Chapter 76 – Exit the Doughnut

A/n – Hello everyone! I have an announcement for you. If you leave questions about me or things you want to know about this story in your reviews I'll record myself asking them and post it on the tumblr for this story. Link on my profile. Be warned that I've been told my accent is quite strong so I hope you all decipher it fine.

Toni and Natasha didn't look all that much like drunken people when they entered the room. They were walking perfectly normally and neither was acting like anything other than their usual selves. Clint knew this was bad for him as he was sure to be punished creatively for his comments. Especially the one about Toni not having a good sense of humour. She was bound to use him as a test subject to prove that she was in fact capable of being funny. He flinched nervously away from the girls but they both just smirked at him and took their seats. This did not reassure Clint in any way. It just meant that he was really in for it later.

"Now that that's disaster is over with let's watch the next bit which is not that much better in some ways," Toni said, "I come off much better though." Inwardly she was impressed by how much her team had understood her actions in the last part of the movie. It was another reason why she had left and yet still eavesdropped on their comments, she wanted to know if the understanding attitude the team was displaying would stick about when she wasn't around. She felt much better around the team knowing that it had. She was almost ready to thank Amora for repairing the relationship between her and Steve. Almost! Displaying her life in this fashion was still a step too far. In fact it was several steps too far.

"Why did I come back?" Natasha muttered quietly. She knew she was about to be supremely uncomfortable for the next section of the movie. While she was glad that in the end her actions had saved Toni she was not looking forward to reliving the pain on Toni's face. And that stupid video was bound to cause a lot of grief. Toni gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze as if to reassure her that they were still friends and it helped a little.

The screen showed Edwards military base as Rhodey approached announcing, "Edwards Tower, this is Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes inbound from three miles east at 5,000 feet…"

"And as suspected he goes straight to the military," Bruce sighed.

The military began looking through binoculars out the window clearly expecting to see a plane and looking puzzled when they couldn't see anything. Then Rhodey shot past as everyone in the military yard stopped what they were doing to watch. The HUD quickly identified people of interest before Rhodey landed. He lifted the faceplate as the officers began to surround him and a higher ranked officer approached, "Colonel."

"Major," Rhodey replied.

"This is not going to end well, in any way," Steve sighed, "as much as I appreciate the military not everyone there has the best intentions. Especially with Vanko being involved with Hammer and having some influence there."

"Wow," the Major declared while looking the suit up and down.

"Yeah," Rhodey said, "let's take it inside."

"They're ridiculously impressed for it just being the Mark 2," Toni scoffed, "that one still has the icing problem because of the metal it's made out of and several of the other upgrades I made aren't part of that one either."

"To be fair to them any of the Iron Man suits are sort of impressive Annie," Natasha pointed out.

"To them maybe," Toni dismissed.

The soldiers began dispersing as the scene changed to how Toni still in most of the Iron Man suit minus the helmet eating a doughnut within a doughnut shaped sign. Fury was standing on the ground below and shouted up to Toni, "Ma'am! I'm gonna have to ask you to exit the doughnut!"

There were several snorts around the room from everyone who hadn't been there. "I think that will go down in record as one of the most ridiculous things Fury has been forced to say," Clint snorted, "congratulations Toni."

"Yeah, the whole situation was almost worth it just for that," Toni said with a smirk.

"I'm sure it would cheer up members of SHIELD if they were to know that their commander had done such a thing," Thor declared.

"I have the video of him saying it," Natasha said slyly, "I've been saving it for the perfect blackmail opportunity but if we're leaving SHIELD then I see no reason not to use it now."

Toni lowered her sunglasses to stare at Fury as he walked away into the shop. She evidently decided to join him however as the next scene showed her sitting opposite him at a table. "I told you I don't wanna join your super-secret boy bod," she deadpanned.

"Still accurate considering that Natasha and I are outnumbered," Toni said, "although I'm not entirely sure we want to hear you guys sing."

"I'll have you know that I can sing," Clint declared.

"Oh really," Natasha deadpanned, "so that wasn't you squawking at the microphone the time we had to do undercover karaoke."

There were snickers from everyone but Clint at that comment. He really needed to learn to stop putting his foot in his mouth because the only thing he was doing was embarrassing himself. He didn't think he was going to work though.

Fury chuckled before saying, "No, no, no. See, I remember, you do everything yourself. How's that working out for you?"

"Better than it would be if it was you trying it," Toni stated.

"And there's Toni making the best of a bad situation," Bruce said with a smile.

"Hey!" Toni declared, "It almost went as planned. It's not my fault that Rhodey decided to fly off to his bosses with my suit instead of respecting my wishes."

"I'm sorry," she continued, "I don't want to get off on the wrong foot. Do I look at the patch or the eye?" Fury seemed to smirk at the question.

"You've joined the very short list of people brave enough to ask him about that," Natasha chuckled, "most people are too intimidated to even mention the patch."

"Please," Toni scoffed, "he's not all that intimidating. Not to me anyhow."

"Honestly," Toni continued after not getting an answer from Fury, "I'm not sure if you're real or I'm having…"

"I am very real," Fury said as he leaned in, "I'm the realest person you're ever gonna meet."

"You know what I think he actually enjoys your verbal spars," Clint said, "I suppose it must get a little boring being the boss if nobody will talk to you like a person."

"He's still a dick though," Toni declared.

"Agreed," everyone else chimed in.

"Just my luck," Toni sighed, "Where's the staff here?"

"That's not looking so good," Fury said reaching out to indicate the blue veins of palladium poisoning on Toni's neck.

