_Logistics_

Half an hour was plenty of time to land, stroll back to the main building, take their baggage back to their rooms and, in Tony's case, head to the kitchen to find something to eat. And also add more coffee to his cup because he had a feeling he'd need it.

Natasha was there, seated at one of the smaller tables, talking to someone he didn't recognize from the back of her head. He turned his back on them, opened the fridge, and pretended to be contemplating its contents when in fact he was using his watch to ask Friday who the hell was in their living room.

He'd only managed to bring up the girl's picture when Natasha said, "Tony," from just behind him. Dammit, she'd snuck up on him again.

He turned around. "What's up?" he asked, sliding a glance at the solemn girl standing beside Natasha.

"Tony, this is Sara Chen. She's the new Avengers assistant."

He reflexively stuck out his hand for a handshake. "Oh, really? When did that happen?"

Sara's grip was firm. "Tuesday," she said.

Tony gave her a quick once-over. She was probably a little older than Mel but younger than Pepper, with good taste in clothes and a flawless sense of what styles and colors would work for her. He guessed she had something Asian in her background from the shape of her eyes and her straight black hair. He couldn't remember whether he liked her interview video or not. Not that it mattered now. "I guess I should say welcome and good luck. We're a handful."

She smiled slightly. "I look forward to it."

"She'll need to schedule a meeting with you in the next few days to ask about some things," Natasha added.

Tony nodded. "Of course," he said and realized he was still standing in front of the open refrigerator. He was about to awkwardly apologize when Natasha looked toward the door.

"Excuse us, I need to introduce her to Steve," Natasha said, gesturing for Sara to follow.

Tony turned back to the fridge and sighed, then stepped back and let the door close. He didn't know what the hell he wanted to eat, so he turned his attention to obtaining coffee instead. That he could do without having to think.

By the time he was pouring his new coffee in with his old coffee in a larger mug, it sounded like everyone else had already gathered at the conference table, so he quickly grabbed something to eat from the cupboard and hurried over. Fortunately, he wasn't actually the last one to arrive-that was Barton-and the food he'd grabbed was a bag of dried apples and an oatmeal bar, which wasn't bad. At least it was better than the rations on the jet.

After a brief discussion of how the U.N. meeting went, they focused fully on how to go about mopping up this last bit (or what they really, really hoped was the last bit) of HYDRA. The choice of where to attack first came down to two options: the closest, or the one they thought was most likely to provide intel on the two bases the U.N. didn't know about yet.

"We should focus on the intel," Natasha said. "If there's intel we need for the other two, then there may also be intel on everything else."

"So we're less likely to be caught off guard if there's anything unusual," Sam agreed.

"On what basis are we claiming that this particular location has the most information to offer?" Vision inquired.

Everyone looked at Steve. "There isn't much," he admitted. "It is mentioned the most times in the documents we have. Also, when you plot all the known HYDRA bases on a map, it is situated in closer proximity to other bases than the rest."

Tony wordlessly projected the map onto the display with the four targets circled and numbers denoting the number of times that name or location occurred in the files.

"Won't we piss off the Russians when we go waltzing in there?" Rhodey asked. "It's awfully close to some disputed territories."

"I'd be more worried that killing off HYDRA in general will piss off the Russians," Natasha said dryly. "They're usually fond of whatever makes Americans upset."

No one else spoke up immediately, so Steve said, "If there are no objections, we should talk about timing. I want to get it done in the next week, but we also want to take enough time to prepare."

There were several requests to schedule it so they didn't have to fly through the night, but with time zones and travel time, there wasn't any alternative if they wanted to have daylight for the battle.

Tony noticed that Steve was gently steering the conversation away from any suggestions that conflicted with his hospital appointment without admitting that was the reason. He spoke up for the first time since their impromptu meeting began. "How about this: you leave here Tuesday afternoon around three or four. That'll get you there right about seven or eight in the morning so you can scope it out before the attack. Or you can just go for it, whatever. Figure three, maybe four hours there, then you'll get back here Wednesday noon-ish. No muss, no fuss."

"That would give us almost four days to make sure we're ready," Clint said. "We've done fine with far less."

Steve looked around the table, then nodded, and it was settled. As the group began to disperse, Steve said, "Tony, we'll definitely need the computer contents copied again. Would you-"

"I'll work with Rhodey and Vision to get some sort of plan hammered out," Tony said.

