him with the ultimate answer to all his questions.

"Play it again," Tony finally ordered J.A.R.V.I.S. "All of it."

"Yes, sir."

Tony watched himself – a haggard, broken version of the man he was now – spill forth his concerns and fears. His eyes were haunted the way Tony's weren't anymore. He spoke with a tremble he had no desire to feel.

"A trauma needs to heal, and if it cannot, things will just get worse. So, I'm blocking it. I deserve to be able to sleep at night; to go into the city I grew up in and be able to look up to the sky. I want to be able to not be afraid all the time," the Tony on the screen said, then swallowed, and his emotions clearly took over him as he stood up. The camera kept following him. "If something does go horribly wrong, I want Pepper to know I love her. I'm doing this for you. For us."

Tony closed his eyes.

Pepper…

He dug deep – so deep it felt like he was getting a brain bleed – and recalled a night, his terror at waking up, surrounded by flames that burned him but didn't really hurt him. He had looked for Pepper, afraid she was caught somewhere in the inferno, and the idea alone had almost thrown him into another panic attack.

Tony gasped and felt his skull burn from the inside out. The pain of it made him fall off his chair and onto the floor, and for a moment he could hear nothing but the rush of his own blood.

When he came to, Dummy and You were hovering nearby him and J.A.R.V.I.S. was calling out his name.

"Sir, Dr. Banner is here."

Tony blinked and looked up, finding Bruce pushing past the bots, looking worried.

"What happened?" the scientist asked, crouching down.

"I fucked up," Tony admitted, voice hoarse. The thread was slipping away from him, to a false calmness, and he wrestled himself up, using Dummy as a crutch. "J.A.R.V.I.S., play the video again."

Tony had summonsed them all to one of his laboratories. No one knew what it was about when they entered, for which Thor was glad: oftentimes he was the last to be informed of certain things, as if he were a halfwit not worthy of their trust.

As they entered, they found Tony seated on one of the tables. He looked worse than he had in a long time, and Bruce stood beside him, face tight but not from anger this time.

"Will you tell them, or shall I?" Bruce asked Tony as everyone stopped to await the news.

"There's a reboot sequence," Tony spoke up without further encouragement. He looked at them all, as if memorizing their faces. His eyes lingered on Lady Pepper, however, and on his friend Rhodey. "That's a simple word for a very complex programming insertion to the already complex code of Extremis in my system, but you don't need to know anything about that. I realize… Okay, I haven't realized a whole lot, because I'm physically unable to remember those things."

Pepper gasped a little and covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wide. Thor wished to offer her support, but knew better than to do so; Midgardian ways often forbade strangers, and even friends, from comforting one another, even in their time of need. Thor was still learning when it was acceptable to cross that line.

Tony looked uneasy, looking them all over again, then his eyes landed on Harley. "You're right, as much as I hate to admit it. You've all been telling me for weeks, and I've… elected to ignore your advice. I'm sorry. In case this doesn't work out, I've at least said that much, by way of apology.

"We don't need an apology as much as we need you to be yourself," Steve volunteered, and Thor nodded in agreement.

"Your mind must be healed, but your way of using science will never achieve that goal," Thor spoke up.

"Yeah, I get that," Tony agreed a bit irately. "So, all big speeches aside, I'm going to try and undo the programming I installed to block certain things from my mind."

"What do you mean, 'try'?" Rhodey asked. "Aren't you certain you can do it?"

"Oh, I can do it, for sure," Tony replied. "Whether I actually survive it is another matter entirely. You can't put your brain through that much stress on a daily basis. It could cause permanent damage, leave me a vegetable, or wipe my entire memory – what's left of it, anyway," he added belatedly.

"It's not worth the risk," Pepper said at once.

"Miss," Tony started, then caught himself and carefully said the next part: "Honey, I did this for you. For us. I never told you, obviously, but even I'm not stunted enough to think that losing the most important person in my life is an acceptable cost of not having so many nightmares."

Tears slid down Pepper's face and Rhodey finally did what Thor had wanted to and wrapped an arm around her in support.

"What are the odds?" Natasha asked.

"Pretty good, because it's me," Tony said. "But if it turns out I don't pull through, I guess I wanted to thank you for not letting me forget the important bits."

