A/N: In addition to taking this fic over 100,000 words (omg), the previous chapter also marks the transition to material I've written within the past couple of months (I wrote the earlier stuff last summer and have been reworking it ever since). This means I'm revising each chapter before posting while scrambling to make sure I stay ahead of what I'm posting by a comfortable margin. So I appreciate your patience as I continue the one-chapter-every-two-weeks update schedule.
_"Preparations"_
Tony devised a series of experiments with progressively larger sets of data before Rhodey dragged him upstairs for lunch. They returned to the workshop with Vision in tow.
"Here's the deal," Tony said, standing next to a hard drive he'd stripped from its original home in a busted laptop. "This drive is blank except for a small file. I want you to transfer the file to this flash drive." He held up a plastic figure shaped like Iron Man, then plugged it into the computer Rhodey normally used.
"All right," Vision said agreeably. He touched the hard drive. "It is a text file that says 'hello world'," he murmured.
"Don't read it, just copy it," Tony urged. "There won't be time to sift through everything during a mission."
Vision appeared to concentrate, fixing his gaze at the wall. After a moment, he turned and his fingers went through the flash drive.
Tony double-checked, but the drive remained empty. He shook his head and Vision frowned.
"Do you have to touch it? You read those other files without touching anything," Rhodey said.
"I don't care if he feels the need to stand inside the computer as long as the files transfer," Tony countered with some impatience.
"Would it help to think of it like a package that you pick up and then put down?" Rhodey asked Vision.
"I will try," Vision said gravely, and tried again.
And again. And again. And nothing happened. Vision was a good sport about it, but after more than an hour even he seemed to be getting frustrated.
"What did you do to keep Ultron from escaping through the internet? Can't you do the opposite of that or something?" Tony asked irritably. It had to work, something had to work, it didn't make sense for an android to be unable to store data. But then, Vision was hardly the sort of android he would have designed himself.
Perhaps it was that suggestion, or perhaps it was something else, but on Vision's next attempt, a file appeared on the flash drive. It was corrupted, but it was a start.
By the end of the afternoon, Vision had managed to successfully transfer the two smallest test batches-the text file and a music file (AC/DC, of course)-to the flash drive.
It was encouraging that he'd done that much, given the repeated failures over the hours, but Tony was not optimistic about using him to transfer the intel during the upcoming mission. That would involve terabytes of data, minimum.
Tony would have insisted upon continuing the attempts, but Rhodey made it clear that eating dinner was not optional and Vision seemed happy to have a break.
When he arrived upstairs, he was greeted enthusiastically by Lila. "Uncle Tony, will you read to me?"
"Lila, come to the table please," Laura called.
"Coming, mama," she replied, then slipped her hand into his. "Will you sit next to me?"
"Sure, honey," he said, allowing himself to be tugged over to the table.
Lila kept up a steady stream of prattle while they ate, which he listened to with half an ear. The rest of the table was discussing their afternoon pursuits, all of which had something to do with the upcoming mission.
As soon as Lila was finished, he went with her to the couch to do their reading for the day while the others cleaned up. Laura took the boys to get ready for bed; she gestured for Tony to bring Lila when they were done and he nodded his agreement.
Everyone else had settled back around the table by the time they finished. When he returned to the common room after escorting Lila to the Barton quarters, they were discussing what Natasha and Steve had been able to determine about their target, both its design and its surroundings.
Tony lingered near the door a moment, feeling like an outsider peering in. He shook it off and slipped into a chair as unobtrusively as he could. He watched the discussion and especially Rogers, knowing they needed to have that conversation but not wanting it to be so public. Better to wait and pull him aside when it wouldn't be so obvious.
When they finally dispersed, Tony moved to leave the room with Rhodey, who shook his head and gestured toward Steve. He sighed but nodded and hung back, dreading how it might go.
Vision approached him as he waited. "Would you like me to continue the file transfer attempts?"
Over Vision's shoulder, Tony could see Steve leaving with Sam and felt relieved. "No, don't worry about it. We'll try again tomorrow. Just . . . do whatever it is you normally do at night."
