Note: So, for a couple of chapters running, people have stated that they don't like Emory's passivity, and I hear you! The plan has always been for that to 'break' in this chapter, though I already got a review about how the story isn't worth reading anymore because it took so long.
Salty? Just a tad. I want to write something satisfying that shows a true arc, and it just didn't feel realistic to have her change so thoroughly, so quickly. I understand the frustration for readers, I do! All I can say is, There's A Plan.
Along the way, enjoy some Clint and Natasha banter and some hard realizations on Emory's part.
Chapter Eighteen: Halogen
The house in NYC is ready sooner than Tony had expected. He has JARVIS arrange everything for the actual suit construction for the East coast and finishes up the preliminary planning before they leave. It feels fitting that he'll be building it closer to Emory.
Pepper flies out a day early to make sure it's all set up and to attend a pivotal meeting at the New York office. When they're finally done traveling, Happy stays outside to organize the workers as they carry in everything, leaving Tony to go in by himself. The rooms are mostly as he remembers, but somehow the bad memories don't slice past his defenses the way they used to. It isn't until he walks through the whole house chasing yet dreading the moment when they finally crash down on him that Tony realizes what's happened.
The furniture is the same, but the walls are different. In every room. Pepper has added some of his favorite pieces from the art collection, each hung with a designer's eye, complimenting the room. With this change, his brilliant assistant has broken most of the associations between his negative memories and the rooms where they were made. Downstairs, the two workshop spaces are completely different from his childhood and adolescence, full of Tony's things, instead of Howard's. She'd also left him a note, exhorting him to create new memories.
His mind leaps to Emory immediately. However, if she hasn't figured out how to temper her powers, the prevailing memory will be of hurricane-force winds destroying the mansion around their ears. That's several steps ahead, though. He has to rescue her in the first place. He's got the designs, the raw materials, and the means to fabricate something unique and powerful. All Tony needs is time and patience, two things that are in short supply for him right now.
Oh, and a way to get back out of the suit. Preferably without almost falling to his death this time.
He's even got a name for that part: Disrobe-Bot. Happy had been horrified when Tony had suggested it in the car, so he knows it's perfect.
An hour later, everything's brought in and arranged to Tony's exacting standards. Thanks to the 70's concrete chic down here, he almost can't tell he's in New York. Tony cracks his knuckles and rolls his neck. All of his plans are coming to fruition. He's got just about eleven days until his next call with Emory, during which he hopes to get a sense of her schedule and desperation level. Pepper's reconnaissance will be done by then, hopefully achieving the dual aims of gathering intel on the location and letting Coulson's puppet-masters know that Tony hasn't given up. He's got the best coffee money can buy, a chair so comfortable it would make a grown man weep, and not quite enough time to make everything happen.
"JARVIS, you set up?"
"Installed and ready, sir."
"Let's make physics weep, shall we?"
"As always."
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By the start of week two, Emory notices that her classmates have begun to treat her with an odd kind of deference.
"Okay, that's it. I think you're a plant, Emma! No one's courting you at lunch for their division, and you're a little too good at seeming to struggle in here!" The accusation comes from Chelle Song, the most athletic of the recruits.
Emory looks up from her shoe tying. "Is that why everyone switches tables so much?" Since day one she'd eaten alone, while everyone else in the class sat with a different group of SHIELD employees every day.
"You guys see how studiously neutral that answer was? Classic. You're going into Ops, aren't you?" Chelle pushes. "I still can't decide. Got to have lunch with Agent Hill yesterday and she was really persuasive about Comms, but-"
"But Chelle has a crush on Brock, so she wants to look 'persuadable' enough to land a lunch date!" Peter Wheeler teases.
"Oh shut up, you're just making connections for your mom's bid for Security Council!" Chelle shoots back. Peter, as he repeatedly mentions 'in passing,' is Senator Alison Wheeler's son. "You're just wasting everyone's time while you get your 'Do You Know Who My Mother Is' PhD for a spot in Science, pfft."
