AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hellooo lovely readers! First off, I am soo sorry about the delayed update. I have 3 reasons : 1. Uni and Exam prep, of which my exams are still coming up ; 2. I also have been scouting for Grad Year nursing programs and beginning my application process and 3. I wrote this story 3 or 4 years ago (completed) and only just realised, upon revisiting it to publish it, that I skipped over the entire Iron Man 2 film.

Can't remember why I skipped over it, which would be tragic given how much of Tony/Toni's character arc is shaped by that film as well, including the relationship with SHIELD and navigating the hero-identity.

Long-story short, I am writing 2-3 chapters for Iron Man 2, so forgive me as well if the writing style is quite different from previous chapters. This chapter is the first instalment of the Iron Man 2 film.

Unfortunately I have not written the other chapters and so you might be waiting a few more weeks for those.

Now, without further ado, let the story continue...

DISCLAIMER: I do not own MCU or any of its characters. I wish I did. But I don't. If I did, Tony would still be alive; here's to hoping RDJ still shows up at MCU conventions and panels as the honourary godfather of the Marvel Studios.

P.S don't forget to drop a comment, question or review. No flames. Thank you.

Poisoned Heart

"Take off your shirt."

I blink. Turn off the blow torch. Pull up my mask and stare at the unflinchingly stoic blonde.

"Never had someone say that to me without offering me a drink first."

"What, no dinner?"

"Dinner implies a date, implies someone worth making the effort for."

It's his turn to blink. He looks uncomfortable.

"Don't start feeling sorry for me now," I say, "-the whole dinner thing goes both ways."

He still looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. He moves towards me silently. Shoving aside my tools to make room for the first aid kid he'd been lugging.

"Shirt. Off."

There he goes, ordering me again.

"Don't you know better by now, Mr Bennett. Following orders, not my style."

"You're hurt. You didn't allow the paramedics to take a look at you-"

"I had urgent business to attend to, seeing a criminal off to jail and all-"

"And you refused to go to the hospital afterwards too-"

"Didn't really need to, so…"

"You just got your ass-kicked and almost blown up. Probably have a concussion from hitting your head. You're favouring your left arm - probably a fractured wrist. And don't think I didn't notice the way you've been guarding your centre all this time.
Movements are pretty stiff and slow, like you're trying not to breathe funny - speaking of, you're breathing is off, shallower every time you turn or cough or even try not to sneeze - which lets face it, makes you sneeze even harder. I'm guessing a bruised rib or two at best. But after the beating I just saw, I wouldn't be surprised if you've fractured those too."

He'd said with all the cool of the cat who got the canary. No depth of concern or worry. No red eyes or frustration at my general disregard for self-preservation. Just facts. Black and white without all the unnecessary emotion that tugs on my ever-guilty conscience. If anything, the man looks smug.

"Good eye."

He shrugs. "It's a gift."

"How long did you serve?"

Just like that, the smirk falls. "Ms Stark?"

"Ignorance doesn't look good on you, Mr Bennett. Army? Navy? Let me guess Special Ops?"

He grunts, something of an admission - "Something like that."

"Sniper?"

Again with the grunting. Did I hire a man or a monkey?

But judging by his expression, he seems uncomfortable about the direction of this conversation. Unfortunately for him, Toni Stark doesn't give a damn about other people's boundaries. I thrive in pushing them.

"Why work as a PA? Why not a bodyguard or police officer? Or pushing papers for Uncle Sam?"

"Why the sudden interest?"

"I have trust issues, is that what you want to hear?"

Something in his expression tells me that yes, it is what he suspected, but he definitely wasn't expecting me to tell him that.

"You know I think you're right about that concussion," I say, breaking our staring match.

He raises a brow, that frustrating smirk returning ever so slightly. "So you gonna take it off, or am I going to have to manhandle my boss?"

"Well technically I'm your boss' boss," I say, sliding out of blazer, wincing at the action. "And here Pepper was afraid you'd be the one filing a sexual harassment case against me."

"I still might," he joked, smirk softening to something more gentle as I struggled with my shirt. "Here let me," he says. Large hands cover mine. Not expecting it, I stiffen. He notices and begins to pull away. "It's okay, we don't have to-"

"It's okay."

"Okay?"

I nod. His hands return to my sides. Tentatively lifting my shirt up. I try to stop him half-way, just as we reach my bra-line, "That's probably far enough." It's not like Arc Reactor is that big of a secret anymore. But still, memories of Obie's hands ripping out my lifeline - my heart as Pepper so poetically and effortlessly calls it - it lingers like a rotten stench, like shadow that I'll never quite shake.

He looks like he wants to argue, but doesn't. Instead he lowers his blue-grey gaze to my torso. I know it's bad judging by his expression. Dried blood and grazes, olive skin tainted by purple, green, blue contusions. Warm fingers, rough and calloused but also surprisingly gentle brush over my skin, a hawk-like gaze briefly distracted from their assessment of my current injuries in favour of older scars.

