Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: This sort-of concludes the Iron Man 2 plot. Bruh, I never realized how flabbergasting the whole Vanko deal had to be for Tony even in canon until I was writing this story, even once Fury told him the context. He really only met Vanko like twice in-person and both times he tried to kill him lmao.
Anyways, chapter title comes from Back in Black by AC/DC.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~the black and gold 'verse~
~black and gold~
~chapter 16: back in black~
The day that Vanko finally attacked was on August 1st, as Natasha had told him that SHIELD had predicted.
Naturally, although Vanko could have chosen any other city on the West Coast to attack, any at all, such as San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, and more (not that Tony would have wanted any of these other cities to be attacked, let's be clear), he chose Los Angeles. The city was still recovering from the earthquake that it had experienced in June, because while California was highly adept at dealing with earthquakes, an earthquake of that magnitude that had caused two skyscrapers to collapse was still a lot to deal with.
But that was time that was going to be interrupted, and all because Vanko wanted to get back at Tony for what Howard had done to his father.
All because Vanko wanted to cause chaos on top of trying to attack Tony's children.
It didn't get that far, he just wanted to say that in advance. The second that a handful of security cameras in Los Angeles caught footage of the seven-foot-tall drones being released from some semi-trailer trucks scattered around the city, JARVIS was on it. "Sir," he announced. "It is time."
Tony, who had been in the process of whisking pancake batter for a late breakfast/early lunch for his kids (they'd all slept in longer than usual), stopped everything that he was doing. He let go of the whisk, causing its handle to clatter against the bowl.
Rebecca took over immediately, grabbing the bowl and taking it away from him. "Go," she said. Her face was grim. "You and Rhodey both. We can take care of this from here."
He didn't need to be told twice. Stepping away from the counter, he rushed over to the breakfast table, where the majority of his children and Pepper were staring at him in concern (Edward and Gemma were also gazing at him, their stares simply weren't to the same effect), and Rhodey was already rising from his chair. "Be good for Alfred, Rebecca, Pepper, and Dick," he told his children. "If things get bad enough, they'll take you down to the panic room, and you're all to staythere until either Rhodey or I come to get you, do you understand me? We'll be back as soon as we can."
I'll make sure that we both come back, I promise, he tacked on to that silently, making sure to keep it to himself. If it was a promise he wound up not being able to keep, just like his promise to stay safe in Afghanistan and all the other ones he'd broken since then, he didn't want to put the stress of that on his kids. Not again.
As it was, only Dick and Jason had really been told what was going to happen today in advance. Tony's younger children knew that he and Rhodey had to do something important, something involving the suits, yet that they hadn't been quite sure of when they were going to have to do this exactly. But that was pretty much all that they knew.
Dick's mouth twisted into a frown because of his knowledge. "Tony – "
"We'll be back," Tony reiterated. He glanced over at Rhodey, who nodded at him. Then he looked over at Natasha, who had been helping him make breakfast but was no longer. The younger kids had bee told that she was involved in all this as well, but not how; they knew that she wasn't exactly a nanny now, albeit they still treated her as such.
The sound of Happy's footsteps preceded his arrival; he, too, looked at Natasha expectantly.
"Are you ready?" Tony asked all of them.
Natasha was the one to answer him. "Of course, Dr. Stark," she replied. "Happy and I will be heading over there now."
"There" being the headquarters for Hammer Industries on this side of the country, which was located in Los Angeles. That was where the hacking came in: somebody had to make sure that all of the files on Vanko's arc reactor technology and his drones were deleted so that they wouldn't fall into the wrong hands.
"Platypus?" Tony double-checked.
"Ready," Rhodey said. "Let's go."
They went to the lab. This was perhaps the fastest suit-up of all time for both of them, because there was absolutely no time to waste. It was Tony's first time in a suit since before he'd gotten the arc reactors switched out. He'd now moved on from the Mark Three to the Mark Four: the Mark Four was mostly similar to the Mark Three, but it had more space for and even more protection over his abdomen than its predecessors did. There was additionally a protocol installed, the Hasty Retreat Protocol, to make sure that if he lost consciousness for more than a few seconds or his vital signs took a severe hit, the suit would fly him to safety of its own accord.
