[Iron Man - PG-13 - Tony] 48 hours
Title: 48 hours
Author: nicpick (Nic)
Characters: Tony Stark, Jarvis, James Rhodes, Pepper Potts
Rating: PG-13; language
Summary: Tony Stark doesn't know how he feels. About being tortured, about being a superhero, or about the possible existence of magic and aliens. [Spoilers for the after-credits teaser.]
He has the remnants of a black eye sketching a ring of light blue and purple around his eye, and the bath water is making it sting along with every other scrape and bruise on his body. It doesn't help how he keeps holding his head under the water, sinking deeper, deeper until everything starts to fade.
Fade until he can feel rough hands around his neck, holding him down even father.
Past the blackness. Past everything.
He comes up struggling. Breathing hard, inhaling vestiges of water up his nose as he half chokes on his third breath before everything evens out, and he's back to staring up at the softly lit ceiling.
With his chest exposed and the lights dimmed, everything is tinged electric blue.
He is not brooding.
"I would suggest, sir, pulling out of the dive as soon as possible." He is being lectured by his AI at twenty thousand feet over desert and certain death.
He is shouting, "Jarvis, remind me to explain the difference between relevant and obvious information."
Three seconds.
He can feel the wind speeding around and over him, threatening to tear him limb from limb.
It would have been nice to know, beforehand, just what kind of crazy, psycho organisation was holding him hostage. How they got their hands on the unmanned spaceship currently chasing him would be great.
Really, though, what Tony wants to know, is how to disable it. Failing that, he wants to know how to blow it up.
"Sir, the ground!"
"I see it."
He does.
It's filling up his vision, and Jarvis's readouts are screaming red at him.
"Sir!"
He pulls up, so close to the sand that his face feels burned by it underneath the mask. His heart is beating too fast to be healthy, but his voice is steady when he shouts, "Climb!" and Jarvis has enough circuits that even with most of them set on panicking, he's still stretching for the clouds.
Ten thousand feet away, and he can still feel the explosion rocking the earth below. Jarvis scans the thing, and proclaims it neutralised.
Tony laughs so hard he can't breathe.
He lasts three minutes and eight seconds before Rhodey is picking up his cell phone, and Tony's snapping, "I want to know what the hell that thing was."
"It's in pieces."
"Yeah, thanks Rhodey, I really owe you one for that explanation."
"It wasn't ours."
"It wasn't mine." He doesn't hang up, but he's diving over horizon lines and the connection disappears in a burst of static.
Everything is brighter when he's running on fear and adrenaline.
He doesn't know if he works more or less, but his hours in the shop fly by faster than they ever did before, even with Jarvis's new found interest in making sure every detail of what Tony is up to is known to him.
As the clock slides over from midnight to one, he substitutes his coffee for scotch, and lets the hologram colours blur together as he traces new inventions.
Life has always been a mix of light and darkness, he's just messing with the contrast.
"Have I mentioned how much I hate this?" He hears Pepper's shoes before he hears her voice, and it's all about what tone she's using, more than the order of her words.
His head is fuzzy, and he reaches for the mug of coffee Pepper is holding out to him before he says, "Hate what, exactly?"
Looking up when she glares at him is just an encouragement, but Tony was never one to resist.
Her hair is twisted into some complicated knot.
He likes it better when it's left down.
She's blushing now, which means he said that out loud.
He also might be leering at her.
"Your meeting starts in forty minutes. Come on."
He would go with her wherever she wanted to lead him, but in this case it turns out to be an engineers meeting about some new kind of smart phone that apparently does everything except cook food for you.
It's a lot of details the forefront of his brain doesn't want to deal with.
In his imagination, he's on a beach somewhere south of the border, with Pepper, sipping frothy drinks and teasing her about how gorgeous she absolutely has to look in a bathing suit.
He makes it through the meeting.
"It's technology we've never seen before," he is being told by some faceless, nameless government employee.
He has Rhodey next to him.
That always seems to be the case when he's dealing with the military. Maybe it's to keep him in line, or maybe he's just spent too much time reading into it.
Rhodey is his friend, does it have to be more complicated than that?
He feels like asking questions, so pretty soon he's saying, "Exactly what does that mean?"
He ignores the feeling that anything he can think of saying right now would screw with the ambience, and continues, "Technology like I could be building in six months, or technology that has no right to exist anywhere on this planet due to the laws of physics?"
