Chapter 11 – Safehouse
The drive to the safehouse took hours. Amy didn't look up from the floor of the armored car that carried her. It wasn't like there was a window with sights to see. The car was claustrophobic and bleak. Everyone was ignoring one another. Amy didn't like it, but she didn't like a lot of things right now. Two SHIELD agents sat next to her, their armor brushing her shoulders. Two more were next to Tony, who'd insisted on staying with Amy.
Whatever, Amy had decided. She didn't care what Tony did. She didn't care about anything except getting to her mother. Amy had to protect her. She clenched her fist. She couldn't fail again.
She didn't know how she could tell, but she knew when they'd left London. She guessed it was the feeling of finality that tipped her off.
"Uh, Mr. Iron Man, sir," the SHIELD agent next to him piped up. Amy rolled her eyes.
"Please, no formalities. Tony will do fine," Tony answered.
"Well, sir- Tony, I was wondering if I could get a picture?" The agent asked.
The metal suit sat stiffer than before. Amy's detachment melted only a moment to stare at it curiously. The SHIELD agent was terrified, wondering if they'd offended him.
"Sure," Tony said at last. The agent breathed a sigh of relief and pulled a cellphone out from their pocket. "SHIELD let's you guys keep your phones on the job?" Tony asked as the agent moved closer and readied for a snapshot.
"No," they answered with a sly grin. Tony threw up a peace sign and the agent took the photo.
The safehouse was less like a house and more like a facility. It sat in a farmland full of tall grass and sloping hills. One would expect to see a farmhouse out here, so the grey, fenced in compound was an odd sight. Amy walked through the chain link gate two guards held open, passing through the barbed-wire lined fence. The grass tickled her ankles as she moved forward to the main doors. More SHIELD agents stood at attention up ahead. Cupping both the left and right corners of the fence were guard towers. Good, she thought when she saw them. We'll be safe. Tony had a different opinion.
"Doesn't this seem like a prison?" He commented. "And why so dull? Or is it in the rulebook that anything SHIELD has to be utterly depressing?"
"Yeah, Article III Section II clearly states all SHIELD facilities and uniforms can only be grey, black, and navy blue to, 'make the right impression.' Also, any smiling while in uniform is forbidden," the agent who'd asked for a picture said. Tony snorted.
"She's not kidding," the agent on his left said.
"Wait, seriously?" Tony asked with a hint of suspicion.
"Yeah," the first agent said, her wolfish grin battling against her straight face. Her partner barely contained a chuckle.
When they reached the doors, two stoic-faced agents who genuinely seemed to have sticks inserted in their rectums stood guard. One flipped open a wall panel on the right of the doors. Amy held her eyelids open and let the stinging blue light sweep over her right eye.
"Welcome, Agent Stern," an AI greeted Amy by her alias. "Who is that you are with?"
The AI had orders to fire the automated weapons it controlled if Amy said any codewords alerting danger.
"Stand down, Vicki," Amy told the program.
"Yes, Agent Stern. Please submit your password and step inside."
Amy punched in her password and when the AI swung open the doors she walked in. Tony attempted to follow but the doors slammed shut in front of him.
"I'm sorry, but you must be registered in SHIELD's database to enter this facility. I can get you registered with a ten minute survey and DNA sample, if you'd like," Vicki said.
"Yeah, okay," Tony said dismissively. As soon as Tony said the words JARVIS hacked Vicki's system, pulling open the doors.
"Hey!" Vicki protested.
"My apologies, ma'am," JARVIS offered, retreating from the system once Tony had stepped inside.
Tony took a look around and was surprised to find the entry room brightly lit, colorful, and a lot like the lobby of a decent hotel. A wide hallway seemed to actually be inviting him to explore it.
At the end of the hall Tony found a living room. Warm brown leather couches and ottomans made a community area in the center of the room, a red rug underneath. A TV hung on the wall in easy sight, cornered by shelves of films. Behind Tony right next to the entry were bookshelves carrying books by the hundreds of every possible genre. It was cozy and comfortable in this room, with many blankets thrown over the couch or sitting in a chair or on a desk. Hell, there was even a coffee and hot chocolate machine.
Tony didn't know what to do. To wait for somebody to find him or explore a bit? He wondered where Amy had went and wanted to find her. Tony scanned the room as if Amy was simply invisible and would give herself up under scrutiny. When she didn't appear, he decided he would move on and explore the compound some more.
