Chapter Four: Reeling In The Years

S.H.I.E.L.D & Masked Operative Rehabilitation Complex (MORC), San Ysidro, CA, 1987

I: The Man in the High Castle.

It had been seven years since The Man in the High Castle was removed, forcibly, by S.H.I.E.L.D agents from the bewitched squalor and institutionalized madness of his penthouse suite at the top of the Las Vegas casino he owned, after the last shreds of his fragile sanity disappeared.

He was a very old man by then, nothing more, really, than a bag of raw nerves and old bones, looking at 75 as if he was 25 years older.

But, he was a very important man, a man whom the government who worked behind the government could not afford to lose. That is why Nick Fury sent a team in to retrieve the gaunt old skeleton, and bring him to S.H.I.E.L.D's state-of-the-art facility.

For seven long years every doctor and specialist and psychiatrist and nutritionist that money could buy had been had at work on the project of restoring the old bag of bones to his place as the Man in the High Castle.

They cut his hair and his fingernails, and he was infused with Infinity Formula and wonder drugs.

Occupational therapists and physical therapists were called in by the metric ton to convince the Man to do something besides get out of bed in the morning, park himself in front of the television in his bathrobe and sit in front of it all day, pausing only to ring for nurses and attendants to bring him his meals.

Psychiatrists and psychologists came to him in all manners of theories and approaches, and he paid no attention to them.

It was the same thing, for years, and then, one afternoon in 1985, the Man turned off his television set and went into his bedroom, in which there had hung, waiting for him for years, ten identical pairs of khaki pants, ten identical white button-down shirts, ten sportcoats in various shades of khaki, brown and beige, his fedora, ten pairs of white, unworn Keds, two ties, one blue and one red, and one sportcoat in beige with brown lapels and accents.

He had specified, in a lucid moment three months after he was brought to the M.O.R.C that he wanted the aforementioned, and that only his hat and the one sportcoat should be brought from Las Vegas, everything else was to be new, and come from JC Penneys.

After looking into the closet, he rang for his nurse.

"Nurse, how am I supposed to get dressed if I don't have any underwear? Now, I'm going to need ten pairs of boxer shorts, and ten undershirts. From JCPenney's. No socks. I hate socks, they make my feet sweat, that's why I wear gym shoes. After I can get dressed, send that doctor in here that was talking to me about behavioral therapy. I might go for that. The rest of it sounds like a whole lot of bullshit, pardon my French."

When the package arrived, The Man was on the phone.

"I think it was senility, Ron…yeah, I know I'm not much older than you are, but you didn't scramble your brains the way I scrambled mine…some kind of vitamin, I'm not sure…no, I think I ought to stay here for a little while and sort out some of my trouble, I just wanted to call and let you know I've got my mind back, so you can send somebody along to get me up to date on what's been happening. How about Eddie…what happened to him…I'm sorry, Dutch, I'm still a little deaf, I thought you said a giant squid…Jesus Christ! Well of course he's not really dead, weren't you briefed on anything…well, leave it to Dick to just smile and leave you with a Jesus Christly mess on your hands. I'll look into it for you. Don't you worry, Dutch, we'll get this country straightened out. Tell you what, you come up with some pretext to come out to the coast, and come here, to the hospital, and we'll talk…it's good to hear from you, too, I'll see you soon…Bye, now."

Nick Fury came with the package, himself.

"Jesus Christ, Nick, how the hell did Dutch Reagan get to be President? Where the hell do you have Eddie stashed, and what's all this bullshit about a god damn giant squid?"

"Well, Howard…"

"Never mind that shit! I guess I'll talk to one of those behavioral shrinks, because I'm not taking any of this god damn medicine, other than that Formula, because it looks like without me, this country's going down the tubes!"

"It is. That's why I invested all this time and money in your restoration. Now, about Eddie. Just what was it you shot him up with in that basement in Brooklyn in 1944…"


After a year of intensive therapy, Howard's doctors thought he was about ready to return to Las Vegas, and to his regular irregular life, but Howard was dragging his feet.

What he needed was a reason.

Howard liked everything to be just so, and when it wasn't, he noticed.

In the morning, the girl who brought his breakfast looked like she was going to cry.

He took a walk on the grounds and ran into Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne visiting the Todd kid, and neither one of them would look him in the eye.

Not to mention, right after Howard left his psychologist's office, he saw Flynn sitting out on one of the balconies and he looked like he hadn't shaved, showered, or slept for two days.

He didn't ask anybody, because he figured they'd give him the run around, but after lunch, he followed his former nurse to the hospital wing.

After she and two doctors left room 386, Howard went in.

A long, awkward moment of silence passed between the tall, lanky man leaning on the walking stick and the man lying in the bed.

"Well, that's settled, at least. You still look like your mother, but you look like me, too. I guess I owe you an explanation."

"Nothing's settled. You and Flynn are about the same height and build and your hair's the same color. An explanation for what, Howard? I never believed you were dead. I figured you went crazy and they had you locked away, somewhere."

Howard pulled a chair up to his son's bedside.

"Yeah, well, that I did."

"Everybody heard the rumors. Howard Stark's a crazy old man, living in seclusion. He never cuts his hair or trims his nails or puts on pants, and he watches TV all day long, the same shows, over and over again, and he pisses in Mason jars and saves them."

"Milk bottles."

"Whatever. But, in his lucid moments, he's still running the world."

"Well, I stopped having lucid moments in 1980. Goddamn, I've been here for seven years. I didn't make any real progress except for the last two. But, you look like Hell, Tony! All these wires and tubes and machines! You're only, Jesus, 22 years old! What, do you need a kidney, or something? We'll get the damn blood test. Hell, I don't care if it say's Flynn's your father, I'm still your old man. You can have my goddamn kidney. Hell, if he gives you one of his, the son of a bitch would probably grow back."

"I don't need a kidney. I OD'd, or something."

"You did what? Drugs? You're on drugs! Oh my God! Where the hell is that SOB, Flynn? I'll knock his block off!"

"Howard, please. I never got high with my stepfather, and he never gave me any drugs. It's no big deal, really."

Howard looked at the chart.

"Jesus Holy Christ! You had a heart attack! You're 22 and you had a heart attack!"

"Yeah. Speedball."

"A what?"

"Coke."

"Cocaine! Jesus Christ, Tony, how could you be so goddamn dumb! You didn't turn out to be a drunk, like your poor mother, did you?"

"Not everybody can be like you and drink milk."

"I had no idea, Tony. I really didn't. People must have been lying to me, all these years. Or at least only giving me a selective version of the truth. I know you graduated from MIT when you were 17, and took over Stark International at 18, and graduated from Columbia with an M.S, this year. Turned the whole damn company around so that in 4 years you've almost become a billionaire in your own right. Hell, I even read about you and Marvel Girl in the tabloids. You and a whole bunch of starlets and Eurotrash debutantes and heiresss, in the tabloids. Where did you find the time to become a cokehead and a boozehound?"

"I don't sleep much."

"Yeah. I'll bet. Well, son, this is what we're gonna do. As soon as you can get out of this bed, we're going back to Las Vegas. And you're going to get your lazy, skinny, flabby ass into shape. If you're gonna do this booze and dope roundelay, you're going to have to get a lot stronger! How do you think, besides being a goddamn mutie, that Flynn could keep it up…there you are, Flynn! I was just talking about you. Listen, we need to get this kid into shape! Look at him!"

"I agree with you, Howard. You've had far too soft of a life, Tony. I mean, one measly little bump of coke over the line, and your heart nearly gives out? You're going to have to see how the other half lives."

"When we get back to Vegas, I'll hire the best goddamn trainer than money can buy. Guys who train fighters. Nutritionists. Dieticians."

"Get him to a gym. Every day. Tennis lessons…"

"…marathons. Karate. All that shit. Then, when he's fit as a fiddle, you can take him to sea for a year or two. Show him the world. The hard way."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Do I have any say in this?" Tony piped in.

"Hell no! You've had your say, and look what you did to yourself! Me and Flynn, we're gonna make a man of you, the kind of man who can give Steve Rogers and Eddie Blake and Superman a run for his money."

"But what about the company?"

"I'll worry about our company, Tony. You worry about you. Shit, I need to get back to Vegas. Yesterday. I need to get things ready. Flynn, can you hold down the fort here?"

"Certainly."

Howard got to his feet.

"Don't worry, Tony. I've got everything under control."

"Whenever you talk like that, Howard, it worried me."

"When the hell are you going to stop calling me by my first name? I'm your father, goddamn it!"

"When that's' been proven."

"Aw, Hell!"

Howard left the room, looking distracted.

Tony sat up in bed.

"Does he know his buddy Eddie Blake is dead?"

"Eddie's not dead."

"Yes, he is. He got thrown out of a window, and his head went up into his stomach."

Flynn shrugged.

"Howard got him straightened out."

"How? Wait. I know. If you tell me, someone has to kill me with a shrimp fork. You're not really serious about this whole, Tony Stark, man of iron, thing, are you, Flynn?"

"Completely."

Tony looked thoughtful.

"What the hell? I've tried everything else." He decided.