"Wait, am I the only one who got the certificate in a candy bar?" Emory asks lightly, hoping to defuse things.
"If by 'certificate in a candy bar' you mean above 95% on the admissions test for more than one academy, yeah," Peter smirks.
"Couldn't your mom get her staffers to take the tests for you? I guess you're just like the rest of us, Veruca!" Chelle waves gaily as she sails through the door with three of the other recruits.
"She's just salty because they're not courting her for ops," one of the other guys says.
"Salty. Nice," Peter says. He turns and offers Emory a smarmy grin. "Well, Emma, if you want an ally, let me know. I've got some pretty sweet connections. My uncle is a VP at Hammer, and my dad's on the board at AIM." Behind him, the only other student left rolls his eyes and salutes her before heading for the door.
Emory's done enough googling about Stark Industries to know that both companies are considered Tony's competitors. Chelle's accusation of a hidden agenda was pure luck, but are Peter's namedrops equally coincidental?
"Thanks, Peter," Emory says, pushing her PA sincerity into high gear. "I'd tell you about my contacts, but then I'd have to- Well, you know." She shrugs, offering him a shy smile. On her way out, Emory glances across the training room and sees Agent May. The exacting instructor gives her a nod of respect, which coats Emory in a layer of energy from the resulting pride.
The power dissipates on the way to lunch. The truth is that she's being lied to in multiple ways, probably by multiple people. Emory's fear of losing control had turned her thoroughly compliant. It's frightening to realize how easily she let herself excuse what's going on, but then again, that's how she ended up so dominated by Rory.
She sighs, setting the tray down to fill up her drink cup with something that isn't tepid water. The food here isn't bean stew. The bed she sleeps on doesn't nearly topple when she rolls over. The building's temperature is normalized.
Best of all, she can see the sun from multiple angles, even go out with her agency minder and feel its rays warm her skin without fearing for her life. But Emory's still a prisoner. Most of her light is still artificial, for all that it's higher quality and more illuminating than the yellowed fluorescent bulbs in the cave.
Emory drops her head on her arms, right there at the lunch table. She's been dazzled into accepting a fancier cage, but it's still a cage. If she wants to feel less like a lab mouse, she'll need to stop acting like one.
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The first test of Tony's repulsor boots does not go well. Not only does the sound of him crashing into the support beams in the garage bring both Happy and Pepper down from breakfast to investigate (Note to JARVIS: viability tests should only be performed when Ms. Potts' GPS location is not within auditory range), but when the fire-suppressant settles, Tony has a black eye.
He's supposed to meet with the board this afternoon.
Pepper fixes him up after lunch, arguing that there's no point in wasting the makeup till after he's done eating, which, fair. He's worn makeup before for stage appearances and talk shows, but usually to conceal the evidence of a late night of wine, women, and song.
His toe is almost healed. The whole foot feels better encased in metal armor, so he wears the boots. Tony threads two thin wires through his clothing to connect them to power on the off chance that the board doesn't believe him when he says he is building a hover suit with (hopefully! There are more tests to be done) astonishing reconnaissance capabilities. The heads up display he envisions has a camera and a couple of visual enhancements. It's purely defensive, but still something he can see Stark Industries selling- and he sure as fuck will load the damned things up with code that only his people could make work.
Tony snorts. That fat fucker from the cave wishes he could figure tech like this out.
The self-satisfied smile from that thought is exactly what the board would expect to see, so Tony keeps it in place as he strolls through the door, expecting to see all every seat at the table turn toward him.
Only one does, because only one is occupied.
Obediah Stane doesn't even get up. "Tony! Glad you could make it."
"What's this? I'm practically early! Tell me you didn't tell everyone else a different time, you know I hate that shit."
Obie's insincere smile in response is chilling. "Nah, I wouldn't do that to ya. The meeting was yesterday."
"I'd make a 'stabbed in the heart' joke but something tells me that wouldn't play well," Tony says coolly. Inside, his blood is boiling. Did he imagine this man being sporadically paternal over the years, or has Tony just been a boiling frog the whole time?