SHIELD might have wanted him to fight this battle that he was continuing to be a reluctant participant in – don't be fooled on that part – but he wasn't going to do it without making sure that his baby would be protected as much as she could be. No sir-ee.
Because this was his first time in a suit since the switch, however, he was unprepared for the side effects that came with it. "Gah!" he exclaimed, placing his metal-covered hands on his metal-covered knees.
"Tones?" Rhodey asked concernedly. Like Tony's, his voice had been masked by a voice modulator to hide his identity until he was ready for it to be revealed to the public. He reached out a hand, but didn't actually touch Tony. He didn't get that far. "You alright?"
Tony lifted his left hand. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" He breathed in deeply. "Just...wasn't expecting that."
The second that the arc reactor had been put to a greater usage other than keeping the shrapnel in his chest from reaching his heart, he'd felt a surge of electricity flash through his system – was still feeling it, too. It wasn't entirely unlike adrenaline: it felt like every part of him had been dialed up to eleven, if only briefly.
"...God," Tony said, smacking his lips. There was a distinctive taste to go along with the power surge. "That tasted like coconut. And metal."
"JARVIS, are you sure he's alright?" Rhodey asked, tilting his head up towards the ceiling.
"I'm right fucking here, Rhodey."
"Boss is fine, if not a little shocked."
You can say that again, Tony thought.
"But I believe there is a more pressing matter to attend to," the AI continued without missing a beat. "There are currently three of Vanko's drones flying towards the Beach House."
Tony and Rhodey flew out of the lab right in the nick of time.
Without even thinking about it, Tony activated one of the missiles on his shoulders and fired it at the first of the drones. The drone was well over four hundred feet away, though coming in hot. His aim was true: within seconds, the missile hit the drone and blew it up.
"Nice," Rhodey commented.
Tony grimaced. "We're only getting started."
The second and third ones weren't that much further behind the first. They zeroed in on Tony, which was their fatal mistake. While he took out one, Rhodey got the other.
The purpose of these three drones was clear to Tony. Like he'd said, Vanko had been trying to attack his children. Sure, one could maybe argue that he'd been trying to deal with Tony before he could became a nuisance, he supposed. But Tony knew better: Vanko wanted the fight and, more importantly, he wanted to make Tony feel like he had lost everything, like Vanko had with the death of his father.
It made Tony see red.
Nobody tried to hurt his children and get away with it.
"JARVIS, have Romanoff and Happy left the house yet?" he demanded.
"Just now, sir. They are on their way to the Hammer Industries' headquarters. The LAPD have also been informed to arrest Justin Hammer. He is currently at a restaurant in the city, not at Hammer Industries."
Good.
"I want you to activate the Mark Three remotely and use it at your discretion," Tony ordered his AI. "Don't let any other Vanko drones come even this close to the Beach House."
"Yes, sir."
To his best friend and honorary brother, Tony then said, "Alright, Rhodey. Let's go give this guy a taste of his own medicine."
"That sounds like a plan to me."
He and Rhodey came across five more drones as they flew to Los Angeles, which were all dealt with quickly. When they got to the city, they saw the chaos that he'd also mentioned beforehand: there were dozens and dozens of drones in the downtown area. They were inciting panic and causing destruction...and death. People were fleeing from them, but there were multiple bodies on the ground, either beneath rubble or with wounds that had obviously been caused by repulsers, unmoving.
Tony gritted his teeth.
There was no sign of a suit that wasn't a drone yet. That didn't matter. His attention was brought almost immediately to one drone on the ground. Its repulser was aimed against a child, a literal child, who was probably between the ages of Harley and Peter. Roughly the same age as the child that Tony had rescued during the earthquake. It wasn't the same kid: this kid's hair was more like Harley's in color, and he was just a bit taller. His face was hidden by what looked to be a homemade Iron Man mask. In the palm of his hand that he was holding up to the drone in the same way that it was to him was a fake repulser.
