As they scrounged together lunch in the main kitchen, Tony did a quick scan of various news outlets. "Nothing on the broadcasts about a small plane crash in the middle of Washington, D.C. It's not like that bridge is cloaked."
"I think this is actually a case of things happening too fast," Clint said, pilfering an entire box of roma tomatoes for himself. "The quinjet didn't get much altitude while Cap was pummeling it."
Tony frowned at him. "You're enjoying that a whole lot."
"Cap beat up a plane! Him and his shield took out a 600 million dollar aircraft, and he walked away."
"And a three million dollar motorcycle."
Clint choked. "Excuse me? How much?"
"Three million dollars. I customized that thing for him myself, and the cost does not include my not-insubstantial consulting fees. There was nothing standard on that thing, the materials research alone-and he just-Jarvis, make a note, Steve Rogers never drives one of my cars."
"Noted, sir."
Clint couldn't help his smile. "It was still very cool."
Tony shrugged. "Yes, it was very cool. A very dramatic way to declare war on a major American law enforcement organization. Does he even know how to evade surveillance?"
"He's better at this stuff than you give him credit for. Natasha has been willing to work with him for months."
"Fair point." Tony finished assembling his bowl of edibles and leaned back against the counter. "Jarvis, any luck tracking Cap's phone?"
"No, sir, Captain Rogers' phone has either been turned off or been destroyed."
"And the trackers in his motorcycle will put it in a sad pile of junk on the bridge."
"Confirmed."
"And his uniform?"
"His uniform is at the bottom of the Potomac. I believe it is safe to assume that Captain Rogers is not in it."
Tony grinned. "Steve Rogers stripped down in the river and walked out onto the riverbank in our nation's capital in all the glory science gave him, and it's not all over YouTube? I disbelieve!"
"I believe Captain Rogers' underwear is not being tracked, sir, therefore it is unlikely that he appeared in public nude."
"A loss to us all."
"Wait," Clint said, "there were trackers in his uniform? How do you know? How did he know?"
Tony blinked at him. "I think it's presented as some sort of recovery system in case an agent needs an extraction but can't communicate his position. Isn't there some sort of beacon in your uniform?"
"Yeah, but I have to activate it-fuck. I don't, do I."
"No. So I'm guessing you weren't aware of the trackers in your boots, your bow, and your quiver, either."
He put the milk carton down fairly firmly on the counter. "They messed with my bow?"
"Jarvis disabled all of them when they came into his sphere of influence." Tony shrugged. "We disapprove of surveillance equipment we didn't install."
Objectively, trackers made a hell of a lot of sense for people who might need rescued but couldn't yell for help. But it was supposed to be active tracking, activated on a case by case basis. Clint felt like an idiot for not thinking there'd be a way to trigger those trackers remotely. Phil and Fury had had an ongoing argument about subcutaneous trackers for high-level agents, in case of capture, but Phil said he refused to be chipped like somebody's poodle.
"This is the freedom vs. safety thing, isn't it. The things we think are protecting us can be used against us."
"Yep. Probably some of the fine print in your contract said you were perfectly happy with SHIELD tracking your movements at their discretion."
Clint chewed on a few more tomatoes as he thought. "That pile-on in the elevator was not put together in a couple of minutes. That was a lot of heavy hitters, and they had specialized tech. So something happened where the organizer of all this figured he'd have to have a massive take down on deck in case things didn't go his way. But Steve didn't look like he was expecting that kind of trouble until they started surrounding him."
"Kind of like having a clean up crew ready to move in after an assassination?"
"God. Someone in SHIELD is dirty. And we've got enough people who just say 'yes, sir!' that they'll draw down on Captain America if they're told to."
"Not every minion is as cool as the ones in 'Despicable Me.'"
"You gonna paint your next robot yellow and name him Kevin?"
"Dummy would murder it. He wants a goggle to go over his camera for dress-up occasions."
Clint stared at Tony, looking for the signs that this was yet another joke. Tony stared back, smiling faintly, but with no indication that he did not indeed hold dress-up occasions for his robots.
"Sometimes we have cake," Tony added.
"You're a troll."
"But with cake." He clapped his hands. "But this is doing nothing to find our fearless leader, who beat up a plane and then jumped into a river to take off his clothes, god bless him. Jarvis-"
"I beg your pardon, sir," Jarvis interrupted, "but there is a video call for you, from the Triskellion. Secretary Alexander Pierce would like to speak with you."
Clint dropped his fork.
Tony blinked. "Well, that's interesting."
"Secretary Pierce calls you up-and it's just interesting?"
"It's not like he's done it before! I've only ever talked to him at horrible Washington cocktail parties!"