"Have a seat, okay? Let me explain. I even got the pizza you like, kept it in this bag so you couldn't smell it right away," Obie says with an easy smile, pulling the bagged box from its hiding place.
"What's the topping, pomegranate seeds?"
"Hey, I wish I had Hades' empire or head for strategy. Instead, all I could manage is to keep them from removing ya from your position for a couple more months." Obie leans back and spreads his hands in his personal signal of humility. "Let me tell you, starting out I thought it would take hell freezing over to manage that, but they came around. I told them what you'd been through, that you'd been fatally injured but made it through. That you'd lost one of your fellow PoWs in your escape. It made an impression, Tony."
Stane's tone is familiar, comforting. Tony can't stand the juxtaposition. He crosses his arms and nods, clenching his jaw and nodding just once. "What's the bad news?"
"We need to offer them something in two weeks. Blueprints, prototype, something. Sit down, Tony. Eat something."
Tony walks over and shoves the chair aside, sitting on the table with the box between himself and Obie. He grabs the largest slice and folds it, cramming an absurd amount of pizza in his mouth. "Two weeks isn't a couple more months," he says, the words barely comprehensible.
"I may have promised them we had a few things already in the pipe, because you do, don't you?" Obie says, nodding at Tony's feet.
Shit.
"Maybe," Tony says, swallowing too soon.
"I heard you fucked up your foot. Let me guess: you've got something up your 'sleeve'-" he reaches over and tweaks Tony's pant leg. "-that you were hoping to show them, right? Right?" Stane chuckles. "You're all beat up, should be resting, but not Tony Stark. You built those, probably to help you walk in here as full of vigor as always. Might be onto something there. Exoskeletons, isn't that what they're called? Armor that doesn't just protect healthy troops- injured ones, too. We could keep 'em fighting!" Obie's voice is flush with excitement, and it's infectious. "Dignity, Tony. That's what we could be restoring. Can you see it?"
He can. Enough that he feels bad to doubt this man, who is in no ways perfect, but neither was Tony's actual father. What's more, Tony had already planned to have his suit flight-ready by the end of this week, so two weeks is generous. It allows him time to spend with Emory, time that he can tell Stane he's too busy to be bothered. It would keep the other man off his back at exactly the right time. Tony nods.
"Great! Set it up with Rhodes, will ya? The two of you always do great things with the military."
Almost all of Tony's unease is gone. As an executive, Stane always was unpredictable, and it nearly always goes in Tony's favor. This doesn't feel all that different than before, which should feel good, normal, ordinary. This is their dynamic, after all.
"Okay, but you lied to me so you forfeit this pizza," Tony says, hopping down from the table and taking the whole box.
With each step away from the conference room, Obie's words ring warning bells in his mind. He would have told Emory not to trust Obie, if their situations were reversed. Does that mean he should go back there and challenge Stane? What would really change, if Tony decided he wasn't trustworthy? He's still going to build the suit. The idea of a purely defensive carapace still has merit, even if he doesn't quite trust that Obie was being genuine back there.
Instead of going back up, Tony checks off one of the 'benefit of the doubts' that his younger self still owes Obediah Stane. In light of the contrast between the advice he's giving himself and the advice he'd give Emory, though, Tony does allow his uncertainty to linger. He's not just protecting himself for his own sake, after all. There's just more not to tell Emory about during that call.
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Thirty hours after her realization about suppressing her feelings, Emory's caught up in a mental siege battle between her sense of duty and her sense of outrage.
So far, every minute of her adulthood has been about calculated risk, and in that equation, the 'Emory' variable always has the lowest value. Now that she's feeling the full brunt of SHIELD's unethical actions, Emory can't put the anger genie back in the bottle- and it's time for a sparring session with Hawkeye and Black Widow. She'd at least managed to hide her inner turmoil during her one-on-one yesterday with Natasha. Emory's frustration had helped, as she'd been trying to use her powers to hurl objects at the tree she'd uprooted. There's little hope that she'll be doing anything that can conceal her wildly fluctuating emotional energy.
