Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel; I play in the sandbox and wallow in Tony feels.

A/N: New series, new lease on the fandom; this one's been brewing for a while, so bear with me folks; it's not gonna be an easy ride. But, I hope you'll enjoy it, and so, I give you...

Iron

I knew they'd find a way.

Knew it, like I know my reactor, my bots, my tech.

You know, you really don't expect shit like this to happen to you, but trust me, it does. And when it happens, all can you do is roll with the punches and hope for the best; I'm not that fucking optimistic. Kinda shitty, though, that it was mail fraud. I mean, c'mon, who the hell believes that crock of shit? A. I don't mail people. B. If I'm gonna go down for defrauding anyone, it'd probably be myself, since my net worth's twice Bill Gates'. Seriously, not even Cap's that gullible. But convict they did, and wonder of wonders, Ross brought out the big guns. Y'know, the war crimes, aiding and abetting foreign and domestic terrorists, unlawful vigilantism, yada yada yada...It was a cluster fuck.

They won the rights to my tech, the government did; I thought Pepper was gonna have an aneurysm, she was so pissed, but the joke's on them. The moment I knew they had the warrants (and what's sad was that they tweeted about it, so really, I didn't even have to work for info), Jarvis and I destroyed every single blueprint and file with my John Hancock anywhere near it. This screwed SI over a desk, but I made sure that the pensions were safe and secure, and really, trust funds are easy to set up for every member of the family if you're willing to let go of a little cash. And let's be honest, I have too much money to care whether I keep it or not; let my crews have their just reward for dealing with my bullshit.

But...

That meant everything.

Everything at SI.

Everything at the mansions.

Everything, including the Tower.

My suits.

My bots.

My AI.

My little, fucked up family.

So, Jarvis and I, we shut down the bots.

That hurt. Hurt like hell, and by that point, the other Avengers were long gone into the wind and the Tower abandoned, so me sobbing as Dummy's arm slumped down for the final time, and carefully taken apart and crated. I even left his favorite stuffed Iron Man in the box with him...We packed up the whole workshop, nice and neat, though fuck cleaning, I refused, and toasted our tremendous losses. And then, my most powerful creation, my second oldest friend, destroyed himself, bit by bit, leaving me with only a simple, almost wistful "Good night, sir."

I'm gonna miss my boys.

Tony stared down the growing crowd just out side the tall, smoky glass doors, one of Logan's forgotten cigars between his teeth and Scotch and schwarma in both hands. He'd kicked everyone out around two weeks ago; right when the verdict had been passed down and he'd been under house arrest. "Get the hell out of here and don't tell anyone where you're going. Just run." The agents hadn't been any trouble, just like he'd expected; Clint was gone in the hour, Natasha even before that. Coulson had disappeared before night fell, and Bruce, Happy, and Pepper had hopped a flight to nowhere by the next morning. But then again, they'd all seen behind the news footage and the press conferences; they knew Tony had no way of protecting them once he was taken.

And these days, that was a protection they direly needed. Shit was going down, and without his money and know-how to finance and finangle through the legal maneuvers, especially with the three new bills about mutants and superpowers now before Congress...well, they were up a creek without a paddle, the boat was leaking, and the water had gaters and leeches. So, he pulled out his cash stash and sent them running, knowing that they could protect themselves better when they were far away from him.

Steve and Thor, however, didn't quite see things his way. Tony had finally appealed to Jane after a week of bitter fighting, begging the astrophysicist to drag him to Asgard...And that just left Steve. It broke his heart to do it, but he forcibly evicted the super soldier, buying him an apartment out in the boroughs and moving his things while Steve was trying to help out at SHIELD. And he locked down the Tower from that moment on. He dissolved his shares of the company to the public and set up everything for SI to take over; made sure that those who would lose their jobs had offers elsewhere.

Because no one else was paying for his fuck-ups ever again.

Not after Malibu. AIM. Killian. Never, ever again.

So here he sat in his darkened Tower, and Tony grinned at the man snarling opposite him, lighting the cigar with a flourish. The dragon might have lost his hoard and his freedom, but the fangs remained.

"Break it down." General Thaddeus Ross glared down the seated figure inside those darkened doors and bristled, teeth grinding as Stark flipped him off cheerfully and knocked back a finger of liquid. Probably Scotch. "That little shit..."

"You'd have better luck, General, if you'd simply..."

"Shut it, Hammer." Justin Hammer only smirked and leaned a little farther out of the requisitioned SWAT van, the dark jumpsuit not entirely hiding the sturdy cuffs that secured his wrists and ankles together. He was paler, thinner, and a little unkempt; a shaggy blond beard covered his chin and upper lip and he sported slightly crooked wire-rimmed glasses, one of the lenses cracked and catching the light from the sunset outside.

"Seriously, I think."

"I did not bring you here to think!" Ross grated out, and Hammer leaned back, distaste twisting his handsome, ragged features into a mask.

"No, you brought me out here as a display of power, a coup you so successfully orchestrated. And I've been telling you all along, Tony won't be letting anyone get their greasy claws into his hoard."