"I've only ever talked to him once, and that was at a formal SHIELD ceremony where he shook my hand and said 'Keep up the good work, Agent Barton!'"
"Sir," Jarvis reminded, "he is waiting."
"Crap, yeah." Tony poked at his hair. "Give me a mirror." A screen popped up in front of him, showing himself. "OK, hair is attractively tousled, t-shirt is clean and for an appropriately retro band, nothing in the teeth, nothing incriminating in the background."
Clint half-way stood up. "You want me to leave?"
"Not on your life. Give me what you know about him."
"Uh, he's a politician, his smiles look like the ones you use on the press, Fury worked with him for years and would occasionally take his advice. He's the on-site representative of the World Security Council at SHIELD."
Tony settled onto a stool, and his demeanor changed from manic super-genius talking about geek movies and pet robots to billionaire philanthropist international businessman. He nodded at a couch across the room. "You'll be out of the camera angle over there. Jarvis, keep him off the pickups."
"Yes, sir. Secretary Pierce coming on the line."
Another screen popped up, this one showing the urbane figure of Alexander Pierce, who was perched oh-so-casually on the corner of his desk. He smiled warmly at his own camera. "Mr. Stark, thank you for taking my call."
Tony sent a press-conference smile back. "Not at all, Secretary Pierce. I was just going over some of the documents I have covering our contracts with SHIELD. Without Fury . . ." He shrugged sadly.
Pierce's smile froze a little. "Ah, so you've already heard the bad news."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Tony looked chagrined. "Was I not supposed to know about that? I talk to lots of people in SHIELD, and I got some emails this morning."
Pierce sighed and waved a weary hand. "No, it's not a problem. It's not something we want to make common knowledge, but you're a SHIELD consultant and one of our major contractors. Plus you had a personal relationship with Nick-with Director Fury."
Tony nodded solemnly. "Yeah. I think I'm going to miss the annoying bastard." That actually sounded sincere. "But what can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?"
Pierce folded his hands together and stared into the camera seriously. "During the investigation into Nick's death, we discovered that Captain Steve Rogers is withholding vital information. Nick went to Captain Rogers' apartment last night, and Captain Rogers won't tell us what they talked about."
"What do you think they talked about?"
"I'm afraid Nick may have let his respect for the Captain America title sway his judgement, and I think he told Captain Rogers about a developing project designed to make risk assessment and intelligence analysis more efficient."
"Better data analysis? Nobody appreciates efficient data handling more than me, but what s so important that you had to call me personally?"
"It's more than just . It's an attempt to get ahead of the curve on threats both domestic and worldwide. We're trying to get better projections in place so we can stop things like 9/11 or even, well, the Mandarin." Pierce gave an apologetic smile. "We shouldn't have to play catch-up, we should be seeing the game before it starts. If we see where the trouble is likely to start, we can go in and stop it. Entire regions could come off a war footing and put their resources into peace and productivity. If aid workers didn't have to keep looking over their shoulders, they could do a better job of helping communities." He broke off with an embarrassed laugh. "Sorry, I get carried away."
"No," Tony said thoughtfully, "you haven't said anything that hasn't occurred to me. And you think Captain Rogers objects to this?"
"Oh, absolutely not, Captain Rogers has more than demonstrated his dedication to protecting people. But I'm afraid he's still looking at things in black and white, without appreciating that the modern world is more grey. We need to find him and tell him that he can't just go out in public and be outraged without it causing a lot of trouble."
Tony frowned. "Find him? Have you lost him?"
Pierce gave a mea culpa shrug. "Between what happened to Nick and his dismay over our policies, I think he took some things I told him this morning the wrong way. I doubt he trusts SHIELD much at the moment, but he may talk to a fellow Avenger."
Tony's eyes narrowed. "You think he'll call me."
"Of all the people he knows in the 21st century, you probably have the best grasp of how the government and the private sector interact, and you can explain the various subtleties. You understand how delicate international relations can be, you can answer his questions and point out the pitfalls of his more-direct approach."
"Yeah," Tony said, looking away to fight a smile, "Cap is rather famous for his 'the only way out is through' philosophy."
Clint put a hand over his mouth to stifle his delighted grin of memory.
"But OK," Tony went on, "if he calls me I'll try to talk him down. Maybe get him to come up here and we can drink a toast to Nick Fury. The Avengers should throw the man a wake, he made us what we are. Besides, if it s worth it to you to take the time to deal with this personally, Mr. Secretary, I can make an effort to talk to Steve."
Pierce nodded in acknowledgement. "A lot of things go more easily if you just deal with the man at the top. Thank you for your time, Mr. Stark."