Vision nodded. "Good night," he said before floating out of the room. Why he bothered to walk sometimes and not others wasn't something that Tony was going to question.
He was the last to leave and could have gone down to his workshop rather than turn in so early, but he was already tired thanks to his short night and there wasn't anything he felt inspired to work on. He ought to try to finish the peek-a-boo program, as he'd privately dubbed the effort to see through the stealth tech, especially since it might be needed for the mission, but he still hadn't had any grand insights to make it work.
So he went to bed and dreamed of awkward conversations atop floating computers and standing unseen in the midst of crowds of people.
.
As soon as he woke, he could tell it wasn't going to be a good day. Everything felt wrong somehow, even his clothes, and he kept dropping things even though his hands didn't look like they were shaking. He didn't try shaving, just to be safe, and he steeled himself to have that conversation with Rogers despite his suspicion that it wasn't likely to go well.
"Friday, where is Rogers?" he asked when he was finished getting dressed.
"Captain Rogers is in his quarters, boss."
"Tell him I'd like to speak to him in the office when he's available," he said, squaring his shoulders and sauntering out of his room like nothing was wrong.
Tony had enough time to do a brief check of his messages and put his feet up on the desk before Rogers appeared in the doorway looking like a walking clothes advertisement, all freshly washed and perfectly cut. "You wanted to talk to me?" Rogers asked.
"Yeah. Come in and close the door," he said nonchalantly, resisting the impulse to sit up straighter. When Rogers settled in front of the desk, standing in parade rest, Tony asked, "How are you getting along with the shield these days?" He meant it to sound light-hearted but it fell flat.
Steve frowned. "That's none of your business."
He sighed. "You can't go on a mission unarmed. If you aren't taking the shield, you need to take something else. Gun, bow and arrow, rocket launcher, whatever, I don't care, but you need to be armed."
"I'll take care of it," Steve said staunchly.
"Will you? Do tell, what is your weapon? You'd better do a good job of convincing me or you're not going."
Steve clenched his jaw. "Do you really think it's wise to send the team out short two people?"
"There's still as many of them as there used to be of us," Tony retorted, pulling his feet off the desk and standing up in challenge.
"You'd risk the mission over this? We need all hands on deck."
"You risked your life and everyone else's by going in unarmed," Tony hissed. "I will not allow that to happen again."
"You won't allow it," Steve repeated mockingly. "Stark, what are you trying to prove? That you're a big man even without your suit of armor?"
"This isn't about me," Tony said hotly. "This is about you. And guess what? You're benched for this mission. Now get out before I give in to the urge to punch you again."
Steve clenched his fists but turned on his heel and strode out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. Tony let out his breath in a rush and sagged back into the chair, running one hand through his hair.
Could he have handled that better? He didn't want to bench Rogers, though a part of him had suspected all along that it would end that way.
Now he needed to spread the word. "Friday, where's Rhodey?"
"Colonel Rhodes is-"
"-right here," Rhodey announced as he rolled into the room. "You talked to Rogers."
"I talked to Rogers," he confirmed with a sigh. "You're in charge for this round."
"Right." Rhodey studied him for a moment. "Do me a favor?"
"For you? Anything."
"Remember that it's his decision that put him here. Not your fault, not your responsibility."
"Easy for you to say. He wasn't accusing you of risking the mission by daring to send the team out short-handed."
"We'll manage," Rhodey said confidently. "Come on. Breakfast, then I have a mission to coordinate."
Tony followed him into the elevator, then had a sinking realization. "And I have to teach an android to move large amounts of data, if all this is going to be worth the effort. Unless you want to give the orders while I'm operating the suit for you."
"I can be the backup plan," Rhodey said after a brief pause. "Good luck with that."
"Easy for you to say," Tony said with a grimace. The day just got better and better.
Everyone else, including Rogers, was already at the table when they arrived. Tony busied himself with figuring out what to eat rather than look at him. Benching Rogers now seemed simple compared to telling the others about it.
