Tony Stark took another sip from the glass poured full of scotch as he stared at the flames burning merrily in the fireplace.
Grief is something new for the last Stark left in the world, he knew what to do with anger or rage or frustration, but grief, it just sits there, on his chest, like a lead weight, he poked at it, to find out whether there will be any tears or perhaps some other emotion will come gushing forth. But no, it's just there and he doesn't know what to do with it.
He hoped some sort of anger would come, after all being angry at his father has been one emotion he had a lifetime of experience dealing with, but once again, nothing. Its disbelief that's most prominent in Tony, alongside grief.
Howard Stark crashing his car because he was drunk on two pegs of scotch?
He might have believed, if it was two bottles instead, but two pegs?
There was something about ice on the road, but whoever said that obviously did not know that except for the exterior, every inch of a Stark's car is either heavily modified or custom built. That included the tyres.
It takes more than a few millimetres of ice for that car to have lost traction.
None of it made any sense, their deaths did not make any sense, his grief did not make any sense and this numbness did not make any sense.
As he continued to stare at those hungry flames, the doors of the mansion creaked open and the sounds of hard heels on the cold italian marble shattered the settled silence of the mansion.
Tony looked away from the flames and found himself staring at the stately middled aged woman who strode towards him.
Aunt Peggy, Tony thought, she said she had something to talk to me about at the funeral.
She settled herself in the high backed chair beside his own, in front of the fireplace and said with more warmth than he expected from her, "Anthony, how are you?"
The last time he had seen her before the funeral was four years ago, at his graduation from MIT. Even before then his Godmother has been distant for years, much different from the woman who played along with his re-enactments of Captain America's adventures as told by his father as a child.
A flash of irritation passed through him at that question, she had not been a presence in his life for years and has been a distant one even when she was for years before then.
"What do you care? You haven't cared for a decade, do Godparents care only once actual parents are dead?", he bit out.
She flinched visibly for a split second, but answered without any hesitation, "I cared Tony, I will always care about you. Your father demanded my distance. I have become too much a part of his life that he was no longer willing to come near his family. So my best-friend begged for me to keep my distance and I acquiesced."
"What? What does that even mean?", Tony demanded.
She sighed quietly, and answered, "The first time you were kidnapped, when you were eleven. They did not kidnap you because you were Tony Stark, son of millionaire industrialist, Howard Stark. They kidnapped you because you were Tony Stark, the only son of Howard Stark, Co-Founder of S.H.I.E.L.D and the Director of its Science and Technology Division."
"What is S.H.I.E.L.D?", Tony asked quietly, he could hear the acronym, some old memory even tugged and insisted he knew the acronym.
"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, its an extra-governmental agency", Aunt Peggy replied swiftly.
Tony snorted with a bit of unexpected humour before he can stop himself and said, "How long did it take you string those words together with at least some semblance of coherence. Obviously you decided on SHIELD before finding the words for the letters. Named in the honour of Captain America, I assume."
Aunt Peggy smirked with mischief for an instant before saying, "You won't believe how many Representatives and Senators did not get that reference."
Tony stared at that smirk on that face for a moment, it invoked faint memories of a fun childhood he had almost forgotten. Its hard for Tony to remember the boisterous laugh of his father when Tony pulled a successful prank on Howard with Aunt Peggy's help.
Perhaps understanding the thought that crossed his mind, Aunt Peggy turned melancholic and sombre.
Before the mood could take an even more depressive turn, Tony asked, "Why? I mean, why tell me of S.H.I.E.L.D? Obviously my father did not want me to know and I doubt that S.H.I.E.L.D itself wants me to know it exists. Its not an intelligence agency publicly acknowledged by the U.S. Government. If it was, I would have heard of it and probably got into its servers. So why tell me?"
Aunt Peggy sighed and that sigh seemed to deflate her, it felt like she almost aged ten years before his eyes, "Because, its Howard's legacy, as, much as Stark Industries is, as much as you are. Because you are trustworthy and have grown into a good man, whatever the tabloids say. And because, I believe, my best-friend was murdered and you are one of the handful of people I trust enough to even voice that belief in front of."
That lead weight of grief that sat on his chest finally did something, it brought the world into crystal clear clarity at those words. He would have expected anger, perhaps even tears, maybe they will come with time. But focus and clarity are much more welcome in this instant.
Tony leaned forward, his eyes intent on Aunt Peggy and asked softly, "Why do you believe that?"
"The Super Soldier Serum, your father recreated a version of it, for the Army. I wasn't supposed to know. My distaste for the experiments done to recreate it and my displeasure at Howard for even considering to lend a hand to those experiments is well known in certain circles. Your father and I argued relentlessly on the subject. Not just because those experiments were unethical and inhumane, but I believed a successful super soldier program needed three things, while your father believed two things are enough, Erskine's Serum to kick start and guide the change and Howards own Vita-Rays to fuel the change. I believe we need a good man to actually administer the serum to. Without that all we would be creating is another monster like Redskull."
Aunt Peggy fell silent for a moment after that before continuing, "Anyway, I digress, my belief did not make any sense to your father. But he respected my position on it and he respected me enough to let me know when recreated the serum he believed the closest to the original than ever before. So that if he was wrong and I was right, I would have the time to make contingencies."
