omg yes there is more, purge, purge, purge
Therapy, ~5500 words
Tony goes to therapy and criminal activity in New York City--and then the world--grinds to a halt. Pre Skrulls, New Avengers era.
"And how does that make you feel?"
Like I want to call my armor and fly the hell out of your tastefully appointed office?
"Tony?"
"Sorry." He looked away from the spectacular view that dominated the doctor’s office, to the other spectacular view in the room: the doctor herself. "What were you saying?" He gave her his best charming yet mild smile. Calibrated over years of experience to be diverting without being inviting.
She smiled warmly, almost indulgently. Bingo.
"I was asking how you feel about Dr. Hansen’s incarceration?"
Like I failed her. Like I’m a fool. Like I’m a raging neurotic who talks to himself, apparently.
"I don’t know."
The doctor pinched the bridge of her nose above her gun metal Prada glasses. "Tony, you came to me."
And I’m regretting that more and more.
"We can’t make any progress if you keep being evasive."
"I’m not being evasive, doctor." Not exactly. "Look, I’ve known Maya for years, she was a friend."
"So you’re unhappy about her situation?"
"She’s responsible for hundreds of deaths."
"So she earned her fate."
The right answer here is yes, she deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life. The only problem is that I know why she did it.
When Tony confronted her, her reasons, as much as they disgusted him - that she would risk the lives of hundreds, even outright sacrifice them in the name of science - were logical, almost too easy to understand. He knew Maya, how she thought, how she prioritized, and he could see the decision being made - the moment she saw her funding evaporating, saw her chance of curing cancer lost, that was it for her.
The needs of the many.
And Maya was always a gambler. Part of why they’d gotten along so well.
"Yes." Tony looked out the window again. Breaking eye contact now would usually be a sign of weakness. But here the rules were different.
The doctor’s office was on the 34th floor of a glass and steel tower overlooking the river. Out on the water, a ferry gracelessly inched along, a single curl of pale smoke visible even from here. From this high up the water looked cleaner, and in the fading light, prettier than it had any right to.
Tony felt the silence stretching out. Like a hard to reach itch, it was uncomfortable. Almost physically so - the longer it went on, the more his muscles tensed; the more his hair stood on end. The more he prepared for the other theraputic shoe to drop. Not visibly of course.
Not for the first time, he wondered why she let it go on for so long, and never forced the issue.
The doctor sighed. "Ok Tony, time’s up. We’ll continue this next week?" She stood, automatically brushing an elegant hand across the front of her wool trousers.
He stood too. "Of course." He hadn’t been sure of the etiquette at first. Did you shake your therapist’s hand at the end of a session? Share a deeply felt, but platonic embrace? Take a series of cleansing breaths?
He’d settled on a polite nod. It seemed neutral. "See you Tuesday."
"Tuesday." She smiled and left through the door to her inner office. She always left the room first. Giving him time to pull himself together, he thought. Or a show of trust? He wasn’t sure which.
He pulled on his coat and took up his briefcase. Tony always debated bringing the armor. On the one hand, the chances of a super-villain breaking into a session with revenge/mindless destruction/who knows what on his mind, were alarmingly high, despite the anonymity guarantee the doctor maintained.
He’d made a database. The numbers were not in his favour.
On the other hand, even though the doctor wasn’t into having Tony lie on a couch and discuss his relationship with his mother, or say, hypnosis, he couldn’t quiet the internal alarms that went off every time he left for a session.
The doctor had almost obscenely high security clearance, which made sense, considering Nick had recommended her. Her client list was every bit as colourful as Dr. Samson’s, but unlike Len, she wasn’t and would never be a public figure. She counseled super-heroes, but also VIPs in the business world, military and even politicians.
He hadn’t been able to hack her systems. That wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been.
Tony wasn’t the best systems guy in the world. One of the best, but not the best. Even with extremis there were still systems he hadn’t yet cracked.
It wasn’t that he thought that he was in danger from the doctor. It was just that there was something inherently dangerous about the situation. And he couldn’t let go of the importance of keeping his secret. There were a million reasons to keep his secret identity secret, a million more to keep private the fact that Tony Stark and/or Iron Man were in therapy.
She’d asked him once, why it was so important when Jan and Hank, hell, even Len operated openly. What made Tony Stark so different? Leading question, if ever he’d heard one.
The thing he always came back to was this: danger. There was no part of his life that was safe.
He left the room, closing the door softly behind him. When he arrived and when he left, the door was always closed.
In the outer office he nodded to Dana, the assistant. She nodded back and smiled, blandly polite.
There was no waiting room in the doctor’s office - Tony had never seen another patient and he’d never had to wait. Dana was evidently a master scheduler. Twice he’d had to reschedule appointments and they’d always been able to accommodate him without trouble. Tony Stark was a powerful man and used to that kind of treatment, but so were the rest of the doctor’s rumored client list.
Hers was only office on this floor - the elevator opened to the reception area, which was larger than most apartments on the island. Tony had always gone directly from the elevator to the underground garage where Happy waited; from the garage to the elevator. He checked out the building every visit - there were no hidden cameras or listening devices. Nothing suspicious at all.
Everything in the office, from the decor, to Dana’s efforts, to the doctor herself was designed to minimize anxiety - create a safe atmosphere for a particular kind of personality.
The elevator chimed softly and the doors slid open. He stepped out into the garage, pulling his coat closed against the chill that persisted, despite the heating system. A moment later Happy pulled the limo up and Tony got in.
"Hey boss."
"Hap."
"Where to?"
"Home."
***
MJ and Jessica Jones were on the big couch in the living room, a brightly colored, and manically flashing children’s program playing on the tv. Danielle, wrapped up in a Sponge Bob blanket in Jessica’s lap, was captivated. He worried about the risk of tv-induced seizures.
"Isn’t she a little young for... whatever that is?"
"Fairly OddParents," said MJ. On the screen pink and green fairies argued with a bratty kid.
"She likes the colours," said Jessica. "And I thought I’d start building up a tolerance now, before she’s old enough to demand control of the remote."
"So this isn’t a new child development thing?"
"Just chalk it up to the duties of motherhood."
"What’s your excuse?" he asked, turning to MJ.
"I like the colours," she said with a winning smile. "Oh, an envelope came for you." She got up from the couch and headed to the kitchen, leaving Jessica and Danielle absorbed in their show - duties of motherhood. Right.