Emory lets herself into the room quietly and leans against the wall. She waves awkwardly at Clint, who nods a 'sup at her and promptly dodges sideways. As a result, Natasha's attack misses, even though there's no way he could have seen it coming.
"Really?" Natasha asks him when she immediately pivots into a move that sweeps his feet out from under him. Clint does a swift roll that gets him back on his feet, throwing his hands out beside him as if asking 'what' at the same time as challenging her to attack again.
"Not my problem you get predictable when there's a distraction!"
"Because we fight the same enemies so regularly." Natasha shoots a sarcastic look at Clint.
"Won't always be the case." He lunges toward her with one hand chopping toward her neck. With the other hand, Clint reaches back and pulls an actual knife from a pocket at the back of his vest. He turns his body to block Natasha's counterattack that blocks the short jabbing attack he makes with the weapon. Emory tries to keep her frightened indrawn breath silent as she watches, but Natasha is ready for Clint, twisting her leg up to deflect the attack with her knee. "You of all people ought to be prepared to fight your former allies, don't you think?" Clint says, his voice only slightly strained as Natasha tries to twist his knife hand into a position that forces him to drop it.
It looks like they're done, but suddenly she rears up her foot and kicks out, striking Clint's wrist with a kick that has him dropping the knife and hissing, "Nice."
"How often do you need the ER, do you think?" Emory asks weakly.
Clint chuckles. "Never."
His answer comes at the same time as Natasha's, which is "Often enough."
"Does that make this the 'anything goes' training room?"
"No, he's pretty much always trying to kill me. I just return the favor."
"Hey, I figured, if Emory's freaked, she won't have the focus to uproot the building!" Clint tucks his knife away as he speaks.
"It's not just positive emotions. If you scare her often enough we might just use an image of your face as a generator," Natasha teases. "Okay, stand here, I'm going to hold my arms up and I want you to try to hit me," she continues in a businesslike tone, shifting to a wide stance and demonstrating the position. "You'll see the difference in the deflection by the way I angle my arms. Then I'll swap, so you can try."
Ordinarily the two agents' banter is fun to watch, but today it makes Emory uneasy. On one hand, she's glad the two people she actually trusts at SHIELD know what she's capable of, but on the other, she has no control over that knowledge. Who else is privy to her secrets? Will they bother to keep them? It sometimes feels like she's being treated with as much humanity as Tony's armored suit- technically well designed, but in a hurry, out of scrap materials. It had fallen apart at the completion of its mission, and they'd left the pieces to scorch in the harsh desert sun.
Will SHIELD discard her too?
For a good half hour, she tries to listen to what Natasha's teaching her while struggling nullify the energy she keeps accumulating. Unfortunately, the static snowfield she usually pictures isn't dampening anything today. Instead of a stabilizing snowdrift, all she can muster are artificial plastic flakes that make a mess and muffle nothing. Soon, her fear that she can't de-escalate starts contributing to the sheath of power already accumulated.
"All right, two on one, just do your best," Natasha says, immediately launching an attack with her leg. Emory tries to fall back, but Clint is there. She dodges sideways with an arm movement that protects her core from Natasha's kick. She'd been taught how to prevent the way Barton's trying to lock her arms to her sides, but she's in the wrong position. Desperately, Emory tries to move fast enough to twist free.
Instead, her powers respond. The tornadic boost that spins her out of the way sweeps Clint into the wall behind them.
"Shit!" Emory yelps, watching him shake his head on his hands and knees for a second before getting up. "I'm sorry, Agent Barton!"
"It's fine." Clint gestures down at himself as if to challenge her to find an injury. "You set me up for that," he says with grim amusement, leaning over to point behind Emory at Natasha. "Three seconds different and it would have been you playing pinball, Nat."
"Not my fault you get complacent in training," Natasha says with a smug half-smile.
Neither of them seem surprised by what just happened.
