July 9th, 2011. 3:42pm. Stark residence. Malibu, California, USA.
By the time Toni framed herself in the doorway of her living room, she'd attained a level of laissez-faire coolness that was as much a second skin to her as her anxiety.
It didn't matter that her hair was on the wetter side of damp, trailing down her back and over her shoulders in dark black curls and loops, both sleek and frizzy in that way that was both exasperating and also so worth it when it cooperated. It didn't matter that she didn't have makeup on, or that she was barefoot—it was her own damn house, and she'd dress, or not, however she pleased—no. No, all that mattered was that she felt good in her own skin for the first time in weeks, maybe even months. What mattered was the way that her favorite jeans—dark, skinny, slinky, with rips and tears all over earned through the years instead of being pre-fabricated—made her feel. What mattered was the way that her blood red tank hugged her form over top of her comfiest bra, arc reactor light shining through the material in a way that would remind everyone just who they were talking to, and her muscles on easy display for all to see.
She felt good, and that's what mattered.
She felt powerful, and yeah, that mattered too—especially with whom she was dealing with on this particular day.
Sunny, with a chance of S.H.I.E.L.D. raining on your parade. Bring your umbrella!
Toni rolled her eyes at her own stupid sense of humor, and leaned against the doorframe so that she could take a good look at who'd interrupted her frankly well-deserved rest and freakout time.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to Phil Coulson as he was in her direct line of sight, standing at the large granite island that made up a large portion of her open kitchen. He looked hale and hearty as ever, if bland, though a smile was playing very faintly at the edge of his lips. Which, frankly, was understandable, as he was talking to Pepper, and if anyone could get Super Secret Agent Man to smile, it was Pepper Potts. Coulson had always seemed to have a soft spot for Toni's Personal Assistant turned CEO, and it seemed to soften all the more with each interaction.
A hint of a smile played at her own lips as Toni swept her gaze across the rest of her living room-foyer-kitchen, catching sight of a man with sandy blond hair and arm muscles that could rival hers lazing back on her white couch—god, she really needed to get rid of that damn thing after everything; she just hadn't had the time—before her attention was caught by movement to her right.
"Ms. Romanov, it's been quite some time," Toni began before the woman could even open her mouth, sounding not at all surprised to see her in the company of Agent Coulson. Truly, she wasn't. Fury and Romanov were tight, as were Fury and Coulson, thus it made sense that the spy would be far up in Coulson's confidence as well—especially considering the woman's role in deceiving her, despite the fact they'd all bought her some precious time.
Toni was still fucking cranky, but she'd never quite figured out if she was crankier about the deception, or about the fact that they'd actually been goddamn right to push her ass in the direction they had. The direction which had ultimately saved Toni's life.
Ugh.
Probably the latter, and that was just the worst.
"It has, Ms. Stark," the redhead said evenly, her gaze, fixed on Toni's, just as steady as her voice. "I trust you've been well? Better than you were the last time we saw you, yes?" Her expression was carefully composed.
Toni narrowed her eyes at the other woman, trying to suss out exactly what the hell her motivations were, then said 'fuck it'. "Cut the shit, Agent Romanov, you're not one for pleasantries, and I don't believe you give much of a damn for me. Not anymore, if ever." Toni's voice was cold, her words sharp, and her expression even sharper, even colder.
Toni didn't entirely believe all that, but she had to make the other woman believe.
Something flickered behind Agent Romanov's eyes, across her features, and she almost—almost—shut it all back and away from Toni's prying eyes, but instead she let her features soften into something a little more… human. Toni wasn't sure what exactly she was seeing, but it was… something. Something very Natalie Rushman, but without the veneer of duplicity that curdled Toni's stomach when she looked back on most of those interactions.
Toni almost let herself listen to the part of her brain whispering that maybe, just maybe this was the real Natasha Romanov. The woman, not the spy. The truth, not the artifice.
Almost.
And then Toni's eagle eyes caught the way Natasha moistened her lips just so and the quick dart of her eyes off to Toni's left. Toni glanced in that direction and then did a double-take, thinking that Natasha had been looking at her boss, but that was before she noticed the careful way that Pepper was holding herself away from Toni and Natasha and holding Coulson's attention, despite the fact that Toni knew full well that her arrival had been noted.