"And thank you for yours, Mr. Secretary."
The screen flicked off.
"Wow," Clint said, "if I didn't know what had happened to Cap, I'd believe him."
Tony nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, me too."
Clint sat back and studied Tony. Pierce talked to prime ministers and ambassadors and the nameless people who told prime ministers what to do. On the morning when SHIELD declared war on the embodiment of America's old-fashioned ideals, Pierce took the time to make a personal phone call to Tony Stark. Yeah, Captain America might call up his brother-in-arms Iron Man for some help, and Pierce would want to get Iron Man on his side, but that wasn't the point of the conversation.
"He was trying to get you on his side, and for more than just corralling Steve."
"Yep."
"Whatever he was talking about, there has to be more to it than gathering intelligence and finding out who the bad guys are before they can cause shit. That's what we've been doing all along."
Tony nodded, still staring off. "There's something a whole lot more pro-active involved. Look for the people who you think are going to be trouble before it even starts."
Clint frowned as the ramifications began unrolling in his head. "Have they talked to you about this project before? Why bring it up now?"
"They're cutting off Cap's avenues of assistance, and they knew they'd have to give me a good reason to not back up an Avenger. But no, this is the first I've heard about this. They probably weren't sure which side I'd come down on. I'm never quite sure myself where I stand on order vs. chaos. Fewer people get blown up in an orderly world, but you need chaos to take down the dictators who try to force order down people's throats. He made a thoughtful noise. The problem has always been execution. Whose hand do you trust to make the decisions? And who might that hand pass the power on to?"
"Except people aren't statistics that you can manipulate however you want," Clint said, his stomach tying in a knot as he listened to the cool, scientific analysis.
"No, they aren't. That kind of thinking discards the outliers, tries to negate the statistical anomalies that make theories messy. You have to be willing to throw away the interesting things that happen on the ends of the Bell curve." Tony looked at Clint and smiled faintly. "Statistically, I should have died of a wrecked liver or multiple mutated STDs a decade ago."
Clint fought his own smile of relief. "I've got lots of statistics that say I should have ended up in a police morgue years ago."
"Except you ended up in the interesting parts of the Bell curve, where the extraordinary people are."
Clint shrugged and looked away. "Extraordinary fuck-up."
"You are still way behind me on the epically stupid things you've done with your life. Though I have had far more resources at hand to make bad use of." Tony got off his stool and went to the row of liquor bottles. He held one up and looked quizzically at Clint, who shook his head. He poured out only half a glass of brown liquid, capped the bottle, put it away, then went back to his stool. "Extraordinary people are bad for business, they're unpredictable and they argue with you instead of quietly buying what you want to sell to them, whatever it may be. But that's why we need the extraordinary people. That's where the heroes are." He tipped his glass towards Clint before drinking.
"If I'm a hero, what are you?" Clint snapped. He would never be happy with that title.
Tony stared into his glass. "Unfairly lucky. Stubborn. Narcissistic enough to think I can make a difference in the world."
"So hero is a fair cop, then."
Tony actually snickered. "No, Steve's the hero. The rest of us are just trying to keep up." He drained his glass. "And we need to find him. He's seen something that makes the Powers that Be twitchy to the point of fighter planes, and that kind of twitchy makes a mess."
"You think this is why Fury was killed?"
"Probably. But whether someone wanted to stop the plan or to stop Fury from interfering with the plan, I don't know."
Clint got up to prowl. "OK, just to put this out there-we're assuming Steve's on the side of the angels, here, right, and we should be countering whatever SHIELD is doing to stop him from doing-whatever he's up to?" He shrugged at the look Tony gave him. "SHIELD has had my back for a long time. I'm barely getting over being a traitor under Loki's command. I want a good reason before I do it in sound mind."
Tony nodded and leaned back. He held out one hand. "Captain America." He held out the other. "SHIELD. Which one do I trust when the chips are down?" He raised the first hand. "Cap, against all odds, appears to actually fulfill those stories I've been told all my life, told by people who I personally know didn't and don't take shit from anybody. He was the only thing Dad and Aunt Peggy agreed on, and they couldn't be in the same room for more than 30 seconds without yelling at each other." He raised the second hand. "SHIELD, founded by my dad and Aunt Peggy, but with a lot of other people's fingers in the pie. Eventually run by Nick Fury, who probably lied to himself about what he had for breakfast."
He tossed that hand over his shoulder. "I'm picking Captain America. Your results may vary."
Clint wandered over to a stair railing and hoisted himself up on it, leaning into the angle and balancing on the narrow rail. He barely noticed Tony's squeak of protest. It was his own version of Rodin, his personal Thinker pose.
