*~*~* Authors Note*~*~*
I made my Tony 13 in 1987, I had Tony be born in 1974 in my version, not 1970 like in canon to try to sort out the timeline of Tony being 17 when his parents died in 1991.
I decided to go a slightly more serious route with Tony slamming into the concrete slab because the more and more I watched that scene I realised how much that really would hurt.
No copyright infringement intended...
All Movie Scenes used here belong to Marvel Studios and their respective owners, I'm not out to profit from this work.
I made it purely for enjoyment purposes.
"The future of air combat. Is it manned or unmanned?" Came Rhodey's voice as the next scene formed around them, finding Tony walking through an airbase towards a group of airmen that Rhodes was talking to.
"Dude, you better not say unmanned," said Sam. Rhodey quirked an eyebrow at him.
Meanwhile, Steve was silently impressed with the colonel's demeanour, he had not really appreciated before that point, that in the military Rhodes was a leader too, of a similar - if not slightly higher - station to himself.
"I tell you, in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot's instinct, his insight - that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome. Or a pilot's judgement-"
"Colonel? Why not a pilot without a plane?" Smirked Tony.
"Look who fell outta the sky! Mr Tony Stark," Rhodey waved an arm to introduce him to the airmen as Tony waved and shook hands with one of the men.
"Speaking about manned or unmanned, you gotta get him to tell you about the time he guessed wrong at spring break. Just remember that, spring break, 1987, that lovely lady you woke up with. What was his name?"
"Don't do that," Rhodey said exasperatedly.
"What was his name? Was it Ivan?" Tony could barely hold back his grin.
"Hang on," Bruce cocked his head as the airmen and some of the team laughed over the denials of both Rhodey's. "1987… Tony would only have been 13, not even in college yet."
"Exactly!" He waved to Bruce in relief.
Vision asked innocently "So you didn't know anyone with the name Ivan then, Mr Rhodes?"
Rhodey appeared flustered for a moment before giving in. "I told Tony about Ivan while I was drunk… really drunk and reminiscing about what my life was like before I met him. I thought I had a crush on Ivan, not that anything ever happened. It was a confusing time, cause he was nice and pretty. It just so happens he is now a drag queen. Shut up."
"My brother sometimes pretended to be a maiden in our journeys and quite enjoyed it. You'll find no judgement here, my friend." Thor rumbled softly with a sad smile. He only wished he'd said that to Loki.
Steve nodded earnestly. "This world is more accepting now than the world I grew up in and I feel like it's for the better."
"Tony can be a right ass sometimes and has always taken far too much pleasure in baiting me," Rhodey said, though he smiled fondly. "But he doesn't have anything against Ivan. He'd probably try to be a bit more tactful now but he just wanted a rise out of me and to get me alone so we could properly talk. I see that now, I wish he'd just ask me straight. I'm not a mind reader."
"Don't do that, they'll believe it. Don't do that." Rhodey chided his best friend before turning to his newly chuckling and smiling group of airmen. "Give us a couple of minutes, you guys."
"I'm surprised," Rhodey smiled at his best friend as he continued in a warm tone. "I swear I didn't expect to see you walking around so soon."
"I'm doing a little better than walking." Tony's tone sounded confident enough, but his eyes were serious and they could feel the anticipation writhing in his gut.
"Really?"
Although Tony didn't like the scepticism that he could feel coming off Rhodey, he barrelled onwards. Despite the outer appearance of being unaffected, they couldn't help but notice his voice was tighter and more controlled now. "Yeah. Rhodey, I'm working on something big. I came to talk to you. I want you to be part of it."
'I want you to be my pilot.'
Rhodey's jaw dropped nearly to the floor. "W-what? I thought he just wanted me to help build it. Not this."
"Why not, man? He must have worked out a way for you to pilot the suit without the arc being actually in you. And he obviously had good sense, you are War Machine." Sam asked.
Rhodey crossed his arms and looked away. "That... didn't happen the way you're probably thinking. He wasn't happy with me when I first put it on. You'll see."
Natasha and Rhodey shared a significant look, it was obvious they knew something about this particular topic that they weren't willing to share with the group.