Emory still feels terrible. "I'm trying to clear my mind, but it's not working the way it usually does, and-"
"You're able to control it with mental exercises?" Natasha interrupts sharply. Gathering up her courage, Emory nods. It looks like the agent is interested, not upset. "Tell me exactly what you do."
Emory explains the visualization, adding that it's never failed this badly before.
"What's different today?" Clint asks, when she's done. His focused excitement drags the truth from her lips before she realizes what she's saying.
"I feel like a refugee rescued with everything I own, and instead of getting to go home I've been forced to give it all up, piece by piece, to prove I'm worth saving. Nothing I've learned here feels like it's about me, except what you two have taught- and that's just to keep me alive and out of your hair." She scrunches her eyes shut, her fists balling at her sides. There's a sleeve of power coating her skin, and the fear that usually chases it away is magnifying it instead. "I'm… I'm lost," she gasps miserably.
"Look at me," Natasha says. "Picture me surrounded by your static." She stands directly in front of Emory, expression neutral, eyes locked to hers.
"I-"
Natasha angrily claps twice. "You're in crisis. This is good practice! Focus on me, make everything else static. Do it now." The agent schools her expression back to calm, but the shift had been sudden and shocking, enough of a touchstone for Emory to refocus.
She breathes in and out, letting the jolt of resentment leech into her bloodstream, on its way to be filtered away like any other toxic substance. Emory tries to picture large, sound-muffling snowflakes falling around Natasha, blocking her view of Clint, of the room, of this trap she's found herself stuck in. Just as before, the visual is not quite right- plastic flakes with no depth. Emory's irritation surges a double layer of power that ruffles her hair and tickles her neck, further annoying her.
"Talk it out," Natasha instructs, her voice more gentle than before.
Emory shakes her head. "I can't. If this is how SHIELD treats me when I've been compliant, then…" She lets her voice trail off, unwilling to give voice to her fear. "I can't find that scientist myself."
Natasha nods thoughtfully, digging into a pocket in her fighting suit. Looking over at Barton, she says, "Lock the door?"
A surge of horrified fear coats Emory in energy so thick she feels like she's suffocating.
"Em!" Clint calls out on the way to the door. When she looks over, he locks eyes with her, sincerity written across his forehead creases. "I won't let you fall. Remember?"
Emory hasn't known him long, but Clint Barton strikes her as one of the most genuine people she's ever met. Despite everything, she trusts him. His words loosen the band of fear constricting her lungs, allowing her to suck in a huge relieved breath. As she lets it out, Natasha throws two objects at the ceiling corners, one from each hand. They spark a blue-white arc of electricity that engulfs identical round, black fixtures. Emory stares at them, confused, until Clint jogs over and explains, pointing up to the nearest one.
"Surveillance. Those last what? Fifteen, twenty minutes, Nat?"
"Twenty-five. Old system," Natasha says. "It'll take a while to notice, even longer to figure out what to do about it." She crosses her arms and offers a crooked grin, her eyes impish. "I think Fury took today off."
"Feel safe yet?" Clint asks, nudging her shoulder.
Inside her head, Tony's voice whispers something equal to the look of mischief in Natasha's eyes. Emory goes for it.
"This is about how much you two are fans of Rory Fall and were planning to torture me into revealing her inner secrets, right? I mean, if anyone asks?" she says, using her journalist wrangling voice.
"Like how she's really blonde and can't sing? Yep. Solid plan." Clint clears his throat as if he expects blow-back. "I read that somewhere." At Natasha's raised eyebrows, he adds, "What? Stake-outs are boring."
Telling them how she feels goes better than Emory had expected. Throughout, she stares at her own feet to avoid jumping to conclusions based on the agents' faces, though. There's something inherently cathartic in explaining the bizarre similarity between being held in a cave in Afghanistan and in a seemingly hostile government building in the US. After her final declaration ('No one should have to feel like this.'), she keeps her eyes downcast, waiting.
