Collateral 13 - and end
And this is the last installment. There's a related mini-scene which I'll post, and the next thing I'll do is add the links to the stories to the entries so they are all in one place for reference.
Thanks for reading and commenting. :)
Collateral: Chapter Thirteen
Title: Collateral
Status: Finished
Authors: gileonnen and vashtan
Fandom: Iron Man/The Punisher crossover (Iron Man filmverse, The Punisher MAX comicverse)
Pairing: Tony Stark/Frank Castle, Tony Stark/Other
Rating: Adult
Summary: Frank Castle traces a grey shipment to Stark Industries, and demands an explanation. This brings him face-to-face with another vigilante-playboy Tony Stark.
Warning: Dark (the Punisher is involved, after all). Kinky (knife play, restraints, techno fetish, death, bombs, implied heavy abuse, and bambi dies).
Disclaimer: No money is being made & no breach of copyright is intended.
Dedication: To all the Marvel writers that don’t own their creations and don’t get a cut of the huge profits of films featuring them, and especially to the original creators and writers working on the Punisher and Iron Man ‘intellectual property.’
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Patrick Baker had begun to live at Stark Industries HQ--he had a room next to his office where he slept, had restaurant fare sent to him twice a day, unless he was meeting stakeholders and the ‘key talent’ for food in the golf club he also attended.
Looking at his performance over the first weeks, he’d clocked up eighty hours of work per week, firmly established a rule that he would, under no circumstances, attend more than a cumulative ten hours of meetings per week, which was considerably less than Tye had had to put up with. He’d also bullied another board member into leaving in a huff-one of the guys who’d not wholeheartedly supported him.
He’d introduced himself to most of the middle management, with more meetings scheduled, and he’d taken a huge interest in all the segments of the market where Stark Industries was active. At the same time, he charmed the high and mighty like his life depended on it, attending and throwing charity events like there was no tomorrow, raising funds for wounded soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions, funded young scientists straight out of MIT with grants and goodies, and gave the press far more than they’d wanted. Baker was seen walking in on scientists working on current projects, watching. Learning. People still didn’t know what his plan was.
Even the prototype ‘practically fuel-free’ car that Tony had wheeled into a charity event had done little to assuage the buzz; while it was flashy and drew the interest of a half-dozen auto companies--Mitsubishi and Honda were duking it out over the rights to develop the idea, with Ford waiting on the sidelines to pile-drive the victor--no one knew what it meant in the larger restructuring process. Stark Industries was branching out, kudzu-like, into energy, transportation, and medical technology, and a few companies with comfortable near-monopolies were growing distinctly uncomfortable with the pressure.
"You want me to make these MIT kids my students?" Tony asked incredulously, at the end of another endless (forty-three minute) meeting. The board was breaking--or scuttling for cover--and he and Baker had the end of the long table to themselves.
“These are the smartest I could buy”, said Baker. “Hungry. Falling over their feet to learn from you. If we are going to lead in all those fields, Mr. Stark, we have to have a hell of a lot more talent than you. The next generation. Building a legacy. Give them small stuff you’re too bored to fully develop. Toss them an idea to sink their teeth in. Knock up the blonde and marry her … do whatever you please, but we are just starting our war here. And as a note, shares are up ten points since I joined. I already made you a couple billion. Trust me. All you need to do is point the kids in the right direction. You might enjoy it.”
"Do I look like a professor to you?" Tony rubbed at his eyes. He'd found a grey hair this morning. "I'd have to set them up a workshop. Hire someone to supervise them so they don't blow themselves up, or at least program something. And to be perfectly honest, they'd be touching my things. You're totally sure this is a good idea?"
“They can work over here, at Stark Industries--I had a new research facility outfitted, for your cyborg projects.”
Tony dropped his hand and looked Baker in the eyes. "Cyborg projects? I don't have any cyborg projects."
“I mean your advanced prosthetics. I’ve come to call it cyborg project, which is probably a bit brash of me.” Baker reached into his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper.
Tony Stark creates first cyborg was the headline, and there was a photo of gloved and sunglassed David, at an airport. The damning piece of evidence was an x-ray shot of his body as he passed through security. “I’m getting calls whether this FBI agent is a prototype and when we want to present it. So far, I say you’re working on something and that the last thing in the world I’d do is interrupt Tony Stark’s creative flow.”