"Thanks."

Tony slipped out of the room and went down to the workshop to check on the bots and ponder how to test whether Vision was capable of downloading data. While he was mulling it over, he checked in on his satellites and moved one to better cover their target area.

He also pulled up the security logs for the compound; it had been a suspiciously long time since anyone tried to stray into the secure zone and he wasn't going to assume that the camouflage tech was really that good (though it was). And yes, there was a team dedicated to monitoring security 24/7, but it made him feel better to see for himself that all was well. He'd learned a lot about securing his premises after the Malibu house was attacked.

"Friday, pull up the Malibu blueprints," he said absently, then gestured for the image to move from the screen to the holographic projectors. It was much easier to manipulate in all three dimensions.

Something about that thought struck him as important, but he wasn't making the connection.

He shook off the feeling and began removing and rearranging rooms, visually working through what he might want from a house now that he could completely start over. Then again, maybe he should start from scratch, reimagine everything rather than reworking what had been. A clean slate.

The trouble with a clean slate was knowing that no matter how careful you were, messing up somehow was inevitable and yet disappointing. When starting from a messy or uneven foundation, mistakes were more understandable, just part of the process.

He got rid of another room, then another, then another, until he had nothing left of the blueprint, mirroring the bare bluff. He waved away the hologram impatiently and sat with his chin in hand, staring morosely into space.

After a while he pulled up the monitoring system project and stared at the jumble produced by his last scan of Rhodey. He stared at it long enough that his eyes almost crossed and he began to suspect there was some sort of hidden message buried within the mess. Then he was startled by Friday and he lost whatever he had been seeing.

"Boss, Colonel Rhodes is threatening to come down and physically drag you to lunch," Friday said placidly.

"I'd like to see him try," Tony retorted, but stood up from his stool. "Tell him not to get his panties in a twist. I'll be up shortly."

When he made it to the kitchen, Lila squealed, "Uncle Tony!" She slid down from her chair and threw herself at him, hugging his waist. "Where did you go? I missed you."

Tony patted her head awkwardly and cast a glance at Laura, who didn't seem as perturbed by Lila's abrupt departure from the table as he might have guessed. "How about if I tell you later? Right now we should be eating lunch."

"Okay," she said, sounding disappointed. She let go of him and returned to her seat, casting doleful looks at him periodically.

The kids finished their lunch first and sprawled on the couches with their books while Laura took Nathaniel away for his nap. Tony wandered over to see what they were doing. Cooper had his nose buried in a book of 3D optical illusions and Lila was all but climbing on him in an attempt to see, too. Tony watched him slowly pull the page away from his face, then grin when he managed to discern whatever was hidden in the picture. Lila wanted a turn, then, and Cooper tried to hold the book up for her to see without letting her actually touch it.

Tony couldn't remember enjoying such books when he was a kid, but he'd always been more interested in things that moved, things he could build. Still, the jumble of color on the page Lila was trying to decipher reminded him of the scan output he'd been meditating over.

Then in a flash, he realized what was wrong with that output: it needed depth, dimension. It was entirely possible his scanner was already doing exactly what he wanted it to do, it was just flattening the output. He felt like an idiot.

Since Lila hadn't noticed him, he thought it was safe to head down to the workshop to see about fixing the now obvious problem with what he'd been doing.

He tinkered with it a while and found that the output would only improve if the input did, and that required some modifications to the scanning devices themselves, mostly in terms of positioning and programming. He fixed that, then needed new scans to see if the display was any better.

Lacking any other test subject, he stood between his table and the door and had Friday scan him and display the results as a semi-transparent hologram. The result was a nearly life size copy of himself from the muscles on down to the blood vessels.

"Lose the musculature, the skeleton," he commanded, curiously looking at the body-shaped mass of organs and blood vessels before him. He reached out as if to grab the heart and pulled his hands apart to increase its size. "Isolate the heart. Can we get a better view of the interior?"

"Your movement is interfering with the scan, boss," Friday said.

He stood as still as he could manage and listened as she verbalized the set of adjustments he'd programmed in hopes of clarifying this one final piece. He was beginning to think it would fail but then the image sharpened. "Stop, right there, save those settings and decrease the opacity of the exterior by fifty percent," he ordered, watching the inside of his heart as it beat with something approaching awe. "Are we recording this?"