Toni looked back at Natasha and lifted an eyebrow. "What's going on?" she asked calmly.
"I asked for a minute of your time before we began," the redhead replied smoothly. "May I have it?"
Toni let the silence stretch for a few seconds before nodding her head slowly. "Sure, whatever."
"I'll keep it short and painless, I promise," Natasha said seriously, though there was a hint of mischief in her eyes. Whether heart or art, Toni didn't know, but she was sure she'd find out in good time.
"Well go on then, you're killing me with anticipation," Toni egged her on dryly.
"I just wanted to apologize," Natasha said simply.
Toni nearly fell over. She didn't. What she did was swear. Creatively. And then, "I have a heart condition; don't shock me like that." She lifted her hand to her chest dramatically, pressing against the arc reactor in a way that masked the affirming touch with what would look like theater to anyone who didn't know her intimately.
Or, well, to anyone other than a spy, too, she supposed.
"You are completely fine, you drama queen," Natasha replied with an arched brow, a smirk covering her lips.
Toni waved that away, choosing to reply to the… apology, instead. "It's forgiven and forgotten, but why now?"
And here Natasha hesitated, just the slightest bit, before continuing, "I deceived you once. I don't want to do it again. Not now."
"Say what?" She blinked. "What do you—" Toni stopped abruptly as her brain suddenly made the leap between the thoughts that Natasha was edging her towards. Whether she wasn't stating it directly on purpose, wanting Toni to connect the dots on her own, or if it was just because Toni's brain was moving faster than it normally did with certain non-engineering things, Toni cut herself off as soon as her brain went click-whirr.
"Shit, it's you?" she practically demanded, mind blanking just a little.
Natasha's expression didn't say 'good job, you got there on your own', and yet Toni still felt like that was exactly what was going on. Not quite putting words in the other woman's mouth, per se, but Toni certainly felt that way.
At Natasha's silent nod, Toni felt a little at a loss for how to respond.
On one hand, Toni knew that Pepper had a soulmate—she'd been the one to find it and convince Pepper that no matter what she and Toni had, a soulmate was so much more. She'd known about it, even if she hadn't honestly had enough time to absorb the true implications of that information.
Yes, she'd moved on from the relationship with Pepper, but a lot of that time had been spent in the literal past, and before that on trying to find her way to said past. She'd been a little too stuck in her head for her to really think about who Pepper's soulmate was; too stuck in the math and engineering and even the metaphysics of the whole soulmate question—never mind her goddamn self-destructive anxiety—to really think about what she would do when faced with the woman who would mean more to Pepper than Toni could—or, at least, mean more to her in that way, because she knew damn well that she meant a lot to Pepper, and vice versa, and she always would.
That was not in question.
But what was in question was how exactly Toni should respond. Pepper had said she'd met her soulmate before they'd received marks, had said that it hadn't been the right time—which, uh, yeah, when you were trying to infiltrate the company of your future soulmate's boss and girlfriend, wasn't exactly the right time at all, jesus christ, Toni almost felt sorry for the spy—and Toni had put that together with ease. What was also easy was how she could see they were right for each other, at least with the little she could glean from Natasha that could be genuine.
—Oh God, those two could take over the world together—
What was also not in question was that Natasha could just as easily break Pepper's heart as be its missing piece.
It was on the tip of Toni's tongue to threaten Natasha, and Toni could see that the redhead could just tell that was about to leave her lips, but…
But, well… Toni had done some growing up these last two weeks. She'd been to a place and time she still had trouble believing at times, been to a place in her heart she'd never expected to be, been through emotions and events she had never dreamed of experiencing, and had seen herself that people could not only change, but that one's preconceived notion of another person could one hundred percent be wrong—or, at least, be not entirely right.
—Steve, his initial fearful lashing out, his growing and fierce defense of and warmth towards her at the end—
Toni had grown, and that growth stilled her tongue.
Instead, Toni inclined her head and smiled a mix of her private and press smiles. Something… cautiously warm. "Thank you for being forthright about this. I won't forget that." She was on the edge of saying something else—'But I won't forget what you did' or 'That's not the last you'll hear from me on this'—but fully recognized that any and all options were C-level movie villain speech and so swallowed those words down.