Tony stared at the header, wide-eyed. "... shit, this is not marketable. There is no cyborg project. That was a favor to a friend."
“I hope you’ve registered the patents?” Baker studied the article, like he hadn’t already. “You put a crippled man back together. Do we have a right to keep this from those who were crippled in a similar vein?” He waved. “It’s a theoretical question, of course. But you should have seen the soldiers that ended up in minefields… or blown up on patrol. I’ve donated a good sum from the marketing budget and brought the cheque in person.”
"I have seen them. And trust me, I'm going to do something about it-but we're talking about the kind of technology where if it became an option for elective surgery, it'd be like the fucking Matrix. I'll dumb down the system for an exclusive contract with the military, maybe, but this--" Tony indicated the photo. "This, we are not marketing."
“That’s fine. Just make them better than the competition. I have a bunch of researchers on the job to get an idea what the competition will launch in the next couple years. Trump that, and you can build and keep under wraps whatever you like--from my perspective. You can do that anyway, of course. Just trump the Japanese and the Swiss, and I’m happy.” Baker gave him a smile.
With the studied irony of the company owner talking to his employee, Tony drawled, "Yes, sir. Send me the CVs on those MIT kids, will you? I have to find out how much they're going to hold me back."
“Consider them forwarded.” Baker regarded him with the same irony, only the other way round. “Fire me anytime. I know you don’t like me, but I’ll still run your company like it should be run. It’s a beauty, and I’m in love with it, but I know she’s married to you.”
"So this is your dream job now? The one you were trying to get by working with Stark Industries?"
“I’ve blocked all incoming calls from headhunting agencies. Sometimes I can make the BlackBerry do what I want.” Baker grinned sharply.
Tony laughed at the feral eagerness in that grin. "Just don't try it on the treadmill again. Seriously, p-r-o-t-t? How the hell was I supposed to figure that one out?"
Baker laughed, no less feral, with plenty of white teeth. “I was doing 13km/h on the treadmill. And all voice recognition systems for handsets suck.” He fished out the offending device and pressed few buttons. “Right, I have Monday off, but I’m coming in Tuesday.”
"I'll be in and out. Like usual. Send me a voicemail if you have anything to say, okay?" Tony offered his hand to be shaken.
“Of course, sir.” Baker stood and shook his hand. “Have a look at the prosthetics lab if you have five minutes in between and ask Mr. Klein to get whatever other equipment is missing…” He closed his briefcase and left the board room.
Tony looked around the empty board room, out the great glass windows at the city spread below. Things had been picking up and moving on all around him; he'd flown a mission to Georgia and torn a Russian tank to hell, then saved a chopper in free fall. He'd rescued hundreds.
Pepper was smiling these days when she came into the workshop to bring him coffee; they'd been slowly reconnecting ever since he'd put the Punisher debacle behind him. She was working more heavily with the company lately, taking care of the minutiae of his life less often. "You can take care of yourself now. I like that about you," she'd said once; although she never said it, he knew that she was thankful that he hadn't turned into the Punisher.
He'd learned a lot from Frank Castle--and then the world had moved on. Frank hadn't checked in since his resurrection (still in a snit over the 'betrayal,' Tony thought), but Fury had said that he was recovering well. Something to keep in the back of his mind, but as the days went by, Frank moved further and further to the back.
Tony stopped by the prosthetics facility on the way out, taking time to chat with the scientists and the refurbishing team about what he was envisioning. A surprising number of them had decades of experience in the field, and an even more surprising number were young up-and-comers in rehabilitation and robotics. Baker had chosen well, he thought on his drive home. A good crop of workers, ready to meet the challenges of the project.
He had dinner with Pepper that night: salmon seasoned with lemon and white pepper, and a rice dish that he'd have to remember the name of so that he could request it again. After the meal, it was down to the workshop to retool the old designs for David's hands. He felt the old energy for the project surging in him as he studied the designs--a feeling that was both vital and inspiring. Not as much a challenge as the first attempt had been; that had been art. This was work, and for the first time in years, he really felt ready to work.
* * * *
Fury didn’t meet him often. In fact, he was just passing through, as he informed him he’d meet him “in that nice beach house, twenty-one sharp.” He was a busy man, the director of SHIELD, keeping an eye on threads most people never realized existed, running secret organizations and operatives with a tireless efficiency.