No, no, no, Tony thought.
He swooped down from the skies and landed in front of the kid in a heartbeat. The drone was destroyed by a shot of his repulsers.
He turned around to look at the kid. "Nice job, kid," he said. "Now, you need to go find your parents or get some cover, you hear me? It's not safe for you out here."
He watched the kid long enough for him to get over his shock to nod slowly. Then he took off again.
Rhodey was nowhere in sight. "Rhodes, where are you?"
"Somewhere near the streets," Rhodey said, prattling them off. "There's a lot of them here. 'Think they realized I'm with you."
"Yeah, things aren't a lot better here." There were more drones converging on him. He was dealing with them as quickly as they arrived, but they just kept on coming and coming. "JARVIS, are there any more going to the Beach House?"
"Negative, sir."
Great. Perfect. Absolutely extraordinary.
Tony really, really did not want to cause damage to any buildings more than necessary, however it was quickly becoming more and more apparent to him that he didn't have much of a choice. He tried to use the same icing-up trick on the drones that he had on Obadiah, but he wasn't successful there. Although not too many of them followed him up here in comparison to the horde he'd accumulated, they showed no signs of icing up in the ways that his first suit and Stane's suit had. Vanko had already accounted for that.
"Shit," he swore.
He shot back down to the ground, destroying as many as he could. He remembered one of the sites in Los Angeles that he'd been thinking about taking his kids to before the earthquake had happened. "Is the Los Angeles Conservatory still mostly intact? I know it's closed right now because of repairs."
"...If I say 'yes,' sir?"
"Then I'm going to need you to let me know how fast we can make a 10-million dollar donation or greater to them."
His AI did not get the chance to reply to him. He approached the Conservatory at breakneck speed and shot through its glass. His suit sustained the minimum amount of damage from it – but more importantly, the drones weren't that lucky. Many of them crashed into the frames that sustained the glass dome of the Conservatory and blew up. Only a few survived, and they were all quickly destroyed like their predecessors.
"What the hell was that for?" Rhodey demanded.
"Had to thin the herd," Tony explained, cringing. The action had been necessary, but man, he was hoping that they didn't suffer severe consequences because of it. Congressional hearings would be in his future, he was sure. He prayed not civilian charges on top of that. There was some precedent with vigilantes not being charged for the damage that they caused with his husband as Batman in Gotham, sure. But Los Angeles was an entirely different city compared to their home. "What's your 20?"
"Coming up behind you, what do you think?"
Tony turned around. There Rhodey was, with plenty of more drones behind him.
"Vanko's gone," Natasha's voice suddenly piped up on the comms. "It looks like he built a suit, like we thought. Be on the lookout for him."
"Aye, aye, Captain," Tony said.
He had the distinctive impression that she was rolling her eyes in spite of being unable to even see her doing so in any way, shape, or form. "Well done on the new chest piece. Even with the significantly higher output required by the suit, all of your vital signs look promising."
"Yes, I'm not currently dying anymore. Thank you."
"Tony!" Rhodey exclaimed.
"What? What do you want me to do?" He fired off a few of his rockets, his repulsers, and his lasers as Rhodey went streaming past, the drones hot on his tail. More of the drones expoloded.
Rhodey turned around and fired off his own, including the machine gun that was attached to his right shoulder. Honestly, that wouldn't have been Tony's first placement for a machine gun. Yet, the importance of something big and showy for the military was not lost on him, so that was what he had done in the end.
In the aftermath, Rhodey flew over closer to him. There was something about the face plate that made it well at conveying his undoubtedly bland expression. "That," he said.
Tony would've thrown his hands in the air if doing as much in the suit with his repulsers wasn't a very not good idea all around. "I'm sorry, I can't know what you're expecting me to do if you don't tell me about it! I'm not combat-trained!"