"An envelope?"
"A real honest to god envelope, made from no-doubt 100% recycled paper. I thought SE was mostly paper free now."
"It is." Not only did it save SE a lot of money, it saved a considerable amount of time in a business where even the custodial staff was wired. It also made it easier for Tony to keep track of things with extremis - eliminating the paper part of paperwork let him multitask, and do the boring side of his job while he worked on the more interesting stuff.
She handed him a plain letter envelope, addressed to ‘Mr. Anthony Stark’. There was no return address. Strange, yet it had passed the security checks which were standard at Stark Tower. "When did this arrive?"
"The desk gave it to Jarvis a few hours ago. But since he’s out with May, I got the pleasure of delivering it to you."
"Right, I forgot they had a date tonight."
"It’s their big night." He raised an eyebrow in question. "Their three-monthaversery."
"Is that Peter-speak?" It sounded more like him than MJ.
"Duh," she said with a wink. MJ opened the fridge and rummaged with purpose. She started pulling out sandwich fixings; more than he thought could possibly fit into one sandwich.Tony had slept with a lot of models - really, a lot of models - but he’d rarely seen one eat, and eat as much as MJ did. Of course he’d never actually lived with a model before. Who knows what they did when they weren’t on dates with international playboys?
But MJ could never come close to her husband. Sometimes Tony was actually grateful for the satphone (darling of the SE board) - it helped keep SE stock price healthy, and the way Peter ate, it was reassuring to have a safety net in the way of bankruptcy.
"Where is Peter?"
"Patrol. Luke and Cap are in the gym, Jessica went out, and Logan is... wherever he goes when he’s not here."
"Thanks MJ."
Tony left her to her sandwich, and headed to his home office.
When Steve decided to reform the Avengers, Tony had invited the team to use the newly built Stark Tower as its headquarters. The Avengers’ suite actually took up two floors, including bedrooms, guest rooms, shared living space, the gym and the conference room. Not to mention the Quinjet hangers and landing pads on the roof. He didn’t care about the space - even now, all these months later (and post satphone launch) people still weren’t dying to lease space in Stark Tower.
But he’d made sure to keep his own living space separate. He’d always had a room in the mansion, the same as all the other Avengers, but he also had his own apartment to go home to, when things got too crazy, as they inevitably did.
As much as he genuinely liked (most of) the new team, he wasn’t sure he could stand waking up to them. Sharing a pot of coffee with Spider-man and Wolverine every morning was not an enticing prospect.
Tony’s home office, though right beside his bedroom, was seldom used. Normally he’d rather spend his time at home down in the garage, working on the armor or the Avengers’ equipment, than working on SE stuff. And ever since he’d taken the extremis solution, he didn’t really need an office.
Maybe he was being paranoid but he didn’t want to take a mysterious anything down to the garage. Unlike his home office, which contained a desk, a chair, a cup of disposable pens, a pad of paper, and some incomprehensible modern paintings he’d bought at a charity auction, and had to put somewhere, the garage was a secure area.
Tony sat down and put his briefcase on the desk. He connected with the armor, still inside and scanned the envelope - nothing. It was an ordinary envelope.
Ok, then.
He neatly tore open the envelope and pulled out its contents - a single sheet of paper folded in half. He unfolded the paper. The page was blank, save for one typed word in the center.
Stop.
"I am not in the mood for a mystery."
Tony connected with the building’s security systems and searched for the envelope’s arrival. Logged at 11:52 hrs. Came in with the regular mail at 11:46 hrs, which mostly consisted of takeout menus, invitations to revival meetings and other solicitations. The message clerk had flagged the envelope, as per SOP, as soon as he’d found it. It had been screened by building security, and then handed over to Avengers security, who’d screened it again, and then handed it over to Jarvis.
Jarvis sorted and prioritized whatever mail Tony received at Stark Tower, and this resulted in Tony pretty much never receiving mail. As far as he was concerned, that was just fine.
Tony checked the security tapes. At 11:45 the regular messenger, Dave Green, was buzzed into the mailroom and chatted briefly with the clerk. After buzzing the messenger out, the clerk sorted and logged the mail. At 11:46 he found the envelope and logged it. Tony went through it again but there was nothing strange about the delivery. He went through the tape of the security desk, but again, everything was normal.
Ok.
Stark Tower employed an outside mail screening service, as well as its internal security measures. He connected with their system - it was easy enough with extremis to hack in. The envelope was not logged as part of the daily package for Stark Tower.
Either the messenger had added it to the package, or someone at the screening center had a) missed it, or b) slipped it in.
"Stop what?"
He put the letter on the desk. Stop what, and why? There was nothing distinctive about the envelope or the letter.
Nothing about the letter actually suggested menace.
There was a soft knock on the open door. Tony looked up to see Steve leaning in the doorway.
"Hey."
"Did you forget that it’s poker night?" Steve asked, the beginnings of a teasing smile on his lips.
Yes. "No, I was just finishing something."
"Of course you were."
Tony put down the letter and got up, grinning, and followed Steve down to the living room. "Is Peter back?"
"He got in a few minutes ago. Quiet night."
"Good." It was good. Not just because it meant the criminals were taking a break, but because Peter would be more relaxed. A bad night meant hyper Peter; trying to conceal his anger and disappointment Peter. He was amazingly easy to read once you figured out that the jokes were, aside from sometimes hysterically funny and usually inappropriate, Peter’s favourite coping mechanism.
"Jessica is out and Logan is ‘taking care of something’."
"So it’s the happy couples and... us."
"Looks like."
"Great."
In the kitchen Jessica Jones was setting up the baby monitor on the counter, beside the enormous stack of Avengers mail. Luke was already shuffling. MJ was counting the chips and Peter, behind her, was guarding an overflowing bowl of popcorn.
Tony had known Jessica for years - casually, they’d never been even remotely close - but it was strange to be sharing space with her, playing poker with her and Luke Cage. As for Spider-man, he’d met him of course, and even worked with him, but as much as Tony respected his abilities, he’d never expected to be on an Avengers roster with him, much less the former Power Man. If someone had told him a year ago that he would be living with Spider-man, Luke Cage and their respective wives - model slash actress Mary Jane Parker nee Watson, and Jessica Jones, super-detective and journalist - he wouldn’t have known whether to laugh, or laugh until he cried.