Fortunately, he was able to sit next to Rhodey at the table. Unfortunately, the kids had already cleared the room, so there was no convenient way to keep the conversation from turning to the upcoming mission. He idly dragged his spoon back and forth through his oatmeal-it kept sticking in his throat so he wasn't going to finish it anyway-and listened as the others discussed what still needed to be done for them to be prepared.
Before he decided how to interject, someone asked Steve a question about strategy and he replied, "I won't be going."
"What are you talking about?" Sam demanded when no one else spoke.
Tony seized the opportunity. "I benched him," he said flatly. "Rhodey will be leading the mission."
"Who died and put you in charge?" Clint asked snidely.
What little patience he'd managed to maintain during the confrontation with Rogers had long since evaporated. "Well, let's see, I only finance this entire outfit," he shot back. "Not to mention that I had to vouch for your sorry asses so you wouldn't end up on the Raft again. You go rogue, it's my reputation that goes down in flames. So yeah, I'm in charge for now. Like it or leave it."
"Why did you bench Cap?" Natasha inquired calmly.
"You want to answer that, Rogers?" He was more than a little curious if Rogers would be willing to confess.
"I put everyone at risk by going on the last mission unarmed," Steve said meekly. His demeanor in making the admission was so different from their interaction earlier that Tony had to wonder what happened in the interim.
"And he couldn't convince me that he wouldn't do it again. If we're planning a mission, you go prepared or not at all," Tony added, just to make sure it was clear that this wasn't personal.
To his surprise, Sam nodded. "You would've been in even hotter water-and sooner-in the Army for a stunt like that," he said to Steve. "Will you be on comms like Stark?"
Steve shrugged and glanced at Tony, who hadn't thought about it. "I don't see why not," he said carelessly. "It's not like he could do any damage from here."
"So what's the plan?" Clint asked.
"Let's collect everything we've got so far and see if we need to plug any holes before we devise a plan of attack," Rhodey said. "How about we regroup in ten minutes? Rogers, you're welcome to stay and strategize."
"Do you need Vision or should we go do the other thing?" Tony asked as the others began to rise from the table and clean up the meal.
"Go do the data thing. We won't need him until later."
"Got it. You need anything, just call."
Rhodey waved him off. "We'll be fine, they know what they're doing."
"I wish I could say the same of Vision," Tony grumbled half-heartedly. It wasn't the android's fault, he knew that, but that he didn't know how to fix it troubled him. Especially now that the crux of the mission relied on Vision figuring this out.
As it turned out, Vision had spent time overnight working on his technique. "I do not require sleep, so passing the time usefully seemed wise," he said when Tony expressed his surprise that the first two attempts were successful.
It was too good to last, of course. After the initial spurt of progress, they were back to where they had left off the previous afternoon: frustrated and at a standstill.
Tony felt helpless, useless. Why was he even there? It's not like he could do anything besides watch and try to come up with a contingency plan for when this one inevitably failed.
He was almost glad when Rhodey demanded he make an appearance for lunch. Vision stayed behind to keep trying; perhaps the absence of an audience would help.
As he finished his sandwich, he became aware of a small presence hovering next to his chair. He pretended he didn't notice and took a long swig of water while studying her out of the corner of his eye. Lila was bouncing on the balls of her feet, clutching her book to her chest with both arms.
Finally, she couldn't contain herself any longer. "Uncle Tony?" she said shyly.
He feigned surprise as he turned to look at her. "Oh, hello there. Would you like to join me?"
She shook her head vigorously. "Will you read to me?"
"Hang on, let me check with the boss. Rhodey, do I have time to read to the little lady?"
Rhodey paused on his way out of the kitchen. "We don't need you yet, so do what you want."
"You know where to find me," he said, carefully sliding his chair back. "Okay honey, I'll be right there."
He always found it a little uncanny how still Lila could be while reading a book despite her (and her brothers') seemingly boundless energy otherwise. But maybe it wasn't that strange; he could vaguely remember being very focused on the things that interested him as a child. People usually assumed that his early success in electronics was due to his father's prodding. In truth, his father had been angry to find him messing with the equipment. His mother talked him down, pointed out that it was natural for their son to show interest in such things, and wasn't it nice that he also seemed to have an aptitude for it?