In front of him, the back of the poor kid's neck in turning pink, and Tony is grinning in victory.
Rhodey is rolling his eyes, as always, and trying not to smile.
Until he's told, "I - it seems like the latter. Sir."
They three of them walk in silence until they reach the end of the hanger, and a tarp is pulled away revealing the wreck of the alien craft.
If it hadn't been trying to kill him, he would say it was the most sophisticated weird thing he'd ever seen.
Even if it is in pieces.
It is blue, and shiny, and almost frighteningly organic looking. Like a child's drawing of a spaceship brought to life. "Did you get any life sign readings? What about the material? Has it been tested?"
He has only scratched the surface of the thoughts racing through his head, but already people are scrambling to keep up with him. That's how it always is.
Terribly difficult being such a genius.
Definitely he does not use the distraction to steal a tiny sliver of the thing and put it in his pocket. That would be wrong. And illegal.
He gets halfway through his first test before the thing disappears.
Jarvis makes a shocked sound rather like a gasp. Something Tony wasn't aware was possible. "It is as if it was never there. I can't even recall the test programming, sir."
He is sitting in the shower with the lukewarm water cascading over him, matting his hair to his forehead and the back of his neck, and carefully not thinking about the similar call he had received from Rhodey about the mystery craft.
It was a fairytale now, a myth.
He could feel the hot sun and burnt desert air, and feel the fear that had been pumping through his veins as he fought with everything he had. Now, all he was left with was a dead end, and the niggling feeling that he should be remembering something.
Someone had the answer.
He hated it when that someone wasn't him.
His head hit the tile wall at his back, and he stared up into the simulated rain. It didn't bring back the sort of frantic memories of torture and darkness the bath did.
"Increase temperature six degrees, Jarvis."
"Very good, sir."
He is in his living room with a towel wrapped around his hips, soaking wet and tense as all hell, and Nick Fury is looking out his window for the second time.
"You understand what I'm talking about now?"
"This is getting old," he says without thinking about it, with just as much resignation as if he was.
End.
Author's Notes: I know it's choppy. This is one of those fics I spent more time staring at than writing. I hope you get some enjoyment out of it nevertheless.
Word Count: ~1200
Author: nicpick (Nic)
Characters: Tony Stark, Jarvis, James Rhodes, Pepper Potts
Rating: PG-13; language
Summary: Tony Stark doesn't know how he feels. About being tortured, about being a superhero, or about the possible existence of magic and aliens. [Spoilers for the after-credits teaser.]
He has the remnants of a black eye sketching a ring of light blue and purple around his eye, and the bath water is making it sting along with every other scrape and bruise on his body. It doesn't help how he keeps holding his head under the water, sinking deeper, deeper until everything starts to fade.
Fade until he can feel rough hands around his neck, holding him down even father.
Past the blackness. Past everything.
He comes up struggling. Breathing hard, inhaling vestiges of water up his nose as he half chokes on his third breath before everything evens out, and he's back to staring up at the softly lit ceiling.
With his chest exposed and the lights dimmed, everything is tinged electric blue.
He is not brooding.
"I would suggest, sir, pulling out of the dive as soon as possible." He is being lectured by his AI at twenty thousand feet over desert and certain death.
He is shouting, "Jarvis, remind me to explain the difference between relevant and obvious information."
Three seconds.
He can feel the wind speeding around and over him, threatening to tear him limb from limb.
It would have been nice to know, beforehand, just what kind of crazy, psycho organisation was holding him hostage. How they got their hands on the unmanned spaceship currently chasing him would be great.
Really, though, what Tony wants to know, is how to disable it. Failing that, he wants to know how to blow it up.
"Sir, the ground!"
"I see it."
He does.
It's filling up his vision, and Jarvis's readouts are screaming red at him.
"Sir!"
He pulls up, so close to the sand that his face feels burned by it underneath the mask. His heart is beating too fast to be healthy, but his voice is steady when he shouts, "Climb!" and Jarvis has enough circuits that even with most of them set on panicking, he's still stretching for the clouds.
Ten thousand feet away, and he can still feel the explosion rocking the earth below. Jarvis scans the thing, and proclaims it neutralised.
Tony laughs so hard he can't breathe.
He lasts three minutes and eight seconds before Rhodey is picking up his cell phone, and Tony's snapping, "I want to know what the hell that thing was."