Jarvis just let him in, informing Tony that his ‘guests had arrived’, and not much later, the director of SHIELD walked down the spiral staircase, knowing exactly where he Tony could be found. Another man followed him, wearing dark clothes--black jeans and a tight, long-sleeved shirt.
Recognizing Frank Castle happened by the way he moved--the strength and purpose, determination like he was going into battle. The face was changed, however--the broken nose had been fixed, and there had been quite an amount of surgery on the scars, which took an easy ten years off Frank. His black hair was shorter than it had been, trimmed neatly, just as neat as the shave, and buzzed in his broad neck. It took a moment to find the biggest change, though. He sported a tan like he’d been out in the sun for maybe a week or so.
Tony had to stare for a moment, taking in that familiar economical grace and the known-unknown features. "You look great," he said, putting down the spanner he'd been holding and going to the door to let them in. "You actually look Italian."
“Just picked him off Maui to drop him in your lap”, Fury said. “Field test whether Frank can deal with the sun.”
Frank shot Fury a glance. “You look darker than I remember you, too.” Despite the retort, his body language suggested that Fury outranked him by a mile, so he remained somewhat stiff and tense. “Can I see that suit?” he asked.
"Yes, absolutely. You can even try it on, if you want--the flat reactor was a bitch to do, but I figured it out while I was working on that new low-fuel vehicle design. This is going to work basically like mine works, but with a few custom features."
He led Frank across the floor of the workshop, past other projects under construction and the hulking specter of his own suit--undergoing repairs after a glancing hit from a shoulder-mounted cannon. They stopped before a cabinet nearly hidden in the metal paneling of the walls, with a keypad fashioned out of seemingly random bolts scattered on his surface. Tony's fingers danced over the secret keys, tracing out a pattern that only he knew, until at last the doors swung open with a hydraulic hiss.
The second suit stood there, coolly gorgeous, blastproof glass and what looked like blued steel. Its facemask bore only a trace resemblance to that e-fit that the FBI had passed out, months ago; something about the eyebrows, the grim line of the mouth. A human resemblance as hidden as the cabinet, and one that no one who wasn't looking would have noticed.
"You like it?" Tony asked, stepping back from his work.
Frank looked at it, blue eyes reflecting the color of the steel. He was still withdrawn, collected, very much like a ticking timebomb, at the same time, he looked so much more sane than he’d ever been. He walked around the suit, inspecting it like a sergeant would inspect a recruit, but the suit wasn’t intimidated, and above all, it was flawless. Frank stood behind it, from Tony’s perspective they lined up perfectly.
“Looks like I have joined SHIELD”, Frank said. “Power it up for me.”
"You heard him," said Tony, grinning, hands in his pockets. "Suit him up."
From every wall of the concealed space, there came mechanized hands--tiny, fragile, deft as they slotted plates into place and bolted them neatly together. Slowly, Frank vanished under heavy plating, watching as it happened, face concealed last of all. Tony took a few steps back, giving Frank room to walk if he felt like it. "It takes a few weeks to learn to drive it," he offered. "Like a car, or--whatever else you've learned to drive."
Frank moved, first one leg, a small step, and then paused as the way the suit responded to his motions seemed to surprise him; he stretched out his arms for balance, took another step, careful, walked a few meters and turned back, returning to the spot where he’d started. “Like learning to walk all over again”, he finally said.
Fury appeared near Tony’s shoulder, chewing on one of the Cubans. “Soldier of Fortune, then?”
Frank found the mechanism that opened the visor and pushed it open, looking at Fury. “If I have to bend over for you, at least call me what I like.”
Fury laughed, creating a cloud of smoke around him. “Yeah. Who’s your daddy, Frank.” Grinning broadly.
Tony came perilously close to rolling his eyes. "You didn't actually fuck him, right? You're being clever and metaphorical or something."
Fury raised an eyebrow, then gave a small sigh as he remembered Tony Stark’s file and habits. “The Kaplan boy. What’s your take on him?”
“Been treated rough. Good kid, needs some polishing and training”, Frank said.
“Yeah, and he’s a cyborg”, said Fury and looked at Tony.
"He's a normal, slightly messed-up guy who just happens to have some extremely realistic prosthetics!" Tony protested. "Why is everyone so hung up on 'cyborg'?"