Greenwich Village, New York City, 2000

I: Tony

"…that's fine with me, Sasha. I can understand you wanting to make your own way in the world. Just don't go to work for any of my competitors. And try not to move to the East Village. No matter what they call it, or how much the rents are, it's still the Bowery."

Natasha reached around Tony, and turned off his laptop.

"You're not listening to me, Tony. I am not child, anymore. Ever since I come to the States, I rely on you for everything. Job, car, apartment, bills, school, everything. I'm 23 years old and I have an MS but I have never had a bill in my name, I've never looked for an apartment, I've never really lived on my own. I get offer from S.H.I.E.L.D., to be an agent. I try just working in private sector, but I miss the kind of work I used to do in Russia, when I lived with Vanya. It was criminal, then, but I made a lot of money and I liked the work. What I'm saying, Tony, is, to have my own life, I need to make my own life. Away from you. I still love you. Nothing but my death will change that. I know it may sound cruel. But I have to do this."

Tony's heart dropped into his feet.

He felt a burning in his chest, and then he felt dizzy, and faint.

A brilliant blue light flashed before his eyes and he thought he was dying, until he realized that was just the arc reactor in his chest, flashing.

Just?

And then it was dark, very dark, and all of the sudden he felt terribly cold.

"Sasha, what are you saying? Jesus, what the fuck are you telling me? I don't care if you become a spook for S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't care if you quit your job and move out of your apartment and give me back the car? What interest would I have in stopping you from having your own life? I don't care if your idea of a career choice is to assassinate the President of some small Central American country with an olive fork! Do what you want. When you want. With who you want. Hell, you can get the Superhero Yellow Pages from my desk drawer and fuck everybody in it! Twice! But, for God's sake, Sasha, you can't leave me! I love you! My mother left me, my father left me, you can't go! I'll die without you. I will! I'll die!"

Tony wasn't sure at what point in time he had gotten on his knees on the ground, in front of her, but Sasha had this horrified look on her face.

"Don't beg, Tony. Please."

"What, you want me to be reasonable about losing the only woman I've ever loved? I'm not going to make this easy for you! I can't!"

Tony jumped to his feet, and ran out of the room.

He came back, bare-chested, with a screwdriver in his hand, and handed it to her.

"Before you go, just pry the arc reactor out of my chest, and smash it. I haven't got a spare, but I want you to. Because you are literally murdering me. Don't shut me out of your life, Sasha. Even if you only come to see me once a week, hell, a little is enough! But you can't just walk out on me! Jesus, you say you love me! Do I mean that little to you? Can't you understand what you're doing to me?"

Tony realized, however, that she didn't.

Not at 23.

"Tony, you're scaring me."

"I know I am. I'm sorry. I can't help it. If you have to go, do it. Just go. Don't say anything else. Don't call me, and don't write to me and don't send me chatty e-mails like we can be good friends. We can't. It would tear out my heart. You don't understand, do you?"

"No."

"You will. Someday. Just go, Sasha. And don't come back, unless you mean it. But, if you get into any trouble, in any way, anywhere in the world? I don't care who you work for or what you've done or how bad or hopeless it seems. Call me. Before you hang up the phone, I'll be there. No questions asked."

Now she was crying.

That's alright, he was crying, too.

"Tony, this isn't what I wanted."

"Then don't do this."

"I have to."

"Then go."

II: Jean

Dr. Jean Grey was in her office, correcting papers.

She had a large backlog of papers to correct, so when her husband burst in without knocking, she was annoyed.

"What is it, Scott? Is the building burning down? Are there Sentinals on the lawn? Because I goddamn well told you…"

"Jean, your friend Tony Stark is here. And there's really something wrong with him. For one thing, he's drunk and hysterical, and when I say hysterical, I mean he's in tears. But he's very pale, and he's sweating bullets and he's completely incoherent. All I can make out is 'She left me'. I think you'd better do something."

"How bad is it, Jean?"

"He had another heart attack. If it wasn't for the arc reactor, he'd be dead."

"A heart attack? But he's sober, well, sober for Tony."

"I'm telling you, Steve, that girl leaving him literally broke Tony's heart. And his mind. He's had a complete mental and physical breakdown."

"Oh my God. What are we going to do?"

"I don't know. I'm not that kind of doctor. It's a good thing that Charles is. Tony's going to stay here, for awhile, and Charles is going to treat him, and I am going to take care of him, and reassure him that I, for one, will never leave him. Ever."

Las Vegas, 2000

III: Fathers and Son

"It's nice of you to let me stay here, Howard. Dad, I mean."

So you're satisfied you're my son because you lost your mind? Don't let Flynn kid you. He's stark raving loony. I know how you feel, Tony. It took me twenty years to get over your mother's death. At least the girl isn't dead. Now, you might think the old man is crazy, but even though I may not look it, I am an old man. I'll be 90, next year. And one thing I know for damn sure is that there's nobody, no matter how smart they are, who knows shit about anything when they're 23. You didn't. I didn't. But when you're in your 20's, Christ, you think you know everything. Now that girl of yours, your Sasha, a few years are going to go by, maybe even five or seven or ten, and she's going to begin to understand what it was she had with you, and what it is she lost. Love doesn't just evaporate into thin air. Look at me, and Katie. You know when she left me? 1938. Do you think I thought about that for a minute, earlier this year, when I heard that she was sick and probably on her way to a long, slow, painful death? I didn't."

"No, Dad, you didn't. You flew onto the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, unauthorized, stormed Nick Fury's office and put a gun to your head."

"You're goddamn right I did! I pulled the hammer back and I told Nick Fury that if Kate Hepburn was dead, I didn't want to live, either, and therefore, if the Colonel didn't release a little more Infinity Formula for "Katie", I was going to blow my brains out all over his desk. He believed me, too. But when people think you're crazy, you can get put the damndest things over on them."

"Howard, you are crazy."

"You're goddamn right I am. That's what Katie said. She said, 'Howard, you're out of your mind. You're 89, and I'm 93. We've lived our lives, without each other, and we've no right to anything more. But we're both a couple of selfish bastards, so I suggest we go right ahead and take it'. So far, things are working out pretty well. What I'm saying, Tony, is don't throw your life away. You and Sasha will get your second chance. Where there's life, there's hope."

"I don't feel very hopeful, Howard."

"That's because you're young and melodramatic. Hell, you aren't even forty, yet. And this is only the first time you've ever lost your mind. Don't worry, son. You'll get the hang of it. By the time you're 50, why, you'll be able to lose your mind and get over it in less than a month. Now, I'm going to drive over to McDonalds and then go to the Super Target, and buy some more Germ X, and pick up some things. And you are going to put some clothes on and come with me."

"I can't."

"Sure you can! There's nothing to really be scared of out there. Just do what I do. Wash your hands and say to yourself, well, I'm a nut, and it can't be helped. I think I'll go have an ice cream, and try not to think about it. We're leaving in ten minutes. Make that fifteen. If I don't clean that spot off of that window, I'll be up all night thinking about it."

Los Angeles, California, 2000

"Tony, I know why you don't want me to go with you."

"It's not what you think, Flynn. I'm not sailing off to meet my doom."

"I know a man who's going gently into that good night when I see him. I tried all that, you know. Before you were born. You know what I got for my troubles? A premature end to my movie career, and my life as I knew it, a drug habit, and ten years in and out of the MORC and the worst assignments possible from Nick Fury as my punishment for being a very bad boy. I missed half the lives of my children, and I almost lost your stepbrother, permanently. It wasn't until Sean very nearly died that I really looked at the shambles of my life and I said, see here Flynn, or Blood, or whatever your name is, what the hell are you doing? The only reason I didn't die is the good old X-Factor. But, the jury is still out on which of us, me or Howard, is actually your Dad. If it is Howard, you haven't got the X-factor to fall back on. And you've already had two heart attacks, and you're only 36."

"I appreciate what you're telling me, Flynn. And what Howard has been telling me, too. I've tried to listen. I just can't. I have do this. If I don't, I'll just put a gun in my mouth and blow my head off. At least, this way, I have a chance to survive."

"If you get into any real trouble…"

"You'll be the first to know, Flynn."

Letter from Tony Stark to Jim "Logan" Howlett, dated May 7, 2000.

Dear Logan,

I kept wanting to tell you this, earlier, when I was at the X-Institute, but I couldn't tell you to your face.

It would have given both of us too much pain.

My friend, you are crusin' for a brusin'.

And so is your brother.

There is a special kind of hell a 17 year old girl can make for a man who's in love with her.

All of the sudden, it's daylight, and springtime, even though it's been winter and ten minutes past midnight for your whole life, as far back as you can remember.

You're a new man, and you want to be a better man than you ever were before, and you're just so in love and everything is so wonderful, but do you know what you've forgotten, Big Daddy?

The girl is seventeen.

That little red thing on the turkey hasn't popped out, yet.

It's not too soon after 17 that 21 comes, and after 21, comes those itchy feets you had when you were 21.

And she won't mean to hurt you, when she tells you about how she has to go and live her own life.

She'll be crying, and she'll feel terrible about it, and she really will miss Big Daddy when she goes, but make no mistake, she's going to go, and she'll have a wonderful life and always love you and think of you fondly.

