Iron Man: It's a Wonderful Life
Chapter Fifteen
December 24, -:-
Tony broke into a run the minute he was on the street again and headed into Central Park for the place he had last seen his father.
"Dad? Hey, dad? Howard! Where the hell are you?" There was no answer, and a cold feeling began to drip through his veins. He couldn't be stuck here, not now. "Dad!"
"Hey! What's the problem, buddy? You know there's a curfew in this city, right?" A policeman edged nearer to him, a high-power flashlight in one hand, his other hand resting lightly on the butt of his pistol.
Tony took a few steps backwards before tottering in place, warring with the desire to put distance between them given the ruckus he'd caused at the induction center earlier that night.
Either Tony looked crazy or guilty for the officer froze, his body language that of someone who expected confrontation. "You alright, guy?"
Howard was still nowhere to be seen and Tony's mind worked overtime. He needed to get back and what if his father had left him? Tony couldn't imagine it, but at the same time, he couldn't wait. Maybe it was a test. Now that he'd decided what he wanted, he had to work for it?
"I lost someone," Tony tried to explain with the least possible amount of detail. "I'm fine, I just need to find him."
The officer's slow nod betrayed his disbelief, but as Tony was breaking no obvious law, he had no reason to hold him. "You get inside before nine, you hear me?"
"Yes." Tony needed a plan. There was only one place he could imagine his father going if he weren't here. The alternative was unthinkable. He just needed a way – "Hey, wait! Just a second."
The officer turned warily.
"I was in a car accident tonight," Tony explained, not needing to fake the frantic tone rising in his voice. "On I-80, heading toward Pennsylvania. My car was totaled, I hitchhiked here; now I can't find my dad, and I'm thinking that maybe he got help and went back to where we crashed." Officer… Stevens, Tony got a look at his nametag, said nothing, waiting for the other shoe. Tony dropped it. "I need a lift. To where I crashed." And then, as though it would make a difference, "Please.
The older man scrutinized him with a discerning eye, and Tony was glad enough of his story was true that it might pass muster with what was obviously a man who took his job seriously. Officer Stevens detached his radio and said a few quiet words into it, leaving Tony to wonder if he were about to be arrested, or catch a break.
"Car's that way." Jerking his head to the east side of the park, he started walking, expecting Tony to follow.
He did, sputtering thanks that was waved away with a surly grunt.
The drive was mostly silent, save for a few directions muttered and aided with hand gestures. Tony's agitation rose the closer they drew to their destination, and he was unable to conceal it from Officer Stevens, whose attempts to question him or draw him into conversation were met with distracted, monosyllabic, responses that did little to reassure his driver.
"There!" Tony was almost out of the car before Officer Stevens had brought it to a complete stop, pulling into a turnout on the two-lane, road along the interstate and out of harms way.
Heedless of potential oncoming motorists, Tony raced across the interstate to the turn he and the Stingray had taken too late. From the road, the car wasn't visible, but the moon, and one streetlamp, provided poor enough illumination that he reasoned his father could be down there in the dim light. Couldn't he?
"Dad?" Tony put his hands to his mouth and called again, but there was no answer. Officer Stevens was coming toward him, but Tony ignored his calls. Ignored everything, other than the thought of finding his father and going home.
Down he went with barely a thought, feet sliding on the loose dirt, rocks, and leaves as he tried to run down the steep incline and surfed most of the way. His uncontrolled descent gave way to gravity, and Tony landed hard as the ground gave way beneath him, but he ignored the pain and scrambled forward on his hands and knees until he'd regained his feet and was jogging toward where the remains of the Stingray should be.
He searched, desperately trying to remember how far the car had rolled, and into what clearing. His heart pounded, blocking out the voice of the officer, calling to him from the shoulder of the interstate behind him. Everything was muffled but the white noise of his own blood, claustrophobic and suffocating, stealing the breath from his lungs. He stopped, struggling to draw in air.
There was no car. There was no father. There was nothing. Of course not - he had never been born.
His brain refused to process, and sinking to his knees, Tony looked wildly around, hyperventilating, for his father, for any sign that he had even been there before. There was no evidence of a crash - no debris, no damage to the trees or underbrush. Not even the ground cover appeared to have been disturbed, and Tony fell forward, face falling into his hands in an agony of realization that he was trapped, forever lost in a misery of his own making.
He had no idea what to do, but he did know that he didn't want to stay there.
"I'm sorry," he gasped to himself. "Pepper - I'm so sorry. Rhodey, Happy… I messed up big. If I could take it back-"
"Hey Mack, you can't be down there!" Officer Stevens was shining a light down on him from the road, but Tony ignored him.
Tears came, and he dashed them away with his fingers, fighting back a sob. He was going to lose them all, and he had no one to blame but himself. He had pushed them away, alienated them and given them every reason to abandon him. Tony deserved it, had even wished for this exile, and yet now the thought of living without them, even if he faced a life filled with stress, anxiety, and looming disaster, was abhorrent.
"Buddy, can you hear me?"
"Please-"
"I'm coming down there!"
"I take it back. Please, I take it all back."
Tony never begged, but he did now. It didn't matter to whom he was speaking, to whatever cosmic force had assumed editorial control of his life, offering him repeated chances to alter his course and do things right. All he asked for was one more chance. A far too generous gift, more than he deserved, but maybe, just maybe, he could earn it. Be worthy of it.
"Dad-"
"You okay, guy?"
The light reached him, and Tony hunched his shoulders protectively, away from the glare. "Leave me alone, alright? I'm not leaving until-"
"Mr. Stark?" The officer kindly angled the flashlight away from Tony's face, leaving him in the corona of the light. "Mr. Stark, is that you? You're lucky to be alive."