“I’ll have him picked up. But before that goes anywhere, he’ll lose that eyepatch.” Fury studied Frank in the suit for a moment longer. “Tony will let me know when you’re trained up, Soldier.” He turned to Tony. “Get him ready. Soon is good. Sooner is better.”
"My pleasure." Tony made a passable attempt at a salute, watching Fury leave through the glass doors and head up the spiral stair. When he'd gone, Tony turned back to Frank, unable to keep himself from grinning at seeing that altered face on the body that he had crafted. "Soldier of Fortune, huh? We get another one, and we'll be a mix tape."
“Classic rock superheroes.” Frank smiled a little. “Get me out… too tight on the chest.” He touched his knuckles to the breast plate. “Reanimation. Fucked my chest up.”
"Gotcha. Get back into the cabinet, okay? No closet jokes, they're old." Tony watched as his robots undid the armor that he'd made, studying their efficiency, measuring Frank's chest with his eyes. "I can adjust the chestplate for you tonight, if you want to get started."
“Yeah. Everywhere else is a good fit.” Frank seemed relieved to be free, but didn’t take his eyes off the suit as it stood there. “I’d been imagining something else. Black, with the white skull for a face.” His eyes narrowed a little. “But this is good. I can work with this.”
"You're not the Punisher anymore. You're going to have to." Tony took a slow step forward, leaving space between them. Not pushing for contact, and Frank didn’t move back or forward.
“They are changing my name, new life, new biography. My name is now on the grave of my family. Fury’s idea.”
"Yeah. About what I did." Tony looked down. "I'm sorry it turned out that way."
Frank placed a hand flat against the suit’s chest. “Iron Man versus the Punisher. You win. When did you decide that I … the Punisher had to be destroyed?”
Tony took another step, standing close--close enough to touch Frank's arm, if he'd reached out. "It would be easy to turn into you, you know?" he answered. "You're the best. You're everything I could be. And to tell you the truth, that scared the hell out of me."
Frank looked at him, eyebrow raised. “The path of the vigilante. You didn’t want to live like me. You had more to lose.” A small, amused sound. “Whereas I was getting tired… ran out of war somewhere… kept going because I didn’t know how to stop.”
"You look... happier now, I guess. Are you?"
“Ask me again in the middle of battle.” Frank looked at the suit. “Graduated from infantry to heavy mechanized infantry … the thing feels like a tank. I’ll have to rethink my tactics. Maybe go with something lighter for my usual MO, for flexibility in the zone of deployment. And nonlethal weapons.” He said that like he still disapproved. “And Fury proposed Death Wish but I said no. I died. I know what that feels like.”
"Pretty soon, it'll feel like a second skin--the suit, that is. Not death." Finally, Tony reached out and closed his hand over Frank's shoulder. "You're not Fury's bitch. Pick whatever name you want."
Frank smiled, the smile looking almost natural on that new face, if still a bit stiff. “He told me to reconnect with my humanity.” His hand came up and covered Tony’s hand on his shoulder, keeping it there. “Set up a meeting with a kid I rescued. She’s in foster care. She still recognized me.” He inhaled deeply. “Might… might turn into a father, but that fucking scares me.”
"No kidding. I know I wouldn't be ready for something like that. Kids are fragile." Tony laughed, curling his free arm around Frank's waist and pressing warm against his back. "But this new guy, Baker-the one your man Teeth found for me to help run my company--he's trying to get me to take on a bunch of MIT kids. Make them into genius engineers. That's pretty fucking terrifying, too."
“Makes sense. Try and replicate your most valuable asset.” Frank exhaled and reached behind to touch Tony’s hip, then splayed his fingers and ran it over Tony’s butt, and down to his legs. “Italian, you said.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Sounds like you like Italian.”
Tony grinned and leaned in to steal a kiss. "I consider myself equal-opportunity," he answered, trying and failing to keep a straight face.
Frank turned in the embrace, took hold of Tony’s neck and kissed him, a harsh, pent-up kiss, half-push that drove Tony’s legs against the edge of the workbench. Frank growled--that hadn’t changed, not one bit. “You’ll suffer, Tony. You owe me, and I’ll make you pay.” Another grin, both feral and sexy. “Sounds good?”
"Sounds good." Tony laughed, open and unafraid, drawing the embrace tighter. A challenge--and a welcome one. "This time, I'll let you bolt me to the table."