Thor was moved by this, as were the others, clearly.

"You'll still be an Avenger, after all this is over," Steve swore.

"Don't make promises that you cannot keep," Tony told him wryly and slid off the table. "J.A.R.V.I.S., prep the machines."

"Yes, sir," the phantom voice answered from all over the room at once and several computers came alive around them.

"You're doing this now?" Pepper asked, suddenly alarmed.

"No time like the present," Tony said, as if it were a joke, then wiped the cheer from his features. "If I do not do this now, there are no guarantees it will work later. Not as effectively. Also, I might chicken out."

"We are here to support you," Thor promised.

"Yeah, about that," Tony moved to look at Steve and Thor. "There is a small chance… A tiny, tiny chance…"

"Of what?" Steve asked impatiently. It was proof of his concern for the wellbeing of their shield-brother, and Thor fully joined him in it.

"Extremis may fight back," Bruce said when Tony remained quiet. "Tony only needs to feel afraid for a micro second and we may lose the opening to access Extremis' coding."

"What can we do to help?" Steve volunteered at once.

"I cannot be sedated, to be on the safe side," Tony explained. "The whole thing is painful, but if Extremis decides to fight back, I'm not sure the restraints will do it."

Thor knew that Tony was stronger now than he had been before. He nodded in understanding. "You need us to ensure you do not harm yourself, and that your machines can finish their work," he guessed.

"I'm not all that worried about me hurting myself, as much as, you know, going hot and blowing up the entire floor, but yeah, something like that," Tony said airily, as if he had no interest in actually thinking about it.

"We will have to clear the room and seal it, to be on the safe side," Bruce went on when Tony moved to the side, to work on one of the computers. "However, if things get too… hot… I cannot be trusted to keep my cool. Everyone else has to leave. However, I think Thor at least should be able to withstand whatever happens."

"I'll stay with you," Steve said, his tone brooking no disagreement.

Bruce started: "I'm not sure if –"

"Tony's my teammate. I believe I can choose for myself, knowing the risks," Steve remained adamant, and Thor understood how he felt.

"I'm touched, Cap," Tony spoke up from the side.

"If Extremis is as strong as you think it is, it might take more than just Thor to keep you still," Steve noted.

While Thor could disagree with that, he knew his strength could easily hurt Tony, and it might be better if Steve were there, to even the load. "We have a plan, then," Thor finalized.

Bruce nodded, accepting it, albeit with a shadow of concern. "Steve, go suit up; your uniform should be able to take most of the heat," he said. "The rest of you… we'll keep you up to date, as much as we can."

"Tony," Pepper said, stepping forward as the others began to move towards the door in uneasy silence.

Tony turned to face her, a torn look on his face; he still did not remember her, yet he was willing to risk his life for a memory that was not his at the moment. "It will be okay."

"And if it's not?" Pepper asked. "Then what?"

"One step at a time," Tony told her, and raised his hand as if to caress her face, then drew it back. "I'll see you on the other side."

Pepper nodded, slowly, then bit her lip and turned. Rhodey and Happy were waiting for her at the door and guided her out, not giving her a chance to turn back and change her mind.

Steve returned a short while later, suited up. He looked tense yet determined, like so often when they faced a battle.

"Calibrations have finished, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up. "Would you like to try the sedatives?"

"No, bypass them," Tony ordered and then moved to the table he had been sitting on earlier. He glanced at Bruce, who nodded, then looked at Steve and Thor. "Last chance to walk out of here, gentlemen."

"We're here to see this through," Steve promised.

Thor nodded his agreement.

Tony let out the breath he had been holding then opened his mouth: "Seal up the lab. Prepare for overheating."

"Yes, sir. Miss Potts told me to tell you she loves you. She is also planning on telling you that to your face once this is over."

Tony gave a rueful smile at the message. "Anyone else?"

"Colonel Rhodes is telling you that you're making the right choice. Agent Barton noted that you're being a big baby, and that you'll be just fine." Tony chuckled and lay down on the table. "Young Mr. Keener hopes you'll be okay," J.A.R.V.I.S. went on.

"Tell Harley that he gets one of the suits if I die," Tony promised.

"Do you have a preference for which one, sir?"