"That has progressed remarkably quickly," Bruce whistled, "I suppose it would do considering how close to your bloodstream the palladium core must be."

Natasha quickly walked up clad in her SHIELD cat suit saying, "We've secured the perimeter but I don't think we should hold it for too much longer."

Toni did a decent job of appearing shocked at this revelation and said, "If I didn't like you so much I would fire you."

"I was kind of surprised to hear that to be honest," Natasha laughed, "I was dreading this moment after I managed to actually become friends with you and it went much better than I thought it would."

"You're lucky that I already knew and that I liked you anyway or my reaction would have been a lot harsher," Toni told her.

"I'm sure," Natasha said with a smirk.

"That wouldn't have been your call anyway," Natasha told her with a smile as she slid into the seat next to Fury.

"Toni, I want you to meet Agent Romanoff," Fury said clearly happy to have gotten one over on the genius.

"We have to tell him that you knew all along before we quit," Phil said surprising the others who had almost forgotten he was there, "I can't wait to see the look on this face. It can be payback for the fact that he made you guys think I was dead. It can't have been for more than a few seconds since I'm still around."

"That sounds like an excellent idea to me Phil," Toni said already planning how to get the maximum impact from the announcement. They should probably time it just after Fury was informed that his three best agents were quitting.

"Hi," Toni said simply.

"I'm a SHIELD shadow," Natasha quickly explained, "Once we knew you were ill, I was tasked to you by Director Fury."

"I suggest you apologise," Toni told her.

"I did eventually," Natasha declared, "It just took me some time."

"Excuses, excuses," Toni teased.

"You've been busy," Fury said, "you made your boy your CEO, you're giving away all your stuff. You let your friend fly away with your suit. Now if I didn't know better…"

"When he puts it like that it really is surprising that nobody else noticed," Toni said, "I guess I'm too eccentric for people's minds to immediately jump to putting my affairs in order as a reason for my behaviour."

"That or they're just ridiculously oblivious as we've already pointed out," Steve added.

"You don't know better," Toni insisted, "I didn't give it to him. He took it."

"Despite it actually being your plan all along you really did see him as having taken it didn't you," Bruce said quietly.

"Well, the minute he decided to do something with it that I wouldn't have wanted I began to feel betrayed," Toni said, "In a way it was too early to give him the suit as I hadn't truly changed his mind about its military use yet but I had hope. And it's not like I had that much choice considering how little time I had left at this point."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Fury said, "He took it? You're Iron Man and he just took it? The little brother walked in there, kicked your ass and took your suit? Is that possible?"

"He sounds a little too impressed with me when he phrases it that way," Toni said with a smirk, "I bet he regretted phrasing it like that later."

"Well," Natasha said, "according to Miss Stark's database security guidelines there are redundancies to prevent unauthorised usage."

"Still pissed at you for sneaking in my stuff," Toni said grumpily, "even if I made sure you could only access bits of it. I didn't want SHIELD getting their hands on half of the designs that are on my mainframe."

Toni sighed obviously not wanting to discuss this any longer as it was still painful so she simply said softly, "What do you want from me?"

"What do we want from you?" Fury exclaimed, "Uh-uh. What do you want from me? You have become a problem, a problem I have to deal with."

"Not necessarily," Natasha sighed, "there was the option of just letting you die. Obviously it was not one we wanted to follow but it certainly would have solved some problems. It would have opened up some more but it wouldn't have been the end of the world."

"Of course it wouldn't have been," Toni scoffed, "the world will keep spinning on without me."

"Contrary to your belief," Fury continued, "you are not the centre of my universe. I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with." Natasha approached again carrying a syringe and at a signal from Fury inserted it into Toni's neck.

"Just to be absolutely clear," Toni said in a dangerous tone, "Nobody ever does that to me again. There's a reason I don't like being handed things and there's a reason I don't like people doing things to me without my knowledge."

"Oh god, are you gonna steal my kidney and sell it?" Toni groaned to hide her discomfort, "Could you please not do anything awful for five seconds?" While she was talking the marks on her neck slowly receded, "What did she just do to me?"

"I probably should have explained first," Natasha sighed, "I'm sorry. Even back then I could tell that you were uncomfortable."

"What did we just do for you?" Fury corrected, "That's lithium dioxide. It's gonna take the edge off. We're trying to get you back to work."

"Before you ask yes I knew that it would have helped but it's not the easiest thing to get hold of especially since I was trying not to let anyone know that I was dying," Toni said at inquiring looks from the others that suggested they were wondering why she hadn't done this earlier.

"Give me a couple of boxes of that. I'll be right as rain," Toni said.

"You were just trying to get access to the resources so you could work without SHIELD supervision," Clint realised.

"I wish it had worked," Toni deadpanned making both Natasha and Phil feel guilty about what was coming up next.

"It's not a cure," Natasha said puzzled obviously wondering why Toni didn't already know this, "it just abates the symptoms."

"Doesn't look like it's gonna be an easy fix," Fury said.

"Trust me, I know," Toni said managing to use a flat tone, "I'm good at this stuff. I've been looking for a suitable replacement for palladium. I've tried every combination, every permutation of every known element. "

"That's a bit of an understatement," Phil said softly.

"Well," Fury said, "I'm here to tell you that you haven't tried them all."

"Please don't make me watch the next part," Natasha pleaded.

"It depends on how much we see," Toni said, "but you have my permission to flee the room if something really uncomfortable comes up."

A/n – That's it for today. Send in those questions and keep checking the tumblr for this story to see when I post that recording.