"Hey, save it for the debriefing," Natasha ordered. "You guys have got incoming. Looks like the fight's coming to you."
Tony swiveled his head around. He saw what she wanted them to see. "More drones?"
"Copy that."
"God," he huffed, "just how many did he make? Where did he even get the time to make this many? It's only been a month!"
"You know what they say," Natasha remarked in return, "'ain't no rest for the wicked.'"
...She was being cheeky with him, wasn't she?
It was a good thing for her that he and Rhodey swiftly ended up being to busy for him to say something back.
JARVIS was keeping up a kill count in the corner of his information screen on how many drones he and Rhodey were destroying. You know, like they were in one of those shooter video games that Tony didn't allow his kids to play and everything.
(Note: the reason why he didn't allow them to play those games was not because he thought they would make them violent or anything like that, because that was stupid. Rather, it was because he didn't want them to get unhealthy idealisms about how war went. This was even more true now, after he'd seen the destruction that his own weapons had been doing without his knowledge or consent.)
The kill count was somewhere in the 160's range. Yes, the number was right in front of him, he simply wasn't processing it. He couldn't.
It was all bleeding together. Destroying the drones. Saving the civilians. Fighting the fight.
He'd always respected and appreciated Bruce for what he did along with Selina, Dinah, Dick, and now Jason, but now he was gaining even greater levels of those two things. He'd never properly understood until now just how hard all of this was.
Just when he felt like he was getting too overwhelmed, JARVIS pulled out an old trick in the book that Tony had used before when he'd gotten overwhelmed on a project in the lab at home, or during paperwork at work, or any other time that desperately called for it:
He started playing music for Tony.
The familiar tune of Back in Black by AC/DC filtered in through Tony's ears and gave him the spark that he needed. "Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long, I'm glad to be back..."
This was the song that had been playing back in that Humvee in Afghanistan, the day that those soldiers including Jimmy had died trying to protect him and he'd been kidnapped by the Ten Rings.
The day that he had been reborn, for all intents and purposes.
A smirk began to twitch at his lips. "Thanks, JAR."
"Anytime, sir."
By the time that he and Rhodey had gotten rid of the last of the drones that were near them, the total number destroyed was over two hundred. They both landed in a small park that was utterly devoid of citizens, because they'd all fled as fast as they could.
...Hopefully.
"Nice job for someone who, in their own words, is 'not combat-trained,'" Rhodey commented absentmindedly. It surprised Tony that he sounded similarly as shaken from this entire thing as the omega was. Rhodey let out a small whoop, shaking his head. "Damn, never thought I would be doing shit like this when I first became friends with you."
He didn't say it like he regretted it, not at all. Tony understood where he was coming from. He never could have imagined this, either.
"You didn't do too bad yourself, sour patch."
"Thanks."
That was all of the rest that they were allowed. "Yes, both of you did good. Now, head's up," Natasha spoke up. "You've got one more drone coming. This one looks different. The repulser signature is significantly higher."
Vanko.
Ivan Vanko landed directly in front of him and Rhodey. His suit was a bit like Stane's: it was bulkier than either Tony's or Rhodey's. His arc reactor was a clean white, unlike Tony's blue and Rhodey's red. He was already holding his electric whips in his hands.
He lifted up his face plate so that he could be seen without it. He was smirking viciously. "Stark," he said. "It is good to see you again."
Tony briefly, basically for a millisecond, thought about seeing if he could try to reason with him. Maybe he could try to explain to him that Howard wasn't actually his father at all, and something in the alpha's twisted mind would think the lack of a biological connection made trying to get his revenge worthless. He quickly discarded the thought.
Trying to reason with crazy was never something that would end well. The Joker was a prime example of that.
"This ain't gonna be good," Rhodey said, stating the obvious. "Good thing I've got something special for this guy."