- The End -
Thanks for reading and commenting. :)
Collateral: Chapter Thirteen
Title: Collateral
Status: Finished
Authors: gileonnen and vashtan
Fandom: Iron Man/The Punisher crossover (Iron Man filmverse, The Punisher MAX comicverse)
Pairing: Tony Stark/Frank Castle, Tony Stark/Other
Rating: Adult
Summary: Frank Castle traces a grey shipment to Stark Industries, and demands an explanation. This brings him face-to-face with another vigilante-playboy Tony Stark.
Warning: Dark (the Punisher is involved, after all). Kinky (knife play, restraints, techno fetish, death, bombs, implied heavy abuse, and bambi dies).
Disclaimer: No money is being made & no breach of copyright is intended.
Dedication: To all the Marvel writers that don’t own their creations and don’t get a cut of the huge profits of films featuring them, and especially to the original creators and writers working on the Punisher and Iron Man ‘intellectual property.’
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Patrick Baker had begun to live at Stark Industries HQ--he had a room next to his office where he slept, had restaurant fare sent to him twice a day, unless he was meeting stakeholders and the ‘key talent’ for food in the golf club he also attended.
Looking at his performance over the first weeks, he’d clocked up eighty hours of work per week, firmly established a rule that he would, under no circumstances, attend more than a cumulative ten hours of meetings per week, which was considerably less than Tye had had to put up with. He’d also bullied another board member into leaving in a huff-one of the guys who’d not wholeheartedly supported him.
He’d introduced himself to most of the middle management, with more meetings scheduled, and he’d taken a huge interest in all the segments of the market where Stark Industries was active. At the same time, he charmed the high and mighty like his life depended on it, attending and throwing charity events like there was no tomorrow, raising funds for wounded soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions, funded young scientists straight out of MIT with grants and goodies, and gave the press far more than they’d wanted. Baker was seen walking in on scientists working on current projects, watching. Learning. People still didn’t know what his plan was.
Even the prototype ‘practically fuel-free’ car that Tony had wheeled into a charity event had done little to assuage the buzz; while it was flashy and drew the interest of a half-dozen auto companies--Mitsubishi and Honda were duking it out over the rights to develop the idea, with Ford waiting on the sidelines to pile-drive the victor--no one knew what it meant in the larger restructuring process. Stark Industries was branching out, kudzu-like, into energy, transportation, and medical technology, and a few companies with comfortable near-monopolies were growing distinctly uncomfortable with the pressure.
"You want me to make these MIT kids my students?" Tony asked incredulously, at the end of another endless (forty-three minute) meeting. The board was breaking--or scuttling for cover--and he and Baker had the end of the long table to themselves.
“These are the smartest I could buy”, said Baker. “Hungry. Falling over their feet to learn from you. If we are going to lead in all those fields, Mr. Stark, we have to have a hell of a lot more talent than you. The next generation. Building a legacy. Give them small stuff you’re too bored to fully develop. Toss them an idea to sink their teeth in. Knock up the blonde and marry her … do whatever you please, but we are just starting our war here. And as a note, shares are up ten points since I joined. I already made you a couple billion. Trust me. All you need to do is point the kids in the right direction. You might enjoy it.”
"Do I look like a professor to you?" Tony rubbed at his eyes. He'd found a grey hair this morning. "I'd have to set them up a workshop. Hire someone to supervise them so they don't blow themselves up, or at least program something. And to be perfectly honest, they'd be touching my things. You're totally sure this is a good idea?"
“They can work over here, at Stark Industries--I had a new research facility outfitted, for your cyborg projects.”
Tony dropped his hand and looked Baker in the eyes. "Cyborg projects? I don't have any cyborg projects."
“I mean your advanced prosthetics. I’ve come to call it cyborg project, which is probably a bit brash of me.” Baker reached into his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper.
Tony Stark creates first cyborg was the headline, and there was a photo of gloved and sunglassed David, at an airport. The damning piece of evidence was an x-ray shot of his body as he passed through security. “I’m getting calls whether this FBI agent is a prototype and when we want to present it. So far, I say you’re working on something and that the last thing in the world I’d do is interrupt Tony Stark’s creative flow.”
Tony stared at the header, wide-eyed. "... shit, this is not marketable. There is no cyborg project. That was a favor to a friend."