Rhodey in the memory just held back a relieved laugh. "You're about to make a whole lotta people around here real happy, cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy."
The bottom of Tony's stomach dropped out and his shoulders stiffened. 'Right, me forging a path for myself and trying to take responsibility is a little stunt now?'
Natasha's eyes narrowed a little as she looked over to the Rhodes in the memory. She knew that changing directions in life was hard. 'It's even harder when you have someone doubting you all the way.'
"This is not for the military. I'm not... it's different-"
"What, are you humanitarian now or something?"
Tony tensed, the edges of his mouth stiffly quirked up as he made himself look Rhodey in the eyes. He needed his best friend now more than ever.
Wanda raised an eyebrow at the Colonel. "Would it really be such a bad thing if he were?"
Irritated, the current Rhodey gave her a heated glare. "Of course not. And as we've seen he'd already been trying to make small moves into that field already. But this was my job and with Tony blocking contact with the Brass I was left trying to field my superiors. And the shut down seemed so sudden, he hadn't even talked to me about it. Just blindsided me with it."
"I need you to listen to me-"
"No, what you need is time to get your mind right."
Sam cringed. "Tell me you did not just say that. That's not how you-"
"I know Sam, I know!"
Tony's lips twisted up, crinkling his face in a mockery of a smile, his hands fisted in his pockets. He could tell at once that this was a lost cause.
"I'm serious. It was nice seeing you, Tony." With that dismissal Rhodey turned away, once again adopting the Colonel demeanour as he went to find his men.
They watched him go and this time Rhodey was able to see for himself Tony's reaction. His heart sunk.
"Thanks." Tony's lips twitched again around the soft murmur, but his eyes were downcast and dark. The insincerity of his words burned his mouth as all that was left inside was the hollow feeling of disappointment.
'I guess I have to do this alone.'
They returned to the workshop where Tony activated a holographic keyboard filled with some of the same symbols that had been on the safe's keypad. Even though they recognised it from the recent memory, the team couldn't help but admire both its and Tony's efficiency once more.
"JARVIS, you up?"
"For you sir, always."
Amused, Vision smiled at this as he knew the AI didn't have it in his programme to sleep - rather like Vision himself.
"I'd like to open a new project file; index mark 2."
"Shall I store this on the Stark Industries Central database?" JARVIS asked the AI sounded very deliberately neutral as Tony swiped a blueprint of the original suit on to a holographic table.
"No," Tony's voice lost its focused tone and sounded slightly worried. "I don't know who to trust right now. Till further notice, why don't we just keep everything on my private server?"
More specifically, he wasn't sure if he could trust Obadiah anymore. The thought was frightening. He had hoped desperately that he was being paranoid, that Obadiah had made a mistake in not reporting the theft to ITAR… but he smelt a rat.
"Thank God," Scott sighed, he could only imagine how bad things could have gotten if Tony had let Obadiah see this.
Meanwhile, Peter frowned as he felt lucky that he'd had two great mentors in his lifetime, even more upon seeing what having a mentor like Obadiah with his poisonous influence was like.
He had JARVIS looking into what he could of S.I. but he had never been completely integrated into the company's systems, which Tony made a note to correct as soon as possible. 'Though even JARVIS can be biased and he's never liked Obie.'
"With good reason!" Clint spat. The archer crossed his arms irritably, he wished that he could shake Tony at this point and force him to see reason about Obadiah, but the memory had already happened.
JARVIS spoke up with a teasing lilt. "Working on a secret project, Sir?"
Pensive, Tony didn't answer him for a long moment as he manipulated and threw out sections of the suit model.
"I don't want this ending up in the wrong hands." Tony sent the hologram spinning, his mind burning with ideas. "Maybe in mine, it could do some good."
A lot of the team smiled at that.
Wanda was pensive but hopeful. She wanted to see what Stark would actually do with the suit now that her previous preconceptions had been unravelled.
In Sokovia, Cap and Iron Man - especially the later - were seen as symbols of American power and greed. Everything she had heard and seen about Tony, she had filtered through the worst lens possible, damning him as a monster and the worst the world had to offer.