He forcefully pushed the thoughts of his parents away as Lila clambered down off the couch and reverently placed the book back onto its designated shelf. She stood in front of the bookshelf for a moment, alternately studying the books and him while playing with the tail of her braid. He waited, wondering what she was thinking about, but she never spoke her mind. Instead, she grabbed a different book, waved goodbye, and disappeared down the stairs.
Tony sighed and grabbed the neglected newspapers off the chessboard. Newspapers meant it was Sunday, how did it get to be Sunday already? He left them on the counter when he noticed the dishes hadn't been finished after lunch.
After washing the dishes and checking with Friday about everyone's whereabouts, he tucked the papers under his arm and headed for the workshop to see how Vision was doing.
The afternoon passed much like the morning did. Vision made halting progress on the data transfer experiment. Tony skimmed the newspapers. There was nothing particularly interesting, just lots of talk about curbing terrorism even though there hadn't been any incidents for months. The Mandarin had been the last terrorist explicitly targeting the U.S., though there were always some groups up to no good in the Middle East. (Why was it always the Middle East?)
He pushed the papers aside and returned his attention to developing some sort of backup method other than hacking Rhodey's suit to get the intel they'd need. He could send them with one of the small devices he'd used to allow Jarvis to break into Fury's files on the helicarrier, but with this base located in the mountains-and, from what it sounded like, it was actually within a mountain-the signal from the base to his satellite may not be sufficient for Friday to do her thing no matter where he parked the satellite.
Which left copying the files onto something that could be physically carried into the base. But that would take ages, depending on how much data was there. Still, partial data was better than no data.
He was rummaging around in his drawers of parts, looking for the drive he knew he'd stashed somewhere when Rhodey called down and asked them both to come upstairs.
The others were gathering at the conference table when he trailed Vision into the room, except for Wanda, who was in the kitchen with Cooper. He would have to check when he was on food duty next; it had been a while since he'd done it and with everyone else busy with the mission planning, at least he could be useful that way.
"How's it coming?" Rhodey asked as Tony slid into the chair next to him.
"He's gotten better, but it's not enough by a long shot. I'm working on an alternative that won't take you out of the fight."
"Good to know." Rhodey turned his attention to the rest of the group. "All right, everyone, let's get this attack planned out. Rogers and Romanoff, any recommendations for our approach?"
Tony listened with half an ear as Natasha and Steve detailed what they knew about the position and layout of the mountain base, complete with a projected diagram of the likely configuration. The rest of his mind was still considering alternatives to Vision getting the data.
"A big unknown is the number of personnel manning the base," Natasha finished. "Based on the plans we found in the HYDRA data dump, this base can house about fifty under normal conditions."
Rhodey nodded solemnly. "How sure are we that there are only two exits?"
Natasha and Steve exchanged a look. "About seventy-five percent," Steve admitted.
"Can we improve those odds?"
"I can try out my new stealth tech tracking program from the nearest satellites, but no promises. It's a work in progress," Tony said, already pulling out his phone.
"Can the satellites use the other scanning thing you've been working on?" Rhodey asked.
"No can do, boss. That only works short range."
"Could we use it from the quinjet once we get over there? Take a better look before we pass the point of no return?"
"It's worth a shot. I'll get the program transferred over," Tony replied, ignoring the looks of confusion being cast in his direction and focusing on inputting the commands for Friday.
Rhodey briefly explained to the others what Tony had been working on, then continued, "Let's assume the maximum possible number of opponents and two exits. What's our first step?"
Tony tuned them out again, reviewing the peek-a-boo program. He wasn't overly pleased with it, but it was a start. He loaded it up and tested it on the satellite above the compound. It sensed the boundaries of the camouflaged area, but couldn't see within it. That would have to do for now. He was sure he could get it working better, if he just had the time, and also inspiration.
