Chapter Twenty: Transitioning
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There was more to the discussion than that, of course, primarily between Arno and Rhodey. This was mostly due to the fact that as military liaison, Rhodey had to issue at least a token protest to the idea of SI no longer producing weapons. That, and as an Air Force officer, Rhodey simply had a different perspective from a civilian businessman.
Either way, Tony felt that his part in the conversation was done, at least for the moment. He could see both sides of the argument, of course. Yes, weapons in the wrong hands could cause a lot of harm to innocents, but it often required quality weapons to protect those same innocents. Tony would follow Arno's lead on the matter. At the moment, he owed Clint and Natasha a bit of truth.
The three of them had gone out onto the balcony looking out over the Pacific. For a few moments, Tony took in the view, breathing in the ocean air. Nat waited patiently, gaze also fixed on the horizon, but Clint was not given to prolonged silences.
"Honestly, Tones, you don't––" the blond began before Tony cut him off with a brief shake of his head.
He turned around to rest his back against the rail, signing along as he often did in any conversation involving the archer. "I didn't mean to lie," he told them. "Not to either of you. I thought… It wasn't my intent to mislead you or leave you in the dark, I just didn't want to–-to sully what you were trying to do. You both wanted to do good, to do better, and I… I just… I didn't want to ruin that. So, I kept quiet and I kept an eye on the situation, even though I'm starting to realize that there are a lot of things I shouldn't keep to myself."
"What are you trying to tell us?" Natasha asked, not unkindly. Her gaze met his directly, expression attentive but otherwise indecipherable.
"SHIELD is Hydra," Tony stated baldly. "Or rather, Hydra is in SHIELD. Have been since SHIELD was founded, actually, which made––"
He was interrupted by Nat biting out a curse in Russian before turning to pace agitatedly along the balcony. Tony flinched despite himself. Was her response a sign that she was extremely upset or that she had let down her walls enough to let them see that she was upset in the first place? The brunet couldn't be sure; he hadn't seen her in two years.
Meanwhile Clint looked between the two of them bewilderedly. "I'm sorry, SHIELD is what? What's Hydra? I'm guessing bad, but honestly, I thought it was a multi-headed dragon thing."
"They're––" Only Tony wasn't sure how to explain what precisely Hydra was to someone who didn't have some previous knowledge of the organization. The words available to him felt too inadequate, but he knew he had to try. "They were founded with the goal of world domination and the belief people can't be trusted with their freedom and needed to be… overseen for their own good. It started out as a research division for the Nazis back in World War II. They went underground after the disappearance of their leader at the time and have worked in secret to orchestrate events to mold the world as they see fit ever since. They're… bad."
Clint took a moment to process this information, gaze fixed on Tony's face so the brunet could see when it all clicked into place. "They're the ones that raised you," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Tony confirmed.
"And they're in SHIELD. You knew this when I joined up with them?"
"Not until just after you left with Agent Coulson. When I found the business card he gave you."
"And you never said anything," the archer clarified, to which Tony shook his head and the blond sighed. "Okay. Okay, look. Trust isn't your thing. I get that––you know I get that––but Tones, you need to share this sort of stuff."
"I kept an eye on things," Tony protested weakly, tone apologetic, "on you. None of the people you work for directly are Hydra. I made sure of it."
"Then Clint brought me in," said Natasha, having recollected herself. "If I'd told you where I was going would you have told me, Tony?"
Tony met her gaze but could only offer an uncertain shrug. "I wanted to, but…"
"We were trying to be better and you didn't want to ruin that somehow," Clint repeated what Tony had said before.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, gaze dropping to his hands and the imperceptible line across his left palm. After a moment, Natasha's hand crossed his vision to close around his, squeezing firmly but gently. He glanced up to meet her eyes.
"We'll just have to fix things, now, won't we?" she suggested.
They weren't, Tony thought, okay just yet, but they would be. Because they understood one another. Just as he understood how his delayed admission would affect her, she understood what made him keep it to himself. They would get past this, it just might take a bit of time.
"Get rid of Hydra," said Tony, not voicing his doubt at the notion. They both knew him well enough to hear it.
"Don't be so skeptical," Clint told him, equal parts teasing and reassuring. "We're a pair of spysassins and you're a super-hacker genius. How hard could it be?"
Hard. It could be very, very hard.
None of them said it aloud, however. They already knew. It wasn't going to stop them from trying, anyway.
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After a lot of discussion, it was decided that the best course of action was to deal with Stane before Arno changed the direction of Stark Industries. The billionaire did halt all new and upcoming weapons projects, reassigning those employees as needed to wrap up old contracts to avoid having to lay anyone off. Rhodey still wasn't completely sold on the idea, but Arno was adamant.
The situation with Stane was almost anticlimactic in its resolution. It turned out that the man kept all the evidence needed to convict him on a ghost drive on his work computer. There was not only proof that he had been selling SI weapons under the table for years, but also a video and accompanying documentation that he had ordered the attack on Arno in Afghanistan. Since Tony was still nowhere near fully recovered, he was there when Stane was taken into custody.
It was equal parts bemusing and unsettling that the man never once tried to out Tony as a fraud, although he did have words for him before he was escorted away.
"You think you've won," Stane declared. He looked and sounded smug, but his eyes burned with fury. "You're smart; of course, you think you've won. The problem with you smart guys is that you always forget where you came from, the people that made you who you are. But they never forget you, my boy. Might want to keep that in mind. The people who made you never forget."
Anyone else listening would easily have thought those words were meant for Arno. Perhaps, to some extent, they were. But Tony also knew, with a thrill of dread, that those words were meant for him in particular. Which could only mean one thing, of course. Somehow, Stane knew where Tony came from.
Tony ignored his first impulse, which was to disappear. He couldn't do that to his friends. Furthermore, if he started running again, he knew he would never be able to stop.
He also managed to ignore his second impulse to keep the encounter to himself. Instead, he went straight to the others to tell them what happened. Their collective response almost made him wish he had gone with impulse number two.
A group who were already protective towards him readily jumped into overprotective mode. Tony felt that he didn't spend more than ten minutes alone at a stretch and only because that time was spent in the shower. When he wasn't at the mansion, Pepper or Happy were close by, with Clint or Nat trailing along unseen. It felt a little unnecessary, but if it made them feel better, Tony was content to leave them to it for the time being.
Together, Tony and Arno made a new arc reactor to replace the one he'd made in the cave. Pepper took it and placed it on a stand in an ornamental box, the reactor surrounded by the words 'Proof that Heart Overcomes Adversity.' They put it up on a shelf where it could be seen without the danger of being knocked over by excitable robots.
Eventually, life settled back into what approximated normality. Clint and Natasha went back to SHIELD, wary of the people around them even as they worked with Tony to find a way to start weeding out Hydra. Rhodey returned to his duties with the Air Force. As Arno worked towards directing his company away from weapons, Pepper assisting him along the way, Tony put his efforts towards planning a project of his own. He wasn't ready to share what it was with anyone besides JARVIS, yet, but he would soon. After all, he would need Arno's assistance in order to move forward with it.
The weeks fairly flew, peacefully enough that even people prone to an overabundance of caution started to ease down their guards. Only slightly, of course––they were content, not foolish. Of course, slightly was all it took.
Happy had waited by the car as Tony ran in to get carryout from his favorite Chinese restaurant one afternoon.
When Happy went in to check on him ten minutes later, Tony was gone.
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To be continued...