Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There's also a huge warning for canon stuff that is very sad. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: I should not have cried so much writing this but oh, well.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 15); MC4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: n/a
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 15 – Assignment 03
Subject (Task No.): n/a
Other Hogwarts Challenges: 365 [09](Whisper); Auction [D16-A01] ("A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Mis)
Other MC4A Challenges: SuB [5A](Underwater); AU [5C](Military);Ship (War Zucchinis)[Bingo](3E - Grief/Mourning); Chim [Dextrin] (Royal Purple); Fire (Zuke the Hini); Garden [Ship Ahoy!](War Zucchinis)
Representation(s): Autistic Tony Stark & James Rhodes QPR; Ana Jarvis' Undying Legacy; Avengers are not a Family
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: n/a
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: n/a
Word Count: 1687 words

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A Little Fall of Rain
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Tony would have told anyone that asked that he was not pining, thank you very much. Beside, pining was a ridiculous concept to apply to the situation at all. No one pined after friends that could have possibly maybe had been something like a family. That was ridiculous. No one did that.

It was just that Tony had been looking forward to having more people around on a regular basis. Rhodey had been saying for years that Tony should be a part of something, had waxed on about the awesome benefits of knowing that a group would be there to be back up as needed. Tony had wanted that, even if he knew that he would be a terrible fit for any kind of military service.

He did try to foster the same feeling at Stark Industries over the years. It was why he mirrored policies from European countries about vacation time, parental leave, and hours worked per week. It was why he made sure that every level of employment had the same benefit package, including interns and part-time employees. He paid his interns and everyone had at bare minimum enough pay to cover basic living expenses for their area. He even had a student and medical debt repayment program for those who needed it.

Obie had been so upset about it, as had the board of directors, but it had been worth every argument that Tony had ever had with either of them. Pepper had been admittedly leery of the practice as well, but once she had had a chance to review all of the numbers after Tony had made her CEO, she had been all for continuing it. Despite the initial layout of all those benefits, it meant both that they were more attractive towards talents in many fields as well as having far less turnover in personnel.

Stark Industries was thriving now more than ever. Pepper might not have Tony's experience with the major players of the corporate game and the doublespeak that went hand in hand with those circles, but she still was dedicated to the company and all of its people. They were both in good hands under Pepper's care.

And that had left Tony with more time to handle Iron Man stuff as well as some other personal projects that might never need to see the light of day. Then the Invasion had happened and the Avengers had formed. Pepper and Rhodey had both been cautious about Tony wanting to design floors for all of the members. Rhodey had eventually convinced Tony that suites were more realistic and would leave plenty of room for the team to grow.

But the team had decided to not move into the tower.

They hadn't even managed to stay together as a team.

None of them had been interested in either of those things. When Tony had tried to discuss what he had seen on the other side of the wormhole, he had been dismissed, gently at first and then more harshly. When the Mandarin happened, none of them had cared, not even Bruce who Tony had thought might be at least interested in Maya's concept. Thor hadn't called during the event in London, but all the data that Tony could find suggested that it had truly happened very fast once it had started.

The same could not be said about what happened when Steve and Natasha hadn't called him about the whole SHIELD situation. There had been several points where they could have safely called him. If not them personally, then at least Hill or Fury could have. In the aftermath of the uncurated Info Dump, Tony had been too busy for months to sleep, let alone track either of them down. There had been too many good agents that had been burned. There had been too many innocents that needed saving because their Witsec protocols had been compromised by the Info Dump.

Tony had not had time to handle anything else. He hadn't even turned on the news after he had seen the helicarriers (and those turbine engines had been his, a design he had been toying with after the Invasion but hadn't figured out how to offer them to Fury) crash into the Potomac on top of people—on top of families. He couldn't handle watching the cost of not knowing where his tech was going yet again. It was like the situation with Obie all over again but worse because this time, he should have known better.

