First of all, I appreciate all of your feedback. I greatly enjoyed knowing that you like (or dislike, as some people think) this fic. Give yourselves warm hugs from me. I'm a fairly tactile person.

Second, uhm, the devil is in the details. I carefully lay down hints somewhere of what may happen. I put in Harley's tics not word per word because that's not how you actually perceive your actions. Sometimes you think you are doing/thinking/feeling one thing, but then you actually aren't. Or you willfully ignore it, labeling it as something else. It's the incredulous "Me?" of Tony Stark when JARVIS said he was having an anxiety attack.

As someone with self diagnosed high functioning depression, the details are what gets to me. Tiny things added up are big. I know what it feels like to have entire months ruined because of something small but to me is a fucking big deal. I know the spiral of bad thoughts, and how constricting and suffocating emotions can be, how it can control your actions. I know self-destruction and how it takes so much time to just fucking stop it even though it doesn't ever disappear. This isn't masochism, it's not finding pleasure in pain, it's finding absolution and penitence in pain. It's being tired of your own thoughts and drowning in them.This is the point where you need someone to remind you to breathe because you've forgotten how to do it. You don't need to actually have depression to feel that way. Stress has a way with people.

And Harry/Harrhan/Harley? He's a huge fucking mess. I feel that some of you are missing that. He's been through a lot of trauma that was never addressed properly or at all. Not in a healthy way, at least. People change through the course of their lives, and our main character had literal lives as in plural. No one stays the fucking same after years.

Thank you for listening to my ted talk!

Chapter Warnings: You know what? I'm not gonna put it anymore because no one even reads it.

ARC 2: CHAPTER 12
Lachesis

-0-

Tony stark and J.A.R.V.I.S. remain out of contact for weeks.

There had been a moment, one that he'd never gotten rid of in the days that followed, filled with a deafening buzz polluting his mind. A moment that ice ran through his veins and froze something deep, deep inside him. A moment he'd spent staring at the darkness that wasn't even there.

It's a long moment.

(Because it hurt. It stung. When had he forgotten he can't have nice things for long?)

When that moment ended (when that heaviness became something he could bare for a while, when he's comfortable to breathe in the water again), Harley drew himself up, thought of how fleeting people are, thought of how he's better than this, thought of how he never learned how to deal with his own emotions well.

It was only a moment.

(It felt like years than the minutes and hours it had been.)

It lingers for much longer.

So when Harley picked up his phone, intent on finding something that was only Harley Keener instead of Harry-and-Harrhan-and-Harley, he was surprised to find the utter chaos that had become of the internet.

Because right there, right everywhere, were hundreds and thousands of definitely confidential and not-for-public-consumption files. Digging around as lightly as he did resulted in even more. Some had already been redacted, others corrupted, but some are just there, waiting for everyone to see.

Project Insight was the most prominent, right next to the reintroduction of the mythologically (un)defeated HYDRA schemes, and the presence of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate. Without even actively working for it, Harley gets his hands on some of them.

Phase Two, in particular, was of great interest.

(How dare they.)

The reason was admirable, but the execution was clumsy at best and dangerous at the least. Playing with something they didn't even understand, something that they didn't even know, was either idiocy or arrogance.

Because Harley would recognize that shade of Blue anywhere. Would always remember Blue fading into dark, wide with surprise and confusion.

(It's almost the same shade as the arc reactor.)

The Space stone deserved better than what these humans have done.

He started digging deeper, searching for all the possible things he could find, follows the tracks of what was being deleted and what wasn't. Harley would recognize J.A.R.V.I.S.'s work given enough time or evidence, and this kind of almost sloppy work left enough traces for him to notice the A.I.'s participation. There was simply too much information to censor even for someone of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s or Tony Stark's calibre.

The slow realization of why he couldn't contact his mechanic was both disgruntling and relieving.

(There's still ice in his veins, still has water inside his lungs.)

Without putting too much thought into it, Harley joined the crusade, finding a lot of use to the social media accounts he'd accumulated over the years. Hacking into anything that wasn't in a public network is little bit out of his capabilities, but that doesn't mean he can't do anything.