And you and Victor Creed will be tearing each other's faces off trying to get your heads in the oven, first, to suck on the gas pipe.

Marie is a lovely girl, and I'm sure she's a good girl.

So was Sasha.

You don't know how this feels, Logan, and you, of all people, who has suffered so much, you don't want to.

Remember the girl who didn't leave when she turned 21?

The one who didn't leave me, either?

Okay, maybe Jean is married, and we both only get one day out of a week with her, and every once in awahile, she ups and dies for a bit, but has she ever left us?

No.

Will she ever leave us?

No.

I may be wrong about Marie, and I hope I am.

But just in case I'm not, listen to me, Logan.

Eat crow. Crawl on your hands and knees. Cry and scream and grovel and slither across her office floor on your belly, like a snake and kiss her shoes, if you have to, but get your Wednesdays with Jean back and never ever put Marie ahead of her.

Jean's a good woman. She won't let you down. And she won't say she told you so.

I wish I loved Jean the way you did, I wish I'd had some other women in my life that I have loved, but I don't, and I never have, so I'm doomed.

Remember my words, Logan, because the next time you see me, I'll be a jumbled mass of bleached bones, identifiable only by the rotting piece of metal screwed into the sternum.

There's a reason why they have laws against fooling around with young girls, but they should raise the age of consent to 25, because what us old farts are doing is eating the poison candy.

It's lethal.

If you're not 100% hooked on Marie, say goodbye.

Don't walk away, Logan, run, even if you have to chew off your own fucking leg.

And if you can't, hold onto Jean like she's a lifeboat and you're on the Titanic.

Otherwise, mutant, schmutant, someday they'll find your adamantium bones rusty and jumbled, washed up on some distant shore, just like mine.

Tell Jean I said I'm sorry.

It's not that she wasn't enough.

It's not her, it's me.

If you ever seen Sasha again, tell her I love her.

After a decent time has passed, tell Pepper I'm dead, and let her know that my will is in the Frye boot box in the closet of my workshop at my house in Malibu.

See you in Hell,

Tony

Las Vegas, 2002

I: The Man In The High Castle

The Man In The High Castle looked out the car door window, and watched Vegas flowing by him.

His telephone began to ring, and he reached into his inside jacket pocket for it.

"What?"

"Say, 'Hello', not 'What'. Are you going to be alright?"

"Who me? Hell, Katie. I'll be flying. I'll be fine."

"I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about what happens when you're on the ground. Call me when you get to Mexico. In one piece, or otherwise."

"What?"

"Turn up the volume!"

"What?"

"The volume! It's on the right hand side of the phone!"

"I can't hear you, Katie. This goddamn thing is too quiet. Call those boys in Engineering. Remind them it took me two days to design a new phone and it's been a month and I have no prototype yet. By the time I come back, I'd better have a goddamn prototype, or people are going to lose their gravy goddamn jobs! I'll call you when I get to Mexico. I'm hanging up now. I'll call you back from a land line."

He put his phone back in his pocket with a grimace of disgust.

"Strange world." The Man said.

He put his long arm around the big, red Target shopping bag with the white target on it, with a trace of anxiety, and shifted his tall, rangy body around, uncomfortably.

The Man in the High Castle had left his keep, and he was leaving his fiefdom, and not for the familiar territory of Los Angeles, either.

He was taking a rare journey into the unknown, and had the need to talk to someone.

Even if it was just the guy from the car service.

"What was that, Mr. Castle, sir?" asked the driver from the car service.

"I said it's a strange world. It used to be you had to sell people something for their money. Even if it was something stupid. It still had to be something. Not now. Take this whole wired society, this whole personal computer phenomenon. People regularly pay more to get the same thing they already have. Or less. I mean, in 1985, you sold some dumb kid a Commodore 64. So he could play Oregon Trail. Then, in 1991, you sold him an IBM, with Windows whatever on it, so he could write his high school papers. And talk to his dopey friends on the Internet. Over the next ten years he updated his desktop, a couple of times. In 2000 or so, you sold him a laptop. Which did the same thing, only now he could do it, wherever, and he was in college or graduate school. Then you sold him a smaller laptop this year, and in 2004, they're going to start selling min-computers. And what's he looking for, now, on the Internet? Someplace he can download Oregon Trail."

The driver laughed.

"Man, I never thought of it like that."

"Well, you're not old enough to. That's a blessing, and a curse."

The Man in the High Castle was a more than a secret.

He was a whisper in a dark hallway, a fleeting thought, a shadowy notion that was better left unexamined.

He was whispered about by many, and known only to a few, but, from far behind the scenes his hand was still tight on the reins of power.

However, even Achilles had his heel.

There was a time when he couldn't have done what he was doing, today.

Ten years of that time, in fact.

Maybe more.

But, 20 years ago, he had made his first forays back into the world, after a decade of hospitals, surgeries, psychiatrists, therapy, medications, and Infinity Formula, and he had done it for the same reason he was leaving the comfort of his Las Vegas fiefdom, today.

To save his son.

Grasping his walking stick, he thought about the window of his penthouse apartment.

It was a huge window, disguised on the outside façade of the building as a series of garish mirrors, but it was a window, nonetheless.

The window from which the Man In The High Castle looked down on his world.

Because much of it was his; he had a hand in creating it, from sea to shining sea, and he still had a hand in shaping it.

Secretly.

From behind the scenes, from this penthouse fortress high above Sin City.

He was more mobile than he used to be, but still, he didn't like to leave.

"You have any kids, Driver?"

"Two boys. One's ten. The other's eight."

"Enjoy them when they're that age. Because after that? Nothing but trouble. Take my son. My only son. He's 37 years old. Well, he's had quite a life. He's made a great deal of money, and he's a big man in his field. He graduated college when he was 15. MIT. Graduate school at Columbia University when he was 20, and that's with taking time off, in-between. But the boy's a mess. He's been an alcoholic all his life, since he was just a little older than your boys are, and he's had a drug problem since his early teens. Been to rehab more than 10 times since 1987. And that's just for dope. He's still a drunk. And then, wouldn't you know, when he turned 30, he falls in love with a girl of 17. I mean, the boy must have had a thousand women if he had one and he waits until he's a grown man to fall in love with a child. Three guesses what happened when she grew up to be a woman?"

"She dumped him, flat?"

"You got it in one. That was two years ago. He went off on a trip about 18 months ago, and nobody's heard of him, since. Now, I'm an important man of business, here, you know. And in LA?"

"I know, Mr. Castle, sir. RKO is the studio that Marvel Studios is with, right?"

"That's right. I'm the guy who produced all the superhero movies I've been hard at work, looking at scripts for the next X-Men movie. Not to mention what I do here, in Vegas. I'm up to my eyeballs in work. I haven't got the time for this trip."

"Hey, is it true that Robert Blood, you know, the CNN guy, the big reporter? He's going to make a movie for RKO?"

"If I ever see his brilliant script."

"Because I read, you know, on the Internet, on this one website that his father? Robert Blood, Senior, you know, how he was a big reporter and all, too, all that Vietnam stuff, and you know, Chicago in 1968 and all. Is it true that his father was Errol Flynn? You know, from the old movies? Because he sure looks like him. So does his son, on CNN."

"I can't say I know for sure, son. I was a close friend of Robert Blood, senior, and his mother told him that his real father was Flynn, alright. Blood and his son both sure do look like Flynn. But, anything's possible. Especially in Hollywood. But, like I was saying, you can see how I'm a busy man, right? The last thing I have is time to go off on some wild goose chase to find my boy. But, if I don't, who will? He comes by his brains and his craziness, honestly. He got them from me. His mother's dead. She has been since he was 8. Nearly killed all of us, driving drunk. So, it's up to me. Hell, I'm his father."

"Do you know where he is?"

"I got a tip he's in South America. Brazil, or Argentina, maybe. I have to meet a contact in Mexico, get more information. I hope the boy hasn't moved on. But f he has, I've got money, and the best goddamn airplane money can buy. Come on out, son, I'll show it to you."

The driver opened the door, and the Man in the High Castle unbent his lanky, six foot, four inch frame from the confines of the Lincoln Town Car.

Even with his walking stick and his limp, he started walking quite rapidly towards the Sonic Arrow.

The Man in the High Castle has spent the better part of the last ten years designing, building and testing it.

The Arrow was the same size as a Lear Jet, but far more streamilined in its design.

The nose was pointed, like an arrow, and it wasn't that ugly white color like a city bus, it was all chrome, except for the tail and the wings, which were metallic blue.

"Wow! This thing looks like a spaceship from those fifties movies!"

"Well, I like an aircraft to look like an aircraft. Not like a goddamn Greyhound bus with wings. She's supersonic, ultralight, and completely powered by arc reactor technology. Best goddamn idea I've had in this century. I flew her from here to Japan and back, but this will be her first long-term flight. I hope to Christ I don't crash her. Because she's the prototype."

The Man fished in the pocket of his tan sport jacket, then in the pocket of his white, button-down shirt, and finally in the pockets of his khaki pants, before he found his wallet.

"I don't know, son, is twenty a good tip?"

"Fine, Mr. Castle sir."