Tony's mind raced and all of it started to fall into place, "The serum was in the car with him, he was going to deliver it to someone in the Pentagon. You think a third party knew about the serum and killed my father for it and my mother was collateral."
"Yes, the only people who were supposed to know about the serum are the General who oversees the Army's program on Super Soldier Serum, the President of United States, Howard and two SHIELD scientists, who Howard collaborated with, there was no written record of any of it. The work is done in complete secrecy. I checked upon every one involved, everyone of them is clean. Every second of their lives for past two years is accounted for, I might not know every secret they ever kept, but I do know whose secrets they are keeping. I might not know every word they spoke, but I know who they spoke it to. So that means..", Aunt Peggy trailed off leadingly.
"That the system you used to judge those five people clean is compromised. And you no longer trust it. You believe SHIELD is compromised", Tony answered the unspoken question.
"Yes, I believe so", Aunt Peggy continued in an iron tone and said, "If I had believed this to be work of a few spies that wormed into SHIELD, I would not have come to you now. I would have hunted them down myself. And I would be telling you, how I got justice for the murder of your parents. Your father resigned from his from his position as Director of SHIELD's science division ten years ago. To the organisation at large your father cut ties with SHIELD at the same time. Only a handful know he worked as a consultant for some very very confidential projects. Before Howards murder I trusted everyone of those people with my life. I would have trusted them with my family's live. Worse than all of that, I trusted them with knowledge that would make them threats to national and global safety."
"There is something more, I understand why I came to the conclusion that SHIELD is compromised so quickly, my hacks into various Intelligence Agencies servers quickly disabused me of their goodness or even their trustworthiness. But SHIELD is your life's work, the work you started in the honour of your lost love, a dead friend and a week of investigation should not be enough for you", Tony asked without asking.
"No, they wouldn't be, not unless I already had some suspicions. SHIELD is not effective as it should be. While most of SHIELD's funding comes from the U.S., not an insignificant amount of it comes from our allies and even the U.N. While other Intelligences are there to safe guard 'national interests', SHIELD's mandate is to make sure those narrow 'national interests' will not come into conflict to begin with. Its not about America and her allies winning the next World War, its about making sure there will never be another World War. In a few days USSR will officially dissolve and people will say Cold War has ended with it. They will say America is the only remaining Superpower in the world. That the good guys won. All of it misses the point, that all of humanity was at the edge of annihilation for nearly fifty years because two political entities got into a pissing contest about who was the strongest and whose Ideas are the best. It should not have taken SHIELD four decades to stop the Cold War. I am not even sure just how significant our own efforts have been. It feels like every time we were putting out a house fires someone out there started a forest fire while we were distracted."
"Very well, what do you need from me? Obviously not to play James Bond. So what can I do for you?", Tony asked.
Aunt Peggy smiled, "You would be surprised how well you can play at James Bond with a bit of training, your father did not have any and he did pull off some missions in the field when he needed to. But no, I have someone else to do that for me. What I want from you is technological superiority. I want you to create tech that's twenty years ahead of what's available now. I want better computers, hardware and software both, better communication devices, better surveillance equipment. And I want your perspective. Most successful missions of SHIELD ever pulled off were the ones your father and I worked together on planning and executing. And from what Howard told me again and again, you are three times smarter and stubborn than he ever was."
That last sentence hammered into his chest like a sledgehammer, a plaintive question quietly slipped out, "What?"
Whatever Aunt Peggy saw on his face gave her pause and softened her with an emotion he couldn't describe, before saying, "People say don't speak badly about the dead, but I have loved and lost more than most and your father was my best-friend, so I will say this plainly, Anthony, Howard was shit at being a father. He was a genius, but he was an idiot in some-things and his emotional growth was stunted. His own father used to beat him senseless until he ran away at eleven, then he fell in with street gangs for a while, it was not until his late teens that he got out of that life and got something of an education for himself and in his early twenties the Second World War started and gave rise to opportunities for him to exploit. What I am saying is his early life taught him some lessons, lessons that made him an excellent businessmen, he was cold-blooded and ruthless in business, so he succeeded. It was war and suffering that taught him camaraderie and friendship, and let me tell you, you could not have a better friend than Howard Stark. He would do anything for his friends, anything. But its your mother who taught him love, oh he loved his friends alright, but its your mother who taught him love is not something to be guarded. But to his dying day he remained convinced he would destroy you if you ever became closer. The one line I told you about his father is the only thing I know about your paternal grandfather, Howard would not speak another word about it. You don't ever have to forgive him for the hurts he has given you Tony, you have a right to them. You don't even have to believe me. Just know one thing, Howard might have been a shit father, but you have ever been a good son, he was privileged to have you."
"I need", Tony stopped to choke down whatever is stuck in his throat with a mouthful of scotch before saying, "I need some time to think on everything you told me."
"I can give you a week, think, but don't do anything without talking to me, I would not lose my godson. Jarvis knows how to get in touch with me", he came near and kissed his forehead before walking away.
And Tony stared into lurid flames and thought.