"No. And for the record, I'm not planning on dying today." Tony squared his jaw and tapped the table, from which metallic restraints slid out, snapping around his wrists and ankles. Another set of restraints appeared at his neck, closing firmly around it. "Nice and snug. Okay, fire it up. I can hardly wait –" His words were cut off with a cry of pain as the table shifted beneath his head and several needles appeared out of it, stabbing into his flesh in-between the restraints wrapped around his neck. "Fuck," he swore, and Bruce moved over fast, pressing his head down. A hasty look from the scientist drew Thor and Steve over to the table and they got on both sides of it, gingerly settling their hands on top of Tony's body.

"This is going better than expected," Steve dared to say as Tony merely shivered beneath their combined weights.

Tony's visible skin was wet with sweat and his eyes were screwed shut, jaw tight to prevent another sound.

"Accessing data," J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke up from above them. "Pain receptors have been triggered; adrenaline levels rising; bio-scan suggests amygdala is responding to fear and pain, sending information to hypothalamus."

"Just hold on, Tony," Bruce said softly, eyes trained on the nearest screen.

"Are we close?" Thor asked, not knowing how long this would take.

"No," Bruce replied tersely, then suddenly Tony's body jerked and the temperature rose several degrees around them as his body lit up with orange light. "Shit!" Bruce yelled and jumped back, lifting his hand off Tony's forehead. Thor didn't have time to see, but he assumed the other man had burned himself.

Steve quickly shifted, moving to press Tony's head down, his gloves protecting him from the heat.

Tony's eyes snapped open. The natural brown and black were completely overtaken by the molten colors and the restraints around his wrists screeched and bent slightly under the pull of his body. Thor pressed down harder on him, then caught both of Tony's arms as the man wrenched his wrists free of the restrains with a cry of pain and rage that wasn't entirely human.

Steve moved to hold down Tony's chest as well as his head, glancing briefly at Thor. "You got him?"

Thor just nodded.

Tony twisted from side to side, managing to free his legs: the material of his pants had burned away up to his knees, still smoking, the metal of the restraints melted and twisted. Thor put more weight into his hold, knowing they needed to keep his upper body as still as possible.

Heat kept rising from Tony's body and warnings began to appear on the screens.

"Can you cope with the temperature rise?" Bruce asked from the side, his injured hand wrapped in a cloth.

"For the time being," the AI responded.

That did not sound promising to Thor, and he looked down at Tony's face. His teammate's mouth was working as he gasped for air, eyes wide and unseeing. His legs kept kicking, to free himself, but Thor held him still, hoping he was not hurting him too much. Steve stood his ground with similar determination.

"Reboot sequence complete," J.A.R.V.I.S. let them know. "Extremis is activating. Shut-down in progress to prevent damage to the active systems."

"Should we let him go?" Steve asked.

Thor noted the needles had not yet withdrawn, although screens were going blank all around them, the ceiling lights flickering above them.

In response, Tony jolted again, almost throwing them both off, a scream cut off half-way as if someone had robbed the air from his lungs. The needles withdrew from his neck, just before the machinery jerked into stillness, as if broken. Thor felt the heat increase beneath his hands and he heard Steve's sharp intake of air; his gloves were smoking where they were pressed against Tony's skin. Tony's clothes were succumbing to the heat, burning off his body, and the table gave a dangerous whine beneath his continued struggles.

"Bruce?" Thor called out. "Is this supposed to happen?"

"The Extremis might be having difficulties obeying the new commands," Bruce guessed, voice alert. "Can you hold him?"

Thor looked at Steve, whose face was tight with pain he instinctively wanted to draw back from, yet forced himself to endure. "Steven, let go; I will hold him."

"I can do it," Steve replied.

"There is no reason to hurt yourself further," Thor reassured. "However, if you could remove the needles; I fear our friend may yet hurt himself on them." After all, the needles were long and sharp and had not completely sunken back into the damaged table.

Steve finally let go of Tony, moving to inspect the needles, then tore the mechanisms clear off the table. His shoulders were rigid with pain and Thor thought he caught the smell of burned flesh, but he had to focus on Tony, who was trying to vault himself off the table now that Steve's weight was off him.

Thor grappled to get a better hold of him. Not knowing what else to do, Thor pulled Tony firmly against his chest, one arm around his waist, the other around his shoulders, keeping him pinned. "It will be over soon," Thor told him.