Mr. Castle took off his battered fedora, ran his hand through his back-combed, thick black hair that was grey at the temples, rubbed his thin moustache, muttered something to himself, put his hat back on, took a notebook and pen out of his Target bag, and wrote something down.

The driver brought his black carry-on size rolling suitcase, purchased at Target, and the man in the High castle made his way to the Sonic Arrow, lost in thought.

"Well, I'll call for you when I come back."

The Man stopped, and scuffed one of his dirty white Keds against the other.

"Hopefully, there'll be two of us."

That night, the driver from the car service went on a website that existed to report such things that he, personally had driven Howard Stark, the Howard Stark, to the Las Vegas Airport, to go look for his son, Tony Stark, in a supersonic spaceship.

Most people didn't believe him.

Even though it was true.

Mexico, 2002

II: Flynn

If there was one thing Howard wasn't, it was a field man.

Howard was happy in his penthouse, in his casino, in the movie theatre attached to his casino, on the golf course, behind a desk or a camera, at his old RKO Office in LA, and in the air.

Those were the only places Howard was happy, although he'd go other places, if he felt it was absolutely necessary.

The other thing about Howard, he was a creature of habit.

He'd done the same things, in the same places, the same way for about twenty years.

The only deviation he'd taken from his path was when he found out Kate Hepburn was dying.

Most men would go for a visit, to say goodbye.

Not Howard.

"Katie? Dying! Oh no, Flynn. I'm going to talk to Nick Fury about this, right now."

"About what?"

"This is my chance, Flynn! It's been seventy years, women can have a career and a boyfriend and whatever else they like. And I'm better, too. So there's no reason we can't patch things up."

"Not even that it's been seventy years? What are you going to do with that gun?"

"I'm going to make a big goddamn scene, that's what!"

Most women Kate's age wouldn't have been willing to take the chance, on life, the 21st century, or Infinity Formula.

And certainly not on Howard Stark.

But most women weren't Kate Hepburn.

Flynn honestly didn't know how she, or anybody else could actually live with Howard.

And Howard was one of his oldest and best friends.

For one thing, he didn't take medicine for his OCD.

He hadn't since the eighties, and he saw a psychiatrist every week who had him on some kind of special behavioral therapy, which enabled Howard to be about as normal as he had been until the late forties.

Functional, but…

…still Howard.

In Flynn's opinion, Kate, the advent of small cans of Lysol, hand sanitizing gel, and antibacterial wipes had done Howard more good than any doctor ever would.

Still, the last place for a man who used a Kleenex from a pocket pack to open a door, then washed his hands with a liberal drop of his ever present bottle of orange scented Germ-X were the kinds of places that they were going to have to go, in order to find Tony.

Flynn met Howard at the private S.H.I.E.L.D. airfield in Mexico City.

He was standing outside the specially equipped black Land Rover that he had managed to wheedle out of Nick Fury just for the occasion, as Howard alighted from his latest invention.

Looking rumpled, with a reusable shopping bag from Target in one hand, his walking stick under his arm and hauling a rolling duffel bag, probably also from Target, behind him.

Howard was rather fond of Targets, and absolutely hated Wal-Mart.

The only store he personally frequented was a Super Target in Las Vegas that had been built within 10 miles of the Stark Hotel and Casino because Howard got tired of driving almost 200 miles every time he wanted to buy food, and with the exception of his visits to Dairy Queen, Wendy's, and McDonalds he insisted on buying all his own food, and if not preparing his own meals, then having them cooked them at home.

"Tell me that's not all your luggage, Howard."

"Sure it is. I've got a month's worth of clothes and whatnot in the pull bag, and I've got some odds and ends in the shopping bag. I might have brought too many cases of water, though. That's some kind of vehicle you've got there, Flynn. I like it. I could drive all the hell around Vegas, and make a splash in LA, in a job like that. How much do you want for it?"

"It belongs to S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Bullshit. If it makes it through this trip, I'll buy it. And one for you, too. I'm going to go get the water. Did Nick send you, Flynn, or was this your idea?"

"My idea. He's my son, too, you know. And you're no field man."

"He'll be someplace filthy, Flynn. Living like a bum. Just to irk me, the goddamn little bastard! I just hope he hasn't got himself killed."

"I doubt it. He learned how to survive from me, didn't he?"

Howard raised an eyebrow.

"I'm going to go get the water. Are you making any progress on that script?"

"I'm still trying to get around all the cuts you told me to make. You shouldn't be such a prude, Howard. It's not the forties, anymore."

"Me? A prude? Hell, Flynn, the script you gave me was definitely going to be an NC-17! Do you know how hard it is to make any money, to get any distribution for a movie once it gets an NC-17?"

"Why would it get an NC-17?"

"The big fuck scene, that's why!"

"So? There'd plenty of movies that get an R that have fucking in them. Besides, it's a costume picture. You can always get away with more in a costume picture."

"Well, we'd never goddamn get away with a big fat closeup of you, buck naked!"

"I can think, off the top of my head, of at least ten movies with male frontal nudity that got an R rating."

"Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you something that you should already know, Flynn. None of those R-rated dicks were yours. Your dick is X-rated. Triple X. Never mind NC-goddamn-17!"

"I think I'll take that as a complement."

"You would."

They both started to laugh, got in the Land Rover and Flynn drove off.

Argentina, 2002

I: Tony

Wrecked and ruined and broken down.

The Urban Spaceman has met the ground.

Where he lies he'll never be found.

Dying of malaria in a small Argentine town

"Neil Young." Tony suddenly said.

It was the first thing that he had said in three days, surprising the nurse on duty.

"Que?" she asked.

Tony's mother was an Argentine, of Spanish and Irish descent.

He spoke fluent Spanish, and answered her in kind.

"I was thinking something. Something that sounded like something Neil Young would write."

Tony fell asleep, soon after, and didn't wake up again until someone was speaking to him in English.

The nurse on duty, she had gone and got his nurse

"Tony. Wake up Tony. Wake up, hombre. Come on."

Shocked at hearing his name, Tony opened his eyes.

It was her, of course.

His Angel of Mercy, his Lady Madonna.

Even if she had not been wearing Marvel Comics scrubs, when she had first come to the ward a week before, Tony would have known, immediately, that the woman bending over him was a superhero enthusiast.

Tony had a nickname for his most devoted and intelligent female fans, he called them the Iron Maidens, and he had a special relationship with them.

Most mask fans could expect their hero to be polite, respectful, and remote.

Not Tony.

The Iron Maidens were like his own private army, bound to him by their devotion, because he paid special attention to all of them.

There were precisely one hundred and ten of them, all over the world.

He answered all their mail, personally, and he regularly exchanged e-mails with each and every of them.

He'd been intimate with 75 of them, and had every intent of getting to the rest.

He owed it to them, after all.

Especially the one , who, coyly anonymous, always wrote to him in purple, 11-point , High Tower Text.

They maintained a very personal correspondence.

After all, the Shadow has his faithful network of souls he'd saved, why was it any less noble for Tony Stark to have his Iron Maidens, his army of lovers?

Tony liked to think that, in the same crazy way they all loved him, he loved them all, too.

And what could be finer and more noble than that?

He recognized the young woman bending over him, immediately, the first time he saw her.

She was definitely one of his Iron Maidens, but his mind was too confused to put a name to her face.

She had that kind of pretty, Western movie senorita kind of face, but it was marked by intelligence and concern, and a cute little pair of granny glasses perched in the middle of her nose.

Taking in the measure of her, Tony guessed that she would have been something like 44, 28, 44, a zaftig Iron Maiden with an hourglass figure.

Too cute to be too many minutes over 21.

A science major….but he'd thought she was studying to be a chemical engineer, not a nurse.

Well, he was dying, he was entitled to be addled.

Girls like her always had a thing for Tony, and although he was sometimes ashamed to admit it, Tony did a lot more fraternizing with his fans than most masks did.

God help him, as much as he liked gorgeous glamour girls, he had a thing for girls like his Iron Maidens, too.

Smart girls always had turned him on.

It took her a little while, a few days to recognize him.

But that was alright.

He wasn't Tony Stark, anymore, after all.

"I don't know any Tony."

"Speak English! And don't tell me that ridiculous lie about you having an experimental arc reactor and Tony Stark paying for jou and some operation. I know who you are." She continued ,in English.

"Que?" Tony asked.

"You think I'm just going to let you die, don't you?"

"Estoy muriendo." Tony persisted.

"No, you're not going to die. I don't care if it's what you want. Or even what you deserve. I won't let you."

Tony gave up his charade.

And he remembered her name.

Rita Montalvo, who lived in a seaside village in the temperate pampas of Argentina.

Tony had told her about how his mother was from a town not fifty miles from hers.

"There's nothing you can do about that, now, Rita. Can you get me a bottle, in here? And stay with me, while I drink it. Stay with me, please, until the end. I admit it. I'm afraid to die alone."

"I keep telling you, Tony. You're not going to die."

A burly orderly arrived with a stretcher and he and Rita lifted Tony's ravaged, emaciated body into it.

Being moved terrified him, but she reached for his hand even as he raised it to look for hers, and walked along beside the gurney.

"Don't be scared, Tony. I promise won't leave you."

Tony was feeling delirious.