"It's in pieces."
"Yeah, thanks Rhodey, I really owe you one for that explanation."
"It wasn't ours."
"It wasn't mine." He doesn't hang up, but he's diving over horizon lines and the connection disappears in a burst of static.
Everything is brighter when he's running on fear and adrenaline.
He doesn't know if he works more or less, but his hours in the shop fly by faster than they ever did before, even with Jarvis's new found interest in making sure every detail of what Tony is up to is known to him.
As the clock slides over from midnight to one, he substitutes his coffee for scotch, and lets the hologram colours blur together as he traces new inventions.
Life has always been a mix of light and darkness, he's just messing with the contrast.
"Have I mentioned how much I hate this?" He hears Pepper's shoes before he hears her voice, and it's all about what tone she's using, more than the order of her words.
His head is fuzzy, and he reaches for the mug of coffee Pepper is holding out to him before he says, "Hate what, exactly?"
Looking up when she glares at him is just an encouragement, but Tony was never one to resist.
Her hair is twisted into some complicated knot.
He likes it better when it's left down.
She's blushing now, which means he said that out loud.
He also might be leering at her.
"Your meeting starts in forty minutes. Come on."
He would go with her wherever she wanted to lead him, but in this case it turns out to be an engineers meeting about some new kind of smart phone that apparently does everything except cook food for you.
It's a lot of details the forefront of his brain doesn't want to deal with.
In his imagination, he's on a beach somewhere south of the border, with Pepper, sipping frothy drinks and teasing her about how gorgeous she absolutely has to look in a bathing suit.
He makes it through the meeting.
"It's technology we've never seen before," he is being told by some faceless, nameless government employee.
He has Rhodey next to him.
That always seems to be the case when he's dealing with the military. Maybe it's to keep him in line, or maybe he's just spent too much time reading into it.
Rhodey is his friend, does it have to be more complicated than that?
He feels like asking questions, so pretty soon he's saying, "Exactly what does that mean?"
He ignores the feeling that anything he can think of saying right now would screw with the ambience, and continues, "Technology like I could be building in six months, or technology that has no right to exist anywhere on this planet due to the laws of physics?"
In front of him, the back of the poor kid's neck in turning pink, and Tony is grinning in victory.
Rhodey is rolling his eyes, as always, and trying not to smile.
Until he's told, "I - it seems like the latter. Sir."
They three of them walk in silence until they reach the end of the hanger, and a tarp is pulled away revealing the wreck of the alien craft.
If it hadn't been trying to kill him, he would say it was the most sophisticated weird thing he'd ever seen.
Even if it is in pieces.
It is blue, and shiny, and almost frighteningly organic looking. Like a child's drawing of a spaceship brought to life. "Did you get any life sign readings? What about the material? Has it been tested?"
He has only scratched the surface of the thoughts racing through his head, but already people are scrambling to keep up with him. That's how it always is.
Terribly difficult being such a genius.
Definitely he does not use the distraction to steal a tiny sliver of the thing and put it in his pocket. That would be wrong. And illegal.
He gets halfway through his first test before the thing disappears.
Jarvis makes a shocked sound rather like a gasp. Something Tony wasn't aware was possible. "It is as if it was never there. I can't even recall the test programming, sir."
He is sitting in the shower with the lukewarm water cascading over him, matting his hair to his forehead and the back of his neck, and carefully not thinking about the similar call he had received from Rhodey about the mystery craft.
It was a fairytale now, a myth.
He could feel the hot sun and burnt desert air, and feel the fear that had been pumping through his veins as he fought with everything he had. Now, all he was left with was a dead end, and the niggling feeling that he should be remembering something.
Someone had the answer.
He hated it when that someone wasn't him.
His head hit the tile wall at his back, and he stared up into the simulated rain. It didn't bring back the sort of frantic memories of torture and darkness the bath did.
"Increase temperature six degrees, Jarvis."
"Very good, sir."
He is in his living room with a towel wrapped around his hips, soaking wet and tense as all hell, and Nick Fury is looking out his window for the second time.
"You understand what I'm talking about now?"
"This is getting old," he says without thinking about it, with just as much resignation as if he was.
End.
Author's Notes: I know it's choppy. This is one of those fics I spent more time staring at than writing. I hope you get some enjoyment out of it nevertheless.
Word Count: ~1200