His fingers trail over the puckered skin of a particularly deep scar running the length of my stomach, from my left hip bone to just under my right breast; it's an ugly jagged crescent-shaped thing, one of many scars - physical and psychological - picked up during my time in Afghanistan.

"What's going through that pretty little head of yours, Mr Bennett?" It's meant to be light-hearted, meant to ease the tension, like the old flirty play-girl me would have done, but my voice quivers, breathy and afraid of… I don't know what. When's the last time a man's seen me? Touched me gently like I was about to break and the only thing holding me together was them - him?

I shake the thought from my head. I'm not horny. I'm not. I'm just… fucking tired. Tired of pretending.

"Were you scared? In Afghanistan?"

"Every single second."

"Do you still think about it?"

"I try not to."

"You're still scared."

It's meant to be a question. But it's not. Sounds more like a deduction. He's two for two now. I don't know what he gets for a third.

A sharp pain shoots through my chest at that moment. Not from the incident with Whiplash. No this is a familiar, more intimate pain, like my nerves being singed, a slow fire spreading across my chest.

"You better hurry up with patching me back up, Mr Bennett, 'cause T minus 10 minutes, I'm going into playground mode."

"And Sir does not like to be disturbed when in playground mode," Jarvis pipes in, her beautiful child, ever attuned to her.

The blonde holds a gaze a second, unable to hide the flash of pity from her. "Of course, Ms Stark."

They say ignorance is bliss. I'd agree. Can't count the number of times I've gotten low, afraid to fall asleep, afraid of what awaits me in my dreams. Nightmares.

Worse.

Sometimes I'm afraid that this has all been a dream; that I'll wake up in Cave with a car battery attached to my chest, waiting to be starved and beaten and …

Times like these I find myself staring at the bottom of a bottle, wishing I could take it all back, wishing I could be ignorant and naive. Wishing my entire life hadn't been a great, fat lie. Wishing for… I don't know. Something.

Something to make me feel alive.

I thought after Afghanistan, shutting down weapons' manufacturing, Iron Woman… that I'd feel different. I'd feel more. For a little while, I think I did.

But then Obie happened. A man I treated like family, tried to kill me.

I still had Rhodey, Pepper and Happy. I don't deserve them. But I have them. For some goddamn reason I have them. They care. I'm not used to that. Not used to people caring. People leaving… that's another story.

So I hurt them.

How? By being me. Being Toni Stark. All 143 lbs of reckless, compulsive behaviour and narcissistic witticism.

Can't have them crying over my cold corpse. No. Especially not Pepper. Pepper is one beautiful woman but she does ugly drying. Ugly, snotty, red and blotchy-faced crying. Nope, definitely not. I need them to move on. The world needs them, more than they'll ever need me.

Why else would the one thing meant to be keeping me alive, be the very thing that kills me? I told Pep once, that I should be dead. That I was alive for a reason. God, what a lie that was. Okay sure, stopping Obie from using my weapons to kill innocent people, from adding to my sins long after my corpse would have rotted over in some sandy grave in a fucking cave - that wasn't a mistake. But maybe that's it. Maybe that's all I was meant to do…

And doesn't that sound selfish? Living long enough to clear my conscience.

Yinsen would be disappointed. Nothing's changed, not really. I'm still dying slowly. Painfully. If the palladium doesn't kill me first, I'll be too weak to change out the arc reactor core before shrapnel tears through my heart. Then what would my legacy be? The Merchant of Death? A company with no direction, no captain to steer the ship through the proverbial rocks I'd placed there eighteen months ago when I shut down our main profit margin?

So long story short, I hurt them. I hurt them and push them away. I give them gifts they don't want.

Happy promoted to bodyguard to the CEO of Stark Industries. Not for me. Of course. But for her.

Pepper. Promoted to CEO of Stark Industries. She'll be good for the company. Better than I ever was. Knows the company in and out better than I ever did. Commands respect from the board of directors where I'd only ever earned their scorn and criticism. It won't be easy for her; hell a woman as CEO. But she'll handle it with all the grace and poise of a Queen.

Rhodey promoted to Iron...Man? Oh god no… he's far too proud for something so utterly derivative. And after all these years of putting up with this hot mess, I doubt he'd want anything more connecting him to the trainwreck Stark once I'm gone.

Can't say it still doesn't hurt, the way they turn away from me. Can't say I'm surprised, I mean, everyone leaves eventually. Don't they? That's what people do. At least that's what people I care about do. Leave.

I should be used it. I am. Aren't I?

There's a woman in black staring back at me. Ebony hair coiffed neatly, pulled tight to veil the sight of once luscious locks now limp, dull and lifeless. Lips painted a deep, dangerous red to hide where she'd bitten and gnawed them with worry. Eyes drawn thick with kohl and darkened with shadow to make the dark circles under her eyes look intended. Once fresh olive skin now a false hue to cover-up the now sallow, sickly, jaundiced tone. She, the woman, me… I look like death warmed over. Like a corpse ripe and ready for the casket.

I sigh.

Even I'm getting tired of my own dramatics.