So he settles down, gets into something that puts other thoughts in the backburner for a while. It's easier here, where he doesn't really have to be as conscious of his reactions. Code is certain, unchanging unless someone does it. Facing a computer was better than facing another person.

The internet is many things, and misleading is one of them.

It wasn't a matter of cleaning up the files—that is better left to those who actually know what they're doing—it was a matter of making people question the truth of them.

It was a matter of throwing around conspiracy theories that sounded too ridiculous to be true yet realistic enough to be believed. It was a matter of making them believe one thing was not true and confusing them with other things that might be true.

(It's manipulation and deception. It's lying and denying.)

A wry smile spread across his lips, thought again of irony and helping in the shadows.

(Then later; stupid, brilliant, traitorous, clever Natalia Alianova Romanova confessed on burning her own people to the ground.

"You're not gonna put any of us in prison. You wanna know why? Because you need us. Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we helped make it that way. But we're also the ones best qualified to defend it."

And Harley laughed.)

-0-

When the dust has settled, when the governments and other parties have finally started to recover from the sudden exposure of HYDRA that crippled hundreds of organizational systems, when the internet has become split into groups of varying opinions that constantly oppose each other, Harley stares back into the darkness and thinks of something frozen deep, deep inside him.

(His mechanic calls a few times, but Harley always misses it. Chooses to ignore it.)

-0-

Harley was sitting in class, hands tucked under his thighs in a bid to not fidget with anything on the table.

Mrs. Nelson was the kind of teacher that always scolded students who didn't have their eyes trained on her or the board. She's boring and spoke like her tone of voice was permanently going up and down with no end in sight. She has great penmanship though, all loopy and neat and in a straight line on the board.

With legs swinging to lessen the need to fidget with his hands, Harley distracted himself with the rhythmic press of weight the constant motion put on his fingers and palm. The flash from the powerpoint presentation made the dust motes visible to Harley's bored gaze.

A knock on the door breaks the monotonous lecturing, the reception lady having a quick word with Mrs. Nelson when the teacher opened the door for her.

They both turned their gaze on him and Harley doesn't even react anymore.

(It's familiar. Too familiar. Like when they called him in for his mother, like when they dismissed class a little bit earlier so Harley can go to his sister.)

"Mr. Keener?" Mrs. Nelson said as she approached him, a pursed look on her face that was both annoyed and pitying. "A word, please?"

This summoned a few murmurs in the class. Harley packs his bag and follows the reception lady out.

-0-

Mrs. Davis was admitted to the hospital, but that wasn't anything new. She'd been admitted more than a handful of times in the last few months after having fallen victim to the measles outbreak. Her recovery, while sometimes drawn out longer than the previous ones, was fine those handful of times before.

She might stay a little longer, they tell him.

They let him skip afternoon class, let him go to the hospital alone when he asked.

-0-

Who's going to take care of you now? Was what they always asked, was what they always wore on their faces.

"I'm fine," Harley always answered with a smile. "I can take care of myself for a while."

They believe him sometimes.

Most times they just humor him.

-0-

Harley knows all the nurses by name, recognizes the doctors and other staff. They know him, too, and they spare a smile his way whenever they see him. Some actually offer a few words of casual conversation—already knowing him by name—others slip snacks into his bag.

They weren't pitying, just genuinely concerned and sympathizing and understanding. They don't look at him as if they expect him to cry or breakdown or turn irrevocably quiet.

(Harrhan had been silent. Harley didn't want to be.)

It was nice.

(Even if sometimes they whisper about him. Whisper about Harley Keener and his dead mom and his dead sister and his ailing guardian.

At least they don't do it often and never with him in the immediate vicinity.)

-0-

"You don't need to come everyday." Mrs. Davis tells him, bedridden and weak and pained, voice faint and hoarse after another coughing fit. "I know you don't want to."

"Yeah," Harley answered, moving to wipe at the sweat matting her forehead. "I have nothing else to do."

Not anything that eased the coiling tension inside him anyway.

Mrs. Davis, while old and bitter and jaded and withered by life, was sharp when she needed to be. She scoffed, a wet, disgusting sound that was only partially the fault of the wheezing cough that coincided with it, "What about that mechanic of yours?"