“I hope you’ve registered the patents?” Baker studied the article, like he hadn’t already. “You put a crippled man back together. Do we have a right to keep this from those who were crippled in a similar vein?” He waved. “It’s a theoretical question, of course. But you should have seen the soldiers that ended up in minefields… or blown up on patrol. I’ve donated a good sum from the marketing budget and brought the cheque in person.”
"I have seen them. And trust me, I'm going to do something about it-but we're talking about the kind of technology where if it became an option for elective surgery, it'd be like the fucking Matrix. I'll dumb down the system for an exclusive contract with the military, maybe, but this--" Tony indicated the photo. "This, we are not marketing."
“That’s fine. Just make them better than the competition. I have a bunch of researchers on the job to get an idea what the competition will launch in the next couple years. Trump that, and you can build and keep under wraps whatever you like--from my perspective. You can do that anyway, of course. Just trump the Japanese and the Swiss, and I’m happy.” Baker gave him a smile.
With the studied irony of the company owner talking to his employee, Tony drawled, "Yes, sir. Send me the CVs on those MIT kids, will you? I have to find out how much they're going to hold me back."
“Consider them forwarded.” Baker regarded him with the same irony, only the other way round. “Fire me anytime. I know you don’t like me, but I’ll still run your company like it should be run. It’s a beauty, and I’m in love with it, but I know she’s married to you.”
"So this is your dream job now? The one you were trying to get by working with Stark Industries?"
“I’ve blocked all incoming calls from headhunting agencies. Sometimes I can make the BlackBerry do what I want.” Baker grinned sharply.
Tony laughed at the feral eagerness in that grin. "Just don't try it on the treadmill again. Seriously, p-r-o-t-t? How the hell was I supposed to figure that one out?"
Baker laughed, no less feral, with plenty of white teeth. “I was doing 13km/h on the treadmill. And all voice recognition systems for handsets suck.” He fished out the offending device and pressed few buttons. “Right, I have Monday off, but I’m coming in Tuesday.”
"I'll be in and out. Like usual. Send me a voicemail if you have anything to say, okay?" Tony offered his hand to be shaken.
“Of course, sir.” Baker stood and shook his hand. “Have a look at the prosthetics lab if you have five minutes in between and ask Mr. Klein to get whatever other equipment is missing…” He closed his briefcase and left the board room.
Tony looked around the empty board room, out the great glass windows at the city spread below. Things had been picking up and moving on all around him; he'd flown a mission to Georgia and torn a Russian tank to hell, then saved a chopper in free fall. He'd rescued hundreds.
Pepper was smiling these days when she came into the workshop to bring him coffee; they'd been slowly reconnecting ever since he'd put the Punisher debacle behind him. She was working more heavily with the company lately, taking care of the minutiae of his life less often. "You can take care of yourself now. I like that about you," she'd said once; although she never said it, he knew that she was thankful that he hadn't turned into the Punisher.
He'd learned a lot from Frank Castle--and then the world had moved on. Frank hadn't checked in since his resurrection (still in a snit over the 'betrayal,' Tony thought), but Fury had said that he was recovering well. Something to keep in the back of his mind, but as the days went by, Frank moved further and further to the back.
Tony stopped by the prosthetics facility on the way out, taking time to chat with the scientists and the refurbishing team about what he was envisioning. A surprising number of them had decades of experience in the field, and an even more surprising number were young up-and-comers in rehabilitation and robotics. Baker had chosen well, he thought on his drive home. A good crop of workers, ready to meet the challenges of the project.
He had dinner with Pepper that night: salmon seasoned with lemon and white pepper, and a rice dish that he'd have to remember the name of so that he could request it again. After the meal, it was down to the workshop to retool the old designs for David's hands. He felt the old energy for the project surging in him as he studied the designs--a feeling that was both vital and inspiring. Not as much a challenge as the first attempt had been; that had been art. This was work, and for the first time in years, he really felt ready to work.
* * * *
Fury didn’t meet him often. In fact, he was just passing through, as he informed him he’d meet him “in that nice beach house, twenty-one sharp.” He was a busy man, the director of SHIELD, keeping an eye on threads most people never realized existed, running secret organizations and operatives with a tireless efficiency.