He activated one of his last remaining rockets and fired it. His aim was perfect – yet rather than the rocket hitting Vanko and blowing him up like his drones, Vanko batted it away at the last second with ease, as if it was nothing more than a cat toy. The rocket went flying, exploding just when it was a safe enough distance from them.
Vanko lowered his face plate. "Is that all you've got, Stark?" he gruffed.
"Not quite," Tony answered. He didn't say anything this time about his identity not being what it truly was. There was no point and no time.
Various targets for the weapons of his suit were aimed on Vanko. The weapons fired. They, however, were similarly useless as Vanko marched forwards, cracking his whips. He swung one of them, which created a shower of sparks as it crashed against the ground between Rhodey and Tony. They had to duck away from each other to avoid the whip.
Rhodey fired off his machine gun and his other guns. Vanko swung his other whip at him. The whip sliced off his machine gun in one fell swoop and sent him stumbling back.
"Rhodey!" Tony shouted.
His best friend was fine. The electricity hadn't hit any of the vital systems for his suit.
But, just like with his children:
"Nobody tries to hurt my best friend," Tony growled. "Give me back my Rhodey!"
He flew forwards and was able to get a few hits in before one of Vanko's whips wrapped around him and pulled him down to the ground. Tony felt his back crash into a large rock; he gasped. Damn, that had hurt.
The baby was still fine. There was a slight change in her heartbeat from the pain, though nothing more than that.
He got to his feet as Rhodey went back to firing at Vanko. Tony flew at Vanko while he was distracted, although not thatdistracted. He batted Tony away and wrapped one of his whips around Rhodey's neck like he did this all the time.
Tony wasn't going to keep on having this. He came up behind Vanko after he'd pulled Rhodey towards him with his whip and started punching him. Tony got several more good hits in, ones that were better than before –
– Until Vanko hit him with his free whip and head-butted him. Vanko used the whip and wrapped it around his neck like he had Rhodey's. He pulled both of the whips and brought Tony and Rhodey to their knees.
In comparison to everything else he'd experienced since February, the pain from the electricity digging into his suit, deeper and deeper, wasn't that bad. It was agonizing, yet not so agonizing that he couldn't think about a way to get himself and Rhodey free and protect his baby.
An idea popped into his brain. It was very dangerous. Not something he had ever tested before.
He was willing to try it anyways.
"Rhodes, I've got an idea," he managed to say. "You want to be a hero?"
"What?"
"I could really use a sidekick. Put your hand up!"
"This your idea?"
Wasn't that obvious? "Yep!"
"I'm ready," Rhodey replied. "I'm ready. Go, go, go!"
"Take it!" grunted Tony.
At the same time, they fired their repulsers at each other. The two beams of energy met in the middle, which resulted in an explosion that Vanko was unfortunately (for him) in the center of. Tony was sent flying back from the force of it, and he absentmindedly imagined so was Rhodey.
He was pretty sure that he lost consciousness for a second.
Just a second.
It was silent when he came to. He got to his feet and saw Rhodey doing the same. He walked over to his best friend.
They approached Vanko together in silence. His suit had been severely damaged by the repulser explosion. It looked like a lot of the damage was internal. He was probably extremely wounded.
He was probably going to die.
Tony thought back to Stane's death, where the alpha had given him the spiel about how Howard and Tony, but mostly Tony, had wronged him over the years. How that somehow meant he'd been justified in trying to kill him. And he thought about the Joker, too, who had perhaps given Bruce the truth in what had happened to him that night Bruce had brought him down for good.
Neither of those things happened here.
"You...lose," Vanko bit out.
As he drew his last breath, his arc reactor began to glow red.
"Shit!" Tony exclaimed for the second time in recent memory. He and Rhodey backed away as fast as they could. "Romanoff, are there any more drones out there?" If Vanko's suit was set to explode with his death or a mechanism he'd pulled, it only made sense that he'd done the same with his drones."
"There are a few still scattered around the city," she reported. "You're not going to be able to destroy them in time. Get out of there."