"Sasha left me. Mama left me. Don't leave me, Rita. I'm so scared." He muttered.

"I won't ever leave you, Tony. Not ever."

They wheeled him to another part of the Catholic hospital, out of the charity ward.

His devoted Iron Maiden gently undressed him, and covered him with a blanket that was warmer and softer than the ones in the charity ward.

He held onto her hand with all that was left of his strength.

And then, Tony had an epiphany.

A moment of shocking clarity, not unlike the one he'd had while he was a prisoner in Iraq.

This was real.

Death was really approaching.

Suddenly, as mortal terror began to set in, dying didn't seem like such a good idea, anymore.

Everything he had done since Sasha left him didn't seem like a good idea anymore.

Tony wasn't sure what, aside from instinctual mortal terror was making him want to live, all the sudden, but even if that was all he had, he decided to go with it.

"Rita! Rita, I want to live! Get me a doctor. Get me a whole bunch of doctors. Tell them who I am. Whatever I need, I'll pay for it. Triple. Call my father. Both of them. Wait. Get me a priest. I haven't been to church since the 70's!"

"It's alright, Tony. I figured you'd feel that way. So I took care of things."

A doctor came in, and looked at a printout he had in his hands, and examined the scar on Tony's leg from the car accident that killed his mother, and then looked at the serial number printed on the outside of the arc reactor, with a small, hand-held blacklight.

Tony had the Avengers insignia tattooed on his right bicep, with special ink that, when you exposed it to a blacklight, his name and Social Security Number would become visible on the long part of the "A".

It was Cap's idea, and everyone on the team had it done, for purposes of emergency identification.

"You're right, Senorita Montalvo. This is Tony Stark. Do you know who you are. Mister Stark?"

The doctor spoke to Tony as if he was crazy.

Like his father.

Well, he hadn't cut his hair in over a year, or shaved in four months, so he was getting there.

"Of course I do. Don't let me die, doctor. Or any of those other people out there. I'll pay for their treatment too. I've been such a fool…" Tony replied.

In Spanish.

A flurry of activity followed, and Tony was wheeled in and out of several rooms.

He was in an out of consciousness during several tests.

The girl in the Marvel Scrubs, Lady Madonna, children at your feet, wonder how you manage to make ends meet.

She had a telephone, which she put to his ear.

And the frightened voice on the other line.

"Tony? Is that you…"

Potts.

"Tony, you goddamned bastard! How can you be dying? On a charity ward? Please, Tony. You can't do this to me!"

She sounded like she might cry.

Another reason to live.

For all the people who would regret his passing.

"It's me, Potts. Send them triple what the bill is for. The people on the ward need the money. But listen. Don't tell anybody where I am. And don't try to find me. I've made a terrible mistake. Flynn and Howard were right. But I need time to make things right. Okay?"

"Alright, Tony. But you had better call your fathers. And Steve. And Jean."

"I will, Potts. You'll hear from me again, soon. I promise."

Lady Madonna took the telephone away.

No, Rita.

Lovely Rita, where would I be without you?

When the gurney finally stopped. Tony realized he was in a hospital room, a private room.

It had been a long time since Tony had laid down on a soft bed, covered in a warm blanket, and the experience was luxurious.

The face of a priest and a doctor in a white coat appeared over Tony's head.

Tony remembered asking for a priest.

"He's awake. Good."

The doctor left the room, and the priest sat by Tony's bed.

"I guess you want to know why a man like me calls for a priest."

The priest laughed.

"You are not such a bad man as that, are you?' he asked.

"Father, I haven't been to church in twenty years. But I was baptized. My mother was a Catholic. And an Argentine. If I'm dying…"

"If you are dying, you want to see your Mama again. How old were jou when she died, my son?"

"Eight. It was a car wreck. She was driving. It left my father with a limp. My father. I want my father. Both of them. I can't die like this. I'm scared.. I'm a terrible man, father. Mal pinga. Pendejo. El Cabron."

"Maybe jou are. But those are not big sins. To be an asshole. Or a bastard. Or a stupid dick. You have done many good things, despite all of that."

"Should I confess?"

"Dios mio, I don't have the time! It would take hours! I don't think jou are going to die. And I don't think jou are having a sincere conversion. But, then again, I don't think that Our Lord would deny a man who has, in spite of himself, tried to do so much good in the world, to be with his mother in heaven. Tell me, my son, have you committed any mortal sins?"

"Yes, Father. Two years ago, the only woman I've ever loved left me. And I've been, willfully and purposely trying to kill myself, ever since."

"That's not the same as suicide, my son. That's what's better known as dying from a broken heart. But, nonetheless, I absolve you…"

The priest anointed him with holy oils, and said the rest of the sacrament in Spanish.

The doctor came back in.

The priest began talking to him in Spanish, and Tony asked him where Rita was.

"He is more coherent. The medicine is working. He is asking for Rita."

Rita.

Lovely Rita.

Lady Madonna.

"I want her to be my nurse. Full time. I'll pay for it." Tony piped in.

"Rita would be in this room full-time whether you paid her or not." The priest told him.

The doctor told Tony that the tests showed he was suffering not just from malaria, but malnutrition, viral hepatitis, and anemia.

Now that he was getting proper treatment, he was expected to make a full recovery.

"What about my heart?" Tony asked the doctor.

"It is weak. You have put quite a strain on it. But you are in no present danger of another attack."

"Was I dying, earlier? I felt like I was."

"You were going into shock, Senor Stark. But I can't say that you were actually dying."

"But I wasn't far from it?"

"No. You weren't."

Tony was quiet, for a few moments.

"Do they still make those white nurse's dresses?" Tony asked the doctor.

"Some of our staff wear them."

The doctor replied, trying to keep a straight face.

"Get one for Lovely Rita. One that's about a half-size too small. I'd pay just about anything, to see that. Sorry, Father."

"I'm the one who took the vow, not you. We'll just say it's good you're feeling better."

"I have to live for something. To live for Rita's sake? It's a start."


Tony wasn't sure how long he was asleep, before Rita came back.

She had the dress on, and it hugged every curve of her body, and she couldn't button the top two or three buttons.

She even had the little hat on.

"You look absolutely perfect, Rita. You make me want to be get better. As soon as possible. The dress, it's not uncomfortable, is it?"

"No. It's 2 percent spandex, so it moves. You're going to get better, as soon as possible. Tonight, you are going to have the best dinner your money can buy. And the administrator sent me to buy you some clothes."

"No pajamas. I hate pajamas."

"I know. I bought you some tee shirts. And sweatpants. That's as far as the hospital will go."

"Not the ones with the elastic waist and ankles, I hope."

"No. The kind with the drawstring waist. No elastic, anywhere. But first, you have to have a bath."

"And because I am weak as a kitten, that means you have to give me a bath, right?"

"Yes."

She had to help him into a wheelchair, and then into the tub.

However, Tony wasn't sure if it was the medicine they had given him, or the good sleep, or the change in accommodations, and the knowledge that one of his Iron Maidens was at his side, but in the warm bath in his private bathroom, he started to feel much better.

Especially with Rita bending over him in the tub, her absolutely stupendous tits bursting out of the nurse's uniform, only a few inches from his face.

Tony couldn't walk, and it would have been an effort to soap up the washrag, but hope, among other things, springs eternal.

"I see you're feeling better."

"Lovely Rita, I apologize. But nothing, short of death, will discourage him. Take it as a complement. You'd better let me have the wash rag for a minute. I don't want to embarrass myself, any further."

Rita helped him to dry off, and to put on an AC/DC tee shirt and a pair of black sweatpants, with white trim.

The clothes hung on him.

"I bought them in your usual size. Because I'm going to make sure you get back to it."

Suddenly, Tony was embarrassed to be so helpless.

"I'm sorry to be such a burden to you. I'll make it up to you, Lovely Rita. Someday."


Time went by, quicker than he was accustomed to.

It seemed to Tony that it took him no time at all before he could walk back and forth to the bathroom, and bathe and dress himself.

Record time for him to gain back the twenty or thirty or forty pounds he had lost, and start re-conditioning himself with the hospital's physical therapist, and with the gym equipment in the physical therapy room.

But, Tony was sitting in a chair, facing his window when snow began to fall past it.

The leaves had just been turning when he dragged himself into the charity ward.

"Rita, how long have I been here?"

"One month on the charity ward. Two months in this room."

"That long? Jesus Christ." Tony replied.

And not totally without a certain awe.

He was thinking about what the hell was going to happen next when his doctor came in.

"I'm going to set you free, Tony. Try not to do such a good job of killing yourself, again."

"Am I well?"

"You're well enough. You need time to recover, completely, but there's no reason we should keep you locked up in here."

"Does that mean than if I do something about Rita, in that dress, sticking her stupendous tits in my face, I won't die?"

"Is that what's kept you going, hombre?"

"Don't knock it. I don't know if I want to be Tony Stark, or Iron Man, anymore. I don't know where I want to go after you let me out. Or what I want to do. And when I was in the ward, I didn't know if I wanted to live or die. But, the first time I saw Rita, I thought, God, it's one of them. One of my girls, my Iron Maidens. I knew her face right away. I know all of my Iron Maidens. But I couldn't remember her name, right away. Even while I was lying there, most likely scant hours from death, I wished to God I was well enough to be the man she expected me to be. The man I promised her, promised all of them I always would be. The man I was, before I reduced myself to the sorry state I was in, being the selfish prick that I am. If I'm well enough to be that man again, even if its only for Rita? After months of her in that dress, painted on? That's better than good. It's a reason to live, again."

