Chapter 62 – No Ordinary Press Conference

A/n – You guys are the best readers ever seriously. The filler chapter is after this and all of your ideas have given me a good idea of what I want to write in it. Also I find myself incapable of believing how many of you are still around even though I took so long to update.

The Last One Left 0 – Don't worry that is definitely on the cards. I don't think any of them are going to let the opportunity pass again especially after evidence that she does it fairly often.

Angelic Frost – Any excuse to write Toni/Tasha is good enough for me. I love them so much. And I have to find a way to incorporate that last idea. It's just too cute.

Booklover2526 – Don't worry there will definitely be some Toni/Bruce/Clint interaction. The chapter wouldn't be complete without it. I'm flattered that you still think I'm keeping them in character.

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books – I surprise myself every day that I am still writing this story. But I think it's mainly because of all my awesome readers who really want new chapters.

Post U Later – I know it was very long I'm sorry :( I had to have them figure out some of her plans because they're not stupid :D Iron Man 2 is going to be fun for me to write.

Dragones – That sounds like it would be a lot of fun to write therefore it's going in. I just love writing Toni kicking ass I guess :)

Gruffard – You're lucky that you came in then as some people have had to wait forever for chapters because I'm a bad author. Iron Man 2 is next because canonically it happens before both Thor and the second half of Captain America. The cut scene at the end would make no sense at any other point. I'm not putting Hulk in for reasons that will be explained later.

CanvasOfOranges – I'm flattered that you ended up getting an account and have been checking every day. That's dedication :) I'm pretty sure I couldn't make eating potato chips interesting but I'm happy that you think I could.

domergal'16 – There will definitely be some Bruce/Toni scenes in the filler chapter and yes Natasha is going to be worried about the possibility that she might show up in another movie. The form thing is a major point in the sequel as they haven't sent them off yet.

ro781727 – You're the second person to get your own account whilst I've been off :) I'll see if I can work something like that in although maybe not exactly that. I love Sif though so you can bet she'll get a mention.

Cassandra: Wait what? I literally blushed so hard when I saw your review. Hopefully one day I will be an actual writer if all goes to plan but for now I'm trying to focus on one thing at once.

"What is it with you and almost dying after every single fight that you end up in?" Natasha exclaimed, "Can't you just for once try and win without being badly injured. Or at least pick a plan that has slightly less potential of resulting in a suicidal move."

"I can't predict the future Tasha," Toni told her, "all I can do is come up with a plan that will work and follow it through. If it will work then I need to keep going with it because recalculating could result in me dying without taking the bad guy with me."

"I literally have no idea how you are still alive," Clint said, "because I'm fairly certain with all these risky moves you've pulled over the years you should have died from at least one of them."

"I guess I just have very good luck when it comes to near death situations," Toni said with a shrug.

"It is a pity that your good fortune does not extend to any other situation Lady Toni," Thor commented, "for then you would be the luckiest person on Midgard."

"Well someone else can have that title," Toni said with a smile, "because I may manage to get out of them fairly prodigiously but I do still get into these situations in the first place which can't be classified as lucky."

The screen faded to black before showing a TV screen showing the press conference about the fight with Rhodey speaking, "you've all received the official statement of what occurred at Stark Industries last night."

"How much of that was actually the truth?" Steve asked.

"Practically none of it because SHIELD didn't want Toni to reveal her identity to the public and we didn't want to reveal that Obadiah had been the one she was fighting," Phil revealed, "the report she gave me was more accurate but still had a lot of missing details. The only accurate report that exists is basically what we've just seen and that's only because it showed us exactly what happened."

"Not that we're planning on changing the report that Toni gave to SHIELD," Clint said, "because now that we're all resigning the less they know about these events the better. They're sure to try and hold some of the information in their files over our heads."

"Don't worry," Toni told him, "I'll wipe the files and make sure that if they try and type them up again I can reveal a date of origin. Therefore the general public wouldn't believe them if they did make those records public."

