Chapter 4 Actions and Consequences
It's hard for me to remember Afghanistan as even just thinking about the bomb can set off my PTSD. I remember waking up in that cave not being able to figure out where I was and panicking when I realised that I wasn't at home with Pepper or Clint. I'd then noticed Yinsen and discovered the electromagnet in my chest. It'd taken me a while to accept what Yinsen told me and try not to remember the surgery. I could still feel the pain in my ribs and sternum where they were removed.
My heart had been in agony and I could barely sit up on the cot let alone stand up when the guards came in. I was still weary from the drugs that they'd knocked me out with and the stroke I had almost prevented me from speaking when I refused to make the Jericho missile. The pain that was in my lungs and chest as I was almost drowned and electrocuted to death had been excruciating. It hadn't helped that the electromagnet rested almost on top of my lungs, so that when they did bring me up for air I couldn't expand my lungs far enough for a decent breath.
Later, after they'd shown me the weapons they had and Yinsen and given me quite the pep talk, I started building the first miniaturised Arc Reactor hoping that it could cure me and prevent me from dying, even if it did stop the shrapnel from going into my heart, I still had to cure myself of my 'death sentence' as I called it, to prevent me from dying anyway. If it didn't heal me then that would kill me instead of the shrapnel and I couldn't leave my family in the mess it was in before I left, I had to make things right.
A few months after my parents had died and my depression and narcissism had increased I'd had a strong argument with Clint, I can't remember what I said to him or to Pepper as she tried to calm me down, but he ended up leaving the house and running away. When I'd woken up the next day I couldn't remember the argument I'd had with Clint or anything that had happened the day before.
When I asked Pepper where Clint was and she quite angrily told me what had happened I almost had another heart-attack and I'd already had three that month. I told Pepper that I couldn't remember anything from the day before, I couldn't even remember going to sleep the day before that when Obie was there. She didn't believe me at first until she started questioning me on things that had happened and discovered that I hadn't been lying. We both immediately consulted JARVIS who told us he'd been shut down before I lost my memory and that someone had used a device to control me due to the data he received from his scans. That left me panicked and I immediately took Pepper and the babies to a new home I'd recently built in Malibu to make sure they'd be safe before I went out looking for my brother, hoping to tell him what had happened but I never found him.
The memory of this fuelled me with enough desperation that allowed me to finish the Arc Reactor and not give into my depression. With my determination for escape and to fix what I'd done wrong increased I started building the first Iron Man suit with Yinsen who I became very close friends with as we built the suit. He taught me some of his language that I quickly became fluent in, even with my vocal problems after my stroke, and eventually told him in his language everything that had happened in my life.
I told him about how I found out I was Were then how I got married and studied at MIT whilst having children with Pepper and my relationship with my brother and the fall out that happened between us. I'd felt an immense load taken off of my shoulders after talking to him about it and he offered me comfort in just listening that I felt all of my Narcissism disappear and I began to feel more like my old self. Then there was the escape and Yinsen's death.
I completely destroyed the base the terrorists had kept me in through my anger, grief, and pain for everything that had happened to me before the cave, in it, and then after. When the suit failed and left me stranded in the desert I'd almost immediately shifted into the Leopard to help me get back to the US base. With my heightened senses I heard the helicopters coming up behind me and immediately shifted back so that I could claim their attention. It wasn't long after that that I got home with Rhodey helping me off the plane where I saw Pepper-heavily pregnant with twins again-watching us come down, tears staining her cheeks. I made a b-line for her, ignoring the medical that was there and wrapped my good arm around her as we both cried onto each other.
Then of course I shut down the weapons manufacturing and laid low before Obie, the one I'd trusted almost as much as my Father, told me that he'd been controlling me when I'd had the argument with Clint and paid the Ten Rings to assassinate me in Afghanistan before he literally took out my heart and left me to die. I'd trusted him only to have that trust betrayed, and I was only 19. Then of course there was the battle between Iron Man and the Iron Monger which ended with both of us dead (though somehow I survived again, apparently I can't even be killed by myself) then I found myself in hospital with Pepper as she gave birth to our third set of twins, another boy and girl, who we named Yinsen and Miracle-I wanted to make a tribute to Yinsen in some way and that was the easiest way I could do it.
The day after led to Coulson giving me the cards to read to the press (he knew about my marriage to Pepper and our children since he was there when she went into labour, but swore not to tell anyone including Fury) but instead ended up with me announcing to the press and the world that 'I am Iron Man'. It was clear to me that people thought I was doing it for attention and fame-as if didn't have that already-or to get more women to sleep with me-the press still thinks I'm a playboy due to always having a baby with me when I was studying at MIT, they seemed to think I was sleeping around and I couldn't seem to persuade them that I was just babysitting and technically I was. But I wasn't doing it for the attention at all, I knew if my identity as Iron Man was kept a secret that would just cause Pepper to be even more frightened about my well being than she was (she's not worried about it now because the Arc Reactor did heal me) and I also hoped that it might draw Clint back home so I could talk to him, but he never did.
When I came home, Pepper was still in the hospital and some friends had offered to look after the other twins so I was alone, I immediately recognised the scent Blood-Death-Dark and I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from growling when I saw him. I hadn't seen him since the first time and I wasn't sure what to think about him since he appeared to have a different attitude towards me.