"You're a strange man, Mr. Stark."

"I may be an asshole, and a real bastard, but I'm a Romantic. I love women. Especially the ones who save me. I want to start by living up to all the filthy, nasty, dirty fantasies Lovely Rita has ever had about me. Then, maybe she'll make me want to move up to being me again. Who knows?"

"Wait until you're out of the hospital, Mr. Stark."

"Doesn't Rita work here?"

"No. She was volunteering, until you hired her. Rita is from a little town near Mar del Plata. It's on the coast. "

"I know. My mother came from some little village by the sea, not far from here. Right now, I can't remember the name."


"...I know it looks like an ordinary Vanagon camper. Well, actually it's a '75 and it's the deluxe model. It has everything. Sink, stove, tables. Fridge, cabinets, one of these pullout cots. Electrical hookups. Water storage. There's an awning, and a tent and the deluxe popup. Toilet, rear table. Map table. Storage unit. A/C. Automatic transmission. But I did some modifications. I put the whole stereo system in, and that computer is built into the panel, there, and the whole thing, inside and out, runs on arc reactor technology. No gas. No electric. I mean, I live here. What do you think?"

Tony had never seen Rita in civilian clothes.

Jeans, an X-Men shirt, Converse sneakers.

She wrinkled her nose in the cutest little way, and adjusted her glasses in a scholarly fashion.

"It's cool. But jou can't live in this thing, forever. What about the money?"

"I have some left."

"Tony, jou are coming home with me. I don't have a car, you can park this in my space in my apartment building. But I can see if I just let jou go, you'll be dead in six months. Unless you don't want to."

"I was hoping you'd ask me to come with you. I don't have any big plans."

"Jou have plans?" Rita asked.

"Yes. I do. I want to live in my camper, and listen to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and smoke dope, and drink beer. I miss the ocean, I want to get back out on the water. I'm bored, I probably need a job. I think I'll work in a garage. But do you know what I want to do the most?"

"What?"

"I want to prove to you that I'm exactly the kind of man you thought I was. Do you live with somebody, or anything?"

"Me? No. I had a bad breakup, when I graduated. I'm single. Very single. I haven't seen a cock that wasn't on YouTube in six months."

"Except for mine."

"Yours was off limits."

"Not anymore, my Lady Madonna. Why don't you shut the door? And lock it."

"Why? Do you have Internet?"

"Certainly. Everywhere. I had perfect high speed internet in the Amazon. But that's not what I had in mind."

"Me? You want me? I could understand, in the hospital, but you know, I don't expect nothing from you, man."

"Can I tell you a secret that everybody knows, Lovely Rita?"

"Shoot."

"I'm a nerd. As such, I can't help but be attracted to the other members of my species. Hence the Iron Maidens. Of whom you must be the absolute queen. A girl like you writes me erotic e-mails, and I make a mess of my keyboard. When I print them out, I get all the pages welded together. And do you know how long you can go in LA without seeing a real pair of tits, on a real woman, who's never had anything nipped tucked, peeled, enhanced, remodeled, or rescupltured? Rita, I decided I didn't want to die, because I owe my life, my body and my soul to all my Iron Maidens, in some sense, but to you? Lovely Rita? My Lady Madonna? My debt is literal. If I ever find the balls to become Tony Stark, again, I'll give you the world. But right now, all I've got is what's in my balls. It's not exactly the world, but I didn't have a reason to live before you showed up and made me realize there was something left to live for. The girl who writes me the erotic letters. In purple text. High tower font. 11 point. That might not seem to be much. But it's meant the difference between life and death to me." Tony replied.

"I'm up to the responsibility, Tony. I can take it. My back is strong. I can carry you on it for a long, long time. As long as you need me to."

"How old are you, Rita?"

"Twenty-two."

"Amazing."

"Not really, Tony. Age has nothing to do with it. I'm a woman, a real woman. Unfortunately for you, you fell in love with a real cunt."

"It's what I deserve."

"Nobody gets what they deserve, El Cabron. They get what they get. How did you know it was me, writing those letters?" Rita asked.

"I saw a text on a Word 2003 window open on your laptop. Even though I was lying in bed, close to death, my heart leapt. Among other things." Tony confessed.

"So, you liked them that much? My letters?"

"Like them? Christ, I waited for another one of those! Lovely Rita, you are the Princess of Perverts, the Empress of Erotomaniacs. Our Lady of Lustful Longing. Never has a woman been so eloquently and shamelessly been possessed of such a dirty, degenerate obsession with a man she could seemingly never have. I however, unlike other men in my position, cowards all, was not frightened by such a display. I was honored. Flattered. Intrigued. Inflamed."

Tony faltered, his mind reaching for a further turn of phrase.

"And encouraging. I have a friend who wrote two or three letters to someone in the X-Men I won't name, but he shoots lasers out of his eyes. You know what she got in reply? A restraining order."

"Scott has no dick. I know. I've been his old lady's friend with benefits since 1982. Or was it 1980? Anyway, tell your friend to write to Beast, or Wolverine, instead. If she puts a return address on the envelope, Hank with write back to her and try to arrange a date. Logan will show up on her doorstep with a case of beer, and a pizza. In a clean shirt, with his hair combed, and he'll take his hat off, call her ma'am, move her couch for her and punch out her ex-boyfriend. In addition to the obvious. As for me, as I recall, right before I left on my ruinous journey, I sent an envelope to the PO box of my secret admirer containing a lock of my hair, a pair of dirty boxer shorts in a Ziploc baggie, and the most eloquently filthy letter I could think of. And I didn't seal the envelope by licking it."

"You're really a filthy bastard." Rita replied, fondly.

"I am? Who's been giving me a bath with a happy ending even before I could walk?"

"Who put me in a naughty nurse outfit when he was at death's door? I think it was the same pervert who was feeling me up every time I gave him a bath, even before he could walk. Not to mention you've been completely capable of bathing yourself for a month."

"True. But where would the fun in that be? You know, Rita, we've been talking and texting and teasing each other more than enough. For fuck's sake, I had to remove the High Tower font from all my computers, and ban anyone I employed from using it, because every time I saw high tower font, I got this raging hard-on. I two hundred percent stand by every dirty, nasty, filthy thing I wrote that I wanted to do to you. This is fate, Rita. It's synchronicity… its…it's time for us shut up and fuck, that's what time it is."

"I'm all for the fucking part, but do we have to shut up?"

"I never do. I must warn you, Rita. I start out a talker and end up a screamer. And I have this unfortunate tendency to come like a fountain. You don't mind, do you?"

In that she walked over and pulled his sweatpants down, Tony figured it was alright.

He had wanted to commence l'affaire by absolutely nailing Rita to his hospital bed, while she was still in the nurse uniform, but doing it several times over in the hospitals parking lot with the windows of the Vanagon wide open, despite the fact it was snowing out, was just as good.


Tony was sound asleep when he was awakened by something ringing, under his head.

It was Rita's cell phone, but he knew the number on the Caller ID.

"Hello?"

"Howard?"

"Are you having fun yet, Tony?"

"Actually, I had a lot of fun in the beginning, The first six months. After that it all got very much like a William Burroughs novel. Which are only entertaining when you're not living them. How did you get this number? This is my, uh, my nurse, Rita's, cell phone?"

"I'm Howard Stark. When I want something, I get it. Yesterday. Where the hell are you? Why haven't you called? When are you coming home?"

"I really lost my mind, Howard. I'm coming home after I get my shit together."

"You've got six months, kiddo. Then Flynn and I are coming after you."

"How are you going to find me? Because I've blocked the GPS signature of this telephone, and all the other devices I'm using."

"That's for me to know and you not to find out. Now, I want you to call me every Thursday at two-thirty in the afternoon. Pacific time. I gave this number to Captain Rogers, and to Dr. Grey and to Ms. Potts and Flynn. I'm sure they'll be in touch."

"What if I didn't want…"

"Hell, Tony, you're half-mad. You don't know what you want."

New York City, 2002.

IV: Sasha

The phone rang, and when Natasha Romanov saw that it said "Castle" on the Caller ID, and the Las Vegas area code, she dove for the phone.

"Did you find him? Is Tony dead?"

"We found him. He's alive. Crazy as a shithouse rat, but alive. I'm giving him six more months to get his act together, and then his stepfather and I are going to get him, and kidnap him, if we have to."

Sasha caught a sob in her throat.

"I am so sorry, Mr. Stark. I did not realize. I did not know…"

"It's not your fault, Ms. Romanov. Now, I've got some people to call and some things to do, so, I'll be going."

Howard Stark hung up the phone.

Natasha sat there, holding the phone for so long that Clint came and took it out of her hands.

"He said I was killing him, Clint. How could I just go?"

"Because you had to. How did you know he'd do something like this?"

"When he comes back to New York, I will go and talk to him."

Clint smiled, sadly, and shook his head.