She wanted to be proven wrong.
There was a whirl of small scenes and thoughts. Jumbles of blueprints, equations, formulas and material properties ran through their minds as Tony typed, soldered, welded and wired.
It seemed so different to what they had seen in Afghanistan, the workshop was bright, clean and well organised, stocked with top of the line equipment that was a stark contrast to the gloomy, dirty cave full of half rusted supplies. And yet it was so similar as Tony worked seamlessly with the bots, everyone moving to help with each other's projects while making easy banter, as he had with Yinsen. But most familiar was Tony's hands-on approach, he didn't just design a part and have a machine print it, he would cut and shape the metal, welding and wiring it as much himself as he could. Any time a job could be done with handheld tools, that was what he did.
There were smiles as they saw little moments of Tony wiring a boot with Dum-E, the bot continuously moving a magnifying glass around to earn a humoured reprimand, complementing U on blueprints that got a happy noise from the bot before he intoned what almost sounded like a raspberry at Dum-E, and leaning against Butterfingers as they debated the properties of various metals.
The flashes of scenes soon slowed and they were able to focus on Tony who was now wearing a pair of the intricately wired boots and had cleared a section of the lab floor.
"U, you're on camera duty. Whatever happens, don't drop this." Tony placed the camera carefully in U's grip, faced slightly to the left of the test site. While JARVIS was already recording the test from every angle he had, this would provide him not only another angle, but the camera was equipped with sensors that he hadn't had the time to upgrade JARVIS with yet.
Quickly he stomped over to the testing mats he'd prepared, he picked up the hand controls from the cabinet behind him and eagerly positioned himself in the centre of the mats.
Scott pointed out Butterfingers watching anxiously from further back in the room and the fact that his claw now looked larger. The team wondered what purpose he played in the test.
Curiously, Peter peered at where Butterfingers was, he could see that the Bot was actually monitoring a screen covered in what looked to be pressure readings. He pointed it out to the rest of the team, highlighting the fact that it was showing the maximum pressure Tony's body could take from the suit.
It was easy to deduce at that point that Butterfingers claw was there to pry bits of armour off of Tony if necessary.
Confused, Thor frowned. "Those numbers seem quite low. When friend Anthony conducted tests on me and my abilities in the lab my numbers were much higher."
At the other's questioning looks, he elaborated. "He wanted to get over a mechanical flaw in his armour to make it so his suit could work as a conduit to my lightning, if I were to aim it at him, without sustaining damage. But he also wanted to make sure I wouldn't electrocute or damage anything else, like his metal children, unintentionally during the test."
"At this point, Tony is, at best a baseline human, but really he's currently an underweight human having escaped captivity and experiencing medical consequences from that." Sam answered, "I really don't know what you were expecting, man."
Thor grimaced and refocused on his comrade getting ready to test his partially assembled armour.
"Okay, let's do this right. Start mark half-meter back and centre." He looked behind him briefly, "Dum-E, look alive, you're on standby for fire safety. U, roll it."
Tony fiddled with the controls on the belt. "Okay. Activate hand controls."
Bruce found it was odd to see Tony so ill at ease and formal with the tech when he was normally in his element.
"We're going to start off nice and easy. We're going to see if 10% thrust capacity achieves lift."
The team watched with brimming excitement as the repulsor boots powered up, anxious to see Tony's first real flight.
Bracing himself, Tony tensed. "3...2...1."
The sudden burst of force, like a catapult, flung Tony through the air. He half flipped and smacked straight into the sloped ceiling with a violent thud.
Dum-E's arm frantically whipped around as Tony fell ten feet to the floor with a clatter and a breathless cry. A stream of dry powder flew from the extinguisher in his claw.
"Mr Stark!" Spider-Man yelled over Clint quietly swearing.
For a single heartbeat, they were all in shock before the pain actually hit. It was like a tidal wave crashing through their ribs.
"Oh god! That shit hurts!" Scott doubled over. "Almost feels like I got hit by a car."
"Slamming into a cement wall at the speed of a car would be more accurate," Natasha gritted out.
