Chapter 66 – The Problem with Palladium

A/n – I will forever marvel at how much you guys like this fic. And yes that was a pun. I make no apologies for it. From now on I should be updating every Thursday barring any return hospital visits which I am hoping won't happen.

ManagerOfMischief96 – Considering this type of story is fairly popular I'm going to take that as a huge compliment.

TheHandOfChaos – You've gone and made me cry now, I hope you know that. Praise for Toni will forever be appreciated because she's my baby. There will be some teased Toni/Natasha sections throughout their interactions. There will certainly be some flirting.

Jade-8199 – Fitz is my favourite and Jemma is up there too so expect more mentions coming up along with some other AOS characters. I keep meaning to go back and fix those because I do get distracted and they happen. I'll do a widescale edit when the fic is finished probably.

"Congratulations on indirectly quoting Doctor Who," Toni told Clint. When she received nothing but blank looks from everyone else in the room she rolled her eyes and sighed, "I mean I understand Steve and Thor but really! It's only been running for fifty years. I need to make you guys watch some more television because this is ridiculous."

"I would welcome a return to our Earth culture lessons," Thor boomed.

The Earth culture lessons had basically been Toni forcing everyone to hang out and watch movies in between Avengers callouts. Being around people who got basically none of her references really sucked. At least with Piper she got an eye roll when he recognised something. Blank looks were really annoying. She probably should have covered TV earlier but she'd gotten caught up with work and then Amora had started repeatedly showing up and they hadn't had the time.

"I thought we might give up on movie nights after watching all these," Bruce commented, "they're certainly making me feel a little bit uneasy about watching movies."

"TV is totally different," Toni scoffed. The truth was that she was deflecting. She knew her poisoning was going to come up sooner rather than later and apart from Natasha who already knew and Bruce who she was pretty sure had figured it out everyone was in for a big shock. She remembered how they'd looked at her as they were watching what happened in Afghanistan and wasn't keen to see those looks all over again. She just wanted a few more light hearted moments before the mood in the room plummeted. After all it wasn't like there was much more fun to be had in this period of her life. Even the funny things she did were tainted by the fact that she did most of them because of her poisoning.

The scene changed to show an exterior shot of Toni's home in Malibu before switching to show her sitting in her lab. She clapped her hands and 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' started playing as everything in the room began powering up.

"I have to admit when you do things like that you really do make them look cool," Steve sighed.

"You'll get used to it eventually Cap," Toni said with a smirk, "after all making everything cool is somewhat of a speciality of mine."

"Wake up Mommy is home," Toni told her computers as they booted up.

"It's kind of cute when you treat your robots like your children," Natasha mused.

"They basically are my children. I created them and they have intelligence (even if JARVIS has more of it than the others) so there's really no difference than if they were actually my kids except for you know – species," Toni said with a shrug.

Steve got a thoughtful expression on his face at this. He'd learned to respect Toni's love for her AI's without ever truly understanding it but he hadn't seen a reason to bring it up. If she truly saw them like children – and her explanation certainly made sense – then he could understand it a lot better.

"You have a ridiculous amount of kids," Clint teased resulting in an affectionate slap to the back of the head from Toni.

"Welcome home, ma'am," JARVIS began, "congratulations on the opening ceremonies. They were such a success as was your Senate hearing," here JARVIS loaded up the video of Toni exiting the senate hearing on one of the many screens, "And may I say how refreshing it is to finally see you in a video with your clothing on, ma'am."

"There are videos of you with it off," Steve said sceptically not sure if that was a joke or not. JARVIS spoke in such a dry tone of voice all the time that he was never really sure.

"There's some vids out there that people have taken of me in my underwear – mostly surreptitiously – it's not really a big deal. I mean it's the same level of coverage as a bikini and I used to wear those in public situations all the time. Honestly the amount of freaking out people do about women being seen in their underwear is ridiculous," Toni laughed.

Toni chuckled at JARVIS' comment as over in the corner one of the AI's turned on the smoothie maker without the top on it and splattered green liquid all over the walls. "You!" Toni sighed exasperatedly. This only resulted in You knocking the entire device over spilling the rest of it.

"I would think you'd be thanking him for knocking that over," Clint said, "it looks foul."

"Believe me it tastes about as good as it looks," Toni said wrinkling her nose in remembrance, "but when you have to take something then you have to take it." This statement resulted in confused looks from Clint, Thor and Steve and unhappy ones from Bruce, Natasha and Phil who knew why it was necessary or at least suspected in Bruce's case.

"I swear to God I'll dismantle you," Toni told You, "I'll soak your motherboard. I'll turn you into a wine rack."

"Oh, that reminds me. JARVIS can you acquire some more wine for this official function that Piper is insisting we organise for the Maria Stark Foundation," Toni stated, "Thor drank what was left of the last batch."