See, Pepper? Sometimes she could be mature.
"She deserves the best," is what Toni finally said, leaving the rest unspoken. 'You better be the best,' and 'don't hurt her or you'll answer to me,' and 'I'm not even sure if you qualify as the best.'
Nope, definitely didn't need to say any of that. She could sure as hell think it, strongly, in Agent Romanov's direction, however. So that's exactly what she did even as she nodded her head sharply and turned on her heel, feeling the sharp, piercing gaze of the agent in question on her back as she walked away.
Toni hid the barely there shiver she felt at turning her back to the deadly spy and assassin by giving Pepper an over-exaggerated wink and relishing in the bare hint of a blush that stained her ex-girlfriend's cheeks. She could take the time to figure out what to actually say to Pepper later. For now… well, not artifice, but… misdirection. Teasing. Sleight of hand.
Okay, so maybe a little artifice.
"It's fine, Pepper," she said warmly as a way to make up for it, and the smile that Pepper gave her in return made the choice that much more right.
"So," Toni said, switching gears suddenly as she padded to a stop in front of Agent Coulson. "What brings you lovely people to my humble abode?"
Coulson ignored the comment she just knew that Fury would've made—points to him—and replied instead, always straight to the point, thank god, "We picked up an unusual energy signature early this morning, Dr. Stark, one which seems to have originated from this approximate location at approxi- no, exactly 4:32am local time."
No questions, just a simple statement of fact.
Toni blinked mildly without changing her expression—it honestly did not surprise her that S.H.I.E.L.D. had picked up on whatever it was that Loki had done to her. "What sort of energy?" she asked without hesitation.
So sue her, she was curious.
"A mix that is most commonly associated with astrophysics, though this is a very specific signature, Dr. Stark. May I ask what you were doing at 4:30am?" Coulson asked patiently, though his eyes tightened the slightest bit.
"Busy spying on me? Tut tut, I believe that goes against even S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rules," Toni replied smarmily instead.
"Dr. Stark, you know as well as I do that specific energy signatures like I mentioned can be picked up with broad spectrum scanning equipment, especially with the technology S.H.I.E.L.D. has at hand. We programmed it with the signature, and then we were notified this morning that the exact signature was detected here. Not California, not Malibu, but here. Specifically." He stared her down, and she gave as good as she got.
She wasn't exactly the first to look away, but that had more to do with the fact that Coulson didn't really have staring contests in the typical manner. He simply blinked and looked away, making it look as if he'd never even attempted to stare her down.
Toni wasn't even sure he had, he was that good.
Toni instead did him one better without thinking by stepping quietly past him and around the granite island, using the time as she wandered to her fridge to think. To figure out what her play was; what she could tell; what she couldn't, or shouldn't, or didn't want to say.
What she really wanted was to be left alone, but she was pretty sure she wasn't going to get that, and well… she could occasionally be practical.
"I may know something about it," she finally said, easily, as she grabbed the little plastic pint of blueberries and closed the fridge behind her. She turned and leaned against the cool steel and continued before they could preempt her. "My question for you is: when did you encounter this energy signature?"
"We asked first," the blond man on the couch remarked.
"Who's this guy?" Toni raised an eyebrow and casually threw a blueberry in the man's direction.
Within the span of a second, Toni heard—and practically felt—the thunk of a knife to her left. Pepper gasped, but Toni… well, Toni paused for a startled moment, eyes going wide as she turned to stare at the long-handled knife quivering and ringing in the steel of her fridge door, and laughed.
"Okay, I like this guy, whoever the hell he is." She tipped an imaginary hat at the man, who raised a playful eyebrow at her and grinned in response, but who otherwise settled down. He whipped out an apple that was in all likelihood stolen from her precious stash of MacIntosh's and started peeling it with what looked like an exact match to the knife still sticking out of the fridge door—her fridge door.
Smarmy bastard.
Toni could appreciate that, that was for sure.