He transferred the program to the target satellite, then switched over to examining the scanning program. It wasn't fully compatible with the quinjet's systems, to say nothing of the fact that the jet didn't have enough cameras to produce the full three-dimensional effect. But that didn't have to be a problem; scanning for a door didn't necessarily require three dimensions.
There was a hand on his arm. "How are you doing?" Rhodey asked.
"I'll have to reprogram part of the scanning code before it'll work on the jet," he answered absently.
"But we're good otherwise?"
"I hope so."
"Then come and eat something. You can do the reprogramming after."
"And finish figuring out a backup for copying the data, and check on the satellite," he said with a sigh. There was always something else to do, something else to develop . . . normally, that thought was invigorating. Today it just made him tired.
"We have almost forty-eight hours before the jet has to leave. You have enough time," Rhodey said optimistically.
"Thanks for the pep talk," he said sarcastically as he stood. He was, once again, the last one at the table, and the others had been busy while he was preoccupied. Someone had pulled out the erasable markers and wrote on the glass display as they figured out the plan of attack; someone else (probably Clint) had scribbled beside it: 1. Drop off flyers, 2. Blow up back door, 3. ?, 4. Profit!
Dinner was some sort of meat coated with breading; Cooper was proud about doing that himself. Wanda had supervised the oven part of the process, since the oven was a little too high for children to operate alone. Served alongside the meat was mixed vegetables, plus macaroni and cheese which Cooper had also made. It wasn't what Tony would have picked, but it was good of the kid to cook for so many people.
After finishing he went back to the workshop to try to knock out some of the things he needed to do. He finally found the drive he'd been looking for and hooked it up to make sure it was empty and ready to go. He'd have to check with Rhodey about who should carry it.
Taking a peek at the satellite data didn't take a whole lot of time, either, since the high resolution scan he'd started of their target area hadn't completed yet. Some parts had to wait for daylight in that part of the world, which wouldn't be for several hours yet, so those answers wouldn't be ready until morning.
He was elbows deep-metaphorically speaking-in the reprogramming when Friday alerted him that Vision was requesting entry to the workshop. "Let him in," he replied without looking up.
"Good evening," Vision greeted him soberly. "Is it permissible for Miss Maximoff to accompany me into your workshop? She believes she might be able to provide assistance in my task."
Tony glanced over and saw Wanda lurking in the hallway behind Vision. He briefly considered the options and found he didn't particularly care either way. "Yeah, sure, whatever," he said dismissively, then addressed Wanda. "Don't touch anything, and you leave when Vision does. Clear?"
She paused in her wide-eyed review of the room to bob her head in assent. "Of course. I am not here to impose."
That settled, he ignored their murmured conversation and re-immersed himself in the code. Every so often he'd load it into the test version of the quinjet programming to see how it was doing, only to have another error crop up and send him into another loop of troubleshooting. It was annoying, but the kind of annoyance he knew he'd beat. Eventually.
After at least a dozen attempts, the code didn't throw any new errors and still seemed to be working. The next step was loading the code into the jet itself, but he kind of didn't want to deal with the inevitable problems that would require attention despite his careful troubleshooting. Yet he might as well do it while he was focused and get it off his plate.
He began the upload and leaned back in his chair to stretch a bit; he was feeling stiffer than he ought to, probably because it had been a while since he'd done anything physically active. So much for resuming a regular workout regimen.
Vision and Wanda were still hanging around, so he checked the empty server set up for Vision's experimentation and was pleasantly surprised to find readable data on it in rather large quantities. Not as large as any of the HYDRA data dumps they'd collected before, granted, but much larger than he'd been able to manage before. He watched the pair until his upload was finished, but he couldn't tell what Wanda was doing that was helping and he didn't want to ask.
As expected, there were a few glitches while integrating the new code into the jet; he should do a new program dump and redo the test server because it obviously wasn't identical to the quinjet anymore. But that could wait.
Fortunately the glitches weren't difficult to resolve, and he activated the new code to test it out on the hangar where the quinjet was stored. It seemed to detect the contours of the building the way he'd expect, so that was promising. Doing a field test before the mission would be even better. He sent a message to that effect to Rhodey, as it was far too late for Rhodey to still be awake, then shut everything down for the night. Wanda and Vision had vanished at some point without him noticing.