Jarvis just let him in, informing Tony that his ‘guests had arrived’, and not much later, the director of SHIELD walked down the spiral staircase, knowing exactly where he Tony could be found. Another man followed him, wearing dark clothes--black jeans and a tight, long-sleeved shirt.
Recognizing Frank Castle happened by the way he moved--the strength and purpose, determination like he was going into battle. The face was changed, however--the broken nose had been fixed, and there had been quite an amount of surgery on the scars, which took an easy ten years off Frank. His black hair was shorter than it had been, trimmed neatly, just as neat as the shave, and buzzed in his broad neck. It took a moment to find the biggest change, though. He sported a tan like he’d been out in the sun for maybe a week or so.
Tony had to stare for a moment, taking in that familiar economical grace and the known-unknown features. "You look great," he said, putting down the spanner he'd been holding and going to the door to let them in. "You actually look Italian."
“Just picked him off Maui to drop him in your lap”, Fury said. “Field test whether Frank can deal with the sun.”
Frank shot Fury a glance. “You look darker than I remember you, too.” Despite the retort, his body language suggested that Fury outranked him by a mile, so he remained somewhat stiff and tense. “Can I see that suit?” he asked.
"Yes, absolutely. You can even try it on, if you want--the flat reactor was a bitch to do, but I figured it out while I was working on that new low-fuel vehicle design. This is going to work basically like mine works, but with a few custom features."
He led Frank across the floor of the workshop, past other projects under construction and the hulking specter of his own suit--undergoing repairs after a glancing hit from a shoulder-mounted cannon. They stopped before a cabinet nearly hidden in the metal paneling of the walls, with a keypad fashioned out of seemingly random bolts scattered on his surface. Tony's fingers danced over the secret keys, tracing out a pattern that only he knew, until at last the doors swung open with a hydraulic hiss.
The second suit stood there, coolly gorgeous, blastproof glass and what looked like blued steel. Its facemask bore only a trace resemblance to that e-fit that the FBI had passed out, months ago; something about the eyebrows, the grim line of the mouth. A human resemblance as hidden as the cabinet, and one that no one who wasn't looking would have noticed.
"You like it?" Tony asked, stepping back from his work.
Frank looked at it, blue eyes reflecting the color of the steel. He was still withdrawn, collected, very much like a ticking timebomb, at the same time, he looked so much more sane than he’d ever been. He walked around the suit, inspecting it like a sergeant would inspect a recruit, but the suit wasn’t intimidated, and above all, it was flawless. Frank stood behind it, from Tony’s perspective they lined up perfectly.
“Looks like I have joined SHIELD”, Frank said. “Power it up for me.”
"You heard him," said Tony, grinning, hands in his pockets. "Suit him up."
From every wall of the concealed space, there came mechanized hands--tiny, fragile, deft as they slotted plates into place and bolted them neatly together. Slowly, Frank vanished under heavy plating, watching as it happened, face concealed last of all. Tony took a few steps back, giving Frank room to walk if he felt like it. "It takes a few weeks to learn to drive it," he offered. "Like a car, or--whatever else you've learned to drive."
Frank moved, first one leg, a small step, and then paused as the way the suit responded to his motions seemed to surprise him; he stretched out his arms for balance, took another step, careful, walked a few meters and turned back, returning to the spot where he’d started. “Like learning to walk all over again”, he finally said.
Fury appeared near Tony’s shoulder, chewing on one of the Cubans. “Soldier of Fortune, then?”
Frank found the mechanism that opened the visor and pushed it open, looking at Fury. “If I have to bend over for you, at least call me what I like.”
Fury laughed, creating a cloud of smoke around him. “Yeah. Who’s your daddy, Frank.” Grinning broadly.
Tony came perilously close to rolling his eyes. "You didn't actually fuck him, right? You're being clever and metaphorical or something."
Fury raised an eyebrow, then gave a small sigh as he remembered Tony Stark’s file and habits. “The Kaplan boy. What’s your take on him?”
“Been treated rough. Good kid, needs some polishing and training”, Frank said.
“Yeah, and he’s a cyborg”, said Fury and looked at Tony.
"He's a normal, slightly messed-up guy who just happens to have some extremely realistic prosthetics!" Tony protested. "Why is everyone so hung up on 'cyborg'?"