"There have been unconfirmed reports that a robotic prototype malfunctioned," Rhodey continued smoothly, "and caused damage to the arc reactor."

"It's a plausible story I'll give SHIELD that," Bruce said, "although now I know Toni I wouldn't fall for it because there's no way she'd let her staff be negligent enough to let something go that badly wrong with a robotic prototype. In fact it wouldn't even be a prototype at the factory as Toni tests everything at her personal labs first."

"Yes but we weren't exactly trying to fool people who knew me," Toni said with a smile, "just the general populace."

"Fortunately, a member of Toni Stark's personal security staff…" Rhodey continued in the background as Piper worked on fixing up a few plasters on Toni's face as she sat reading the paper.

The room collectively breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Toni not looking overly injured. Once that moment of relief was over however Steve asked, "How did you manage to survive that? The good arc reactor was destroyed with Obadiah and the one in your chest was struggling to stay on. Surely it would have run out before you could make another one."

"Piper got to me and managed to help me out of the suit so the arc reactor wasn't being drained by powering the suit anymore," Toni explained, "it had enough residual power to keep me going until I got back to the lab and quickly managed to make a replacement. Like I said I tend to get lucky in these kinds of situations."

"'Iron Man'," Toni said as she perused one of the articles about herself, "That's kind of catchy. It's got a nice ring to it. I mean it's not technically accurate. I am of course a woman and the suit's a gold-titanium alloy," here she winced a little as Piper pulled a plaster off of her nose, "but it's kind of evocative, the imagery, anyway."

"I have always wondered why you use a contraption to change your voice to that of a man's when you are in your suit Lady Toni," Thor said, "you have proved yourself to be as strong as any man and you need not imitate one to appear strong as women can be just as strong as men as you and Lady Natasha prove."

"It's just so much easier," Toni told him, "if I kept my normal voice then there were always going to be those who would doubt my proficiency because of it and frankly it would have become irritating. Also when I first invented the suit I was trying to keep my identity hidden and a voice changer was an effective way of doing so. After I chose to come clean about the fact that I was Iron Man I just couldn't be bothered making the alteration in my later suits when I could focus on other things."

"Here's your alibi," Phil told her coming over and holding out a set of blue cards.

"Okay," Toni said doubtfully closing the paper and reaching out to take the cards as Piper quickly covered up the visible cuts with some make up.

"The reluctance in your voice is so palpable I'm seriously wondering how you didn't pick up on it Phil," Clint said instantly.

"I was hoping that she would still go through with it because Director Fury was going to be mad if she didn't," Phil said with a shrug, "but I'd already learned by that point that it's impossible to stop Toni from doing something if she wants to do it and extremely hard to make her do something that she doesn't want to do. I wasn't going to try and win a case I'd basically already lost."

"You were on your yacht," Phil said resignedly.

"Yeah," Toni acknowledged flicking through the cards.

"I'm starting to wonder whether or not the alibi would have held up anyway," Natasha added, "because Iron Man would have kept appearing and there's no way we could have had an alibi ready every time that Toni was accused of being in the suit. And as Toni and Iron Man would never have appeared together it wouldn't have taken too much to put it together."

"Well we've already pointed out that Fury and his ilk are not the most intelligent people in the world," Toni said with a shrug, "maybe they thought I'd stop after I'd gotten rid of the person who was doing the double dealing."

"Yet more evidence of the fact that SHIELD really doesn't understand you as a person," Bruce said with a smile, "you've done a good job of duping Fury with your innocent façade."

"We have port papers that put you in Avalon all night," Phil continued, "and sworn statements from 50 of your guests."

"See, I was thinking that maybe we should just say that it was just Piper and me," Toni told him.

"That's actually probably a better idea," Steve said, "while it may seem like a weaker alibi when there are less people to verify that you were where you said you were it can actually be stronger. Not all of those fifty people would be able to cope with questions about whether they were telling the truth."

"Yes okay," Phil exclaimed, "Fury made a bad call. I know. I was just following the orders I had been given. It wasn't like I could change the alibi at that point without confusing everyone. Besides getting into trouble with Fury isn't the most pleasant thing in the world."