The hallways were deserted as he made his way to his room so his mind was free to wander, collecting things that he should do, ought to do, why hadn't he done them?
Hit the workout room.
Call Pepper-how many days had it been since they'd talked? Too many.
He ought to have contacted Peter when he was in New York. Not thinking to do that at the time was unforgivable.
Just like not realizing sooner that Rhodey needed a ramp on the chopper. But at least he'd finally fixed that.
He should follow up with the SI team in a couple of days about putting ramps on other vehicles.
He also needed to talk to Dr. Mann about his scanning system. He had another of those appointments soon, maybe he could ask her about it then.
He went as far as making a list of the things circling like vultures in his brain in hopes they would cease to bother him. Then, when sleep continued to elude him, he had Friday start copying the quinjet programming so he could redo his test environment.
When the copying was complete and he was still awake, he returned to the workshop and threw himself into fixing the test server. He finished that without too much effort and moved on to re-examining the peek-a-boo program to see if he could improve it enough that it wouldn't matter if the scanning program didn't work properly from the quinjet. He might as well make the time productive if he wasn't going to sleep.
It was a few hours before the yawning and blurry vision were troublesome enough to force him to stop for a while. He was sound asleep almost as soon as he crawled into bed, unbothered by the weak light and birdsong filtering through the window blinds.
Rhodey was cheerily demanding that he 'rise and shine!' what felt like seconds later. He mumbled something offensive about the man's mother and rolled over. Rhodey wasn't put off so easily, having heard it all before, and tried again. By now Tony was awake enough to croak, "Friday, how long have I been in bed?"
"Three hours, forty six minutes, boss."
"See? Leave me alone."
"Take your meds," Rhodey said, tossing the bottle beside him on the bed. "I was hoping you'd join us to review the plan before I have P.T., but we can do it later. Should I come back in a few hours?"
"Yeah, whatever," he said, swallowing one of the pills without even opening his eyes. He lobbed the bottle toward the end of the bed, not caring where it ended up.
Rhodey left quietly and he might have dozed for a while, but he didn't manage to go back to sleep for long. He gave up when a headache built behind his eyes and he had to abandon the bed in search of painkillers.
The combination of pills and a hot shower helped alleviate some of the pulsing agony, but coffee would be even better. He felt hungover, which wasn't fair considering he'd not had a drop of alcohol for . . . at least a week. However many days it had been since that ill-considered Friday night binge.
Nobody was in the common room when he arrived and that was just fine. He brewed a nice, strong batch of coffee in the press and was considering what he could do that would require the least amount of brainpower-as, at present, he had very little to offer-when the others began filtering into the room. The sound of conversation grated on his ears and he turned away to escape down the stairs.
"Are you coming?" Sam asked suddenly from behind him.
He only just managed not to slosh his coffee when he jumped in surprise. "I-uh-" he stammered as his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He fished it out and glanced at the screen, a little surprised to see it was his lawyer. Normally he called the lawyer, not the other way around. "Give me a minute."
Sam left him alone and he debated whether to answer or not. Lawyer-speak could make his head hurt on a good day, and this was most definitely not a good day.
While he was lost in indecision, the phone stopped vibrating. Well, that answered that. But now he had to decide if he would join the others or slip meekly away to nurse his headache in privacy.
No. He needed to show up, be in charge of himself the way he kept insisting he was in charge of everyone else.
He steeled his nerves and crossed the room, claiming a chair along the railing rather than at the table. He had just settled in when his phone started vibrating again. His lawyer again. He frowned and considered answering this time, but then Rhodey started talking, so he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
Barely a minute later, his lawyer was calling yet again without bothering to leave a message and he knew he had to answer this time. "Sorry guys, I have to take this," he said as he rose from his chair, not caring who he was interrupting in doing so. He was out the door in a few strides. "Bill! To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"I'm afraid this will be anything but a pleasure," the lawyer said grimly.