"Nat, you still don't get it. Tony was right about one thing. You're just too young to understand."

"You're only five years older than me! What, when I turn thirty, a light will go off in head and suddenly, every crazy thing Tony said will come clear."

"Something like that." He replied.

Argentina, Six months later

"Adios, amigos!"

"Adios, El Cabron!"

Fuelled with liquid good cheer, that crazy gringo, who they called The Bastard, roughly translated, staggered barefoot into the street.

He had no shoes on, because he had left his shoes at home, again, and the pair of dirty Levis he was wearing were one of three pair of pants he owned.

The other two were the two pairs of sweatpants he wore in the hospital.

The Bastard pulled his ragged Baja sweater on over one of six tee shirts he owned, four of which Rita had bought and he had worn while in the hospital, and ran his hand through his long black hair, and then his long black beard.

He leaned against the wall as he walked home.

Tony, sporting one of those heathered, faded retro-look Led Zeppelin tee shirts under his baja, was whistling the riff from Kashmir as he idly pissed on the wall of Rita's apartment building.

She came out on her balcony, in a pair of women's boxer shorts and a Who tee shirt.

"Tony, what are jou doing?"

"Pissing. Then I'm going home."

"That is a camper. Home is up here. With me. Did you eat, since this morning?"

"No."

"Well, come on, then."

Tony let Rita lead him in.

As soon as they were upstairs, and in her bedroom, Tony tried to kiss her, and she pushed him away.

"Not yet. Jou need a bath, Tony. First you take a bath."

"I thought you liked it, when I'm in dirty coveralls, covered in motor oil. And I put the coveralls in the camper."

"At the garage? Yeah. On my sheets? Not so much."

"I'm hungry."

"Bath, now. Food, later."

Tony took a long bath, washed his hair and his beard and combed them out.

Rita came in, and she wanted to cut his hair, trim his beard close to his chin.

Like Tessa's mother used to do.

For Howard.

"Don't, Rita."

"Okay, Tony. Have it your way."

She walked towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To cook. And put the laundry in."

"Rita, you are my savior. My Madonna. And you look like one, too. Don't go, yet."

He reached for her and she came willingly to his arms.

"So, now I get my usual payment, for taking good care of you?"

"I have so much money. When I get back to it, I'll buy you whatever you want."

"This is what I want, Tony. You."


After Sasha left him, Tony sailed off on a schooner hardly bigger than a sailboat, telling everyone he'd be home in a month or two.

That was two years ago.

Or something like it.

He'd been all over the world, and had done all sorts of wonderful, awful things, somewhere along the line losing the Tesla, and just about everything else.

He ended up a bum in the street, somewhere, Argentina, maybe, tangled hair, long greasy beard, uncut, long, cracked fingernails, the whole bit.

After he got out of the hospital, he cut his nails and trimmed his hair in his beard to what he liked to think of as his Jim Morrison in Mexico look, when he arrived in Rita's little town by the sea.

Tony had been there six months.

On weekends, he and Rita went sailing on a leaky, creaky, aged fishing boat he had bought from the salvage yard, and painstakingly restored.

It looked a lot like the boat Robert Shaw had, in Jaws, so he re-christened it the Captain Quint.

Tony had a mind to go home, someday, but he never quite got around to it.

In the morning, on his way to the garage, Tony stopped at the bar he drank at, and fixed the ice machine.

The owner gave him a bottle of cheap tequila and a few pesos for his trouble.

He put in five or six hours at the garage.

One of his customers had no money to pay him with, so he took a bag of weed in lieu of cash, and went back to his camper to smoke it, as Rita did not allow drugs in her apartment.

How could he do it?

Go back to the States.

He had no money, and he couldn't find his Passport.

And what would happen to the Captain Quint?

Rita said it his Passport must be in the camper; she would keep looking.

Tony abided with Rita, wrecked and ruined and broken down, in her village by the sea.

He was abiding, one afternoon when he had no work to do, barefoot and bare-chested, in his Levis, in the back of the van with a bag of weed, a bag of peyote and a couple of bottles of tequila.

Tony was somewhere in-between memory and a dream when the softly air-conditioned cocoon of drawn shades and faint rays of sunlight, humming quietly along to the tune of the Rolling Stones was rudely interrupted by a blast of hot air, and Rita coaxing him into the harsh sunlight.

"Tony, both of these guys, they say they're your father. Can I come with you, to America?" she asked.

Tony blinked, and absently drummed his fingers on the glowing blue disc in the middle of his chest.

Wait.

Both of these guys?

Tony rubbed his eyes, until he could see again.

"Flynn, are you crazy? What did you bring Howard to South America for?"

"Flynn didn't bring me. I brought myself. Flynn brought himself, too. Now, that's just about enough of this shit, Tony. You're coming back to the States." Howard told him.

"What if I don't want to?"

Howard Stark angrily took his orange scented Germ-X from his pocket, squirted a great deal of it onto his hands, and rubbed them together, vigorously.

He took a step towards his son, who he was four inches taller than, and glowered down at him.

"You'll go and you'll like it, even if Flynn has to brain you! Aww, the hell with it, I'll brain you, myself!"

Flynn stepped between them.

"Nobody's going to brain, anyone. My dear, you've taken good care of Tony. Of course you can come back to the States with us. Now, I'll just call Colonel Fury, and arrange transportation for Tony's vehicle, and we'll all get in the Range Rover and fight like civilized people on the way to the S.H.I.E.L.D airfield in Buenos Aries. We've got about four hours to drive, so we can sort it all out."

"But I don't have my Passport. And there's the Captain Quint." Tony protested.

"That's his boat."

"Ship, Rita."

"I can't leave her, Flynn."

"I understand, my boy. When I speak to Nick, I'll arrange transportation for the Captain Quint, too."

"I have it his passport. And your wallet, Tony. And your last two thousand American dollars you told me to hold onto. I also have my passport, and I can pack and be ready to go in about an hour. Just let me have a few minutes to call my aunt in Los Angeles." Rita told Tony

"We're going to Las Vegas, Senorita." Howard helpfully told her.

"Okay. I'll stay with Tony for awhiile, then. You're going to need me, huh?"

"Definitely." Tony finally spoke up.

"You listen, El Cabron, I'm leaving my home for you, and my country. You had better not be bullshitting me about getting me into USC for my post-graduate work."

She was smiling when she said it, though, but Tony got a worried look on his face.

"I'm only fooling. I'd go and live in the slums in Rio in this fucking camper with you, if that's what jou wanted. I'd even live on that old wreck of a ship. You know me, Tony. I'm crazy."

"You must be, to stick with me."

Howard broke in.

"I'll say she is! Miss, don't you worry about a thing. Even if my son is too lazy and too drunk and too high to give you anything but what he's got between his legs, I'll make sure you're set for life, for what you've done for him. And that's a goddamn and that's a promise. You know, kid, you kind of remind me of a Latina Jane Russell. There aren't enough girls who look like you in the picture business, anymore. Did you ever think about going into show business?"

Howard began leading Rita to the car.

"Flynn, is it just me, or is he hitting on my girl?"

"I think so. She seems like a smart girl, Tony. You had better get a shave and a haircut, pull your socks up, and make her a better offer."

Las Vegas, 2003

Everything went so fast.

For one thing, he fell asleep in the Range Rover, and he was hardly awake as, clutching his duffle bag, Rita hustled him into the Arrow, which Howard had actually got built, the crazy bastard.

They were back in Vegas before Tony had a chance to blink, and Rita and Flynn were now hustling him into another black car, a Lincoln, and Tony hardly had a minute to protest that Howard shouldn't drive before they were gone.

He was on the phone the whole time, barking to some underlings about having Tony's usual suite ready, and when they got to the secret entrance, Howard's private entrance, the door into an underground corridor about a city block from the Stark Hotel and Casino, there was a flunky with a wheelchair, waiting.

"Go and park the car, Watkins. And call my personal doctor. Hell, call all of my doctors. I want them here, ten minutes ago. And get Dr. Grey here. Come on, son, get in the wheelchair. Flynn, you had better phone Colonel Fury and Captain Rogers and Miss Potts. Watkins, I want a lid on this so tight a fart can't escape. And call the MORC and get my shrink, here, too. You come with us, Rita. Tony needs you."

"Should I push the chair, Mr. Stark?"

"I don't need a wheelchair, Howard! I'm well. I've been well for months."

"No. He's my Frankenstein. I made the boy what he is. Damn my bad leg, I'll push the son of a bitch. As for you, kid, you'll get in this wheelchair and like it! I don't trust whatever cheap, lousy, third-rate doctors you went to as far as I can throw them."

"Howard?"

"Yes, Tony?"

"I have the sudden urge for a cheeseburger. With bacon on it. And fries."

Howard Stark stopped in the corridor and pushed a button on the wall, signaling his chef.

"Welcome back, Mr. Stark. Is the other Mr. Stark with you?"

"He is. And he'll have the usual."

Rita had to run to catch up, as Howard sped down the corridor.

"Tony, how the hell did you modify my design for the Arrow to use on the engine on a 1975 Volkswagen?"

"I'll show you when it gets here."

IV: Pepper

Pepper had received three telephone calls from Tony.