“I’ll have him picked up. But before that goes anywhere, he’ll lose that eyepatch.” Fury studied Frank in the suit for a moment longer. “Tony will let me know when you’re trained up, Soldier.” He turned to Tony. “Get him ready. Soon is good. Sooner is better.”
"My pleasure." Tony made a passable attempt at a salute, watching Fury leave through the glass doors and head up the spiral stair. When he'd gone, Tony turned back to Frank, unable to keep himself from grinning at seeing that altered face on the body that he had crafted. "Soldier of Fortune, huh? We get another one, and we'll be a mix tape."
“Classic rock superheroes.” Frank smiled a little. “Get me out… too tight on the chest.” He touched his knuckles to the breast plate. “Reanimation. Fucked my chest up.”
"Gotcha. Get back into the cabinet, okay? No closet jokes, they're old." Tony watched as his robots undid the armor that he'd made, studying their efficiency, measuring Frank's chest with his eyes. "I can adjust the chestplate for you tonight, if you want to get started."
“Yeah. Everywhere else is a good fit.” Frank seemed relieved to be free, but didn’t take his eyes off the suit as it stood there. “I’d been imagining something else. Black, with the white skull for a face.” His eyes narrowed a little. “But this is good. I can work with this.”
"You're not the Punisher anymore. You're going to have to." Tony took a slow step forward, leaving space between them. Not pushing for contact, and Frank didn’t move back or forward.
“They are changing my name, new life, new biography. My name is now on the grave of my family. Fury’s idea.”
"Yeah. About what I did." Tony looked down. "I'm sorry it turned out that way."
Frank placed a hand flat against the suit’s chest. “Iron Man versus the Punisher. You win. When did you decide that I … the Punisher had to be destroyed?”
Tony took another step, standing close--close enough to touch Frank's arm, if he'd reached out. "It would be easy to turn into you, you know?" he answered. "You're the best. You're everything I could be. And to tell you the truth, that scared the hell out of me."
Frank looked at him, eyebrow raised. “The path of the vigilante. You didn’t want to live like me. You had more to lose.” A small, amused sound. “Whereas I was getting tired… ran out of war somewhere… kept going because I didn’t know how to stop.”
"You look... happier now, I guess. Are you?"
“Ask me again in the middle of battle.” Frank looked at the suit. “Graduated from infantry to heavy mechanized infantry … the thing feels like a tank. I’ll have to rethink my tactics. Maybe go with something lighter for my usual MO, for flexibility in the zone of deployment. And nonlethal weapons.” He said that like he still disapproved. “And Fury proposed Death Wish but I said no. I died. I know what that feels like.”
"Pretty soon, it'll feel like a second skin--the suit, that is. Not death." Finally, Tony reached out and closed his hand over Frank's shoulder. "You're not Fury's bitch. Pick whatever name you want."
Frank smiled, the smile looking almost natural on that new face, if still a bit stiff. “He told me to reconnect with my humanity.” His hand came up and covered Tony’s hand on his shoulder, keeping it there. “Set up a meeting with a kid I rescued. She’s in foster care. She still recognized me.” He inhaled deeply. “Might… might turn into a father, but that fucking scares me.”
"No kidding. I know I wouldn't be ready for something like that. Kids are fragile." Tony laughed, curling his free arm around Frank's waist and pressing warm against his back. "But this new guy, Baker-the one your man Teeth found for me to help run my company--he's trying to get me to take on a bunch of MIT kids. Make them into genius engineers. That's pretty fucking terrifying, too."
“Makes sense. Try and replicate your most valuable asset.” Frank exhaled and reached behind to touch Tony’s hip, then splayed his fingers and ran it over Tony’s butt, and down to his legs. “Italian, you said.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Sounds like you like Italian.”
Tony grinned and leaned in to steal a kiss. "I consider myself equal-opportunity," he answered, trying and failing to keep a straight face.
Frank turned in the embrace, took hold of Tony’s neck and kissed him, a harsh, pent-up kiss, half-push that drove Tony’s legs against the edge of the workbench. Frank growled--that hadn’t changed, not one bit. “You’ll suffer, Tony. You owe me, and I’ll make you pay.” Another grin, both feral and sexy. “Sounds good?”
"Sounds good." Tony laughed, open and unafraid, drawing the embrace tighter. A challenge--and a welcome one. "This time, I'll let you bolt me to the table."
- The End -