Maybe I went about this all wrong. Kept things on the down low. Are people still saying that? Well it doesn't matter, I'm saying it. Not that it matters if I say it really, anymore, that is.

I could have kept it quiet. Something small with only the people who matter… people who I've pushed away and would probably have said no to an intimate night of me celebrating my life.

No, instead I've got two hundred strangers, Stark Industries groupies and the LA club scene upstairs.

"So you're a woman who has everything and nothing."

"Nothing at all," I whisper, glaring at my reflection.

"Are you alright, Ms Stark?"

I jump. Because of course I'd be so consumed with myself to not notice the tall, blonde and yummy standing behind me in the mirror.

"Peachy, Mr Bennett."

"You always talk to yourself, when you're feeling-" he pauses to throw up air quotations - "peachy?"

"Is this you asking your boss if she's drunk?"

"This is me showing concern for a friend."

"Friend?" I say swivelling around, shooting him a scrutinising look.

He looks sheepish, stuttering almost adorably as he tries to take it back. I try to muffle a laugh, which just ends up sending me into a coughing fit that sends an electric shock through my body - I'm not sure if it's the palladium, my still healing ribs or a combination of both.

In the next moment, the blonde is by my side, offering a glass of water, rubbing soothing circles into my back as I scull it down. I wheeze painfully, feeling the crushing weight of my own heavy breaths and pounding heart, the throbbing ache in my chest blinding my thought processes for moment, as if a blinding light shone in my eyes.

Then the moment passes. The pain still lingers - like it has been all these months. But one by one, my other senses return. My own heavy breaths recede, the sound from upstairs filtering through as well as Bennett's own mutterings. Soft-spoken words of comfort. "You alright?"

I nod, afraid to speak.

Feeling his hand trail up my spine, across my shoulder, his thumb gently sweeping over the curve of my neck - I'm unable to help the shiver. Reluctantly my eyes follow his fingers' path as they trace over the inky black veins peaking over the collar of my dress, like Lichtenberg figures.

"Ms Stark?" he asks. His unspoken question doesn't go unheard.

"It's fine. I'm fine"

"That doesn't look fine," he says.

I shrug him off. "It's nothing. I'm perfectly fine."

"You keep saying that, but I don't believe you."

"And why the fuck should I care what you think, huh, Bennett?" I chuckle derisively, though it comes out more as a precariously veiled choked sob. "I don't know what you think you know about me, but I can sure as hell tell you, you're wrong. Whatever you've read in the tabloids about me, are wrong. Whatever judgements you made from our little heart-to-hearts, think again. You don't know me."

"And what about Pepper? And Colonel Rhodes or Mr Hogan? You think they know you?"

"Better than you-"

"But not enough, right? I mean how could they, when you keep pushing them away. You keep pushing everyone away. Everyone who tries to get close to you. Everyone who tries to care about you. That's what all this is about, isn't it? The partying. The obnoxious attitude. Self-sabotage-"

"Newsflash, none of this is new-"

"Lying and deflecting about how sick you really are."

Whatever retort I had, is lost.

He looks down at me - and how am I only just realising that we're standing almost chest-to-chest glaring at one another. I pull away retreating to my seat at the dresser, my gaze avoiding that of my gaunt reflection.

"You should leave."

A few seconds pass, I hear his footsteps, wishing he'd do as I say. But, no, instead he comes closer, till I can feel the heat radiating off his body.

"Ms Stark," he says, voice lower and sympathetic. "How bad is it?"

"You're so smart, you tell me," I quip.

"Toni," he says this time. Voice lower and hoarser. Almost begging.

I tremble, feeling his hands resting on my arm, slowly turning me to face him. I let him. When he gently tilts my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his. I let him.

I feel myself shake in his hold.

'I'm tired…'

Feel my walls crumbling.

'So tired of everything…'

"Toni-"

'Just want to feel something… more'

"How bad is it?"

Grey blue bore into mine own, searching them. Searching me.

"If this was your last birthday, how would you celebrate it?"

A beat. Sympathy and pity pours from him. I feel like pulling away. I don't want his pity. I don't to be treated like some weak damsel.

'But you are,' my traitorous mind supplies. 'You are weak. You are dying.'

Mr Bennett looks contemplative, as if torn between wanting to say something and wanting to hold it back. Eventually he finds his voice, slow and measured, calculating almost - "I think… I'd do whatever I wanted to do-" he pauses, cuts himself off.

There's a battle behind the mask he wears. His grip on me tightens and loosens.

My mind races, hearing those words, thinking about the party upstairs. About the martini, dry and dirty waiting for me. About the warm bodies I could fall into bed with and just… forget. Until I wake up tomorrow and regret every mistake and pray that the palladium kills me before the guilt does.

But all those thoughts disappear. Every one of those ill-thought scenarios, every mistake I could make, every regret I could add to this guilty conscious of mine… wiped clean by words I'm not expecting from a man I never expected - "I'd do whatever I wanted to do… with whoever I wanted to do it with."