It was still surprising how easily this team handled downtime together - he’d been on Avengers squads with more history and more in common, who couldn’t stand to see each other out of costume, or even out of the field. These new Avengers could go for surprisingly long periods of time without threatening to kill each other.
"What are we playing tonight?" Tony asked.
Steve gave him a look. On any one else it would be an I-told-you-so look, but on Steve it was more like smug fondness. "It’s Luke’s turn to deal."
"Five card draw. Ten jujube buy-in."
"Pretty steep," said Tony.
"Think you can handle it, rich boy?" asked Steve.
Tony grinned. "Deal me in." The only way they could convince Steve to play was by making candy their currency of choice. Or toothpicks. That also worked. Tony didn’t mind - it was almost less absurd to play the team for candy, than it was for money. Especially since he usually won.
"Peter?" asked Luke.
"He’s not playing," said MJ.
"I’m letting my more attractive half represent me."
"Letting?" One of MJ’s perfectly shaped eyebrows flew up.
Peter nodded. "My much more attractive half represent me."
"Letting?"
Peter’s grin melted a little under MJ’s stare. "I thought the compliment would get me off the hook."
"You thought wrong." Peter’s face really fell then, a little boy’s hand-in-the-cookie-jar, oh shit moment. Tony couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching one of innumerable reruns of a familiar non-argument. He pushed aside the niggling feeling of too-closeness - it was Jan and Hank again, but not.
"You have a much better poker face than I do."
"This isn’t my poker face."
"So, would you say your expression is an accurate representation of your current emotional state?"
"Pretty much."
"Couch tonight?"
"I’ll let you have a blanket."
"We playing cards, or what?" Luke leveled a baleful mock-glare at them. The weirdest part of living with Power Man, Tony thought, was discovering that he was actually a giant, living teddy bear. With impenetrable skin.
"Not me, I have to work on breaking in the couch."
"You’re so cute when you pout."
Peter and MJ smiled sweetly at each other. Tony was just glad that Luke and Jessica weren’t the sweet type - he wasn’t sure if he could handle two happy, (mostly) non-dysfunctional married couples in his house.
He caught Steve’s eye and - discretely, he liked his internal organs where they were - rolled his eyes. He got another fond smile in return.
Luke dealt, starting with Jessica, who immediately looked at hers. Tony liked to wait until he had all his cards before looking - it gave him more time to watch the other players’ reactions.
Peter was right, MJ did have a great poker face, but Tony had figured out her tell, along with the rest of the team’s. And it looked like the gods were being unusually kind tonight - to everyone. MJ stared the pot down through her eyelashes, Jessica’s left eyebrow arched ever so slightly, Luke glowered into his cards a little harder than usual, and Steve’s lips parted enough for his tongue to dart out and wet the right corner of his mouth, before he controlled the impulse.
Tony curled his hand around his cards and turned them up to his chest.
"Did you shuffle the cards, or just move them around a lot?"
"Something wrong with your hand?"
He tossed his cards down, face up. Joker-Joker-Joker-Joker-Two of spades.
"What the hell? I swear I took those out."
"You were with him last, Cap - has Luke been hitting the bottle?" There was a moment of awkward silence. Where everyone but Peter looked away from Tony Stark: alcoholic. Everybody but Peter, who couldn’t seem to help himself, and stared at Tony, eyes huge. A deer in his headlights and so guilty. "I mean-"
He wanted to tell Peter that honestly, it was fine. Years sober at this point, he was tired of everyone being so damn careful, but as strangely comfortable as being with them was, that wasn’t a conversation Tony had even wanted to have with the old team. It wasn’t a conversation he particularly wanted to have with anyone. Hey guys, it’s totally cool to joke about the addiction that almost destroyed me! Not that you know about that part, because a man’s got to have his secrets.
MJ saved Tony from having to reassure Peter by turning her cards over. "Well I don’t know about you guys, but I welcome Luke’s new method of shuffling." Ace-King-Queen-Jack-Ten of spades. "Royal flush. Looks like I just hit the jackpot."
"No way." Peter’s handful of popcorn fell back into the bowl.
"What are the odds?" asked Steve.
"Normally?" Tony laughed. "Point zero zero one five percent. Tonight? I’m going to have to say one hundred percent chance of weird."
Luke waved his hands to shut them up. "All right, all right - we playing?"
"Danielle is sleeping quietly and Peter made us popcorn," Jessica said. "It is on."
"Hey! This is my popcorn." Peter hunched over his bowl and tried to look threatening. Since Peter’s glare was about as scary as that of a ten-year-old boy, Tony thought it was safe to say that Jessica wasn’t impressed.
She proved that by cracking her knuckles. "Are you prepared to defend it with your life?"
"Yes!"
Jessica glared.
"Can I change my answer?"
"Anyway - sleeping baby, popcorn. We’re playing cards. But this time I’m shuffling." She took the jokers and tossed them down beside her chair. "Was that so hard?" Luke smiled sweetly at her and Tony revised his earlier estimation.
Thank god for Wolverine - the living antithesis of all things sweet and cute.
***
The Avengers never went on patrol, and the New Avengers, at least as a team, were no different. Even before the team, when Tony was just Iron Man: Tony Stark’s bodyguard (and possibly a robot!), he’d never gone looking for trouble. Trouble usually found him. Usually with alarming frequency.
It had been a slow week: no extra-terrestrial, sub-terrestrial, or ordinary, garden variety terrestrial threats requiring the Avengers’ attention. Even non-super crime had been slow. Luke and Peter, who did still patrol, had been reduced to bringing in adolescent shoplifters and litterers.
Tony was beginning to suspect some king of peace ray.
He didn’t have a problem with the villains and criminals taking some down time, but he had way more time on his hands than he was used to. He’d caught up on all the tedious paperwork that Pepper could throw at him, finished two projects that required his personal attention, and one that didn’t. Finally Pepper sent him home.
"Go back to your garage and revolutionize the jetboot industry."
"There is no jetboot industry.
"Whatever. Go work on something, because your micromanaging is stressing everyone out."
"I don’t micromanage."
She glared. "We’ve had this conversation."
"Yes, Pepper." He went.
Tony overhauled the Quinjets, his main armor, two older models and rebuilt the engine of his current favourite car. When he started making noises about redesigning the kitchen appliances, Jarvis told him to get out of the building. He was joking about the appliances - though the toaster, in his opinion, was criminally inefficient - but he went.