Tony struggled and breathed hard and irregularly into his ear. The heat increased, yet Thor endured it – would have endured it even without the Asgardian armor he had chosen to wear today – and eventually Tony's fingers gripped at him, desperately, his mouth open in a soundless scream. With a last wave of fire it was all over: Tony's body cooled down and he sagged against Thor, still jerking slightly from time to time.

The table protested beneath their weight and Thor pulled back from it, taking Tony with him, and surveyed the area: the lab was a mix of burned, melted and smoking equipment. Steve had ripped off one desk and had propped it up to block some of the heat, to protect himself and Bruce. Both of them emerged, burns on their skins. Bruce looked a little green, but he was holding off a transformation into the Hulk.

"Tony?" Bruce called out.

Thor looked down at their teammate. Tony's legs were not completely holding him up and he was still clutching at Thor's upper arms, face pressed against his shoulder. "Are you well?" Thor joined Bruce's concern as the scientist moved over and peered at Tony.

In his arms, Tony coughed, then lifted his head, blinking blearily. It was amazing that through it all, considering the heat, his body hair had not suffered in the slightest. Truly man's technology sometime rivaled the magic known in Asgard. "Ouch," Tony finally said and moved back, almost falling to the floor as he released himself from Thor's embrace. Both Bruce and Thor reached for him, to soften his fall, guiding him to the floor.

Steve joined them, looking relieved. Tony looked up at him, eyes lingering on his hands for a moment before he looked around the lab with half-vacant eyes; he still seemed a little out of it. "Did it work?" Steve asked.

"I hope so," Bruce said and crouched down to be at Tony's eye-level. "How do you feel?"

"Like burned toast," Tony commented, looking at him, then down at himself. "Burned toast with no toppings. Pathetic."

Bruce smiled. "Welcome to my world."

"For some reason you look way better waking up naked in the midst of destruction. It's a good look on you."

"We'll get you something to wear," Steve promised. "Did it work?" he asked again.

Tony looked up at him again, blinking, then jumped a little as the lab door was forced open – forced, because it had partially melted from the fire. One of the Iron Man suits stepped aside and let the other Avengers and Tony's friends into the lab.

"Wow," Harley said, looking around, then spied a look at Tony. "That's…"

"You can just say 'wow' again and be done with it," Tony suggested, then looked up at Pepper, who had come in with the others, and his features froze.

For an instant Thor feared it had not worked. Perhaps Extremis had battled the change and won. Or could it be Tony's condition was worsened and they had simply not noticed that yet?

"Help me up," Tony croaked at Bruce, who offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. Tony was still shaky, but he ignored it; all he noticed, once he was up, was Pepper, and he stepped towards her. "I'm so sorry," he started, voice cracking, and Pepper rushed the remaining steps to him. Tony drew her into his arms, holding onto her tightly. "I'm so sorry, Pepper," he said into her hair, and she cried, clutching at his naked body with a desperation Thor had seen all too often. It was easy to tell Tony was crying, too, and Thor looked away, to give his shield-brother the privacy of this moment he deserved.

"Am I the only one who's noticed he's stark naked?" Clint observed from near the door, but he didn't sound offended. Relief shone on his face when Thor looked at him with disapproval for breaking the tender moment.

"Get him some clothes, then," Rhodey snapped, and Clint turned and did just that, returning with a robe by the time Tony drew back, gazing into Pepper's eyes. Pepper framed his face with her hands, tracing his cheeks, then leaned in to kiss him tenderly.

"I love you," Tony told her once they broke apart. "I'll try not to forget that again."

"You actually remember forgetting?" Happy asked from the doorway.

"Kind of," Tony admitted, accepting the robe from Clint and pulling it on awkwardly. Pepper reached over to smooth it properly into place and tied it shut with slightly shaking hands. "It's confusing, but I'm sure my genius brain will sort it out, eventually."

"So you remember everything now?" Harley asked, sounding as if he feared the answer a little bit.

Tony looked down at the boy, first critically, then dropping the act in favor of a fond expression and reached out, pulling the boy against him. "Yeah, pretty much."

Harley accepted the embrace for a bit, then pulled back, making a face. "I just saw you naked!" he protested.