Peter was the first to move. His palm pressed tightly to his ribs as he walked around the tool chests to find Tony lying on his back, covered in white powder and staring unfocused at the ceiling.
"I'm surprised that impact didn't knock him out completely," Bruce said as he watched U and Butterfingers wheel over with concerned chirps while Dum-E whined and rolled back and forth.
"Sir? Sir!" JARVIS's voice was becoming audibly distressed as he urged Tony to respond.
"Tony?" Rhodey spoke softly when Tony made no response to JARVIS.
U bent down and prodded Tony's shoulder gently.
Tony flinched and batted the claw away with a morose sound. A slight movement to raise himself up had him clutching the arc in a white-knuckled grip while lightning bolts of agony ripped through his chest.
Butterfingers lent over him as he let out a soft questioning coo.
After a while, Tony gasped, "Don't… Don't move me… I-I need a minute."
His fingers ghosted over his ribs, a few prods earned some gritted hissing. Thankfully, his chest still seemed to be holding itself together and neither bone nor metal felt obviously broken or misplaced. Despite what it had felt like, the arc was still bolted into his ribs, exactly how it was meant to be.
Remembering how his pre-serum self was and how much agony he had experienced, Steve swallowed a lump in his throat and exhaled shakily. The ghost pain was making it difficult for him to remain calm. He glanced across at the members of the team near him to see how they were fairing with it...
Wanda's lips were slightly parted and her hand was trembling where it was resting above her chest. The glow of her power around her hand seemed to be pulsing like a heartbeat.
Natasha's reaction was harder to read, her mouth was in a thin line and her jaw jumped from how hard she was clenching it.
Clint and Winter had adopted tense stances with their arms wrapped protectively over their chests while Rhodes let out a stilted breath and sat by his best friend, he instinctively reached an arm to his shoulder but found it went right through. Seeing the utter hopelessness on Rhodes's face, Winter's stance broke and Bucky came back out.
The change was immediate.
Wide-eyed, Steve watched Bucky kneel in front of Rhodes.
Steve could hear the stilted, whispered conversation.
"It's alright man, you can't do anything now and I know it's really frustrating, but this is in the past. Trust me, I remember being there with Stevie-"
"-I want to change things and I can't, it's just so..." Rhodes's voice petered off. It unnerved Steve to hear Rhodes so sad and hopeless, it was a strong juxtaposition to the Colonel and teammate he knew. "I wish this didn't happen. I hate seeing him in so much pain."
"I know. I know. No one deserves this, Stark least of all. The scene will change soon," Bucky guided Rhodes up with a comforting hand on his back.
It amazed Steve that the two seemed to be building a comradery because of the memories and the similarities between Stark and him in the past.
While part of him was jealous, another part was happy that Bucky was making more friends.
Instinctively, Bucky steered Rhodey towards where Thor, Bruce and Spider-Man were gathered. Upon seeing where they were headed, Sam moved from next to Steve to Rhodey to offer his support.
Before Bucky could fully move away, Rhodey reached out and stopped him.
"Thank you, Sergeant Barnes."
Bucky's lips twitched upwards. "Your welcome." He was about to move away when he impulsively turned around again. "Call me Bucky."
Touched, Rhodey gave a small nod in response and looked back to Tony as he started moving again.
"Damage report, J."
"Sir, no breakages detected. There is severe bruising around your ribs, especially around the arc's casing, but no fractures. Mild bruising on your back and head but no signs of a concussion, the rest of your body is unharmed."
Tony let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"I don't need another operation then." Tony managed a wide relieved smile.
Bruce was confused for a brief moment since most people wouldn't need surgery for fractured ribs. Then he remembered the arc, the heavyweight of the casing and realized how dangerous even a fractured rib could be. A fractured rib could very quickly break under the weight of the arc, which would put more pressure on the other ribs and impact the entire support of the reactor.
"No, sir."
"Oh thank fuck-"
"But to keep it that way, I advise against any more flight tests until a better system can be devised."
Tony nodded as the three bots helped him stand and manoeuvred him to the couch.