Tony scowled. She was probably right, but he didn't like such a defeatist attitude. "Romanoff – "
BOOOOOOM!
Due to the drones, Justin Hammer, despite having been placed under arrest fairly early on into the attack, had been forced to remain in the restaurant he'd been eating at for "his own safety." What that meant, Tony didn't know, unless the LAPD had been suspicious of the drones attacking him if he'd gone to step outside...which, maybe that could've been a distinctive possibility, now that he got to thinking about it, depending on how much Hammer had annoyed Vanko. Knowing him, it'd probably been a lot.
Tony landed outside the building the restaurant was in just as the police were finally leading him out of it. Hammer let out a yelp at him suddenly dropping out of the sky, a very undignified yelp. "Iron Man!" he exclaimed. His face was ashen. "Don't shoot me, don't shoot me, my hands are handcuffed behind my back!"
What a coward, Tony thought.
Actually, no, not a coward: he was sure that Hammer knew exactly what he was doing. He could tell by the gleam in his eye.
"I'm not going to shoot you," Tony said. He hadn't even raised his repulser at him. "I'm just here to give you – and the rest of the world – a message."
Hammer gawked at him. Meanwhile, one of the reporters who had started to congregate around them regardless of all the chaos that had happened over the past couple of hours, asked, "What's the message, Iron Man?"
Tony went to face her. "The suits that I and War Machine wear – " they'd decided on that for the name of Rhodey's suit. It was better to get it out in the open now: he didn't trust the media not to name him something stupid like Iron Patriot " – and the arc reactor technology, all of it, is not up for grabs. You've seen today how dangerous it is when it's in the wrong hands," he stated. "Don't even try to replicate it. Ivan Vanko, who made the drones after he was hired by Justin Hammer – "
"I didn't hire him!" Hammer exclaimed.
"Don't even bother trying to lie, man," Rhodey said after he'd also landed, causing a brief clamor as people moved around him. "Think of your daughter. You want her to see you blatantly lying on live television?"
Tony acted like neither of them had spoken. " – Was bent on a mission of revenge against Tony Stark. But he had an advantage in the technology that nobody else besides Stark does. The entire world is decades behind in making it. And even if somebody is successful at creating an arc reactor, they'll live to regret it, believe me."
"Is that a threat?" another reporter shouted out.
He turned to look at them. "No, it's a promise."
"Are you Tony Stark?" screamed a third. "Is this 'War Machine' with you Colonel Rhodes?"
There wasn't exactly an easy way to answer that. If he outright said he wasn't Tony Stark, that would be lying...which could get him in trouble in one of those aforementioned potential Congressional hearings, or just the law in general. And the alternative wasn't much better because...
"Our identities are not up for discussion," Tony said.
The reporter was eager. "So you are Dr. Stark?"
That led to an increase in the rabble. People were shouting, and Justin Hammer was grinning as the police officers were trying to shove him into the back of a police car. "I knew it!" he said. "Vanko was right all along!"
"Like I said, our identities are not up for discussion!" Tony repeated himself, louder so that he could be heard over everyone else. "You have a problem with that, take it up with Dr. Stark, not me!"
...He was setting himself up for even more of a migraine with that, wasn't he?
"Dr. Stark! Dr. Stark!"
I've had enough of this.
"War Machine!" he called out. "You ready?"
His best friend inclined his head. "Let's fly."
Unfortunately, SHIELD decided that he and Rhodey needed to be checked out and undergo that debriefing Natasha had spoken of as soon as possible. But to get out of the suits, they had to go back to the Beach House first, so that was what the two of them did. Tony was anxious to see his kids.
He got his wish. Barely of the suit when the lab doors were opened, he was mobbed by the ones that were able to walk. "Omi!" Lili, Harley, Peter, and Bea all exclaimed, running over to him. Dick and Jason weren't far behind them.
"Hey, hey, hey, not too close!" he warned them. They all stepped back.