Letting a slow smile spread across her lips, she stepped back towards Coulson—making note of Agent Romanov's position by the glass doors before speaking again, "I'll play if you play, Agent Coulson. Come now, I've been neck deep in S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets since I could read, and I'm, what? Technically a level 7 with you, if not in practice more?" She let the question stand on its own, silence filling the remaining space between them as Agent Coulson seemed to take a moment to think.
Agent Coulson let her have this one, and Toni found herself carefully concealing a sigh of relief. If she'd had to engage in a pissing match, he was one of the few who had a chance at winning—and he knew it. He was letting her, not conceding the information.
She quirked her lips up at him, and followed when he nodded in the direction of the couch.
There really wasn't all that much space on the couch to fit five grown humans, so Toni found herself flopping onto the white damask to the left of Knife Guy, and patted the seat to her left so that Pepper could have the spot. Coulson preferred to stand, she knew that, and Natasha took a spot sort of halfway between her boss and her… soulmate.
Well, if that wasn't metaphorical of what was to come, Toni would eat her hat.
Knife Guy leaned in close, in a way that somehow didn't set off all of Toni's ginormous alarm bells, and spoke in an obnoxiously loud stage whisper, "They're going to be so scary together, y'know? Like, do you even know what my Nat is capable of? They'll rule the world if even half of what I hear of the Pepper Potts is true, mark my words."
Toni let out a loud laugh, a huge and genuine grin spreading across her face as she turned her head to catch his eyes. "I was literally just thinking that, but I at least had the grace not to say it out loud," she teased.
"Congratulations," murmured Pepper, sounding rather pained, and Toni chanced a glance to her left to see that her best friend/ex-girlfriend/whatever she was rubbing at her temples with both hands. "You've finally found someone with even less of a filter than you have, Toni."
Coulson sighed, sounding long-suffering. Sounding human, and Toni stared at him in wonder. "You have no idea."
"You," Knife Guy said, actually brandishing said knife at Coulson as if Coulson couldn't kill him fifty ways before it actually connected, "are a liar and a madman."
Toni stared back and forth between the two of them, not quite believing the almost playfulness with with the two of them bantered. It was rude to ask questions, but Toni was pretty damn sure these two were at the very least best friends like she and Rhodey, if not platonic or romantic soulmates.
The thought of the Man in Black having a soulmate was just… weird. Weird.
"So… what's your name? I can't keep calling you Knife Guy in my head. Even for me that's a really bad nickname." Toni asked, smile still tugging at her lips.
"Ah yes," the man said, immediately flicking his attention to her again. "The famous Stark nicknames. I mean, they're not quite living up to reputation yet, but I'll give you a pass for the first one." His eyes sparkled with humor.
"Oh just you wait—" Toni started, only to be interrupted by Coulson.
"Children. Antonia. Clint," he said, radiating a sort of weary disapproval.
Toni resisted shuddering at the use of her full name, and focused instead on the man beside her again. Her eyes sharpened with appraisal as she took him in from top to bottom, and she leaned back on her couch, slowly spreading both arms along the back in one of the few poses she'd taken from her father's arsenal. "The Clint Barton? Finally I get to put a face to the deeds. The many, many deeds, and more of which I'm sure I've not been able to snoop on."
"Toni, oh my god," Pepper groaned, and Toni was just glad that she could get that hint of laughter into Pepper's tone of voice. "We've been over this."
"It's quite alright, Ms. Potts," Coulson said. "We always expect a certain level of… perusal on the part of Dr. Stark and her A.I. She doesn't see anything we don't want her to."
"You sound so sure of that fact. Either I'm becoming sneakier, or you guys actually trust me. Either way," she said brightly, "I'm touched. Really touched."
The lack of response was expected.
Toni pulled one foot onto the couch, holding her bent leg up with both hands laced together around her knees. "So, as much as I'm enjoying the rather alarmingly friendly chat with you, I do have lots of things I need to be doing, so…?" she left the end of her half-question, half-statement open-ended, letting Coulson do with it what he will.
But Coulson didn't pick up the rhythm of their conversation on the beat that she thought he would. Instead, his eyes were trained rather uncharacteristically intently upon her ankle.
A frisson of cold tried to climb its way up from the pit of her stomach, adrenaline the only thing that stopped her body from shivering at the sensation, though her heart did leap into her throat and her breaths did come faster.