"Yes, boss."

"Good, that's good. Bring up the images from each hospital scan and display in chronological order."

Black and white photos hovered in the air beside the beating holographic heart, the first image from his hospital stay at the left and each succeeding image forming a timeline to the present. He finally let himself move and scrutinized each photo in turn before returning to the hologram. "Friday, stop the scan and send all of this to Dr. Mann. I'd like her to take a look at the protocol and the end result before I tell anyone else about it, just in case I'm missing something else obvious."

"Message sent, boss."

He returned to his workstation to examine the program and its data. He was sufficiently absorbed that he didn't notice Rhodey's presence until Rhodey said, "What the hell is that?"

Tony looked up in surprise to see him staring at the disembodied heart still hanging in mid-air. "Proof that I have a heart," he said dismissively. "Friday, scan Rhodey."

"It's working?" he asked in disbelief as a new hologram appeared in the empty space.

"It sure is. Anything in particular you'd like to see?"

Rhodey fussed with his hologram for a while, removing a body part, then replacing it and removing another. "This is really nice," he said finally. "And it's safe?"

"It's not immediately deadly," Tony said evasively. "I don't know about long term exposure. I'm going to have to check with the medical types."

"'Not immediately deadly'?" Rhodey repeated dubiously, rolling backward slightly. "That's not reassuring."

"I know." Tony knew very well what he meant. The experience with the palladium had persuaded him to be slightly more cautious about what he exposed himself to on a regular basis. "Did you come down for a particular reason or were you just checking up on me?"

"Yes," Rhodey said. "I came to see what you were doing and warn you that a certain little girl is very upset that you vanished after lunch."

He sighed. "Right. Uncle Tony ought to make an appearance."

"He will if he knows what's good for him," Rhodey agreed.

Tony stood up from his stool and stretched. "Let's go."

.

Lila's face lit up when she saw him. Then she remembered she was mad at him; she scowled and began to turn away, as if pretending not to see him. He pretended to walk past her, then turned at the last moment and tickled her briefly. She shrieked and giggled. "Uncle Tony!" she said reprovingly, putting her hands on her hips. "Stop that."

He held his hands up in surrender. "I already did."

She crossed her arms and gazed at him solemnly. "Where did you go?"

"I had to finish something in the workshop. I'm sorry for leaving again."

"Where did you go before that?"

He explained about the meeting in New York. She asked again. He explained about visiting Aunt Pepper in California. She asked still again. "I was here before that, honey," he said.

She just looked at him, seeming unconvinced. "But I haven't seen you in ages. Auntie Nat reads to me instead, but she doesn't do the voices."

He had no idea what to tell her. He'd been at the compound the entire time, but at the same time it was true that he'd hardly seen her or Cooper in what felt like months. "Would you like to fix that?"

"Yes!" she cried, jumping up to get her book.

Before she could return, Laura intercepted her and redirected her to the dinner table. She looked beseechingly at Tony. He joined her at the table. "We can do it right after we eat, yeah?"

Lila heaved a heavy sigh. "Okay."

He was as good as his word this time. Lila had moved on from hobbits to talking animals and he had no idea what was going on in the story since she was already halfway done, but he muddled through and she seemed satisfied by the attempt.

After that, Clint herded his daughter off to take a bath before bed. Tony remained on the couch, leaned his head back against the cushions, and tried to think of what had been going on before his California trip that would have prevented him from reading to Lila or even seeing her in general. He had no idea.

His watch chirped and he obediently tapped it without looking. "Boss, Doctor Thomas would like to see you tomorrow if your schedule allows."

As if he had anything on his schedule. "Sure. Put me down for the first available appointment time." He didn't pay attention when Friday reported the time of his appointment; she would remind him in the morning.

Lazily he considered his options for the rest of the evening. He could go to bed but it felt too early.

He could try to find the pieces of the toaster he'd dismantled and put it back together, but what had he done with the pieces? He didn't remember leaving them anywhere in particular. Friday would know, but asking would be admitting he didn't remember and he could already feel her judging him sometimes.

He could join whatever conversation was happening at the other end of the room. So far he had identified the voices of Sam, Natasha, and Steve, but hadn't followed enough to know what they were discussing. Then he heard Ross's name mentioned and knew he didn't want any part of that.