It was only for a few seconds. As soon as he was fully out of the suit, he was going over to them and pulling them into a giant hug. "'Told you guys we'd be back," he said. It was a promise he'd been able to keep after all.
"Omi, you were so amazing!" Peter told him.
Tony was sure that he felt the muscle under his right eye twitch. "You guys watched all that?"
"Not all of it," Pepper assured him, appearing in the doorway. She had Riri perched on her hip. She went over to Rhodey, who looked as if his day had become infinitely better in seeing his girlfriend and daughter again. "Hi, James."
"Vera," Rhodey returned. He planted a kiss on her lips, causing the kids to all cheer. He took Riri from Pepper and smothered her face in kisses. "And – my – daughtr! My – darling – Georgie!"
"Daddy!" Riri shrieked in laughter.
Pepper redirected her focus back on Tony. "They didn't watch all of it," she said. "We turned off the news before it could get too – " she made a gesture with her hands mimicking an explosion.
"Violent."
"Did you get the bad guy?" Harley asked excitedly. "Did you kill him?"
Tony froze.
He got over himself as soon as he could. Crouching down so that he was eye-level with Harley, he grabbed his hands gently. "That's not what it was about, mimmo," he said quietly. "And killing is never, ever a good thing. You know that. Remember what your dad says?"
Harley's demeanor shifted. "'Justice, not vengeance?'"
"That's right," Tony said.
There was more that he wanted to say than that, so much more, but yet another person appearing in the doorway caught his attention. Lifting his eyes, he saw that it was Natasha. She was wearing a different outfit than she had when he and Rhodey had left, but it still gave her the appearance of a nanny. She must've had a clothes change or two since then.
"Dr. Stark," she spoke.
"Can't it wait?" he snapped at her. "I just got back."
The look in her eyes told him that it couldn't. Undoubtedly because of Fury insisting on it.
"Tony, what's going on?" Dick asked worriedly.
Sighing, Tony got to his feet. "Have to do a debriefing and whatever over what just happened, I guess," he explained. He was really starting to hate SHIELD now. "Don't worry, we'll be back."
"Can we come with you?" Lili pleaded.
Tony opened his mouth to tell her that they couldn't, however Natasha beat him to the punch. "Of course you can," she answered, smiling.
He glared at her.
There was no use for it once she put it in the kids' minds, though. He didn't have the heart to tell his kids "no" after that. So they went with them to the SHIELD facility which was almost all of the way out to Ojai, and surprisingly was well-equipped to deal with kids ranging from the ages of 1 to 18. Everyone in the household had to go for some reason, albeit there was a specific interest in him, Rhodey, and...Rebecca. She was uncomfortable with it, but Natasha assured them that it was related to a specific purpose that he and Rhodey would also be told about. That made Tony ease up a little.
The medical checkup didn't take that long. Tony would have some bruising relating to his crashing into the rock and Vanko's whip going around his neck, yet that was all. It was confirmed that the baby was fine, that his replacement for the arc reactor was working, and that there was hardly any palladium left in his system.
Afterwards, he was led to an office-sort of room (as opposed to an interrogation room) with a table, two chairs, an armchair in one corner, and floor-to-ceiling windows. There were some other things as well, they merely didn't interest him too much. He wandered over to the windows, looking outside. The view was of the almond orchard that surrounded the facility. Best way to remain out of sight was to surround yourself with trees, he figured.
He didn't look out the windows for long, the need to sit after so much stress in a matter of hours and his pregnancy getting to him. Although the armchair looked inviting, he sat down in one of the chairs at the table instead. He hadn't noticed it before, but there were some folders laying on the table with the SHIELD logo stamped on them and everything. Tony pulled one of the folders closer to him, the one labeled AVENGERS INITIATIVE PRELIMINARY REPORT and opened it up.
As soon as he did, the door to the room opened. "I don't think I want you looking at that," Fury said as he walked over, taking the folder out of Tony's hands and closing it before he sat down opposite of him. "I'm not sure that it pertains to you anymore."