Tony had seen the kitchen, the dining room, the training room, the bedrooms, the lobby, and the science lab. By the time he'd gotten back to the living room thirty minutes had passed. He sighed, completely bored. He wondered what movies SHIELD had stocked in the shelves. Without anything better to do, he wandered over to the shelf on the right and started picking through the movies.
None of them looked good to him. Tony leaned against the wall and gave the selection his most unimpressed look. A snarky remark about SHIELD's lack of taste was on his tongue when the sound of compressed air being released whispered behind him. There was a click as the wall sunk into itself, a shake, and suddenly the wall was gone. He fell backwards in his metal suit with a yelp.
Tony grunted as he stood up. The secret room he'd found held one long table, a dozen chairs, a large flat screen TV with Director Fury's face staring at him, and two women standing there staring at him too. When his eyes fell on the older of the two girls the world stopped.
She was as tall and strong-willed as he remembered. Her broad shoulders weren't rolled back confidently like he remembered. They sagged under the grief of losing her husband. When she saw him her chest puffed out, her glare was icy, and she tried to look as formidable as possible. It was effective. She was as intimidating as she was beautiful. But there was something off in her that Tony couldn't place. He remembered every line of her face, but something was inconsistent. It couldn't be age, he'd accounted for that and really age hadn't affected her much at all. What was it about her now that put him off so much?
It could be how her eyes were rimmed with red and puffy. How tear-stains coated her cheeks. It slapped him in the face then that he had never seen this woman cry. Never. Not once. But here she was with the evidence literally written on her face. It was bizarre and off-putting for him, to say the least.
"Mr. Stark, glad you could finally join us," Director Fury said. "Unfortunately, this meeting is over. I'll let Catherine fill you in on what you missed. Goodbye, ladies," he said to Cat and Amy. Neither responded, Amy too depressed to speak and Catherine too furious at Tony for existing. Fury cut their connection and the TV's screen became a signal-less blue
"Amy," Catherine called to her. Amy retained focus long enough to hear her mother's words. "Please go to our room. Unpack." Amy glanced from her mother to Tony, unmoving, too anxious to leave. "Go," Catherine asserted. With one last look at her mother Amy left the room. Tony was left alone with Catherine in the quiet.
Cat blinked, raised her chin higher, and crossed her arms. "I didn't know you were coming. I didn't even know you'd found me."
"Sorry I didn't call ahead," Tony said lightly, eyes never leaving Catherine's face.
Her lips curled back in disgust. "Don't."
Under her glare Tony felt very small. He stared at the floor like a scolded child.
"Joanna-" he tried to say.
"No," Catherine cut him off, furious. "Don't you dare call me that. We aren't twenty anymore and we aren't together!" Catherine's eyes glowed with anger. "I'm not that woman anymore," she insisted. Tony looked up at her with frustration.
"You look the same to me," he argued. Catherine barked a cynical laugh.
"You definitely haven't changed," she countered. Tony finally glared back at her
"What the hell, Joanna?"
"What? What do you want?!"
Their voices became louder by the word.
"I wanna know what happened to us!"
"What happened to us? You were an alcoholic, Tony!"
"I'd just lost my-"
"I did too!" Catherine screamed. "I did too but you didn't care!"
"I always cared!"
"No, you didn't, because everything was always about you! Because you're a narcissist!" Her words were sharp like a snake's fangs dripping venom.
Tony looked away from Catherine, glaring at the table.
"And you've never done anything selfish," he said, quietly now.
"No, I haven't," she matched his level now.
"Then why'd you leave?" He asked like he already knew. Catherine's anger melted slightly. At least she wasn't glaring so terribly anymore. Now something glinted in her eye that was a lot like fear.
"Why are you here?" She asked, on the verge of enlightenment. Really, she already knew, but she wanted to deny it. She wanted to deny that he knew her biggest secret.
"I read something interesting on Amy's file when Back in Black gave it to me," Tony said. Catherine nodded bitterly.
"Fury..." She shook her head and bit her lip. Curse that man.
"You left how long ago, Joanna?"
Catherine was quiet for a long time.
"Sixteen years," she said quietly.
"Sixteen years and – if my math is correct, which it is – seven months," Tony finished. Catherine nodded, biting her lip and not meeting his eyes. Tony said nothing more. "So, you would have been two months along when..."