"Join the rest of the world," Tony joked and ruffled his hair. Harley shoved his hand away but didn't seem to mind all that much.

"So, do the rest of us get hugs?" Rhodey asked jokingly, and perhaps Tony's brain was still adjusting to the reboot because he moved forward to hug his friend, tight. It seemed Rhodey had nothing against it, holding onto him for as long as Tony let him.

Thor smiled broadly. "We have gained a great victory today, my friends!" he declared. "Iron Man has returned!"

"He was never really away," Tony protested as he returned to Pepper's side, holding her with one arm.

"Shush," Pepper told him and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Tony protested no further.

"So, this is where Dr. Selvig set up the machine, while brainwashed by Loki, and opened the wormhole?" Harley mused, squinting up to the starry sky. Well, not that starry because of all the light pollution, but one could imagine.

Besides, Tony was kind of glad there weren't any stars to be seen; the open darkness of the sky was bad enough. "Yeah," he said, then poked at the kid. "You promised not to talk about that."

Harley grinned, not one bit sorry. "Yeah, well, I had to make sure… In case the reboot missed a spot."

Tony huffed and threw a couple chips into his mouth from the array of snacks they had brought up with them. This was as close to camping as it came, but Harley was content, looking up while stuffing his mouth with sweets.

They sat in silence for a bit. The sounds of life from below were a distant noise, echoing off buildings. It was calm, and Tony wasn't sure he liked it because it left him with too much time to remember the wormhole and the vast, foreign space on the other side of it – not to mention the fear of dying there, all alone, locked inside his suit.

At least he could remember it now… not that he would have been unhappy to lose that particular memory. Well, he had gone down that road and it hadn't gone so well, so he just had to cut his losses and keep fighting.

"I'm cold," Harley complained finally, clutching at the jacket he was wearing.

Tony nodded and they gathered their food and blanket, taking them back down. The other Avengers plus Happy, Pepper and Rhodey were in the main living room, sitting on couches and chairs, TV droning on in the background. They all looked up as Tony and Harley appeared, and the kid immediately threw himself down on a spot that looked roughly his size, ending upside down between Steve and Thor. The Asgardian laughed and picked Harley up without breaking a sweat, planting him back down on his butt.

"Should we watch a movie, now that you guys are back?" Pepper asked.

"Sure," Tony shrugged and placed their snacks on the table – several hands immediately grabbing for them – and then deposited himself between Pepper and Rhodey, extending his legs towards the armchair Bruce was sitting in, placing his feet in his lap. Bruce gave him a look, then pulled his shoes off, tossed them to the side and settled again, one hand resting on one of Tony's ankles.

Tony smiled at that, then shifted a little as Pepper burrowed a bit closer to his side; she had been craving closeness once Tony had fixed his memory issues, and he gave her all he could.

"Can I pick the movie?" Harley asked. "This is my last night here, after all."

"Certainly," Thor agreed, and looked around to check whether someone dared to challenge his answer. No one did.

Harley grinned and took the remote, browsing through the films available to them – of which there were many. "How about Lost in Space?" he asked, grinning devilishly at Tony.

"You know that movie is crap, right?"

"Language," Steve said from Harley's side and looked at the summary of the movie that appeared on the TV screen. "It looks like a fun movie."

"It's –"

"Tony, if you're squeamish about the title, I'm sure someone can hold your hand," Clint noted teasingly from where he had scooted down to lay his head in Natasha's lap.

"Whatever," Tony said and burrowed his nose in Pepper's sweet-smelling hair, caressing her arm. And, just in case as the film began rolling, Bruce kept a comforting hold on his ankles, anchoring Tony to the here and now.

During the film, Tony looked at the people gathered around him and supposed that they were all worth remembering – the good and the bad. Steve met his eyes, briefly, giving him a small smile, and Tony returned it after some consideration, deciding he could snark at him later, at a better time. For now, they were all a family, brought a little closer by Tony's failed attempt to purge himself of his demons.

It could have gone worse, he decided. A lot worse.

Pepper's hand caressed his stomach and Tony knew this was where he wanted to be, with these people, even with the memories he would have gladly gotten rid of. It was all part of a whole, and if you took something away, it just wasn't the same anymore. You just couldn't know that until you had tried it for yourself.

The End