She didn't care if it was obvious—he'd already seen it, her mark, her soulmark—but Toni immediately tucked that foot under her ass and sat on it hard.
It was her mark. No one else's.
It was her only tangible link to Steve, to Bucky even, other than the clothes she'd had on her back and the things she had in her pack, and none of those were as personal as the digits and numerals scrawled into the pale skin of her ankle.
It wasn't polite to pry, but then again Toni had been the one to casually flaunt the mark in the first place. She hadn't even thought about it; had spent her whole life with nothing to show of the whole soulmate-soulmark thing, and just wasn't used to this.
Normally Toni wouldn't have any qualms about flashing the mark—but this was S.H.I.E.L.D., and Toni was damned if she'd just hand over a piece of her very heart and soul.
That wasn't for them.
They could have her mind—she was happy to give them that, honestly, even in a post-weapons era. Anything more, though? If it wasn't her Aunt Peggy, the rest could fuck off, and Fury always did have a damn hard time convincing Peggy to speak to Toni about 'such dry and impersonal matters, Nicholas, really now.'
God, she loved Peggy.
With a little twinge in her heart, she banished the adrenaline and anxiety about what exactly Coulson had seen, and focused on diverting back to the matter at hand by making a gesture with one hand for Coulson to continue.
"This energy signature, Dr. Stark," he began—
Dots connected in the back of Toni's mind, of thoughts that'd been percolating in the back of her mind, and she made a snap decision based on a long history of intuition which had seen her constantly outpacing competitors at every turn. Toni was a woman who trusted her gut feeling more than others of her calibre, and she trusted that gut feeling in this instance.
Besides, she was pretty damn sure that Coulson knew the answer to begin with, and she wanted to see what he, what S.H.I.E.L.D., did with the information.
Suitable, in a way, for the God of Mischief, for Toni to throw a little chaotic energy into the mix.
Toni cut in easily, catching Coulson's sharp gaze from the moment her tongue curled towards the consonant— "Loki."
Coulson paused for a moment, eyes assessing, piercing into her as if to suss out exactly what had happened through osmosis alone.
"What did he want?" he finally asked, nice and even. But Toni caught him rocking back a little on his heels before he locked his knees, straightening as if his balance had never wavered.
"I'm not sure," Toni replied, deflecting as if it were second nature. "It was only the second time I've met him, and the first time he did his wavy magicky shit in my workshop of all places." The grumbling at the end was all real.
Jerk, fucking with her workshop. But jerk he might be, he was still connected to her… her soulmates, and she wasn't giving S.H.I.E.L.D. that. Not unless she didn't have to, and it would take a hell of a lot to give them that information.
"What happened the first time?" Romanov asked, and Toni glanced at her, gaze lingering on the decreased distance between her and Pepper.
Toni took a deep breath, suddenly overcome with emotion she had to fight to bite down, because in that moment she desperately wanted Pepper and Natasha to have a happy ending, whatever that might mean for them. If she couldn't have a happy ending, or even if she could only have half of it, then they needed to be happy.
They needed to.
"He'd heard things about me," Toni answered indirectly, blinking away the feelings that wanted to show, the scream that wanted to crawl from out of her throat. Her mask fell over her features, and she looked from Romanov to Coulson to Barton and back to their boss once again. "Heard things about Iron Man, and wanted to meet me, apparently. Taunted me, then next thing I knew he was gone. Couldn't tell what was truth, what was lie, and based on my, albeit limited, knowledge of Norse mythology, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't believe my own name if he called me Antonia Stark, so I don't know what's helpful and what's not."
'Do try,' Coulson's expression said without a single word.
Toni raised an eyebrow at him, but continued anyway, as she leaned against the back of her couch. "He taunted me, left when my back was turned after he quite literally froze me in my tracks. No kidding, I could only dream of making a freeze ray that worked as well as that. Second time he came around was this morning. 4:30am. 4:32. Whatever. Interrupted my date with the old particle accelerator, so dude's in my dog house, let me tell you."
"Dr. Stark," Coulson said, simply.
