Lockdown
The Rhodey Files, part 2 - Tony almost gets himself killed and Rhodey is about ready to tear him a new one for it. But with the Avengers around, things are changing.
Rhodey sat down at Tony's bedside where he was recovering from the injuries he'd gotten in the most recent battle. Bruce and Steve were there too, and he looked at them sort of suspiciously. He'd been off coordinating Air Force aspects of the fight, and hadn't been around when Tony fell out of the sky, but they had, and Rhodey wasn't sure yet who he was going to have to yell at.
"What happened?" he asked the room in general.
Bruce joined him in curious silence; Rhodey knew from his file that if Hulk had been involved, he didn't yet know. Memory didn't usually cross over between the two forms. Rhodey knew they'd been working together but he was surprised at the amount of exhausted worry on the doctor's face. He knew Tony didn't make friends easily. But then he realized - indestructible. Well, that would help.
He turned to Captain Rogers.
"Suit power cut out completely in midair," Rogers said. "He only fell a few stories, but he'd already taken a couple of good hits, and we couldn't get the suit off him to treat his injuries. We ended up having to take him back to the tower and let Jarvis take it off him, and by then Tony'd lost a lot of blood."
"What the hell went so wrong with the armor that you couldn't get it off?" Rhodey asked, anger building, moving to settle on Tony. "How does that even happen?"
"Actually things went right," Tony argued. "Well, sort of. Lockdown triggered perfectly. Not the ideal conditions for a test, I'll admit, but hey, I'm here, the day was saved, it's all good, right?"
Rhodey sputtered a little before the words arranged themselves in his mouth. "You did that to yourself... on purpose? No, Tony. Not a good plan."
"Best one I had."
"Dropping out of the sky encased in a gold brick? Tony, I don't see how that's ever gonna be a good idea. You can't do shit like this." He turned to the other two. "Come on, back me up here, guys."
Steve gave a small shake of his head. "Tony knows the suits, I don't. Suit stuff, I leave to him."
Rhodey narrowed his eyes at Rogers. "Yeah, armor is what Tony does. But you're his C. O. If you don't get the tech stuff, can't understand the strengths and weaknesses of the piece of equipment that's protecting my best friend, maybe he shouldn't be under your command, Captain."
Captain America looked supremely uncomfortable. "That's not quite how the Avengers work," he insisted. "I'm not their superior. Each of them is the best in the world at something, and my job is to make it less likely that they'll get in each other's way."
"So it's not your job to watch Tony's back and make sure he doesn't kill himself?"
"I do my best to do that too," Steve answered.
"Looks to me like it's not good enough," Rhodey said, jaw tightening, body tensing like a cat preparing to pounce.
"Hey," interrupted Bruce. "Rhodes. I have a question."
Rhodey turned to face the quiet scientist, making himself relax fractionally, not wanting to upset the man.
"How much do you understand about the armor? How much do you really get it?" Coming from the almost timid figure, it didn't sound confrontational - it spoke more of genuine curiosity, although the words made it clear that he was driving towards a point.
"I know the basics," Rhodey answered defensively. "I fly one of those things often enough to get its advantages and what it can take."
Tony made a face, a little cringe to it. "You kinda don't," he said. "And yours get the little upgrades, basic stuff, but Iron Man's never quite the same after I fix it up. Honestly, nobody's gonna be able to keep up with that."
"At least I try!" Rhodes shot back.
"So do I," Steve said matter-of-factly. "But in my experience, it's when you start thinking you know enough that tech really gets you in trouble."
Bruce's only response was a slightly wry smile of agreement.
Rhodey shook his head, despairing at the inability of these people to watch his friend's back.
"Rhodey," Tony said from the bed, beckoning a little, and he had this tight frown - knowing him, Rhodes wondered how much was from the pain and how much from some impending sincerity. So Rhodey listened close.
"Hey, it's my call, all right? Rather be bleeding out in that useless brick than watching it get used against my team from the inside. You with me on that?"
The shitstorm that was the Expo flashed behind Rhodey's eyes. "They were trying to hack the armor," he concluded with his own worried frown. "Yeah, I get why you'd wanna avoid that. It's terrifying." Looking through War Machine's HUD as it targeted Tony was a moment that would haunt him for a long time to come.