Tony was cruising through the city’s glass and steel corridors at a leisurely speed of 200 mph - fast enough and high enough that it wasn’t physically possible for him to see all the crime that wasn’t happening, but the armor fed him a constant stream of data about his surroundings. The news feeds reported the birth of sextuplets in Jersey and the police band had nothing more exciting to announce than a cat up a tree. Definitely a peace ray.
But if there was one thing he’d learned in the super-hero business, it was that peacetime never lasted very long - even diabolically imposed peacetime. The city, and the Avengers deserved a break.
The problem was, according to Pepper, that he didn’t want a break, and really, had no idea of how to handle a break.
Tony hadn’t taken a holiday, a non-working holiday, since Monaco. Ru had wanted to party, Tony had wanted to work on the armor - they went to Monaco and he managed to leave the armor in its briefcase for a whole week. He liked to say that her mutant power was getting her way. She liked to say that Tony needed to learn how to live in the moment
Financial, recreational - she didn’t care if he took risks. Ru would have been happier if he’d risked more on the little things, the everyday things. Speed, reputation, money. And less on the life and death things - because she’d learned quickly that even if Iron Man was the bodyguard and superhero, Tony was never not involved.
She liked to say that he was always looking for the next crisis, the next disaster.
Maybe he was. Maybe it said something about him that his first response to a lull in crime was that it was caused by a peace ray. Or mind controlling insects. Aggression suppressing chemicals in the water supply. Maybe it was messed up to see a Trojan horse in this but he was still too easily blind-sided. Too willing to believe in the pleasing face of things.
Too damned optimistic about the things he had the least cause to be optimistic about.
Tony flew up, out of the canyons of office towers, until he achieved a safe altitude, and then gunned it. At mach three, he was one of the fastest flying objects in the atmosphere, manmade or superhuman - and that wasn’t the armor’s top speed.
He shot through the cloud cover, leaving Manhattan behind him in seconds, and then slowed. Still faster than most humans ever experienced, faster than they could even conceive. A smudge, exploding across the horizon was a building storm - it would reach the city in a day or so, if it didn’t break apart by then. To the armor it was moisture, energy, speed. He headed into it.
The ocean was briefly invisible to his eyes, but even in the thick thunder heads he received satellite feeds, could still access everything - a vast skyline of numbers. Oceanographic data, Naval intelligence reports, wikipedia.
He carved his way to the uppermost, fast-moving layer of cloud, leaving strange eddies in his wake. Turned until he faced the atmospheric ceiling. If he went high enough he could see the stars in daylight. Some things remained cool, no matter what else you saw.
The thing was, he thought, checking his email for status updates, even when he was living in the moment, he wasn’t. And since he’d taken extremis, he couldn’t.
Tony RSVPd Jan, forwarded Dr. Lee’s report to robotics, and deleted Pepper’s reminder about the board meeting in the morning.
Even if he was breaking the land speed record, the manned flight record, fucking the prettiest girl in the world, his brain didn’t take a break. Part of him, even when he was focused down so tight that all he could see was that line, that face, those lips, was still thinking about something else.
Tony dialed the tower. It rang longer than usual.
"Avengers Tower."
"Cap." He accessed the security cameras and found Steve sitting at the kitchen table, neat stacks of paper in front of him. Jarvis wasn’t in the building. Neither was May Parker. Steve was alone.
"Tony, hey. Where are you?"
"Driving."
Steve smiled. "Are you obeying the speed limit?"
"Nothing’s posted."
"You never know who’s watching."
"I think I’m good." He increased magnification on camera k6. Steve was doing... paperwork? One of the upsides of no longer being a UN sanctioned team was the severe reduction in paperwork. Steve still found some to do.
"Are you here tonight? Jessica wants to do a movie night."
"I have a late meeting. Give her my regrets."
He smiled teasingly. "I thought Pepper kicked you out of the office."
"How did you hear about that?"
"I have connections."
Steve was the furthest thing from connected in all of creation. "Jarvis told you."
"He also told me you were going to rebuild the toaster."
"I was bored."
He grinned. "I looked for you in the garage. Did you clean it?"
"Actually two of my old suits cleaned it. It was a good test for them."
"You test drive your armor with household chores?"
"Dexterity, flexibility, grip strength."
"Does Jarvis have something to worry about?"
"It’s all part of my evil- oops, I mean efficiency plan."
"A better world through robotics."
"Glad to hear you understand."
"I’m with you one hundred percent." Steve smiled and it was full, genuine. Not so long ago it would have been a different kind of smile. Tony was feeling better about the peace ray.
Given his experiences as Iron Man, and as an Avenger, Tony had expected the unexpected, when it came to this new team. Still, he hadn’t been prepared to be fighting with SHIELD again. Shadowy government conspiracies, terrorists, reality-warping ex-teammates who decided to remake the world on a whim. And being mind-controlled by some kid barely out of puberty. Just like old times.
He’d killed people - not of his own volition, but he’d been used as a weapon. Turned into a murderer while his mind was engaged elsewhere - lost time. Time that he hadn’t entirely reconstructed. What did an extremis enhanced mind do when a sophisticated neurological implant was directing it to take a time out? Tony didn’t know.
He’d killed himself to stop it. But things weren’t quite the same after. They never were.
Part of him was glad that he wasn’t a telepath, that he didn’t have to know if everyone just expected him to go crazy and kill people every few years. "Tony killed some people? Well, I guess he was due." And that he didn’t know if they meant it when they forgave him, said it wasn’t his fault.
How many times before it became his fault?
He became aware of the silence he’d let grow between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable somehow. Steve shuffled his papers absently, waited.
Tony searched for something to say. "As Peter would say, I for one welcome our robotic overlords."
Steve smiled. There was something indulgent, private in it. Tony didn’t mind at all.
"So what’re you watching tonight?"
"I’ve heard rumblings about The Day the Earth Stood Still."
"Sounds just about right."
***
Back in the doctor’s office that evening, Tony was contemplating faking a super-villain attack. The stealth armor wasn’t well known - he could use it to break through the doctor’s logic-defyingly pristine picture window, and they’d evacuate the building. Thereby canceling his session.
Tempting.
"And how does that make you feel?"
TBC, theoretically
That foreshadowing. Subtle, right? However, I should note that there was going to be a totally awesome scene in which Logan jumped out of a window at Avengers Tower.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/273057.html.