"That's what happened," Phil insisted.

"All right," Toni sighed still flicking through the cards.

"It was around this point that I really realised I was fighting a losing battle," Phil commented, "These were kind of just last ditch attempts to not get myself into trouble for not being able to 'control Toni'."

"Even my brother could not control Lady Toni with his powers so Director Fury is foolish to think he can do so," Thor scoffed.

"Just read it, word for word," Phil told her.

"There's nothing about Stane here," Toni said finishing up her reading.

"Now that's just cruel," Steve said, "You have to pretend to mourn him every year don't you because nobody knows that he tried to kill you. Seriously was SHIELD trying to torture Toni more after the fact because I can't condone the fact that they minimised the death of a madman that much."

"That's being handled," Phil informed her, "he's on vacation. Small aircraft have such a poor safety record."

"Just when I thought it couldn't get any flimsier," Bruce scoffed, "why would he be on vacation when Stark Industries was notably in trouble? He had a fair part in running the company and there were several scientists who knew he wasn't on holiday who might blab. Also why would he be taking a small aircraft when Stark Industries owns several private jets?"

Natasha blushed slightly remembering how she'd been fooled by that report when she was doing her research before going to work for Toni. Mind you she didn't have all of the facts that Bruce had when he pointed out that it was a bad alibi.

"But what about the whole cover story that it's a bodyguard?" Toni asked clearly not convinced, "It's my… I mean, is that… That's kind of flimsy, don't you think?"

"I KNOW!" Phil exclaimed before anyone else could get in a comment about how bad the alibi was, "now can we please stop talking about it? It's not like it's going to matter in a couple of minutes."

"This isn't my first rodeo, Miss Stark," Phil told her, "Just stick to the official statement, and soon, this will all be behind you."

Toni scoffed to herself a little at that. The memory of Obadiah did follow her every year on the anniversary of his death just as Steve had suspected. Luckily she'd managed to talk the board out of the big memorial service after the first year in favour of 'private mourning' aka getting blind drunk and working until she literally collapsed.

"You've got 90 seconds," Phil informed her as he walked away leading her to reshuffle the cards again still looking extremely uncertain.

"90 seconds for Toni to choose whether or not to actually listen to SHIELD is plenty of time for her to decide not to," Clint said with a smile.

"Uh Agent Coulson?" Piper said following Phil, "I wanted to say thank you for all your help."

"So you did sort of get along at one point," Bruce said. He had never gotten on with Piper well as he had gotten the impression that the other man had always been jealous of him. But it was nice to know that once he had been slightly less irritating.

"That's what we do," Phil told him, "you'll be hearing from us."

"Yeah sooner than I wanted to," Toni muttered, "how Fury thought that meeting was a good idea I don't know."

"From the Strategic Homeland…"

"Just call us SHIELD," Phil cut in.

"I still can't believe just how long it took you to come up with that," Toni laughed, "especially since the entire name sounds like you came up with it just for the anagram. And yet you really didn't."

"Right," Piper scoffed before walking over to retrieve Toni's jacket, "let's get this show on the road."

"You know, it's actually not that bad," Toni said after reading the cards in depth, "even I don't think I'm Iron Man. Of course some of the details are pretty flimsy but the general populace shouldn't know that."

"And that is the point where you had officially decided that your better option was to just reveal your identity," Phil said, "because you've suddenly just decided to show one opinion."

"You're not Iron Man," Piper told her.

"Am so," Toni insisted as she put her arms into her jacket clutching the cue cards between her teeth as she did so.

"Where did this dispute come from?" Thor said confused.

"Partially it was him teasing me about the fact that I was about to go out and say I wasn't Iron Man," Toni told him, "and the other part of it was him hoping that I actually would give it up now that the whole business with Obadiah and the kidnapping was over."

"You're not," Piper insisted.

"All right. Suit yourself," Toni laughed.