"And it would be irresponsible of me to let that happen," Tony continued. "They can't get the armor."
Rhodey did not want to admit that Tony was right, that these weapons were too powerful to get into the wrong hands, even at the cost of a life - not if that life was going to be Tony's.
"There had to be another way. You've always been an idiot," he told Tony. "But exactly when did you become a self-sacrificing one?" And he hid the grief at his conclusion with a small laugh.
Steve looked uncomfortable. "That might be partially my fault," he admitted.
"Yeah, Cap," said Tony, rolling his eyes. "Real irresponsible of you to try to teach me the fine art of being a hero."
"Actually it kind of was," Steve answered. Tony shook his head in denial.
"It's a balance," Bruce said from his corner. "And we're both trying to find it together. Right, Tony?"
There was a weight to those words that Rhodey could hear, but didn't understand. He watched Dr. Banner now.
"Yeah, yeah, we gotta optimize for greatest positive impact, possible future potential is almost always worth more, I know the drill, Big Guy. Not giving up on you yet. And you're sticking with me, right?"
Bruce nodded, smiling, satisfied and yet strained, and Rhodey wasn't sure what it all meant, but he knew he felt better about Tony's chances with this guy around.
Tony and Rhodey had been thrown together and they'd stuck, but these two... well, Rhodey thought Bruce might really understand Tony better than he ever had. Rhodey had always taken care of Tony, been the older brother he sorely needed. But when Bruce spoke to him... Tony's eyes were full of determination and concern, and Rhodey got that Tony listened to Bruce because somehow Bruce had gotten Tony to want to take care of him.
They really did have each other's backs, without being in a clear hierarchy. Rhodey was maybe too used to being part of a chain of command to ever really get how that worked. But it did.
He sighed. "All right, all right," he said. "I don't get it. But clearly you've got your own way of doing things. I still reserve the right to yell at Tony when he almost gets himself killed."
"Oh, you're welcome to," said Bruce with a smile, somehow encompassing both grim and gleeful humor. "Just don't expect me to join in. I'm not all that big on yelling."
"Yeah, your style is more ganging up with Jarvis and leaving snarky little notes in all my suit upgrade files," Tony said with mock annoyance.
"Hey, those were genuine suggestions," the doctor answered innocently. "It's not my fault if you can't figure out how to implement them."
Rhodey recognized the spark in Tony's eye that happened when someone presented him with a real challenge. Yep, Banner was good for him. Especially if those challenges were about ways to make the suit safer, keep Tony out of the kind of trouble he'd been in today.
And now they were talking about some kind of hardwired biometric system, and Rhodey could almost follow the engineering side of things - he did know some things from his MIT classes and being a hardware specialist in the Air Force, and from what he understood, Bruce was more of a casual tinkerer than an actual trained engineer - but the biology, radiology, math and programming were well outside his areas of expertise.
Steve raised his eyebrows at him as if to say 'you getting any of that?'
Rhodey shook his head. He'd have to concede defeat, here.
He'd always have Tony's back, if the guy needed him. But Rhodey was getting that he didn't always need all the big-brothering Rhodes had been doing, unasked, for years. That there were other ways to watch out for Tony Stark, that this team was good for him too. Maybe they could teach him something about his oldest friend, after all.
"They really get each other, don't they?" he asked the Captain.
Steve smiled. "Yeah. Bruce has been giving me lessons on Tonyspeak, but I've mostly resigned myself to missing half of everything he says. The way Bruce describes it - it's like poetry. Dense with meaning. Makes me wonder how they survived apart."
"Barely," Rhodey said with a twist of his lips. Then he looked thoughtfully at the two scientists. "Maybe I'll ask for some pointers, too."
"It helps," Steve said earnestly. "Tony's learned to be a fighter but he's the farthest thing from a soldier. None of the Avengers are. I can't treat them like I did my old team."
Rhodey nodded. "Thanks, Cap," he said. "Take care of 'im, all right?"
"Will do," answered Steve.
Rhodey walked out, returning to his world of rank and file and leaving Tony to his new team, an impossible combination of exceptional people who were each the authority on their own abilities and how they could best be put to use. It was different.
He'd always wanted to be part of a team of heroes, but he wasn't sure, now, that he was quite meant to be a superhero.