Tony stared at him, frozen in surprise. "You know me?"
Officer Stevens looked concerned, but smiled reassuringly, no doubt assuming Tony was in shock. "I would imagine there aren't many people who don't know you, Mr. Stark. 'specially these days. How you feeling? Why don't you take a seat while I call an ambulance for you?"
Tony tried to leap to his feet, but pain shot through his chest and he sucked in a hard breath. He clutched his right arm close, feeling the sharp ache, and when he looked, Tony saw that once again, his clothes were torn, dirty, and bore traces of the blood that covered his face and body.
"I was in a car accident," he murmured.
Forehead creasing, Officer Stevens crouched beside him. "Yeah, yeah you were. You're not looking too good either, Sit tight, I'm just gonna call you that ambula-"
Tony turned, too quickly for his injuries, and grabbed the officer's arm. A wild gleam had entered his eyes, in complete contrast to the severity of his situation. Letting loose a untamed cackle of joy, he shouted, "No! No. Take me home. I have to go home right now."
"You should get to a hospital. I can call someone, if you need-"
Shaking his head, Tony limped toward the embankment. He could get up there, broken bones or no. He'd done it before, but not with as much to gain. Or as much to lose. "I'll see a doctor later. There's something I have to take care of, first. Someone I need to…"
Stevens followed in agitation and reached for Tony's shoulder. Tony put a hand atop that of the other man's and resisted the urge to attempt to toss him aside like a rag doll, even without the benefit of the suit.
Instead, he turned to look the officer in the eye, fighting the mania threatening to burst forth, needing prove he was serious. "It's Stevens, right?" He looked at the nametag.
"Yeah." Then, after an awkward pause, he added. "It's an honor to meet you."
Tony left his hand covering the officer's, desperate to impress upon him how important this was. "Officer Stevens – I know you must be thinking I'm a few nuns short of a convent, but I need to go home. I need to make some things right, with one person in particular." He squeezed the man's hand. "Please."
Maybe it was the please – Tony Stark never said please – it was probably the please, but after a long hesitation, Stevens said, "Okay. But I'm still calling an ambulance."
That was all Tony needed to hear. He headed for the embankment again, scrambling with one-armed gracelessness to get to the top. "Great. Fine. As long as I can do what I need to do, first." Not that he knew exactly what that was, but Tony would improvise. He just needed to get to Pepper.
"And we need to have a talk about your accident. I'm guessing you weren't entirely sober when you made that turn." Stevens caught up to him and slung Tony's bad arm around his shoulder to help support him up the incline.
"Sober? I may have been blind." Stevens faltered, surprised by the admission, but pushed on to the top. "Let me take care of my business, and we can talk all you want. I'm sober now, and I'm going to stay that way; and I've got much bigger things to worry about than a D.U.I."
The patrol car was exactly where Tony and Officer Stevens had left it when they arrived, and Tony let out another peal of laughter, hardly able to believe that this was real. Or maybe this whole night hadn't been real. Maybe he'd been knocked unconscious during the accident and dreamt it all.
Only, Virginia - he was sure, that had been real; he couldn't have dreamt that lost, dismal version of Pepper.
"I guess you have got bigger things to worry about," Officer Stevens said warily.
The drive back to Manhattan was far more animated this time around, with Tony expounding manically on all the problems he needed to face – would – face, had found the strength to face, in the days ahead. "She's not getting my company. I'll find some way to fight her on it. But even if I have to start from the ground up, she can't take what's in my head, and she can't take Pepper. That's all I need. Have to figure out what to do about the government, but we'll do it. Don't want to bring a baby into all of this."
Stevens cocked an ear. "You're gonna be a father?" This was big news, and would break like a tsunami once the world found out.
"Yeah. Just found out." His over-excited rambling slowed to a pace more easy to follow, and instead of staring out the windshield in the direction of the city as though willing the car to go faster, Tony turned to the officer. "Do you have kids, Officer Stevens?"
"I got three." Pride pushed his shoulders back, straightened his posture, even if his smile lived only in his eyes instead of on his mouth.
"Three." The number blossomed as an overwhelming concept, but ebbed into an overlay of three little faces that were the perfect coalescence of his own and Pepper's. "I never thought I'd be a father. I'm not really the best role model for one, am I?" He laughed ruefully.
Stevens was silent, in what Tony took, without insult, as agreement. Thoughtfully, Stevens took a quick glance Tony's way. "Doesn't always matter where you come from or what you did in your youth. Only thing that matters is what you're doing now. If you step up when it matters."
Tony was quiet. They rode in silence for the remainder of the journey, and when they pulled to a stop in front of the Stark Industries building, Tony said, "You can pull into my garage if you want to wait till I take care of business. Or if you trust me, I could come in tomorrow. It's not like you don't know where I live." He offered a wry smile.
Steven's patted Tony on the shoulder. "Don't worry about the D.U.I., Mr. Stark. Get that car moved by noon, and I never saw you."
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Tony nevertheless gaped. That was a fairly large infraction the officer was overlooking. One a judge might not have looked favorably on him for, given his history, current prejudices against him, and the danger he'd put others in.
"Officer.."
"Go on - see your lady."
Tony wanted to hug the man. He didn't. "Thank you."
"Get out." Twinkling eyes belied the older man's gruff voice.
Chuckling, Tony did, but called back through the window, Merry Christmas, Officer."
As he jogged toward the door of his building, Tony heard a chuckling behind him. "Merry Christmas, son."
He stopped. When Tony turned to the street behind him, no patrol car sat idling at the curb, and the street was empty of them in both directions.