"Yeah, whatever." Toni lifted a hand airily towards him. "I can't really help you with what he wanted, because I don't know." And this she said genuinely and emphatically, because she absolutely did not know what the fuck this Loki wanted beyond being a goddamn menace. So she said as much. "He's a menace, and I don't think you could get a straight answer out of him, but what I do know is that he mostly wants to fuck with my head. Which is definitely something I don't want, and I do not like this guy despite the fact that I find myself respecting the son of a bitch's style, jesus," she ended with a scoff.
"But no," she added before she could be interrupted, standing up and dusting her palms off on her jeans, skin rubbing over the weave and tear of them. Toni stepped out from their little circle, only to turn and place them all in her sights. "I'll let you know if he pops by again, though I'm sure you'll know just as soon as I do."
This wasn't over. Far from it.
The four others—Coulson, Romanov, Barton, even her Pepper—stayed quiet, simply looking at her and waiting for her to continue.
She sighed. Sometimes people were no fun, had no appreciation for drama.
"I'll make you a deal," she said simply. "You get out of my house, and I'll tell you about the next time I see him. We do it on my schedule, no unannounced visits, and I'll even let you see the data I pull on him with my sensors. I'll even program them with the data you have—that is," Toni tapped her chin thoughtfully, "if you feel like sharing."
"Select parts," Coulson replied dryly, but easily, an eyebrow quirking at her.
Toni smirked. "Select parts of my data, too, so fair is fair. We got a deal?"
"Deal," Coulson replied with his own smirk.
Wondering if she'd been gotten the better of, but sure it would still be worth it, Toni saw them out the door.
She'd made worse decisions in her life.
Toni only allowed herself to shiver after the three spies left. Pepper gave her a look filled with understanding and bussed Toni's cheek with a soft kiss before leaving herself, Toni idly wondering if she would meet with Romanov later on this evening.
July 10th, 2011. 12:59am. Stark residence. Malibu, California, USA.
She was elbow deep in one of her car's engines, taking a break while the new arc reactor was fabricated, when she felt familiar arms wrap around her middle.
It was a mark of the trust that Toni had in James Rhodes that she allowed him into her home, her sanctum, without needing to be announced. A mark of her trust in him that she knew the feel of his arms around her as he pulled her away from the engine, and she spun in his arms with a soft smile directed up at him.
Rhodey smiled down at her in return, then pulled her head towards his chest, giving her one of his patented Rhodey Hugs.
They were amazing. And a balm to her soul, to the jagged pieces pressing against her heart, just the same, but different, still, as Pepper's hugs.
"Jarvis caught you up?" she whispered after a few minutes of soaking up the feeling of warmth and friendship and just… just… Rhodey.
God, she'd missed him so fucking much.
"Yeah," Rhodey's voice rumbled beneath her ear, and she smiled. A piece of her world fell back into place upon hearing his voice for the first time in weeks. For the first time since her world had been turned upside down.
"And?" she murmured, burying her face in the fine cotton of his shirt.
"Doesn't change a thing for me. Doesn't matter what I think. I'm here for you, from campus to crypt, same as you're there for me." Toni smiled at their special words, and Rhodey met her smile for smile as he lifted his large hands to frame her face, thumbs soothing away the tears she hadn't even realized she'd been crying.
"What do you need?" he asked finally, his own voice rough with emotion.
They'd been through so much together, she and him.
Throughout it all, whenever she'd truly needed help—after the initial, obligatory sassing—he'd always asked her, first, before anything else, what she needed.
She didn't deserve him.
God, she didn't deserve him.
But Toni Stark was possessive. Once someone was hers, she rarely let go.
And sometimes… every so often… she found someone who refused to let go of her.
"Help me find him," she whispered finally, eyes wide as they held Rhodey's for another long, warm, and trust-filled moment.
Rhodey pulled her in even closer, squeezing her as tight as he knew she and the reactor could handle with an ease borne of much practice. "You got it, Tones," he murmured into her hair.
"Let's bring him home."
Note: I promise: We get to see Steve next chapter!
I actually have a large section written for this, but it was written before the last two chapters were, so it needs a wee bit of tweaking. :P I'm hopeful I can use a fair chunk of it.
Comments feed the muse and spur the soul. Love all of you commenters, whether I've replied to you yet or not! ily all.