They chirruped at him and fussed; DumE brought over his favourite scotch (amazingly without spilling any in the progress), Butterfingers utilised his bigger claw to bring over a blanket from somewhere that even Tony couldn't pinpoint and U brought over a hot water bottle which was rather amusingly covered in little red hearts.
"Good boys." Tony smiled.
He got a chorus of chirrups in return and the opportunity to listen to an amusing argument between the three about who would clean up.
Dum-E lost, owing to that it was him who had blasted the extinguisher, but he managed to cajole U into joining him while Butterfingers made a teasing noise and snuggled up closer to Tony.
Thor gave a small laugh as he watched the siblings. Aeons ago he would have seen comparisons to himself and Loki. With the duo cleaning together, he was reminded of how many Quests he had persuaded Loki to go on. And with Butterfingers snuggled up to Tony, he was reminded of how he never had to clean up if his and Loki's pranks in the castle went sideways. It was nearly always Loki alone that had to fix everything again. He had justified it to himself at the time, Loki was a Mage after all, but now he could see it for the blatant favouritism it was.
He didn't think that was what was happening here, this arrangement was sorted between the siblings after all, but this experience was making him reflect.
Butterfingers pawed at his shirt and upon seeing the already developing dark twists of violet bruising radiating from the arc, he made a sad noise and adjusted Tony's hot water bottle so it was situated right above the arc.
Hissing when he sees the bruising, Scott peered at it with wide eyes. "No wonder that hurt." He couldn't help but notice how careful and caring Butterfingers was being and gave a smile when he thinks of how attentive Cassie is when he's unwell.
"Quit mothering me." Tenderly, Tony stroked the underside of Butterfinger's claw. "That's meant to be my job."
Tony had just finished preparing the model's coding and his holo-table loaded the interactive template.
Brimming with anticipation, Tony stood then only just resisted the urge to grin like a madman.
'First test; see how the components mesh in 3D imaging.'
He stood for a moment before directing and twisting the bare bones of the green holographic arm.
With each direction of Tony's interactive pen, the arm became more and more complex, individual pieces connecting to form a whole.
It was when Tony instructed the pen to fit all the pieces together that the arm became recognisable as bare bones of an Iron Man gauntlet.
Scott couldn't help but smile in awe, as an engineer he knew that to be a good one someone would have to understand each element, each piece in play to make a well-oiled machine. Stark clearly did.
Upon fitting his arm in the holographic brace, he knew instantly it would work structurally. Powerwise, almost definitely, but the definite measure could only be determined once he made a physical model.
Analytically, he twisted his arm and surveyed the hologram as expected he noted proudly that there were no flaws in his design.
'This is a good first step. I think I can work with this.'
Seeing Tony order and focus on the light green holographs, Thor was bewitched by the Man of Iron's likeness to his brother Loki who appeared similar when he was strengthening their armours with magic.
He wonders if the two would have been friends had they met under any other circumstance. The thought twisted something deep and painful in his chest.
All the preparation was done. Tony just needed to try out an actual bare-bones model of the whole arm itself.
The wiring and the metal framework was complex. The power source of this would be the arc, so the wiring had to mirror veins and push the power towards the repulsor in the palm.
He looked up for a moment, only to see Pepper at the lab's entrance.
Seeing her again made him feel warm and relieved.
Tony distracted himself by directing Dum-E for a moment while Pepper was walking into the lab.
"I've been buzzing you." She placed the coffee and a mysterious package on the lab desk carefully. "Did you hear the intercom?"
"Yeah, everything's- What?"
Rhodey just about suppressed a snort at that response.
"Obadiah's upstairs-"
Tony barely held back a cringe. The twist in his gut turned into guilt that he wanted nothing more than to avoid his mentor.
"-Great. Great. I'll be right up-"
'Honestly, that unease says more about Stane than Stark.' Winter thought whilst Bucky outwardly hummed in agreement and assessed Pepper.
"-What do you want me to tell him?"
It was then she saw the arm brace and repulster. Confused and a tad annoyed, Pepper moved up to the lab desk near where Tony was testing it. "I thought you said you were done making weapons."
"I did. This is a flight stabilizer." He focused intensely on the device, gauging the fit around his arm and mentally checking over the blueprint before activating it. "It's completely harmless."