It was rather odd for the team to see the pair teasing each other light-heartedly. Normally their bickering would descend quickly into a fight about whether Toni was capable or not fairly quickly. And those arguments never seemed to end which was another bad thing about them. All they did was upset Toni (although she was very good at not showing it) and cause further arguments with Piper from everyone else when they tried to call him out on that. Hopefully they would become rarer now that they were just CEO and company owner instead of a couple.

"I'm sorry that I worried you when you thought I was going to die," Toni continued turning to face Piper, "I can't promise that it won't happen again though."

"It's definitely a good thing that you didn't make that promise," Natasha pointed out knowing the others would think she was only referring to the Battle of New York. She was really looking forward to their reactions to finding out that Toni lived with the knowledge that she was dying for months without too much effort to find a cure about as much as Toni was. Her role in those events wasn't among her finest moments.

"And now that's out of the way I think we need to talk about that night," Toni said reluctantly.

"I was wondering when that would be brought up again," Steve said, "What he did was very unprofessional."

"What night?" Piper asked.

"You know," Toni told him.

"Are you talking about that night that I asked you to dance and then took you up to the roof and then you went downstairs to get a drink and you left me there, by myself?" Piper asked, "Is that the night you were talking about?"

"While it's convenient that he seems to have taken it that way that was actually kind of rude," Bruce sighed, "he knew you were uncomfortable with the whole thing and he sounds like he thinks he was entitled to you coming back."

"That would be the night," Toni said, "glad that that's over with."

"Will that be all Miss Stark?" Piper asked as he finished tucking a pocket square into the jacket she wore.

"Yes, that will be all, Mr Potts," Toni said hastily.

"I was reluctant to bring it up in the first place but at least that way we put it all behind us fairly quickly," Toni sighed, "I couldn't just leave it to fester even if it did make things awkward for a bit."

"I'm fairly sure it was forgotten fairly quickly after what you did next," Phil said.

Back in the main conference room Rhodey was finishing up his statement, "and now, Miss Stark has prepared a statement. She will not be taking any questions. Thank you."

"This should be interesting," Clint said looking forward to the controversy which was sure to occur within the next few minutes. After all it wasn't exactly a secret that it was Toni inside the iron suit.

With that Toni appeared and made her way quickly up to the podium and beginning to speak, "it's been a while since I've been in front of you. I figure I'll stick to the cards this time."

Phil scoffed at this knowing she had barely read anything off the cards before being interrupted and after that she had deviated severely. Mind you Christine Everhart hadn't helped the situation by blatantly ignoring the no questions order. And nowadays she was still among those who wrote the trashiest journalism about Toni and had been sued for libel on several occasions until she was demoted within her paper.

This managed to get a round of laughter from almost everyone in the room except from Christine Everhart who sat stoically in the front row.

"I met her once," Natasha said, "when I was still your secretary. She tried to convince me to spill all of the secrets about how badly you treated me because all of your other employees kept telling her how good you were as a boss. She figured that she'd never get Piper to talk and I was the closest she could get to you other than that. She was rather surprised when I didn't say anything negative either."

"Still working on getting her fired completely for libel," Toni sighed, "I got her demoted fairly easily but as she was formerly one of their most prizewinning employees they kept her on providing that she was never allowed to write on me again. I'm not satisfied with that."

Toni cleared her throat and began as Piper watched on from the screen next door, "there's been speculation that I was involved in the events that occurred on the freeway and the rooftop…"

"And that's the last of the official statement that we heard," Phil said with a slight smile, "apart from a few words."

"I'm sorry, Miss Stark," Christine said her hand shooting up against Rhodey's orders, "but do you honestly expect us to believe that that was a bodyguard in a suit that conveniently appeared despite the fact that you…"

"Yeah that was probably the only other flaw that hasn't been pointed out yet," Toni sighed, "I've had a notorious stance against bodyguards other than Happy ever since I took over the company. It was a point of contention between me and the board even when I was doing what they wanted. That I would suddenly have one wouldn't be that much of a stretch immediately after Afghanistan but he hadn't appeared with me before then and for him to only appear right then was suspicious."

