The Tower used to be his pride and joy. Strategically located between 58th and Broadway, near the Columbus Circle, Midtown, Manhattan. The pinnacle of modern architecture, and it operated one hundred percent on renewable energy. The Stark Tower, his swanky bachelor pad. And then, Loki came and ripped it a new one, and when he rebuilt it from the ground up, he welcomed in the Avengers. Home is where the heart is, eh?
How could he stay when there was no one left?
So, he sold the Tower, just like how Steve almost-accused him of selling out to the UN, to the principles on which the founding fathers had built this great nation. Boy, what a day that was. Steve was wrong. Steve was still stuck in the black-and-white of his era. Steve failed to grasp the significance of in-betweens and find power in compromise. He would've told Steve that they must work within the system. The Avengers had to learn to work with the leaders that the people of the country had voted to represent them.
To do otherwise was criminal arrogance.
He would've told Steve, God he would, but he was dumb enough to let rage control him, revenge blind him, and he went on a rampage, because that was so easy to do, to batter Barnes in every way imaginable.
So what if Steve threw in the towel? He stayed, because if not him, then who? Who else was there? The irony was that, after years of hanging around Captain America he learned one thing: commitment. He wasn't going to give up and hightail and have all the supers hunted down like dogs when Ross had enough reasons to. If he'd ended up crucified for selling out, for sticking to his guts and staying committed, then so be it.
Until that time comes, he wasn't letting go of the wheels. If he could work his magic into the Accord no matter how little…
Tony paused the video that was playing on the screen. He palmed his face, scrubbed his eyes and gulped lukewarm coffee in his mug in one go. "Play it back, FRIDAY." He hadn't been paying attention, which never happened.
It was something Peter's suit recorded when he was on the ferry, just before it all blew to hell. A group of men was constantly in his line of sight, so Tony figured they must be the targets. He paused the vid with a flick of his wrist, "Run their mugshot. Do we have an ID?"
Three windows popped up on the side, and Tony chose to enlarge the profile of one "Adrian Toomes". Squeaky clean, not even a ticket to his name. But, he thought the name sounded familiar.
"What else do we have on him?"
"Mr Toomes is the former owner of Toomes Salvage Company. Their business was displaced when all their contracts were taken over by DODC after the Chitauri's invasion in New York. Two months later when contracting private parties for clean-ups was deemed a federal crime, the company was forced into foreclosure in 2012."
Tony sighed audibly and slumped in his chair.
His fault, again. He thought he was doing the city a service by founding DODC. They were handling alien warfare, sciences out of this universe, for God's sake. He didn't mean to drive companies into bankruptcy. Charles Spencer, Zemo… all the collaterals he knew nothing of, that haunted his nights.
He didn't mean for a lot of things to happen.
He had only half an hour, tops of lounging in his penthouse. It would be someone else's soon, and Pepper could take up her twelve percent issue with the new guy. Everything he – and the Avengers, past and current – owned had been carefully bubble-wrapped and stuffed in boxes, ready to be transported to their new base Upstate.
He should get suited up for the party. Couldn't trust the lowest bidders with Steve's new shield and Thor's nifty belt, could he?
And he found Happy pacing the front of his lab, obviously stressed out and agitated. He looked somewhat relieved when he saw Tony approaching, and wasted no time in explaining how DODC would be supervising the moving, and how he'd been forced to furnish them with details of the Avengers relics.
"Come on, don't call them relics," Tony frowned at the tablet Happy was brandishing. It catalogued all the items housed in the Avengers armoury that Happy made him go through the night before, in case they'd missed anything. "They're bleeding edge tech – who authorised the DODC for this anyway?"
"General Ross himself."
"Huh," he passed the tablet back to Happy. "I must've missed the memo." He peered into his workshop, and found it just the way he left it this morning. "You haven't moved anything out of here, have you?"
"No. I thought you'd want to handle this yourself."
He sighed again. "Yeah. I was gonna suit up for the occasion. How much time have we got before they show up?"
"… Twelve hours."
"Plenty of time. 3D-print whatever we can, but prioritise Class A weaponries. Especially the arc reactors, the Avengers' personalised gadgets, and the spare Iron Man suits. Stick in LEDs everywhere possible. Go crazy. As long as we can pass them off as the real thing."
"Yes, Boss. What do we do with the originals?"
"… I'll see where I can stash 'em."
Frankly, he'd run out of strongholds in New York. He could make multiple trips to Malibu… but it would be nice to have them close by. Steve's shield had been polished, repainted and slightly modified. Clint's arrows had something rad going on, he wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. He wouldn't know when the next call for Assemble would be. But when it happened, he wanted them to be ready.
Steve still had his apartment in Brooklyn, hadn't he?
Nah. He'd figure something out.