I hadn't thought that getting involved with SHIELD again would lead to me hiring a spy (who I seriously wanted to throw off the cliff when I found out who exactly she was) whilst dying and making Pepper CEO of Stark Industries leaving me with 'babysitting' on a much higher level, then arranging for Rhodey to steal my suit after acting drunk-seriously when you get invited to parties all the time and don't drink alcohol people look at you weird, so I perfected acting drunk since I can't drink-which still hurt that he would still do it, trashing my home, fortunately the babies were being looked after by Pepper's cousin for the night, and then rediscovering an element for my Arc Reactor that ended up saving my life.
Then I beat the life out of Vanko and Hammer then got scolded by Pepper and Rhodey for three hours straight about not telling them I was dying. It took me a while to trust Rhodey again after what he did and to forgive him, even though I did set up the fight and him stealing the suit. Then I was taken-literally-to a meeting with Fury about the Avengers Initiative in which I wasn't recommended-come on! I was dying and the Leopard was mostly controlling my thinking patterns as well as my depression!-then went home to relax for half an hour before looking after the toddlers and babies whilst Pepper went to work.
It wasn't long after that when my technology found Captain America and I created a way to unfreeze him then left and didn't visit again, for one I was reminded of when my Dad wouldn't shut up about him when I was a kid that caused me to practically hate him, and two the kids had broken out of their bedrooms and Emily and James (my cousin's in-law) were having no luck at trying to contain them, causing me to turn for home earlier than expected.
For a while things were fine, TJ, Maria, Howard, and Daniel had just started kindergarten leaving me with just Yinsen and Miracle to look after (until Pepper has the other set of twins we're now expecting, why can't we just have one baby for goodness sake?!) when I got a call from Coulson on my date night with Pepper which I desperately tried to get out of before he appeared in the elevator and got handed-well, Pepper handed it to me-a pad full of notes which led on to the tesseract and then left me calling for Emily and James to babysit all the kids at their house as I had a feeling something bad was about to happen and sent them to my home in California to make sure they'd be okay.
That's when I ended up getting a notification that Reindeer Games was in Berlin and I had to fly there at top speed. That's when everything I'd been worried about broke loose and I ended up joining a team with Captain America, Thor-Point Break-and Black Widow-Natasha Romanoff/Natalie Rushman-with my brother Clint as Hawkeye. I had to stop myself from screaming when I found out it was him. I was still rather hurt that he hadn't come back home it had been five years since I'd seen him and six since Afghanistan.
I had to ignore the fact that he was there so I could focus on the fight, but when the government sent a Nuke to blow up Manhattan-idiots-and I caught it, I couldn't stop myself from thinking about my family and I had JARVIS ring Pepper, I knew it was too late to say anything to Clint. I could tell just from seeing him again that he hated me and I had no way of fixing that with everything that had been going on, so I prayed that Pepper would be able to tell him what had happened since I knew I wouldn't be coming back when I carried the Nuke through the portal and threw it at the mothership. Eventually in the cold heart of space, I felt death take me and my last thought was of Pepper, our children, and my brother.
Then I woke to a loud roar after falling back through the portal with the Captain and Thor with the Hulk being the one that was roaring. Rodgers then told me that we'd won and then I invited the entire team to go and get shawarma with me after handing Loki over to SHIELD of course. When that was done I invited them all to stay and rest in the rooms that hadn't been destroyed in the fight and completely avoided Clint and the others as I received a call from Pepper-who was in hysterics and close to fainting-and Emily and James with the kids.
Though they had really bad timing as I was dressed only in black shorts so they could see all of my injuries which did cause Pepper to faint and we had to wait a few minutes for her to wake up before I could tell any of them what had happened. I told them about the fight with Loki and about Clint being there and assured them that other than being injured and having an aching heart-that was a 'tribute' from the shrapnel-I was fine.
Pepper came back to New York as soon as she could get out of her meeting and started another row at me for what had happened in front of the other Avengers before I broke her off with a long kiss and hug which calmed her down completely before we went to our room and slept for the rest of the day, just holding onto each other. I don't know what the Avengers thought about our exchange, but I was pretty sure the Captain disapproved of my 'playboy' actions and the others were most likely just confused as to what just happened, well apart from Clint and Natasha that is.
When I woke up I went straight to the living room that was completely trashed where the others were just sitting amongst themselves and eating some food before I offered them a place to stay at the tower. For some reason they seemed surprised by that, especially Steve and even Natasha couldn't hide her surprise, but I didn't want to lose my brother again and plus I loved the fact that I could actually have a conversation on almost anything technological with Bruce who agreed after some persuasion.
That was when I set out to repair the 'Avengers Tower' as I renamed it, and designed a floor for each of the Avengers to live on in comfort. It took a few months for the clean up of New York and the Tower for everything to go almost completely back to normal. The only thing that wasn't normal was that now I had more people living in my home other than Pepper and the children, and that we tended to have quite a few missions and arguments afterwards-the arguments were mainly just between the Captain and I since we didn't exactly get along because I wasn't "like my Father".
And that's actually the situation I'm in at the moment, the Captain yelling at me about everything I'd done wrong on a mission whilst we're in a debrief meeting with Fury with everyone actually shouting at me except for Bruce who hadn't taken a side but had to leave the environment because the Hulk was starting to emerge, causing me to recount everything in my life up to this moment.