Harley pauses, curls his fingers tighter on the towel in his hand. Honestly, he wasn't even surprised she knew of Tony.

He shrugged. "He's busy."

"Bullshit." Mrs. Davis pins him with a glare that Harley graciously receives with only pursed lips. "Ain't busy enough for you. Not with the amount of time you've spoken to him. Man's got his head in his ass, but he's obviously better than me at this...thing with you."

Harley's lip twitched because, "He kind of is."

"It wasn't a question, was it?" She snapped, face severe and judging, but that was just the way she is. "So?"

Harley folds the towel and places it on the bedside table with the wash basin. "So?" he parrots back.

"What are you still doing here?"

Harley opens his mouth.

And closes it again.

(He doesn't know.)

-0-

Harley doesn't miss school.

In fact, he likes to act as if everything was normal. His classmates show their concern, but children—especially these ones he is with—tend to focus on other things pretty fast. It's the adults that he is wary about.

Harley already went to the counselor at least once a month because of that stupid ADHD, and ever since his sister's death, he'd had to meet the counselor at least twice a week. That was too much even for Harley, especially when it took effort to actually convince the counselor as compared to his peers and teachers.

(Normal. He wanted to be normal. Just this once.)

School was not a place of comfort. No place was a place of comfort.

(Then what is his garage if not a haven? What is his garage if it wasn't the boat floating on the raging sea? But the ice in his veins and the water in his lungs became more.)

"Hey."

Harley looks up from the blank page of his notebook, pen poised to write but hadn't done so in the last couple of minutes. His eyes trail up to see EJ, awkward and without his other friends.

Again.

"EJ," Harley greets then places his attention back on his paper, scrawling down the formula he'd been stuck on with his project for the lack of something else to write. (It's runes and the language only users of seidr knew and inscriptions that would only ever make sense to him.) "I'm not in the mood right now."

"I'd be surprised if you were," was the unexpected response.

Harley frowned, stealing a glance towards the other boy who took a seat in front of him. This...was not what he was expecting when he chose to retreat into the meagre school library for once.

The thing is, EJ and his posse stopped bothering him sometime after his mother's death. They didn't miraculously stop being bullies, of course, but they don't go out of their way to pick on Harley anymore. There were the few pointed insults sent his way sometimes, but that was far in between. Most days, they stay away from each other and Harley was fine with that.

"Look, I-" EJ sighed and ruffled his hair in clear agitation and frustration. "I heard- what happened to Mrs. Davis."

"Yeah?" Harley doesn't even bother to keep up his nonchalant facade.

"And your sister and- with your mom-" EJ stopped himself, hard-pressed to find his words and keeping his cool. It was entertaining to watch. "I don't like how your stupid face keeps on smiling like nothing is wrong in the world."

Harley taps his pen, tilting his head and observing the other boy, "And I don't really care what you think."

EJ gritted his teeth, jaw tightening and eyes narrowed in a glare, a thing that grew more intimidating throughout the years. Harley was unaffected. "I really don't understand you."

"You don't need to. I don't like you, you don't like me." Harley shrugged and went back to his formula, already done with this conversation. It's a change of pace, but nothing that held his interest any longer. "There's nothing there to understand."

"No." EJ bulldozes over like Harley didn't really say anything even though the other had clearly been listening. "No. You're supposed to be a nobody here, Keener. You're nothing special. You don't get to be like… like this."

"Like what?" Harley snaps, irritated. He's holding his pen tighter and Harley could feel it click in protest.

"Like you've been fooling us from the start." EJ says after a beat, still glaring but more sullen. "Like you've only been pretending."

And Harley, somehow, understood.

Because the thing is, it was hard not to. He knows the kind of person EJ is, how the other boy was something else other than the top dog bully of the school. They may not be on the best of terms, or in any terms at all for that matter, but the kind of conflicting interactions they've had was unique because of who the two of them are.

EJ has the naivety of youth, the arrogance of a child raised in a station higher than his peers, but he's still a someone underneath that bravado and pointless aggression.