"Well shit, I wouldn't trust me either," Clint finally says. "Though I gotta say, if this is a front? If you were brainwashed into being a terrorist infiltrator after three months of indoctrination, you've got the character down pat. Impressive stuff."
On hearing this, Emory risks peeking at Natasha, who is frowning.
"I'm not sure I like how easily I can follow Fury's line of thinking about this," Natasha says darkly. She looks at Emory and gestures at the ceiling. "Your issue is not going to be as simple to derail. Probably not until after-"
"-the mission. Yeah, I figured." Emory's stored-up energy flares up around her head and shoulders at this disappointing reminder. The motion twists her hair up, soothing the flush of embarrassment from interrupting Natasha. It's the second time she'd forgotten the energy she'd accumulated, a worrying trend. Add it to the pile.
"So we shelve it. Crush the mission, deal with this after, once none of us can do without you," Clint says, grinning.
All of Emory's power evaporates instantly. Her knees buckle, and she leans over to steady them, dipping her head down. "Well, that did it. Thanks, I guess," she manages. "It didn't occur to me- I thought I'd get to-" Her head swimming, Emory slumps onto the floor on her knees, sitting back on her heels and hugging her arms to her chest.
Clint is apologetic. "I don't know what I'm talking about, okay? I don't speak for SHIELD-"
"It's probably naive to think they'll cut ties, and we did need her to drop all that power she had stored up," Natasha breaks in. "Emory. Look at me."
Her voice is kind, and Emory's file was right. She is obedient. She crushes down her despair and looks up.
Natasha crouches down to make eye contact. "You can only change what's changeable. Have you ever seen those ball, rope, and ring puzzles? You have to get the ball from one side of the rope to the other, but it doesn't fit through any of the rings. You solve the puzzle by giving up on trying to fit the ball where it can't go and manipulate the rope instead." Natasha smiles. The expression lights up her face. Emory can't look away. "The ball moves last in the sequence. Up until that point, it looks impossible. Change what's changeable, step by step. Maybe by the time the ball swaps sides, it's too late to stop it."
"Please tell me this isn't a defection metaphor?" Clint jokes.
Natasha straightens. "Which would you rather have, a captive teammate building hidden resentment until she blows up the building, or a full teammate you can count on, with actual superpowers? Ones she can control?"
"So we're the ring?"
"Go unlock the door, Barton," Natasha groans. She straightens and holds out her hand to help Emory up, but she doesn't let go right away, squeezing to emphasize what she says next. "A lot of people join SHIELD on purpose. They want power, adventure, control. You've probably already seen that, from what I hear."
Natasha's trying to distract her, and it's working. Emory huffs out an exasperated laugh, thinking about Peter. "Yes."
"Other people join it for a family. To right wrongs. To make good. Neither side of the spectrum is ideal."
"Join for Fury's wife's birthday cookies, with a side of extrajudicial murder," Clint whispers, leaning over to put his head near both of theirs.
"You are not helping," Natasha hisses.
"She's mad because she didn't earn a cookie last year."
Clint dances away, and Emory slips free while Natasha is distracted. She sees that the ceiling glow is dimming on the nearest camera and jogs over to catch the metal balls as they drop free. There's no time to get across to the other, so on a whim, she tries to force enough power to gust them up till she gets there, using the encouragement from the two veteran agents as fuel.
It works. The powerful burst of air current makes it in time to stop their fall with no excess for her to soothe away. She's able to snag them out of midair, feeling the unnatural uplift she'd created disperse harmlessly. It's a breakthrough. One that might even be enough to balance out the knowledge that these two people expect her to stay at SHIELD beyond the mission she's been manipulated to take part in.
But only because the sooner she can control her abilities, the sooner she can use them to make sure that doesn't happen.
"Nice," Clint says.
Grinning but instinctively repressing her joy to just below the place that might lift it to 'power generation' level, Emory walks over to Natasha and offers her the handful of spy gadgets.
"Keep them," is the surprising answer. "Might come in handy."