Almost as soon as he uttered those words a powerful beam of blinding white light burst from Tony's hand and shot him backwards across the room.
A few members of the team let out startled shrieks whilst all of them peered at where Tony was sprawled across the room. Thankfully he appeared unhurt this time apart from aggravating the old bruises.
Bruce cringed as Butterfingers wheeled right through where he was standing.
Pepper flinched, she swiftly brought her arms up and twisted her head to protect herself. Covering her ears at the clatter of numerous objects cascading from the shock wave.
"I didn't expect that," Tony answered apologetically.
Pepper gathered herself a bit and twisted her head to see him, just as Butterfingers helped Tony back to his feet.
"Whatever this actually is, Obadiah's going to see it as a sign you are making weapons again." Pepper appeared anxious as she peered at the arm. "I don't think that's wise."
Troubled Tony pulled his arm roughly from the flight stabilizer. "Me neither. Once I turn this company around and he can see it works perhaps then… but-"
"But he's a pretty hard man to convince. Especially now."
Tony's voice sharpened a bit. "Do you think he's going to try and force me to make weapons again?"
"Tony, I don't - I know he's not happy. You sprung this on him - on everyone. And you haven't given anyone a clear plan yet. You've left us scrambling to clean up your-"
'My mess?' He mentally finished her sentence. 'Why does everyone think I don't know what I'm doing about this?'
Rhodey winced at the Peppers wording, but he also understood her anger. It had stung that Tony hadn't discussed his decision with them and then left them struggling to deal with the fallout. He understood wanting to keep it from Obadiah, especially now, but it had felt like Tony didn't trust them. And if he was being honest with himself, Rhodey wasn't sure that he wouldn't have gone to Obadiah about it.
"This is my company and I will take it in the direction I see fit, the one I think will actually do some good. And I am asking you if you think Obadiah is going to work with me on this."
She glanced away with narrowed eyes. "He is my boss-"
"And I'm his. I'm just asking for your opinion."
"Tony you do not want to put her in that position. Not against a man like that." Scott implored but he went unheard and watched as Miss Potts became more and more agitated.
Pepper's eyes blazed unnaturally bright as if she were about to cry tears of frustration. The sudden loss of composure betrayed all the stress she had been under recently. "My opinion is that you need to seriously consider how this sudden change of direction looks. No one knows what happened to you over there and as soon as you got back you announced you were going to stop doing the thing that makes us money?! I bet Hammer cracked open the Champagne!"
Admittedly, he hadn't been keeping up with the rumour mill about himself. Tony frowned, he should have put JARVIS on that.
"It looked really bad back then," Natasha muttered as she remembered the early months after Tony had come back from Afghanistan, before Obadiah's death. SHIELD's record on Tony had seemed to really highlight that, when she was preparing her mission as Natalie Rushman, as well as the possible cracks that the business and the man would have.
"You don't say." Rhodey's remark was quiet but sarcastic, Natasha couldn't find it within herself to fault him for it. Since at this point in time he was in the eye of the storm of the company's mess due to no fault of his own.
Meanwhile, Pepper took a moment to recompose herself with several deep calming breaths.
"Sorry, that was harsh. I just wish you'd said something to us before the conference."
He meets her gaze intently. "I couldn't let Obie stop the conference. Pep... I know it looks like I've gone mad. But I know what I am doing. Trust me."
"That's exactly what a crazy person would say." Clint sighed.
"I hope so," Pepper appeared worried, however, her voice remained steady. "Obadiah's not happy with you up there."
Tony let out an exasperated groan. "Of course he's not. When is he ever?" He was starting to think no one was.
Wanda tensed and her eyes glowed with an angry red fire. The witch hated Stane for his role in the deaths of her parents. She chose to focus on that rather than her concern for Stark about to meet with the beast again.
Tony moved past Pepper and up the stairs, she followed her stiff posture betrayed her anxiety and the fact that she was steeling herself for what was to come.
The group wondered what Obadiah had in store for Tony now and what the outcome would be as the scene distorted and blurred around them.