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Tony goes to therapy and criminal activity in New York City--and then the world--grinds to a halt. Pre Skrulls, New Avengers era.
"And how does that make you feel?"
Like I want to call my armor and fly the hell out of your tastefully appointed office?
"Tony?"
"Sorry." He looked away from the spectacular view that dominated the doctor’s office, to the other spectacular view in the room: the doctor herself. "What were you saying?" He gave her his best charming yet mild smile. Calibrated over years of experience to be diverting without being inviting.
She smiled warmly, almost indulgently. Bingo.
"I was asking how you feel about Dr. Hansen’s incarceration?"
Like I failed her. Like I’m a fool. Like I’m a raging neurotic who talks to himself, apparently.
"I don’t know."
The doctor pinched the bridge of her nose above her gun metal Prada glasses. "Tony, you came to me."
And I’m regretting that more and more.
"We can’t make any progress if you keep being evasive."
"I’m not being evasive, doctor." Not exactly. "Look, I’ve known Maya for years, she was a friend."
"So you’re unhappy about her situation?"
"She’s responsible for hundreds of deaths."
"So she earned her fate."
The right answer here is yes, she deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life. The only problem is that I know why she did it.
When Tony confronted her, her reasons, as much as they disgusted him - that she would risk the lives of hundreds, even outright sacrifice them in the name of science - were logical, almost too easy to understand. He knew Maya, how she thought, how she prioritized, and he could see the decision being made - the moment she saw her funding evaporating, saw her chance of curing cancer lost, that was it for her.
The needs of the many.
And Maya was always a gambler. Part of why they’d gotten along so well.
"Yes." Tony looked out the window again. Breaking eye contact now would usually be a sign of weakness. But here the rules were different.
The doctor’s office was on the 34th floor of a glass and steel tower overlooking the river. Out on the water, a ferry gracelessly inched along, a single curl of pale smoke visible even from here. From this high up the water looked cleaner, and in the fading light, prettier than it had any right to.
Tony felt the silence stretching out. Like a hard to reach itch, it was uncomfortable. Almost physically so - the longer it went on, the more his muscles tensed; the more his hair stood on end. The more he prepared for the other theraputic shoe to drop. Not visibly of course.
Not for the first time, he wondered why she let it go on for so long, and never forced the issue.
The doctor sighed. "Ok Tony, time’s up. We’ll continue this next week?" She stood, automatically brushing an elegant hand across the front of her wool trousers.
He stood too. "Of course." He hadn’t been sure of the etiquette at first. Did you shake your therapist’s hand at the end of a session? Share a deeply felt, but platonic embrace? Take a series of cleansing breaths?
He’d settled on a polite nod. It seemed neutral. "See you Tuesday."
"Tuesday." She smiled and left through the door to her inner office. She always left the room first. Giving him time to pull himself together, he thought. Or a show of trust? He wasn’t sure which.
He pulled on his coat and took up his briefcase. Tony always debated bringing the armor. On the one hand, the chances of a super-villain breaking into a session with revenge/mindless destruction/who knows what on his mind, were alarmingly high, despite the anonymity guarantee the doctor maintained.
He’d made a database. The numbers were not in his favour.
On the other hand, even though the doctor wasn’t into having Tony lie on a couch and discuss his relationship with his mother, or say, hypnosis, he couldn’t quiet the internal alarms that went off every time he left for a session.
The doctor had almost obscenely high security clearance, which made sense, considering Nick had recommended her. Her client list was every bit as colourful as Dr. Samson’s, but unlike Len, she wasn’t and would never be a public figure. She counseled super-heroes, but also VIPs in the business world, military and even politicians.
He hadn’t been able to hack her systems. That wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been.
Tony wasn’t the best systems guy in the world. One of the best, but not the best. Even with extremis there were still systems he hadn’t yet cracked.
It wasn’t that he thought that he was in danger from the doctor. It was just that there was something inherently dangerous about the situation. And he couldn’t let go of the importance of keeping his secret. There were a million reasons to keep his secret identity secret, a million more to keep private the fact that Tony Stark and/or Iron Man were in therapy.
She’d asked him once, why it was so important when Jan and Hank, hell, even Len operated openly. What made Tony Stark so different? Leading question, if ever he’d heard one.
The thing he always came back to was this: danger. There was no part of his life that was safe.
He left the room, closing the door softly behind him. When he arrived and when he left, the door was always closed.
In the outer office he nodded to Dana, the assistant. She nodded back and smiled, blandly polite.
There was no waiting room in the doctor’s office - Tony had never seen another patient and he’d never had to wait. Dana was evidently a master scheduler. Twice he’d had to reschedule appointments and they’d always been able to accommodate him without trouble. Tony Stark was a powerful man and used to that kind of treatment, but so were the rest of the doctor’s rumored client list.
Hers was only office on this floor - the elevator opened to the reception area, which was larger than most apartments on the island. Tony had always gone directly from the elevator to the underground garage where Happy waited; from the garage to the elevator. He checked out the building every visit - there were no hidden cameras or listening devices. Nothing suspicious at all.
Everything in the office, from the decor, to Dana’s efforts, to the doctor herself was designed to minimize anxiety - create a safe atmosphere for a particular kind of personality.
The elevator chimed softly and the doors slid open. He stepped out into the garage, pulling his coat closed against the chill that persisted, despite the heating system. A moment later Happy pulled the limo up and Tony got in.
"Hey boss."
"Hap."
"Where to?"
"Home."
***
MJ and Jessica Jones were on the big couch in the living room, a brightly colored, and manically flashing children’s program playing on the tv. Danielle, wrapped up in a Sponge Bob blanket in Jessica’s lap, was captivated. He worried about the risk of tv-induced seizures.
"Isn’t she a little young for... whatever that is?"
"Fairly OddParents," said MJ. On the screen pink and green fairies argued with a bratty kid.
"She likes the colours," said Jessica. "And I thought I’d start building up a tolerance now, before she’s old enough to demand control of the remote."
"So this isn’t a new child development thing?"
"Just chalk it up to the duties of motherhood."
"What’s your excuse?" he asked, turning to MJ.
"I like the colours," she said with a winning smile. "Oh, an envelope came for you." She got up from the couch and headed to the kitchen, leaving Jessica and Danielle absorbed in their show - duties of motherhood. Right.
"An envelope?"