Catherine took one willowy breath and blinked the wetness from her eyes. "I didn't want her to be raised around our drama. We were on the verge of a breakup anyways, whether I got pregnant or not. I just wanted to protect her," Catherine reasoned.
"Does she know?"
"No, she thinks Ben-" Cat choked on his name. "-is her real dad."
Tony nodded.
"I'm sorry," Catherine offered.
"I could have been there for her. I could have been a good dad," Tony talked more to himself than to Catherine.
"Tony," Catherine caught his focus. She fixed an icy glare on him. "If you tell her then I will put everything my mother taught me to good use."
"I know," Tony said quietly. "I'm going to go find a way to get this suit off."
"The tech lab on the West side should help."
Tony nodded and, with that information, left Catherine in the meeting room alone.
Cat collapsed into a nearby chair, eyes brimming with tears. She sucked her breath in through her teeth and tried her best not to cry. Her shoulders shook and her fists were clenched, but this time she had nobody next to her. She didn't have Ben here to lay his palm over her knuckles and ease her. A sob broke from her. A tear dripped onto her hand. She left it there. And she left the next one, and the next, and the next after that. Ben always told her there was nothing wrong with crying, that it didn't make her weak. She'd argue that her mother never cried, that her sisters never cried, her grandma never cried. Logically, that meant she couldn't. Ben would shake his head and smile, amused by her stubbornness. This time though, Cat fell into her arms and wailed.
Amy focused on the computer screen in front of her, tuning out the rest of the world. She typed everything she knew on Hellqvist as fast as she could and when that well of intel ran dry she uploaded a SHIELD file to fill in any gaps. Her eyes never left her work. Not even when the automatic glass doors opened with a whoosh and the sound of metal thunked on the workbench next to her's.
Tony sat with one leg swinging off the edge of the table. He opened a drawer below him and sifted through the tools. None were suitable. He leaned back with a disgruntled sigh. His eyes scoped the room, finding nothing that would help him. Until his eyes landed on Amy.
"Hey, you," he called to her. Amy didn't look up. "I need some help here," he continued. After a long pause, Amy dropped what she was doing and lumbered over with a scowl. A blank, distracted glaze cast over her eyes underneath knit-together eyebrows. "You can manipulate electricity, right?"
Amy nodded slowly.
"Good. I need you to power down pieces of my suit one by one. Then- can your force fields take any sort of shape?"
Again Amy nodded.
"Perfect. Put your shields in the shape of..." he threw out his hand to the holoprojection table and a blue image of his helping robots popped up. "These. Then have them disassemble me. You got all that?"
Amy shook her head.
"Just...try your best."
Amy nodded and set to work.
An hour later, Tony sprung up from the workbench now littered with pieces of his suit. He looked at it with interest, thinking of how to piece them together in a way that'd make the suit more portable. He pulled up a stool, found the best tools he could, and set to work.
Amy didn't have much to do, the only thing left being to develop an algorithm to predict likely places Hellqvist could be hiding that Vicki would run. It wasn't much, but it could be the key to geting him. Damn, she'd get him. She'd make the best damn algorithm and she'd get him. Because he needed to pay. For all the lives he'd taken just today alone. For those civilians. Those children and those parents and those innocent passerby. And for her father. She'd find Hellqvist. Oh, she'd find him, turn him over to SHIELD, and then they could do whatever they wanted with him. Amy knew exactly just what SHIELD would want to do with him. Terrible things. She supposed that in her broken heart she wanted to do some terrible things to him too. She ruffled her hair and pulled it into a sloppy bun. Time to work.
Fun trivia time! Catherina Mercad, Amy's mother, was originally born as Joanna Nivena. In the original comics Joanna was Tony Stark's fiancee. She eventually broke off their engagement due to Tony's drinking and his then-secret identity as Iron Man taking a toll on their relationship. In this universe, Joanna and Tony were lovebirds in their early twenties, but then Tony's parents died (and Joanna's did too, in a spy-related incident) and he began drinking. Joanna left him for it, was two months along, changed her name, and moved far away where no one would find her. There she met Ben, had Amy, got engaged, got married, and raised her daughter. And now this bullshit is happening. Poor Cat can't seem to catch a break.
So, there's that! If you enjoyed this chapter leave a review, favorite, or follow.