Emory nods, biting her lip. She might be able to use them for her call with Tony. Before she can ask who would get in trouble if she uses the objects on SHIELD tech the second time in a week, there's a knock at the door, and a voice calls out to ask if everything is all right. Natasha makes a face and heads for the door, immediately launching into a highly technical description of the objects they were 'testing.' Clint walks over to Emory.
In a low voice, he tells her, "Fury's got a lot on his plate at the moment. I doubt either of us would be able to schedule a meeting objecting to his…" He clears his throat. "Recruitment methods, for a couple of weeks."
"Bummer," Emory says, heartened. She's pretty sure he's telling her that they don't intend to 'tell on her' for her concerns, but also implying that the concerns are valid.
"Yeah," Clint continues. "Fun to picture his face when I explain about the shifting balls. Ahh well." He rocks back on his heels, looking directly up at the nearest camera. "If it helps your mood at all, if what I've heard about Stark's obsession with you is true, we probably need you more than you need us." With that, Clint chuckles and looks down at her, winking. "Competence is one of many ways to ride under the radar here, but Natasha's sure a pro at it."
"That's definitely true," Emory says, a little stunned by what he's telling her. She kind of wishes she had a hidden audio recorder to listen back over everything both agents have said to her this afternoon, because it seems like all of it is important. Most of all the sly suggestion by Clint that maybe SHIELD isn't the one who holds all of the leverage.
Emory slips her hand down into her pocket around the static spheres Natasha had given her, taking courage from them as she slips out of the sparring room to continue her day.
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Tony finishes his first full suit prototype thirty hours before his call with Emory. The Disrobe-Bot works perfectly, which wasn't a given, though the real test will be getting back out (something he wants to perfect before he shows up to perform Emory Autumn's third kidnapping in four months' time). The last piece is his faceplate, and Tony calls out to JARVIS as he puts it on. He's looking forward to hearing the swap as his AI moves from the basement speakers to the built-in earpieces in his helmet.
"JARVIS, you there?"
"At your service, Sir."
The AI's voice sounds just right in Tony's ears. Excellent. "Engage Heads-up Display, import all relevant preferences from home interface."
The HUD is even better than he'd hoped. The visuals are just right, cycling through various data points at just the right speed for him to get a heightened feel for his surroundings. Tony turns his head, and the AI highlights DUM-E's outline, naming the robot with a small but readable label before shifting to identify the coffeemaker on the shelf many feet behind it.
He can't wait to see what this will look like out in the world. "All right, what do you say?" Tony asks, hoping there isn't some last-minute roadblock to the thing he wants to do.
"I have indeed been uploaded, sir. We are online and ready."
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear." Tony knows what he should be doing. He should test the Disrobe-Bot right away, because he doesn't want to be stuck in the suit for more time than it takes for his bladder to fill. He definitely shouldn't go out where someone could catch him on surveillance… but, what if he could get high enough before that happened? "Do a check on control surfaces," he says, walking over to the door that separates the lab from the garage. The display shows the integrity of each tire, with a label for the vehicle.
The check doesn't take long, as Tony has left space for quite a few modifications that aren't necessary for the rescue mission. He's left out anything offensive except for the repulsors and some targeting mechanics, mostly because he wants to stick it to Nick Fucking Fury if the man tries to make anything up about the kind of threat Tony poses during the rescue.
"Tests complete. Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics, which should be ready and waiting for you when you wake up."
"Uh, change of plan," Tony says, trying to sound like he's only just made up his mind. "Link up with ATC, do a weather check, and start listening in on ground control."
"Sir, there are terabytes of calculations needed before-"
"JARVIS," Tony chastises, grinning as he walks through the garage to hit the button for the sliding door. "Sometimes you've gotta run before you can walk."
If he had Emory's abilities, Tony would be charged up with enough power to fly without the repulsors.
"Hey, make sure you get a recording of this," he tells JARVIS, stepping out into the warm June night.
"Certainly, sir. Wouldn't want to miss the chance to identify any design flaws or operator errors that might occur."
"Settle down," Tony says.