Harley recognized it, EJ picked up on that recognition.

And sometimes, Harley forgets that there would always be people who could see through some of him.

(There are many things he couldn't just let anyone know.)

He's frank and blunt and scathing. He doesn't really mind telling someone what he thinks, doesn't mind that his mouth runs away from him sometimes. He's also deceptive and aware enough to know how to manipulate. He's old and young at the same time.

(He's Harry Potter and Harrhan and Harley Keener.)

It wasn't so weird, then, that it was someone like EJ who would call him out on it.

"No," Harley decided to say, choosing to be honest with himself and the boy before him. "I'm hiding. Always have been. But I'm still the Harley Keener you've bullied since first grade."

It was not a resolution for whatever it is they have between them.

-0-

Harley is sitting on the small couch some of the hospital staff had been kind enough to provide him with, fiddling with the original potato gun both he and Emma had worked on. He'd fallen into the habit of dismantling it and putting it back together again.

(The motion of breaking and rebuilding was comforting. The thought of not being able to do it for Emma was-)

His mechanic had already replaced the pneumatic actuator with a newer one all those months ago, and for all the talk of long barrels and diminished FPS, the outside remained untouched. It's stronger now, though. He could dent cars and crack bones with the correct angle and distance.

(The Mark II could break car windshields and could probably break bones if he tried hard enough. Harley didn't know what his mechanic had been thinking.)

Mrs. Davis was asleep, too tired and drugged up to stay awake for a few hours hours in between. She wakes up in small bursts either from lack of breath or another coughing fit.

Her bed is propped up, an oxygen mask covering half of her face. She speaks with increasing difficulty so Harley took to filling the silence whenever she's awake.

His phone, one he rarely uses but brings with him anyway, vibrates in his pocket.

Confused and startled, Harley fishes it out, frowning at the unknown caller ID. He spares a glance at the hospital bed before rejecting the call. No need to send it to voicemail. Who even calls in phones anymore?

He hasn't even let go of the device when it vibrates again. Harley looks at the screen to see the same unknown caller ID. He rejects it again. When it vibrated a third time, Harley sighed and walked out of the room and into the parking area. He'd seen enough nurses scolding visitors to take calls outside.

"Hello?" Harley answered as soon as the call picked up. "Who's this?"

"Kid." The familiar voice of Tony Stark flowed from the speakers. "Harley. I've been calling you for weeks. Why weren't you answering?"

Harley froze, a sudden lump forming down his throat. "Oh, yeah, I-"

"Don't answer that." Tony sounded sharp and angry. "Why didn't you say anything? I could have helped. I know doctors who could have saved your mom or your sister. I have the money to make miracles, kid. Why didn't you just- tell me? And yeah, I guess I'm being nosy, but I could have-"

"Woah, wait!" Harley finally managed to get his voice back (inside, warmth curled all over his chest and the ice melted just a little). "Wait. No. I'm sorry, mechanic. It- it's fine. I'm fine."

"How could you be fine! I saw your records-"

"You hacked into my records?!"

"-yeah, it's not a big deal—and great job by the way, straight A's—but the point is, Harley, kid, you're not fine. There's no way you are. Your school's counselor is an idiot—keeping his notes in his laptop, jeez, like no one can access it there—but he's awfully detailed with his reports."

"I-" Harley swallows the mix of dread and warmth and nervousness. His hands are trembling and he's putting more conscious control over his breathing, he notes belatedly. "What did he say?"

"You're on close watch, kid." Tony answered, a hint of warning in his voice that said he believes in it too. "And not the happy kind of watch too. There's nothing- alarming in it, but it's implied rather heavily."

"Oh." Harley felt numb, not at the words but at what was happening right now, mind blanking at a response. "How did you even know to check my records?" Because isn't that the thing? Tony would know everything if he checked it.

"Who did you think paid the hospital bills?" Tony said it so nonchalantly it felt sharp and pointed. And Harley wouldn't ever say how much it affected him. "I had to hear it from Mrs. Davis of all people. Really helpful, that old lady is. I'm sorry for what she's going through now, but she's insistent to stay where she's lived for most of her life. You, on the other hand..."