He could go out to the hangar and put together the ramp for the helicopter.

He opted for that last idea and slipped out of the room by way of the staircase rather than have to pass the others to go out the normal way. He nearly tripped over Wanda and Vision in the process. In fact, he stepped through Vision, who had the thoughtfulness to make himself less of a tripping hazard. Tony apologized as he hurried on his way, purposely not trying to figure out what, exactly, they were doing on the stairs.

He had gotten as far as unloading the parts from the helicopter and spreading them out in the proper order according to the schematics Friday was displaying when someone behind him said, "Sir, please back away from the aircraft or I will call security."

Tony raised his hands in the air and turned around, smirking. "I think I'm allowed to work on my own chopper."

The technician paled to almost the same shade as her blonde hair. "Mr. Stark, sir, I'm very sorry, I didn't realize-"

He lowered his hands and gestured dismissively. "No harm done. It's nice to know the techs are keeping an eye out for suspicious characters. What's your name?"

She squared her shoulders. "Toni."

"It's a good name," he said, amused. "Would you like to help?"

Her answer was yes. While he dismantled the external panels that formed the belly of the helicopter and surveyed the cavity beneath the floor in comparison with the schematic, she began assembling the ramp itself. He periodically took a look at her work and it was always precisely correct. She was fast, too. "What did you do before you came here?" he asked.

"I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. maintaining aircraft on the helicarrier. Before that, I was in the Navy and did the same on a carrier in the Pacific."

He asked a few more questions in between requests for tools or an extra hand as he began installing the hardware that would attach the ramp to the chopper and allow it to be controlled from a panel by the door. Her answers were simple and brief. Not the talkative type, but that was fine by him.

Though the ramp was relatively light, it was a great help to have someone else hold it in place while he crawled underneath and attached it to the new mount. Toni was more than equal to the task; even after everything, she didn't look like she'd broken a sweat in her coveralls while he felt drenched. He wiped his hands on his jeans. "The wiring is a one-person job so I'll stop stealing you from your assigned duties now. It's been a pleasure."

She shook his proffered hand with a small smile. "I'm not on duty. I was on my way out when I saw you. My assignment today was inspecting this bird, so I wasn't about to let someone tamper with it."

"Right. You're one of those above-and-beyond types, and you know your stuff. You can work on my machines anytime."

"Thank you, Mr. Stark. Good night," Toni said.

"Good night," he responded absently, his mind already deep within the circuitry he was about to rewire.

The wiring took longer than assembling the ramp itself had, mostly because he was connecting into existing circuits in ways that had to make sense and not detract from the pre-existing systems, but also because he kept thinking of other tweaks and improvements he could do while he had the chopper laid bare. He managed to keep his focus on the current project, however, and eventually was able to deploy and retract the ramp from both inside and outside of the cabin.

He almost had Friday call Rhodey to come down and see, then thought to check the time. It was after midnight, so rather than wake Rhodey he put the exterior panels back together. By one thirty, the chopper looked as if it hadn't been touched.

Tony showered quickly before he went to bed, and it seemed like only a few minutes before Friday was blaring music at him to wake up. He grumbled a few choice words in her general direction as he crawled out of bed in search of his meds. "Your appointment with Doctor Thomas is in fifteen minutes, boss," Friday nagged.

"Why the hell is it so early?" he all but whined as he pulled some clothes, any clothes, onto his body.

"The appointment is at nine o'clock," Friday said blandly. The 'nine o'clock isn't early' part was heavily implied.

"You can be replaced," he said irritably.

Fortunately, stopping at the kitchen was more or less on the way to the good doctor's office. Someone had brewed a pot of coffee that would have to be good enough since he didn't have time to do anything else.

Dr. Tanya was in her office working on her computer when he arrived. She smiled when she saw him lurking in the doorway. "Come on in, Tony," she said warmly, rising from her chair.

He slid into his usual seat, clutching his coffee mug with both hands and sipping it carefully.

She sat down across from him and gave him a few moments to drink his coffee before she asked, "What do you remember of our last conversation?"

He answered with a question. "When I was flying to New York?"

She responded in kind. "What were you doing that night, after you arrived?"

"Drinking," he admitted. "Lots of drinking, more than I have in years."

"You called me while you were intoxicated. You don't remember that?"