He had found out about Natasha's theatrics before Congress after the fact. It had been almost six months after the fact actually, and only when Tony had finally gotten things settled with the collateral damage of the Info Dump. He thought he could have a nice evening just enjoying the annual fundraising gala for the New York fire department's pension plans. He knew it wasn't likely to be relaxing by any means, but he figured that the only shop talk that would happen would be the normal poking and prodding of the other rich socialites to donate more.

He wasn't expecting to be waylaid by an angry Congressman who demanded that Tony apologize for his teammates, especially Natasha, who no one could find. He wasn't expecting to come home to what he thought was a thoroughly rejected tower to find Steve and Natasha laughing over takeout like there was nothing wrong. Maybe Natasha had been right and it had been entirely his ego to blame for the flash of hurt he had felt over them choosing to come only when they had nowhere else to go after two years of wanting them there.

Tony had always been the one to throw himself into relationships. Rhodey had had to pull him out of a few over the years. Ty and Sunset had only been the more notable ones and the only ones that had potentially threatened SI. Of course, Rhodey also had a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Tony finally dating Pepper, so maybe his platypus didn't always have the best ideas of who Tony should be dating. Pepper was perfection dressed in a business suit and high heels, and Tony would never truly understand how he managed to convince her to show him any interest at all.

Even if she seemed distant and short-tempered recently, especially after the whole Ultron fiasco. She was angry that StarkTech had gotten used to cause yet another international incident. She was busy doing damage control to less the breadth of the PR disaster's impact on SI. She had bigger problems than Tony feeling lonely because the team had also chosen this time to move out to the compound that Tony had built with the burned SHIELD personnel who wouldn't really be employable by other LEO agencies.

Tony found himself once again rattling around empty spaces that had been meant to house a family. This time, he was even more alone than he had ever been. In the Stark mansion, there had been the Jarvises. They had passed before his parents' wreck. Afterwards, there had been Pepper, Rhodey, and JARVIS to take the edge off that the bots never could. The bots hadn't been recoverable after their extended stay in the ocean. Rhodey had joined the Avengers at the compound when he wasn't sent out by the Air Force. And JARVIS, his beautiful baby boy, had been the first casualty of Ultron, and the last bit of him that had remained had been destroyed in the process that created the Vision, who had barely paid any attention to him since.

Friday made a soft chime to get his attention, something she had started doing because Tony couldn't seem to stop flinching every time she said anything without some kind of warning. Poor girl. It wasn't fair to her, but Tony felt a wave of grief over how she simply wasn't JARVIS.

"Go ahead, Fry," he said, his voice a gravelly whisper after so many days of not needing to use it at all.

"Mr. Barton is in the elevator," she announced with a matching softness.

"Is his suite stocked?" Tony asked, suddenly beyond exhausted. "Is he alone? Or are the mini agents with him?"

"He's alone, boss," Friday said, "and he asked to be brought to you."

"Great," Tony agreed, straightening his spine in preparation for whatever Clint needed. Maybe it was money? Running farms could be expensive, and Clint hadn't had anything salary-wise since SHIELD fell a few years ago now. Whatever it was, Tony was more than willing to help. Clint might have never liked him and had been obvious about it, but he was still an Avenger.

"Tony," Clint said as soon as he had stepped out of the elevator and spotted him. He was still in body armor, this time a royal purple instead of the maroon and black he had always wore in the past. He also looked like he had been swimming in a dumpster or garbage bin. Then he did something that shocked Tony down to his core. He opened his mouth and said a voice like he couldn't hear what he was saying, "Any zr barts mvzrh."

Tony stared at the archer for a long moment. His heart was pounding just a bit harder than his cardiologist would be happy with. He thought he might be excused. It had been years since he had heard anyone speak Hebrew, not since he had noticed how uncomfortable he had made people when he slipped into a synagogue just to feel a little closer to Ana.

And hearing it now, like this? It hurt. It hurt so much.

But he couldn't turn him away, not without rejecting everything his Eym had taught him.

"You are a stranger no more," Tony managed to force through the clog in his throat. Clint kept his eyes on his lips for every syllable. Then several days without sleep caught up with him at the same time as the shock. The last thing he saw before the blackness consumed him was Clint springing forward as if to catch him.