"A real honest to god envelope, made from no-doubt 100% recycled paper. I thought SE was mostly paper free now."
"It is." Not only did it save SE a lot of money, it saved a considerable amount of time in a business where even the custodial staff was wired. It also made it easier for Tony to keep track of things with extremis - eliminating the paper part of paperwork let him multitask, and do the boring side of his job while he worked on the more interesting stuff.
She handed him a plain letter envelope, addressed to ‘Mr. Anthony Stark’. There was no return address. Strange, yet it had passed the security checks which were standard at Stark Tower. "When did this arrive?"
"The desk gave it to Jarvis a few hours ago. But since he’s out with May, I got the pleasure of delivering it to you."
"Right, I forgot they had a date tonight."
"It’s their big night." He raised an eyebrow in question. "Their three-monthaversery."
"Is that Peter-speak?" It sounded more like him than MJ.
"Duh," she said with a wink. MJ opened the fridge and rummaged with purpose. She started pulling out sandwich fixings; more than he thought could possibly fit into one sandwich.Tony had slept with a lot of models - really, a lot of models - but he’d rarely seen one eat, and eat as much as MJ did. Of course he’d never actually lived with a model before. Who knows what they did when they weren’t on dates with international playboys?
But MJ could never come close to her husband. Sometimes Tony was actually grateful for the satphone (darling of the SE board) - it helped keep SE stock price healthy, and the way Peter ate, it was reassuring to have a safety net in the way of bankruptcy.
"Where is Peter?"
"Patrol. Luke and Cap are in the gym, Jessica went out, and Logan is... wherever he goes when he’s not here."
"Thanks MJ."
Tony left her to her sandwich, and headed to his home office.
When Steve decided to reform the Avengers, Tony had invited the team to use the newly built Stark Tower as its headquarters. The Avengers’ suite actually took up two floors, including bedrooms, guest rooms, shared living space, the gym and the conference room. Not to mention the Quinjet hangers and landing pads on the roof. He didn’t care about the space - even now, all these months later (and post satphone launch) people still weren’t dying to lease space in Stark Tower.
But he’d made sure to keep his own living space separate. He’d always had a room in the mansion, the same as all the other Avengers, but he also had his own apartment to go home to, when things got too crazy, as they inevitably did.
As much as he genuinely liked (most of) the new team, he wasn’t sure he could stand waking up to them. Sharing a pot of coffee with Spider-man and Wolverine every morning was not an enticing prospect.
Tony’s home office, though right beside his bedroom, was seldom used. Normally he’d rather spend his time at home down in the garage, working on the armor or the Avengers’ equipment, than working on SE stuff. And ever since he’d taken the extremis solution, he didn’t really need an office.
Maybe he was being paranoid but he didn’t want to take a mysterious anything down to the garage. Unlike his home office, which contained a desk, a chair, a cup of disposable pens, a pad of paper, and some incomprehensible modern paintings he’d bought at a charity auction, and had to put somewhere, the garage was a secure area.
Tony sat down and put his briefcase on the desk. He connected with the armor, still inside and scanned the envelope - nothing. It was an ordinary envelope.
Ok, then.
He neatly tore open the envelope and pulled out its contents - a single sheet of paper folded in half. He unfolded the paper. The page was blank, save for one typed word in the center.
Stop.
"I am not in the mood for a mystery."
Tony connected with the building’s security systems and searched for the envelope’s arrival. Logged at 11:52 hrs. Came in with the regular mail at 11:46 hrs, which mostly consisted of takeout menus, invitations to revival meetings and other solicitations. The message clerk had flagged the envelope, as per SOP, as soon as he’d found it. It had been screened by building security, and then handed over to Avengers security, who’d screened it again, and then handed it over to Jarvis.
Jarvis sorted and prioritized whatever mail Tony received at Stark Tower, and this resulted in Tony pretty much never receiving mail. As far as he was concerned, that was just fine.
Tony checked the security tapes. At 11:45 the regular messenger, Dave Green, was buzzed into the mailroom and chatted briefly with the clerk. After buzzing the messenger out, the clerk sorted and logged the mail. At 11:46 he found the envelope and logged it. Tony went through it again but there was nothing strange about the delivery. He went through the tape of the security desk, but again, everything was normal.
Ok.
Stark Tower employed an outside mail screening service, as well as its internal security measures. He connected with their system - it was easy enough with extremis to hack in. The envelope was not logged as part of the daily package for Stark Tower.
Either the messenger had added it to the package, or someone at the screening center had a) missed it, or b) slipped it in.
"Stop what?"
He put the letter on the desk. Stop what, and why? There was nothing distinctive about the envelope or the letter.
Nothing about the letter actually suggested menace.
There was a soft knock on the open door. Tony looked up to see Steve leaning in the doorway.
"Hey."
"Did you forget that it’s poker night?" Steve asked, the beginnings of a teasing smile on his lips.
Yes. "No, I was just finishing something."
"Of course you were."
Tony put down the letter and got up, grinning, and followed Steve down to the living room. "Is Peter back?"
"He got in a few minutes ago. Quiet night."
"Good." It was good. Not just because it meant the criminals were taking a break, but because Peter would be more relaxed. A bad night meant hyper Peter; trying to conceal his anger and disappointment Peter. He was amazingly easy to read once you figured out that the jokes were, aside from sometimes hysterically funny and usually inappropriate, Peter’s favourite coping mechanism.
"Jessica is out and Logan is ‘taking care of something’."
"So it’s the happy couples and... us."
"Looks like."
"Great."
In the kitchen Jessica Jones was setting up the baby monitor on the counter, beside the enormous stack of Avengers mail. Luke was already shuffling. MJ was counting the chips and Peter, behind her, was guarding an overflowing bowl of popcorn.
Tony had known Jessica for years - casually, they’d never been even remotely close - but it was strange to be sharing space with her, playing poker with her and Luke Cage. As for Spider-man, he’d met him of course, and even worked with him, but as much as Tony respected his abilities, he’d never expected to be on an Avengers roster with him, much less the former Power Man. If someone had told him a year ago that he would be living with Spider-man, Luke Cage and their respective wives - model slash actress Mary Jane Parker nee Watson, and Jessica Jones, super-detective and journalist - he wouldn’t have known whether to laugh, or laugh until he cried.