Oh.

"I've made some arrangements already. You're going to settle whatever business you still need to do there and then you're coming to New York with me. I'll send in Happy to help you with your things. That's non-negotiable."

("What are you still doing here?")

Harley swallows and was unable to hide the hitch in his breath. "Okay."

There's a sigh on the other line, then he hears Tony speak, voice uncharacteristically soft. "I'll see you in a few days, okay, kid? Then we'll talk."

"Yeah. Okay." Harley swipes a hand at his eyes, squats down on the asphalt and curled over himself. "See you, Tony."

-0-

When the call ended, Tony's gaze on the glowing screen never faltered.

There's a deep heaviness in his chest that he never knew was there until it lightened somewhat.

At first, he hadn't really known what to make of the kid from nowhere, Tennessee, who was all kinds of contradicting and helpful and confusingly understanding. Tony certainly didn't know that the kid would somehow claw his way into the short list of people Tony ever cared about.

(Harley Keener wormed his way in there, had carved a niche in the dark, heavily guarded space in Tony's damaged and broken and stitched together heart. Harley Keener and his sharp tongue, awkward reactions, and skillful nonchalance.

The kid who can send Tony into a panic attack but somehow pull him back out.

The kid who can hide things so well that it took literal years for Tony to realize how bad it had been.)

He had been surprised when Mrs. Davis reached out to him a few months ago, speaking of things he didn't know and made him feel so awful for not noticing. (For ignoring the kid right back when he dared to feel hurt. For how he forgot that the world doesn't revolve around you, Tony.)

He was supposed to be a genius. He was supposed to be The Mechanic.

(He wasn't supposed to be like Howard.)

Sure, he noticed the odd things. Responsibility and maturity is all well and good, but there's something to be said about knowing how to patch someone up and being used to pain.

(It made him think of the other, other things.)

So why didn't he know the kid's been going through something like this?

Tony would admit his actions after that had been impulsive and fuelled a bit by anger. For example, signing the custody papers Mrs. Davis sent over while she's lounging it on a hospital bed, and then hacking into the school records.

Nothing would convince him it was the wrong thing to do though. (Well, maybe the hacking one was a bit too stalker-ish. Those had been private records, Stark.)

Pepper and Rhodey and Happy would be so angry at him once they find out. He never really told anyone about what happened in that time between being off-grid (dead, but he wasn't really dead, not when there's someone depending on him at the time, namely Happy and Pepper and Rhodey and maybe the president) and taking down Aldrich Killian.

"Sir?"

Tony shakes himself away from his thoughts, shoves the guilt away for another day, finally turning off the screen of his phone. "Yeah, J?"

"The quinjet is ready and the Avengers are waiting for you."

"Alright. Lay it on me, Jarvis." Tony clapped his hand once and did the gesture to call Mark 43 on him. He grinned as he felt the armor close around his body, sight engulfed by the HUD. "Here's to hoping we find that scepter soon enough. I need my beauty sleep and Captain Tightass has been getting more and more uppity. So where to?"

"Coordinates for the Sokovian HYDRA outpost are displayed, sir."

"Let's go kick HYDRA ass."

Arc II End

Lachesis (Λάχεσις)

Congratulations for making it to the end of arc 2! A lot of people stop reading at Chapter 5 and more probably stopped in the last chapter. I'm bad at chapter endings, apparently.

Arc 2 was all about integrating Harley into the MCU Avengers canon with strong foundations so he can make changes. He needed to be in the thick of things, into a position where he can make major changes with proper motivations. I wanted his future actions to be meaningful and not necessarily right or wrong, but something heavily inspired by who he is. Just like how we all want to, ne?

I'm fed up with people questioning my methods in writing. So I'm gonna introduce you to the main concept of my character building.

The concept of diathesis. This relates to something that describes how the self is made. It involves:

1. Predisposition, which includes biology and generally how you're hard-wired to react; and

2. Your experiences

Like, that's it. That's how I operated the Harry/Harrhan/Harley divide. The rest is emotional content tied down to what I know.

So thank you for sticking around. See y'all in arc 3! I think it's clear what movie timeline it's gonna start with.