He could remember what he thought was the whole evening, from the pizza and scotch to slumping over and sleeping on the couch. "No."

"Have you failed to remember activities and conversations that occurred while you were intoxicated in the past?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Do you remember using your visual memory system that evening?"

His shudder was entirely involuntary. He clutched his coffee more tightly. "I wish I didn't."

"Am I correct in thinking that was the first time you'd used it since the MIT presentation?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"What made you go back to it that night?"

Tony shrugged, staring into the dark liquid in his cup. "I don't know. Every so often I'd wonder how else that might have gone down, but I never had the time to try it. Maybe it was courage I lacked. I don't know. But I'd had some to drink and somehow it seemed like a good idea." He took a sip, then glanced up at her. "If I didn't talk about that, what did I say when I called?"

She weighed her words carefully. "You were . . . distressed," she said after a long pause. "You talked at length about what happened, but never explained what prompted you to use it in the first place."

"Is there anything else I mentioned doing that I might not remember?" he asked, embarrassed that he needed to ask the question. It had been a long time since that was a regular concern.

"You might want to check for other calls from that night. I got the impression that you talked to Pepper before calling me."

He frowned, then drained the rest of his coffee. "She wasn't mad at me when we talked on Sunday, so I don't think I did." He tapped his watch once. "Friday, did I call Pepper last weekend while I was drunk?"

"No, boss."

"Why didn't you tell me that I'd called the good doctor, here?"

"Your behavior patterns were within historical parameters. A failure of memory is not detectable by an external system and it is not normal operating procedure to report every phone call."

"Where did you learn how to sass me?" he grumbled, shaking his wrist to deactivate Friday again. He looked up at Doc T, beginning to feel defensive about the whole line of questioning. "Is this really what you wanted to talk about? What I get up to in my off hours?"

"Partly, yes," she said honestly. "If you were returning to alcohol to drown your sorrows, so to speak, that would be a concern. While I knew you were preoccupied with the U.N. meeting this week, not having seen or heard from you since then made me wonder about your state of mind. You were not in a good place that night, Tony."

"I'm going to have to listen to that conversation later," he said with a small shake of his head. "It must have been something."

"I don't know that listening to it would help, but I'm not going to tell you not to. That would only guarantee that you would."

"Yep."

She steered the conversation to the meeting and his impressions of how it went and the drunken chat wasn't mentioned again. At least, not verbally. Tony had the distinct impression the doc was weighing his answers carefully in light of whatever concern that call had raised.

When she was finished with him, he sought out Rhodey and steered him out to the hangar to show off his night's work. Rhodey scrutinized the ramp, tried rolling up into the helicopter and back out again, then tested to make sure he could reach the controls without his chair being in the way of the ramp.

"This would have been more useful last weekend," he said finally. "It's really nice, Tony. Thanks." He fell silent a moment, staring at the ramp, then pressed the button to make it retract. "Is your company going to start selling these?"

"I hadn't thought about it," he said as they headed back to the main building. "Would you mind?"

"Nah, you might as well get some mileage out of it if you can."

"Friday, send the specs to the medical device team. They know what to do," he directed.

"Have you talked to Rogers yet? We need to know who we'll have before we talk strategy."

Tony didn't answer right away, thrown off by the change of subject when his mind was considering whether it was worth modifying vehicles to add the ramp or if he needed to make a deal with the electric car guy to design a line of vehicles with ramps already built in.

"You said you'd talk to Rogers before the next mission about coming armed or not at all," Rhodey persisted, unfazed by his lack of response.

Right. That conversation he needed to handle or Rhodey would take the matter into his own hands. While the thought was tempting, he should by rights be the one to deal with it. "Don't worry, buttercup, I'll talk to him soon," he said dismissively.

Rhodey stopped his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked unimpressed. "Today," he insisted.

"All right, all right," he conceded. "Friday, where is Rogers?"

"Captain Rogers is in a meeting, boss."

"I tried," he said with a shrug. "You want me to-?" He gestured toward the wheelchair.

"No, I'm good," Rhodey said, wheeling himself forward again. "I'm going to keep asking until you do it, you know."

"Yeah, I know. You busy? We need to figure out how to use Vision as a storage device."

"Not having you hack my suit would be nice," Rhodey agreed. "Let's go."