The suit handles like a dream. It's worth every minute he may have to spend locked into it, should his robotic Yinsen not do its job properly. Tony flies out over the water, pushing his speed for five solid minutes before looping around to avoid the shipping lanes. Thinking about Yinsen is actually what makes him pull back, stops him from climbing too far skyward, too far ocean-ward.
Turns out the lump in his throat isn't affected by gravity or acceleration.
If it weren't for Yinsen, he wouldn't be here at all, and Tony is pretty sure that if it weren't for his plans to rescue Emory, she'd be stuck with permanent shrapnel threatening her heart, too.
Tony smirks. Well, he is often described as magnetic.
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On the day Tony's going to call, Emory wakes up at 5 AM and spends the next hour picturing gently drifting snow. She can basically tell him nothing. Her personal struggles are off-limits to SHIELD, who will definitely be eavesdropping, and her mission is off-limits to Tony, who would definitely be interested in 'helping.' Since that day in the sparring room, Natasha's training has shifted to control, with Clint coming along more often than not.
It's been… fun. More than that, it's helped her feel competent to control herself enough not to destroy her room this time.
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Pepper makes Tony go to sleep at nine PM the night before the call. The joke's on her, because Tony had planned to stay up all night and go to sleep right after (ha. HA HA), so he'd programmed JARVIS to make announcements leading up to the call at ten, five, and single minute intervals starting at a half hour prior. Since he's calling into SHIELD with his cell phone, he can be anywhere in the house, so Tony sneaks into one of the many hidden spaces with a blanket and pillow and waits for all hell to break loose. By call time, he'll be wide awake, which is good, because he can't tell Emory anything he doesn't want SHIELD to know, and that includes a good number of things they probably don't want to know.
It's… tempting to say most of them anyway in a blatant attempt to start a vomit chain in the surveillance room. It's a real shame Coulson won't be there.
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"So how did "The Call" go?" Clint asks ten hours later as they get out of the car and cross the field toward Fido, the mostly-destroyed tree they use for target practice.
"Audible air quotes are so early two-thousands," Emory complains.
Natasha doesn't even turn around as she says, "Co-signed."
"Uh uh. You don't get a vote, we decided this when you voted against 'Fido,'" Clint says, actually wagging his finger back and forth.
"How are you not a dad?" Emory asks him incredulously.
"Having bark is a perfectly good reason to name it after a dog, Natasha. And don't think I don't see you dodging my question, Em."
"The call was lovely," Emory says, turning fully towards Natasha. "Tony seems to have decided that in the absence of any ability to tell me what's been going on thanks to my governmental overlords, he should instead spend the time being overwhelmingly adorable. And, let me tell you-" Emory leans into the feeling in a way she hadn't been able to, hours before. She closes her eyes and grins, remembering the over-the-top endearments that Tony had lavished on her in a clear attempt to be revolting to everyone else who had chosen to listen in. "Mission accomplished."
"Well, Schmoopsie Pie, if I'd known it was that effective, I'd have pushed for more airtime," Tony's voice says from behind her.
Emory opens her eyes to see that both Clint and Natasha are standing in battle poses with clear surprise on their faces.
"Tony?" she asks, afraid to turn around and see that someone's tricked her with a recording.
"It's really me, Em," he says, and the repressed excitement she can hear in his voice is what convinces her to turn around. Now she understands why her teammates reacted the way they did. He's wearing a suit of shining armor.
"No white horse? Man, what a disappointment," she says, all thoughts of soothing static and energy dissipation gone with the wind that's whipping up around her.
"See, that, that right there? Is why there's no horse," Tony sasses back, grinning.
Emory's already running toward him, so wreathed with power and joy already that she lifts into the air for the last few feet. To her utter delight, Tony drops one palm down at his sides and gestures, lifting up just enough to catch her with the other arm. The uneven burst of power from his brand new suit starts them turning, and her accumulated energy continues it, spinning them around for a kiss every bit as scorching as the sun-warmed metal of his suit.