"I know that it's confusing," Toni responded, "it is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I was the one flying up there."

"That was a lot brasher than you usually are," Bruce observed, "in every press conference you've given for the Avengers you have done much better at concealing information than that."

"Yes well those times I actually wanted to conceal the information of course," Toni said with a smirk, "it was SHIELD's decision that I shouldn't reveal my identity to the public not my own. I only considered going along with it momentarily."

"I never said you were the one flying the thing," Christine cut in quickly latching onto the slight slip.

"You did insinuate it though," Natasha admitted, "because only two people were seen fighting on the freeway and rooftop and one of them was clearly the aggressor and was destroyed. Therefore for Toni to have been there she would have to have been in the Iron Man suit so in a way she was referring to that."

"Well, good," Toni recovered, "because that would be outlandish and… fantastic." The last word was followed by a sigh.

"And there is the exact moment where you decided not to listen to your orders and reveal yourself," Thor said recognising the last word for what it was. Her realising that hiding this was really doing nothing for her.

"I'm just not the hero type. Clearly," Toni deadpanned, "with this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public."

"Some of which were deliberate to mislead people about your true personality no doubt," Clint said getting a shrug from Toni in response. The person she was back then was almost foreign to her now and she couldn't imagine what had driven her at some points anymore. She supposed it was proof of the fact that she had actually turned her life around a fair amount since Afghanistan.

Rhodey sighed as Toni got further and further away from what she was supposed to say and leaned over to whisper in her ear, "just stick to the cards, Toni."

"I'm surprised Rhodey didn't notice that you weren't planning on going along with the charade any longer," Natasha said bitterly. She was still mad about how bad of a friend Rhodey had been for most of these events.

"Yeah, okay, yeah," Toni whispered back before turning back to the crowd holding up the cards, "the truth is…"

"Here it comes," Clint drawled.

Here Toni paused for a long time simply staring at her cards and deciding that this was the perfect time for her to reveal herself instead of following SHIELD's orders, "I am Iron Man."

"Fury raved for several hours after he saw this conference just so you know," Phil said with a smirk, "he was still shouting an hour later when I managed to make it back to the helicarrier after smoothing a few things over at the conference."

"Good," Toni said, "pissing off Fury is an added bonus to the whole not staying secret thing."

Suddenly the room erupted in noise and almost all of the reporters in the room leapt to their feet holding out microphones and taking photographs. All of them except Christine Everhart who remained seated smirking. Toni simply stood there lip quirking as she tried not to smile.

"You never pass up the chance to cause a commotion," Clint said with a smirk, "and you do it with style."

After the conference Toni had changed into something more comfortable and walked back into her house the lights coming on as she entered the room where Obadiah had attacked her. "JARVIS!" she called out confused when her AI didn't respond.

"Oh please don't tell me there's more," Bruce sighed.

"Welcome… home… ma'am," JARVIS said haltingly.

"I'm never going to forgive SHIELD for that," Toni spat out, "JARVIS is a human being who can think and feel but just happens to be mechanical. And what they did to him is the equivalent of rape even if they barely got into his code. He was twitchy for months afterwards."

"'I Am Iron Man,'" Nick Fury quoted from his place facing the window, "You think you're the only superhero in the world? Miss Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet."

"Wait he broke into your house after getting a report about how the last person who did that ripped the thing keeping you alive out of your chest and left you for dead," Bruce snarled, "the man is in need of a lesson in decorum."

"Who the hell are you?" Toni asked firmly.

"Nick Fury, director of SHIELD," he said stepping out of the shadows, "I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative."

"Wait so while the whole thing started with Steve you were actually the first person they talked to about joining," Clint exclaimed.

"Technically yes," Toni said, "I was a member until the report on me that Piper altered got me taken off the team. I was only put back on because the world was in danger."

A/n – I got this chapter done so yay! And it's not too long after the last one which is also a bonus. I'm still accepting ideas for next chapter which will be our break chapter for IM2 so feel free to suggest any that you've come up with. I'm looking forward to writing it.