One in 2001, one this year.

She got a card on her birthday, at Christmas, and on Secretary's Day.

And the phone call from the hospital in Argentina.

That was all she'd heard from Tony in two years.

Jean Grey got two birthday cards, and about eight months ago, a call from Tony from said hospital, asking her to send, express mail, several cases of anti-malarials, and he'd pay her back when he saw her, calmly explaining that the hospital he was in was all out, not expecting another delivery for a month, and that by then, he and some of the other malaria patients would surely be dead.

No one else heard from Tony, at all.

The fourth call came from the cell phone belonging to Grant Castle, AKA Howard Stark.

"Did you find him, Howard? Is the stupid bastard alive?"

"He's alive. But he's not taking all this at all well. Could you please be here? Now? Or close to now?"

Pepper was in the lobby of the Stark Hotel and Casino, she had been working for Howard while Tony was gone.

Much of the time, on following Tony's trail.

They were both crazy, but Howard's insanity was far more manageable.

"I'll be right up, Mr. Stark." She promised.

Her phone rang again as she was on her way to the elevator.

It was Tony's stepfather, telling her that he was home.

When she arrived at the door, with the customary BAMF!, Jean Grey and Nightcrwaler appeared.

"Should I come with you, Jean?"

"I don't think so, Kurt. I've seen Tony and Mr. Castle doing their tag-team nut act, together. It's not pretty. I will call you."

Another BAMF!, and Jean and Pepper stood together, in front of the door.

"Why are you throwing those down the shaft for the fucking incinerator? Howard! Those are my clothes!"

"Clothes? Those aren't clothes! That shit was rags not fit for a drunken bum! And probably chock full of mutated, antibiotic-resistant, goddam South American superbugs! Now, go take a goddam shower and let the nice girl who takes care of you give you a shave and a haircut!"

"Why don't you ask Rita to burn her clothes?"

"Because she neither looks nor smells like a goddamn trustafarian stewbum! And use my soap."

Jean and Pepper looked at each other.

"You want to go down to the bar and have a drink, first?" Jean asked.

"I'm buying." Pepper agreed.

V: Tony

It took Tony a month to quit having panic attacks as soon as he left the Casino, and even at that, he refused to go to the MORC if Rita couldn't come with him.

He was at the MORC for two months, following which he returned to Los Angeles.

As it turned out, his father was right.

He had been having regular reoccurrences of the malaria, and he had to have a few courses of the latest anti-malarial treatments to fully eradicate the disease from his system.

Tony did not return to his mansion in Malibu, after he got his clean bill of health, although he did go back to work.

He lived on the Captain Quint, at the Pier 44 Marina, and parked his camper at Rita's.

He bought Rita a little house in Laurel Canyon and a Subaru Outback, sport model, and filled both with all the trappings, quite over her objections.

When he felt like living on dry land, that was where he went, and when he didn't, Rita braved the Captain Quint.

Tony also gave Rita the loft he had once lived in at the brownstone in the Village where he had grown up, and when he was in New York, he stayed there, with her, at first.

It was as if Tony had to ease back into his life again, like he was squeezing himself back into an old pair of pants that didn't quite fit, yet.

It was few weeks before he got back to work at Stark Enterprises, and probably another month or so before he was back in the suit, but, six months after he had returned to the States, and a year after he had been released from the Catholic charity hospital in Argentina, both Tony Stark and Iron Man were back to work, again.

He finally moved back into his Malibu mansion and his penthouse atop Stark Tower in New York after he had been back from Argentina for about six months, but he still did not buy himself a new ship.

The Captain Quint was good enough for him.

Just when Tony thought that all was well, however, disaster came on swift wings.

On a sunshiny day in New York, sitting outside a pizzeria in Brooklyn.

And then, she was there.

The flash of blue light from his chest nearly blinded Tony, and he felt as though his heart had exploded into a million tiny pieces.

"Tony! I'm so glad to see you. I never meant for so much bad things to happen to you. I have so much to tell you. Do you mind if I sit down?"

"I'm sorry, Sasha. But you can't."

"Why?"

Tony sighed.

"You're still too young to understand what I'm about to tell you, but I'm going to say it anyway. In such a way you won't forget it when you are old enough to understand. I know you didn't mean to hurt me, but you did. I don't think anything that has ever happened to me, since I saw my mother die, hurt as much as the way you just left me. It broke me. I lost my mind, I lost my way, I went on a binge of epic proportions that nearly cost me my life, that it has taken me another year to recover from. But none of that matters, because I still love you, Sasha. I will die still loving you. Because of that, I can't be your casual buddy, or your friend with benefits, or anything else. If you ever loved me, get up, and go. Remember when I told you, don't come back, unless you mean it? Well, you still don't get it, and you still don't mean it. If you get into trouble, and you need to he helped or saved, my offer still stands. I'll do it. I'd do anything for you, Sasha. But, just seeing you is making me feel like cutting the arc reactor out of my chest with this plastic knife. If you won't go, I'll do it. Right before your horrified eyes. Please, listen to me, this time. Don't come back until you mean it. And if you don't mean it, don't come back, at all."

Sasha didn't say anything, and if she was going to cry, she waited until after she had gone, to do it.

Tony didn't watch her go.

A few minutes later, Rita came out with their pizza.

"Jou don't look so good, Tony. What happened while I was in there?"

"I saw a ghost. And it was me. Never mind, don't listen to me, I'm crazy. Let's eat."

Los Angeles, California. Chateau Marmont, 2010

Postscript: Sasha

Tony was asleep, and he had been asleep for about an hour, and he had earned his rest, well.

Sasha felt sleepy, and happy, but she was enjoying the peaceful, blissful feeling of total physical satisfaction, and this fleeting, perfect moment of feeling safe and happy and quiet and loved.

She didn't want to go to sleep, and miss it, and hugged Tony tighter.

Sasha hadn't intended to wake him up, but she had.

"I love you too, Sasha, but you're squeezing the rib that I broke fighting your ex-boyfriend for my life."

"I love you, Tony. I love you too much. It frightens me. I never loved a man the way I love you. It's no good for you. For me, either."

"Is that the real reason you left me?"

"Mostly. But the other things I said, they are true, also."

"You're such a cold, calculating, selfish bitch, Sasha. You really are a Black Widow. But I'm a much bigger bastard than you could ever be a bitch. So it doesn't bother me."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It does, doesn't it? So, after my birthday, if things go the way you seem to think they will, at the next Avengers meeting, I'll propose you for membership, and you can get your special gang tattoo."

"Don't you think there might be trouble?"

"I won't give Clint any trouble. And he's such an arrogant SOB, he thinks he's the top dog and I'm just nostalgia, so he won't give me any trouble. Doesn't bother me."

"Can I ask you one thing?"

"Name it."

"Stop making fuck movies."

"But Sasha, I was going to ask you if you wanted to make them with me?"

"Clint would shoot you."

"Not fatally. Come on. We'll make just one. It'll be my swan song. We'll wait until there's been a big announcement that the Black Widow is joining the Avengers, and that she and Iron Man are a couple. Until the perfect moment when we're getting all this press, and the media is in a feeding frenzy. But this time, it won't be just a YouTube clip. I've always wanted to make a celebrity sex tape. Something legendary. To rival Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson. And I can only think of one woman I would want to do it with. I'll write a script, and hire a director, and we'll make it look professional but amateur. And we can both be shocked and appalled when it's released, of course."

"What for?"

"So that out love might be immortal, and live for eternity, of course. Like Romeo and Juliet. Or Tristram and Isolde. You're a beautiful woman, Sasha, and you've got a real, natural, cinematic talent for fucking. You're like a wild animal, you're so dirty and sexy and insatiable and you say the mot divinely filthy things while I'm doing things to you that most men only dream of doing. I want the whole world to see you the way I do, and I want them all to be jealous, and want you and hate me. When every member of the opposite sex in the known universe wants to fuck your brains out, and every time you walk down the street you can feel them looking at you, and you know you could have any one of them you wanted, it's an amazing feeling. It's like being a God. An Avatar. The Avatar of Fuck. I want to share that experience with you, Sasha. I can't really give you the Moon and the strs in the heavens. But I can make you a Goddess, fit to travel among them."

"Tony, you're a madman. And a megalomaniac. Everything Vanya said about you is true."

"That I'm the Devil?"

"You may not be the Devil, but you are a Devil. My Devil. And you know me too well. One time. Clint gets mad at me, he says I am born bad, that I have red hair because I have Devil in me, that he does not know if I am Kali or Whore of Babylon or both. I tell him definitely both. Of course I make movie with you."

Never in her life had Sasha been so madly in love with Tony as she was at that moment.

And never had she wanted him, or any other man, so much.

He rolled over so that they were belly to belly, again.

"Maybe you didn't do it for months…"

"Listen Sasha, my divine Whore of Babylon, my demon lover Kali, my immortal goddess of Sex and the Death of my enemies. What would you do for your birthday, if you knew it might be your last?"

"Whatever I wanted."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

At that moment, Sasha really believed that Tony Stark was a Devil, and that she had given him her soul, and was damned, for all time.

And in that same, wonderful, terrible moment, she didn't care.