It was still surprising how easily this team handled downtime together - he’d been on Avengers squads with more history and more in common, who couldn’t stand to see each other out of costume, or even out of the field. These new Avengers could go for surprisingly long periods of time without threatening to kill each other.
"What are we playing tonight?" Tony asked.
Steve gave him a look. On any one else it would be an I-told-you-so look, but on Steve it was more like smug fondness. "It’s Luke’s turn to deal."
"Five card draw. Ten jujube buy-in."
"Pretty steep," said Tony.
"Think you can handle it, rich boy?" asked Steve.
Tony grinned. "Deal me in." The only way they could convince Steve to play was by making candy their currency of choice. Or toothpicks. That also worked. Tony didn’t mind - it was almost less absurd to play the team for candy, than it was for money. Especially since he usually won.
"Peter?" asked Luke.
"He’s not playing," said MJ.
"I’m letting my more attractive half represent me."
"Letting?" One of MJ’s perfectly shaped eyebrows flew up.
Peter nodded. "My much more attractive half represent me."
"Letting?"
Peter’s grin melted a little under MJ’s stare. "I thought the compliment would get me off the hook."
"You thought wrong." Peter’s face really fell then, a little boy’s hand-in-the-cookie-jar, oh shit moment. Tony couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching one of innumerable reruns of a familiar non-argument. He pushed aside the niggling feeling of too-closeness - it was Jan and Hank again, but not.
"You have a much better poker face than I do."
"This isn’t my poker face."
"So, would you say your expression is an accurate representation of your current emotional state?"
"Pretty much."
"Couch tonight?"
"I’ll let you have a blanket."
"We playing cards, or what?" Luke leveled a baleful mock-glare at them. The weirdest part of living with Power Man, Tony thought, was discovering that he was actually a giant, living teddy bear. With impenetrable skin.
"Not me, I have to work on breaking in the couch."
"You’re so cute when you pout."
Peter and MJ smiled sweetly at each other. Tony was just glad that Luke and Jessica weren’t the sweet type - he wasn’t sure if he could handle two happy, (mostly) non-dysfunctional married couples in his house.
He caught Steve’s eye and - discretely, he liked his internal organs where they were - rolled his eyes. He got another fond smile in return.
Luke dealt, starting with Jessica, who immediately looked at hers. Tony liked to wait until he had all his cards before looking - it gave him more time to watch the other players’ reactions.
Peter was right, MJ did have a great poker face, but Tony had figured out her tell, along with the rest of the team’s. And it looked like the gods were being unusually kind tonight - to everyone. MJ stared the pot down through her eyelashes, Jessica’s left eyebrow arched ever so slightly, Luke glowered into his cards a little harder than usual, and Steve’s lips parted enough for his tongue to dart out and wet the right corner of his mouth, before he controlled the impulse.
Tony curled his hand around his cards and turned them up to his chest.
"Did you shuffle the cards, or just move them around a lot?"
"Something wrong with your hand?"
He tossed his cards down, face up. Joker-Joker-Joker-Joker-Two of spades.
"What the hell? I swear I took those out."
"You were with him last, Cap - has Luke been hitting the bottle?" There was a moment of awkward silence. Where everyone but Peter looked away from Tony Stark: alcoholic. Everybody but Peter, who couldn’t seem to help himself, and stared at Tony, eyes huge. A deer in his headlights and so guilty. "I mean-"
He wanted to tell Peter that honestly, it was fine. Years sober at this point, he was tired of everyone being so damn careful, but as strangely comfortable as being with them was, that wasn’t a conversation Tony had even wanted to have with the old team. It wasn’t a conversation he particularly wanted to have with anyone. Hey guys, it’s totally cool to joke about the addiction that almost destroyed me! Not that you know about that part, because a man’s got to have his secrets.
MJ saved Tony from having to reassure Peter by turning her cards over. "Well I don’t know about you guys, but I welcome Luke’s new method of shuffling." Ace-King-Queen-Jack-Ten of spades. "Royal flush. Looks like I just hit the jackpot."
"No way." Peter’s handful of popcorn fell back into the bowl.
"What are the odds?" asked Steve.
"Normally?" Tony laughed. "Point zero zero one five percent. Tonight? I’m going to have to say one hundred percent chance of weird."
Luke waved his hands to shut them up. "All right, all right - we playing?"
"Danielle is sleeping quietly and Peter made us popcorn," Jessica said. "It is on."
"Hey! This is my popcorn." Peter hunched over his bowl and tried to look threatening. Since Peter’s glare was about as scary as that of a ten-year-old boy, Tony thought it was safe to say that Jessica wasn’t impressed.
She proved that by cracking her knuckles. "Are you prepared to defend it with your life?"
"Yes!"
Jessica glared.
"Can I change my answer?"
"Anyway - sleeping baby, popcorn. We’re playing cards. But this time I’m shuffling." She took the jokers and tossed them down beside her chair. "Was that so hard?" Luke smiled sweetly at her and Tony revised his earlier estimation.
Thank god for Wolverine - the living antithesis of all things sweet and cute.
***
The Avengers never went on patrol, and the New Avengers, at least as a team, were no different. Even before the team, when Tony was just Iron Man: Tony Stark’s bodyguard (and possibly a robot!), he’d never gone looking for trouble. Trouble usually found him. Usually with alarming frequency.
It had been a slow week: no extra-terrestrial, sub-terrestrial, or ordinary, garden variety terrestrial threats requiring the Avengers’ attention. Even non-super crime had been slow. Luke and Peter, who did still patrol, had been reduced to bringing in adolescent shoplifters and litterers.
Tony was beginning to suspect some king of peace ray.
He didn’t have a problem with the villains and criminals taking some down time, but he had way more time on his hands than he was used to. He’d caught up on all the tedious paperwork that Pepper could throw at him, finished two projects that required his personal attention, and one that didn’t. Finally Pepper sent him home.
"Go back to your garage and revolutionize the jetboot industry."
"There is no jetboot industry.
"Whatever. Go work on something, because your micromanaging is stressing everyone out."
"I don’t micromanage."
She glared. "We’ve had this conversation."
"Yes, Pepper." He went.
Tony overhauled the Quinjets, his main armor, two older models and rebuilt the engine of his current favourite car. When he started making noises about redesigning the kitchen appliances, Jarvis told him to get out of the building. He was joking about the appliances - though the toaster, in his opinion, was criminally inefficient - but he went.