"You don't know that; he always leaves a back door, if only for himself." Hammer shrugged tiredly and tipped his head back against the cool steel wall, closing his eyes to the growing darkness and bright lights outside. To his right and behind, the sound of the battering ram against the bullet proof glass made a hollow, bell-like sound; the death knoll to Tony Stark's greatest legacy. Once, twice, a third time...he winced at the crash that followed, for all that it was terrifyingly quiet, the press held back far enough that they weren't even a murmur. Not twenty minutes later, he had a fellow passenger, black eye swelling and the scent of high-end liquor filling the vehicle...and Justin started to laugh, low and soft and immeasurably broken. The son of a bitch still had his damn pita.

"Welcome to Hell, Tony." The grin he got in return was just as broken as his own, and Tony offered him half of the leftover wrap, crisp turkey and spices wafting over and reminding Justin that he hadn't eaten since the morning.

"Been there, got the interrogation T-shirt, fucking hated it. Let's not do it again." And what could he say to that? He took the offering instead.

Watching from afar was not something Steve Rogers liked to do; that was Hawkeye's purview. But Clint was long gone and Steve was alone, so he adjusted the binoculars and hunkered down a little more in the empty floor just across from the Tower. He had an excellent view of the front of the building from here, and since Ross had snipers nested all over, he'd taken over Clint's hideaway after the Chitauri attack and been keeping an eye out ever since...well.

But right now? Tony Stark was being arrested. And in spite of how absolutely livid he'd been to find himself tossed to the curb, completely locked out of the Tower, he'd been worried sick, too. Because Tony was his best friend, his lifeline...his everything. It was Tony who, instead of letting him flounder about in the new century alone, all but forgotten, had taken him to Brooklyn, to the Statue of Liberty, to every part of New York he'd missed in seventy long years. He'd explained tablets and Broadway and Chinese food with the same joy and excitement as he did with Jarvis and the suits and Dummy.

He'd shown him Ground Zero for the Twin Towers, two parts of the skyline Steve had never seen but had read about, shown him the videos of the planes crashing into each one...and the dual collapses. The sorrow and the pain and the horror...Tony had stayed steadfast through it all.

"It was a day that no one will forget. Everyone in New York knew someone who was affected, or lost someone. Most of America knew at least someone in the collapse. But we persevered, we endured, and we came back together. And now, Steve...now, we know how to fight back. Tooth and nail..." He'd taken him down to Arlington and Gettysburg, places Steve longed to visit but had never had the money or the health before, and they'd both paid their respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier...and that was the day Steve knew that Tony was more than what the press painted him. More than what the world saw.

Because Steve saw the man who'd made him a home with robots that didn't do their work and pizza and poker games, with movies and music and laughter and grease and maybe a little bit of fire. Steve saw the guy that liked to wander barefoot and black with engine oil, mainlining coffee and arguing with his own artificial intelligence as to who starred in what movie and who was married to who, not the suave, charming genius in a suit and sunglasses.

That alone might have been why he'd taken the eviction so badly, and he pushed aside any idea otherwise...but now he knew the truth Tony had kept from him, knew the harshness was only fear. Not of him, but for him...He just wanted to grab the idiot and hug him, then flee to another country until everything died down. But...Tony was standing tall. Taller than Steve could right now, taking the blows and the past that was destroying him with a ferocity that left Steve breathless and hurting.

War crimes, vigilantism...those he could see, he could understand and he hated that, that he could justify those charges with the man he knew so well now...but mail fraud? He'd had to look it up, he was so confused, and had scoffed, wondering just how much of an idiot this Ross fella was. Evidently quite a bit of one, judging from the last rant he'd heard from Bruce, but that played second fiddle to the others. And Steve's eyes shifted from the General to the men he was gesturing to...and he felt his gorge rise as they began to batter down those great glass doors.

They'd been his favorite part of the Tower; he could watch the world from inside them and be safe, and get comfortable with so many people...His head fell as the first slam echoed up between the buildings, a hollow sound that filled his whole body with dread and he fell a little to his hands and knees, shuddering. The second came a breath, a pause after the first, and Steve's fingers dug into the short pile, concentrating on the rough texture of the carpet over the roar of memories filling his head...icecoldredskulltesseractcoldicegoingdowniceicecold ohgodtonygodno...

"No..." The third blow came and Steve's head snapped up, fumbling with the lenses against the burning cloudiness in his vision, tears streaming down his cheeks. Smoky gray shards rained down and blurred the scene even more, but Steve swallowed the knot in his throat, almost, almost smiling when Tony came out cuffed, but holding his favorite turkey pita. He's okay...The relief was almost enough to floor him again, and Steve drew a shaky breath.

"Tony..." His whisper was hoarse, pained, and he watched as the soldiers poured into the only real home he'd ever known, tearing it apart from the inside out, and nearly missed Tony being driven away...but super soldier vision caught the plate, and he tore apart his temporary camp and stashed most of his gear, taking only a pistol under his arm and his motorcycle keys, ghosting out once he'd cleaned up his face and composed himself. He hopped on his bike, pulled on the dark helmet and black jacket, and vanished into the crowd, nothing more than a number now.

He'd figure out where they were taking Tony. What they were going to do to him. And when he did...

No mere man was going to be able to stop him.

A/N: Also, Steve feels. R&R makes a Kitsune happy, and makes the writing go a whole heck of a lot easier! Thanks for reading!