He liked Steve Rogers, respected Captain America. But he d sworn an oath to SHIELD. The organization had given a home and refuge to him and to Natasha. He owed them allegiance, if not loyalty. The people of SHIELD had had his back for a long time, they'd pulled his ass out of the fire when he was sure the legend of Hawkeye was coming to a properly disastrous end. The woman running the scanner that morning wasn't the only one to nod respectfully when they saw him, even after Loki. Even if she was balanced by the fuckhead who'd whispered to him.
How much of SHIELD knew that Phil Coulson was still in play? Was that one of Fury's big secrets? And what would SHIELD become without Fury? Obviously an organization that used lethal force against the organization's darling. Would Clint get official orders to hunt down Steve Rogers? To pit his extraordinary assassin skills against the Super Soldier? Would they sic the Black Widow on Captain America? God knows he'd had to go up against former comrades in arms before, it wasn't the first time a SHIELD agent had gone bad. But this time-
"God fucking dammit!"
Clint nearly fell off the railing at Tony's shout. "What!"
Tony was staring at another screen, reading some text. "They've put guards on Peggy! There's an email to the director of her facility saying that due to certain security concerns, SHIELD is placing guards on her room. If they get her riled up and worried about Steve, I'm going to have their balls!"
"Why are you monitoring Peggy Carter's nursing home?"
"Who the fuck do you think is paying for her care? She was the only sane face at my parents' funeral and she sent me letters telling me I was being a shithead." He glowered at the screen. "I hated her for reminding me of all the hero stories they told me about Dad, but she kept begging me not to end up like him. She called me Howard the last time I went to see her," he added. "She said it looked like I was finally taking care of myself and maybe having a son was doing right by me."
"Aren't her kids taking care of her?"
"The bill they're paying every month is labeled maintenance and care. They're paying for the lady who goes in and reads to her every day. And she's not cheap. So at least they're think they're doing something."
Clint shook his head. "Steve wouldn't try to contact her, anyway, not if he's on the run."
"Yeah, but if he hears about it . . ."
"Fucking psychological combat."
Tony gave him an even look. "What, it's not part of the usual gameplan?"
"Against a terrorist, yes! And if they're going to classify one of our own that way, evidence needs to be produced. This is a level one warrant, something concrete should have already come up." He grabbed his hair in frustration. "I hate politics."
"Steve's not going to go anywhere near her," Tony said. "And he's not going to call me, he barely sends me a card at Christmas. Real dead-tree Christmas cards, signed Steven Rogers."
Clint had gotten Christmas cards, too. "He'll call Tasha, if he calls anybody."
Tony nodded. "Which is not a bad idea. Every now and then I find her having drinks with Pepper. Malibu, New York, Paris. They whisper and laugh together and give me thoughtful looks when I stumble across them. I bribe her with toys to keep her from killing me."
"You wouldn't be the first one." Clint looked around the room at the various screens. "There's shit-all we can do at the moment, is there."
"At least as far as the very satisfying bashing-people-in-the-head activities. I'm thinking I might wander over to the New York HQ and see about getting an audit of what they're doing with my tech." He looked at Clint. "You can't come. You keep your nose inside where they can't grab it."
Clint tried to pout in a manly fashion. "Great, stuck inside with nothing to do."
"On the contrary, my dear Hawkeye. I've got three SHIELD goons in my security offices that I don't know what to do with. Someone should at least chat with them, see what their instructions were and all that." His grin was evil. "I don't like government officials running operations on my private property without warning me."
"Dude, you just might be getting a Christmas card from me for this."
"Don't get carried away. Just go chat with Matilda about what to do with those guys."
"Is she your head of security?"
"Her title is Chief of Secure Personnel Interactions. Jarvis is general head of security, though he doesn't appear on the Org Chart."
"Of course you are," Clint said to the ceiling. "My apologies. And Matilda is in charge of dealing with those inconvenient organic entities that mess up your floors."
"Indeed, sir," Jarvis said. "Ms. Zanandrea is quite effective at dealing with unwanted visitors."
Tony got to his feet. "Go have fun intimidating the invaders. I'm going to go put on my billionaire industrialist clothes and wreck somebody's will to live."
"Uh, Stark?" Tony paused on his way up the stairs and looked at Clint. "Be careful, man. Shit's being weird."
The mad scientist was all over the grin. "Just because I'm unarmored doesn't mean I'm unarmed."
Clint's shoulders relaxed. "Good to know. Have fun storming the castle." Tony saluted and continued up the stairs. "OK, Jarvis, lead me to the security offices."
"To the first sub-basement, then sir."