Irritation flickered within him. "What do you mean by that? I don't even know what that is!"
"Call it a pet project of mine," Fury replied. He must've seen that wouldn't be enough by the look on Tony's face; he sighed. "The Avengers Initiative is a plan to assemble a team of extraordinary individuals, when a world-ending threat arises. Yes, 'when,' not 'should' or 'if.'" Tony's mouth had opened at his word choice; he closed it. "Up until recently, you were a prime candidate for consideration."
There was a lot that Tony could have focused on three sentences. He settled for: "'Were?' What makes you think that I would want to join your super secret boy band? I'm an omither of eight children, soon to be nine! Hell, I shouldn't have agreed to help you take down Vanko in the first place because I'm pregnant! Basically the only reason why I did was because you gave me the necessary tools to discover the new element for my arc reactor and helped me find out that Howard's not my biological father!"
Fury smirked. "Funny. That is almost entirely what Romanoff had to say of you in her report." He pushed one of the other two folders on the table towards Tony. "Read it."
Against his better judgment, Tony opened up the folder. "Personality overview," he read off out loud for no real reason. "'Dr. Stark displays compulsive behavior.'" He sniffed haughtily. "Not gonna deny that one. 'Prone to self-destructive tendencies.'" He looked up to glare at Fury. "In my defense, I thought I was getting close to dying." Back to the folder, "'Recruitment assessment for Avenger Initiative. Iron Man? Yes. Tony Stark not...not recommended?'"
Tony was flabbergasted. "What the hell? That doesn't make any sense! How can you approve me but not approve me?"
"Read on," Fury said.
He did. There was a paragraph under Natasha "not recommending" him to be part of the Avengers Initiative, which explained her reasoning for why she was. "'Tony Stark is an omither and husband first and foremost, caring for his children, husband, and their family above all others. While Stark can compartmentalize, thereby not making this necessarily a liability, he is unlikely to want to join the Avenger Initiative to ensure that he can take care of his children.'" He paused. "Well, she's not wrong. 'This has become more important to him since he was kidnapped in Afghanistan in February.' What, were you guys seriously considering me for this even before then?"
Fury didn't answer him. That figured.
"'His actions since have been more out of a sense of duty and responsibility than true desire for the work ethic. Thus it is my recommendation that Tony Stark not become part of the Avenger Initiative.'"
Natasha...had read him pretty darn well. He wouldn't deny that.
He put the folder back on the table. "So, what does all that verbiage mean?"
"It means that, at this juncture, we believe that we'd only like to use you as a consultant," Fury explained, clasping his hands together.
Tony snorted. "You can't afford me."
"No," the director of SHIELD, shockingly, agreed. "What? You're surprised that I'm recognizing we have budget limits? We couldn't afford the reasonable price that you would offer us, but there are...other ways that we could offer you some compensation."
"I swear to God, if by that you mean making sure Rhodey and I don't go to prison for what we did today, I'll – "
"You don't need to worry about any charges, civil or legal," Fury interrupted him. "That is standard practice for SHIELD, not compensation or a courtesy. It would benefit us just as much as it would you if you were arrested for damage you caused on our orders. Congressional hearings might be a different matter, but we'll coach you on what to say if you have to attend one."
"Okay, then wha – ?"
"You finally found out that Howard, as you said, is not your biological father." A gleam was in Fury's eye as he spoke. He picked up the only other folder on the table that Tony hadn't looked at yet and held it out to him. This one was labeled as PERSON OF INTEREST 13-1-7-14-5-20-15, a stark – pun not intended – cry from its predecessors. "While I can't offer you to meet him for more reasons than one, wouldn't you like to find out more about the man who is?"
Tony stared at the folder for several, long seconds. His mind was racing with a paradoxical combination of thoughts and no thoughts at all. "What makes you think that I'd want to know anything about him?"
Fury's smirk returned. "Oh, believe me. You'll want to know."
Word Count: 6,527
Next Chapter Title: nothing compares 2 u