Tony was cruising through the city’s glass and steel corridors at a leisurely speed of 200 mph - fast enough and high enough that it wasn’t physically possible for him to see all the crime that wasn’t happening, but the armor fed him a constant stream of data about his surroundings. The news feeds reported the birth of sextuplets in Jersey and the police band had nothing more exciting to announce than a cat up a tree. Definitely a peace ray.
But if there was one thing he’d learned in the super-hero business, it was that peacetime never lasted very long - even diabolically imposed peacetime. The city, and the Avengers deserved a break.
The problem was, according to Pepper, that he didn’t want a break, and really, had no idea of how to handle a break.
Tony hadn’t taken a holiday, a non-working holiday, since Monaco. Ru had wanted to party, Tony had wanted to work on the armor - they went to Monaco and he managed to leave the armor in its briefcase for a whole week. He liked to say that her mutant power was getting her way. She liked to say that Tony needed to learn how to live in the moment
Financial, recreational - she didn’t care if he took risks. Ru would have been happier if he’d risked more on the little things, the everyday things. Speed, reputation, money. And less on the life and death things - because she’d learned quickly that even if Iron Man was the bodyguard and superhero, Tony was never not involved.
She liked to say that he was always looking for the next crisis, the next disaster.
Maybe he was. Maybe it said something about him that his first response to a lull in crime was that it was caused by a peace ray. Or mind controlling insects. Aggression suppressing chemicals in the water supply. Maybe it was messed up to see a Trojan horse in this but he was still too easily blind-sided. Too willing to believe in the pleasing face of things.
Too damned optimistic about the things he had the least cause to be optimistic about.
Tony flew up, out of the canyons of office towers, until he achieved a safe altitude, and then gunned it. At mach three, he was one of the fastest flying objects in the atmosphere, manmade or superhuman - and that wasn’t the armor’s top speed.
He shot through the cloud cover, leaving Manhattan behind him in seconds, and then slowed. Still faster than most humans ever experienced, faster than they could even conceive. A smudge, exploding across the horizon was a building storm - it would reach the city in a day or so, if it didn’t break apart by then. To the armor it was moisture, energy, speed. He headed into it.
The ocean was briefly invisible to his eyes, but even in the thick thunder heads he received satellite feeds, could still access everything - a vast skyline of numbers. Oceanographic data, Naval intelligence reports, wikipedia.
He carved his way to the uppermost, fast-moving layer of cloud, leaving strange eddies in his wake. Turned until he faced the atmospheric ceiling. If he went high enough he could see the stars in daylight. Some things remained cool, no matter what else you saw.
The thing was, he thought, checking his email for status updates, even when he was living in the moment, he wasn’t. And since he’d taken extremis, he couldn’t.
Tony RSVPd Jan, forwarded Dr. Lee’s report to robotics, and deleted Pepper’s reminder about the board meeting in the morning.
Even if he was breaking the land speed record, the manned flight record, fucking the prettiest girl in the world, his brain didn’t take a break. Part of him, even when he was focused down so tight that all he could see was that line, that face, those lips, was still thinking about something else.
Tony dialed the tower. It rang longer than usual.
"Avengers Tower."
"Cap." He accessed the security cameras and found Steve sitting at the kitchen table, neat stacks of paper in front of him. Jarvis wasn’t in the building. Neither was May Parker. Steve was alone.
"Tony, hey. Where are you?"
"Driving."
Steve smiled. "Are you obeying the speed limit?"
"Nothing’s posted."
"You never know who’s watching."
"I think I’m good." He increased magnification on camera k6. Steve was doing... paperwork? One of the upsides of no longer being a UN sanctioned team was the severe reduction in paperwork. Steve still found some to do.
"Are you here tonight? Jessica wants to do a movie night."
"I have a late meeting. Give her my regrets."
He smiled teasingly. "I thought Pepper kicked you out of the office."
"How did you hear about that?"
"I have connections."
Steve was the furthest thing from connected in all of creation. "Jarvis told you."
"He also told me you were going to rebuild the toaster."
"I was bored."
He grinned. "I looked for you in the garage. Did you clean it?"
"Actually two of my old suits cleaned it. It was a good test for them."
"You test drive your armor with household chores?"
"Dexterity, flexibility, grip strength."
"Does Jarvis have something to worry about?"
"It’s all part of my evil- oops, I mean efficiency plan."
"A better world through robotics."
"Glad to hear you understand."
"I’m with you one hundred percent." Steve smiled and it was full, genuine. Not so long ago it would have been a different kind of smile. Tony was feeling better about the peace ray.
Given his experiences as Iron Man, and as an Avenger, Tony had expected the unexpected, when it came to this new team. Still, he hadn’t been prepared to be fighting with SHIELD again. Shadowy government conspiracies, terrorists, reality-warping ex-teammates who decided to remake the world on a whim. And being mind-controlled by some kid barely out of puberty. Just like old times.
He’d killed people - not of his own volition, but he’d been used as a weapon. Turned into a murderer while his mind was engaged elsewhere - lost time. Time that he hadn’t entirely reconstructed. What did an extremis enhanced mind do when a sophisticated neurological implant was directing it to take a time out? Tony didn’t know.
He’d killed himself to stop it. But things weren’t quite the same after. They never were.
Part of him was glad that he wasn’t a telepath, that he didn’t have to know if everyone just expected him to go crazy and kill people every few years. "Tony killed some people? Well, I guess he was due." And that he didn’t know if they meant it when they forgave him, said it wasn’t his fault.
How many times before it became his fault?
He became aware of the silence he’d let grow between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable somehow. Steve shuffled his papers absently, waited.
Tony searched for something to say. "As Peter would say, I for one welcome our robotic overlords."
Steve smiled. There was something indulgent, private in it. Tony didn’t mind at all.
"So what’re you watching tonight?"
"I’ve heard rumblings about The Day the Earth Stood Still."
"Sounds just about right."
***
Back in the doctor’s office that evening, Tony was contemplating faking a super-villain attack. The stealth armor wasn’t well known - he could use it to break through the doctor’s logic-defyingly pristine picture window, and they’d evacuate the building. Thereby canceling his session.
Tempting.
"And how does that make you feel?"
TBC, theoretically
That foreshadowing. Subtle, right? However, I should note that there was going to be a totally awesome scene in which Logan jumped out of a window at Avengers Tower.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/273057.html.
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