"Of course ma'am," JARVIS stated.

"I am truly sorry once again for the misunderstanding," Thor said apologetically looking rather like someone had kicked his puppy.

"Don't worry about it," Toni said with a wave of her hand, "like I said. Just ask me next time and everything will turn out alright."

You made a rather sad sound as Toni began pouring out some of the supply of smoothie she kept on her desk while asking JARVIS, "How many ounces of this gobbledegook am I supposed to drink?"

"We are up to 80 ounces a day to counteract the symptoms, ma'am," JARVIS said as Toni took a swig with a look on her face that clearly said that she didn't want to be drinking it.

"Symptoms," Steve said instantly looking extremely worried. It didn't help that Phil, Natasha and Bruce all looked extremely uneasy. He knew that both Natasha and Phil had presumably from their previous statements been around Toni when all this was happening and that if anyone was going to spot a serious medical condition in one of their members it was Bruce. Plus the three of them were some of the hardest members of the team to rattle especially the two spies. If the mere memory of this made them tense then he really wasn't sure if he could get through this without owing Toni a lot of money for destroying her property.

"Check palladium levels," Toni said quietly as she pulled the same device from earlier out and pricked her finger on it to let it draw blood. "Blood Toxicity, 24%," JARVIS noted in a voice that sounded rather sad.

"Nothing with the words toxicity and blood together is ever good," Clint sighed realising that his happy mood from the last section of the movie was about to go flying out of the window. He was hoping that the Russian guy would be the only issue for this movie and that a lot of it would be banter between Natasha and Toni but no! Toni had to be an overachiever at absolutely everything including nearly getting herself killed.

Toni's face settled into a perfectly blank expression while she cleaned the blood off of her finger as JARVIS continued talking, "It appears that the continued use of the Iron Man suit is accelerating your condition," as he spoke he brought up an x-ray of Toni's lungs that showed red material spreading from the arc reactor.

"That really is embedded rather deep," Natasha winced looking at the scan, "I know you've always been open about that but seeing it really hits that home. How do you still breathe in any semblance of a normal fashion?"

"It was really strange at first," Toni noted, "But eventually I got used to the shallowness of breath that comes with it. And it actually improved in time so that nowadays I can do genuinely strenuous exercise as I have proved. Just don't ask me to do crunches. Those ain't happening."

Everyone looked at them incredulously about their rather casual conversation about an entirely different medical issue than the one that had yet to be fully clarified on screen. Even Phil gave them the side eye a little bit for not considering how the others felt although he knew deep down they were just trying to distract themselves and prolong the moment of the full discovery.

The music still playing in the background began to feel a little out of place with the serious tone of the discussion. "Another core has been depleted," JARVIS said as Toni simply removed her t-shirt for ease as she removed the arc reactor from her chest.

"I always flinch when I see you do that," Clint sighed. Normally he would be making snarky comments about Toni's attractiveness but he honestly didn't see the point when he knew something bad was coming. Plus his statement was true and he was sure the other Avengers agreed with him. Knowing what would happen if it was out of her body for too long plus the fact that it hadn't always been removed by choice always made him want to shove the thing right back in its socket when she took it out to modify it or switch reactors.

"God, they're running out quick," Toni deadpanned as the compartment storing the power source for the arc reactor opened up and she removed the smoking, burned out piece of metal from the case.

"I have run simulations on every known element," JARVIS informed her as Toni opened up the box in front of her to retrieve a new core, "and none can serve as a viable replacement for the palladium core." Toni neatly slotted the now fully working arc reactor back into its slot and pulled her shirt back on as JARVIS continued, "you are running out of both time and options. Unfortunately, the device that's keeping you alive is also killing you."

Everyone had known it was coming by this point but the three who hadn't been 100% sure still looked like they were ready to start a riot. Thor simply left the room immediately so he wouldn't get shouted at for the property damage he was surely about to cause. Steve's immediate question was, "please tell me that's not still the case."

"If it was I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you," Toni said flatly earning a wince from everyone left in the room and Bruce quickly excused himself to follow Thor. There was silence for a few minutes aside from some angry noises from the Hulk and Thor from several floors down. Neither of the three who had known all along that this was the case knew how to talk to Steve or Clint who while clearly relieved that she'd obviously survived seemed to have been shocked into a state in which they were incapable of speech after that pronouncement. They stayed that way until Bruce and Thor made their way back into the room – Bruce having changed into a new shirt to replace the one he'd just destroyed – and JARVIS restarted the movie when it became clear that nobody was going to say anything.

A/n – I understand that my chapters are usually longer than this but this felt like a natural endpoint for this one. See you next Thursday.