so.. i posted this chapter about a month ago on ao3 and just... forgot... about doing it here too. Hopefully this will make up for such an extremely delayed update.

Chapter Nine

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey," Tony waved his hands wildly from the edge of the simulation arena, "FRIDAY, pause the program for a minute will you? Peter! Did you see what happened there?"

Peter sailed to the floor and landed in an agile crouch, a wispy trail of webbing falling languidly through the air behind him. He toed the mat with his foot sheepishly, head hanging at an angle that effectively kept them from making eye contact, "I left Natasha and she got swarmed. It was my bad."

"My bad doesn't get Nat out of the hospital," Tony said reproachfully, pointing firmly to where Natasha stood breathing heavily in the center of the room, hair sticking in sweaty curls to her forehead. The simulation drones that surrounded her on all sides broke into their pixelated foundations, tiny cubes of holographic light draining silently to the floor like geometric raindrops. "My bad doesn't bring a teammate or civilians back from the dead. My bad doesn't cut it for us. So. What happened? Start from the beginning."

At some point while he'd been speaking, Peter had swept the red and blue mask from his head, his brown hair in total chaos, his cheeks cherry red with heat, and his eyes wide as he listened to Tony. He had snapped to perfect attention, becoming sober as the magnitude of his responsibilities sunk in. "I saw Natasha getting overwhelmed and I dropped in to try and get some of those guys off her back," he explained, twisting the fabric of his mask in his hands and Tony reminded himself to be gentler with him. "When I thought she was clear, I pulled out to get some height and went off to go help Vision. I shouldn't have left her."

"You can leave her," Tony told him, nodding in Natasha's direction as she settled a distance behind Peter's shoulder. "She's terrifyingly capable of handling herself. But you have to make sure that if you do leave her alone, you aren't leaving her with bigger problems. When you pulled out of Natasha's zone just now it left a vacuum, and that space got filled with more bad guys than she started with.

"You helped her out from under a pile of shit at the beginning, but when you left before the entire area was clear, you heaped an even bigger load of shit on her. You have to clear more than just what the problem is at that moment. You have to look at what comes next. You gotta be three, five, ten steps ahead. A battle is much more than just you and the guy you're fighting, it's about all the other guys and how they'll react to what you do. It's a dynamic system," and Tony saw a switch click into place behind Peter's eyes and he smiled to himself. A familiar smile that Tony recognized because he did it, too, whenever he'd figured something out. "There are moving pieces and you have to be able to anticipate how they'll react to stress. Got it?"

Peter pulled his mask back down and rolled his shoulders in anticipation, "Dynamic system. Got it."

Tony backed off the edge of the simulator mat, "FRIDAY, let's run scenario four beta one one. You've got full control over variable manipulation and system preferences."

"Yes, Boss," the voice of his AI responded eagerly, the holographic pixels blinking into the outline of the practice drones, overlaid by the artificial reality filter until the digital metal plates of the enemy bots gleamed in the light of the sun streaming through the skylights two stories above them. The drones were equipped with advanced haptic interface technology, so by the time FRIDAY finished constructing the new situational environment, the team would be facing off against enemies that could hit and hurt. Within appropriate boundaries.

He watched Peter, Natasha, and Vision regroup as the sim ran through the start-up sequence and then they shifted seamlessly into action when the virtual battle began. They had started training together only this week, and it had been rough going the first handful of practice runs. Peter was accustomed to working solo, and filing down his fighting habits so they would fit with the team's took some doing. Plus, he was young and impulsive. But he was also easily coachable and a committed learner, and it hadn't taken too long before the others adapted to incorporate him into their ranks. It was a worthwhile progression, and the entire team was stronger because of him.

He continued observing for another minute or two, mentally celebrating when he watched as Peter flipped over Natasha's head and disabled a drone behind her turned back and continued to shut down two more approaching enemies still some distance away, using his webs to lash them together and fling them across the room into a pack of bots crawling over Vision.

Tony smiled to himself and trotted away from the simulator back to where he'd abandoned Rhodey. He was standing in the bottom half of the War Machine armor, looking more happy than Tony had seen him in months. Rhodey tossed Tony's tablet to him as he came closer, nodding to the practice session, "Kid's getting good."

"Yeah, yeah," Tony agreed, his attention focused on the coupling system displayed on the tablet, but he smiled softly as he heard Peter whooping behind him. "I like him. Okay, let's finish up calibrating your braces to the armor and then we can suit up and go for a test drive."

Rhodey beamed at him, "Hell yes."

Tony set about pairing the two devices, reading instant feedback data as it popped up on his screen and making tiny adjustments to the electrical signatures of both instruments until they became compatible. "Alright, let's see how this works," he murmured distractedly, tapping on the screen to finalize the system default inputs.

He looked up as he digitally sent the calibration settings into the War Machine armor, watching with satisfaction when little circles of light glowed with a positive green color at the joints in the legs as the suit accepted the braces. "Coupling process successful, Boss," FRIDAY informed him, "Saving system settings."

Tony tossed the tablet aside and spread his hands triumphantly, "Run a quick diagnostics check."

Rhodey arched an eyebrow, "You think it might not work?"

"Of course it'll work," Tony assured him, crossing his arms in front of his chest and trying not to remember the black hole that had opened up in his stomach when he'd watched his best friend fall out of the sky. "I built this to work, so it'll work. But I'm not taking any chances. I've also included a few other safety measures in your armor's system functions. For example, if something happens to the calibration of your braces and the armor, FRIDAY will be able to take over remotely and pilot you to the ground. Or if the arc reactor becomes non-operational the suit will eject you and deploy a built-in parachute."

Rhodey tried for a smile but it fell short, becoming something more of a grimace. His gaze trailed to the floor and Tony watched him go silent, his heart constricting in his chest because he didn't know what to do or what else to fix. But when Rhodey looked back up at him, his eyes were guilty. "How long have you been thinking about this?"

The gears in Tony's head crunched together with a screech of metal grinding on metal and stopped working for a beat. He shook his head and squinted at Rhodey, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you," Rhodey said quietly, but with intensity, his eyes searching Tony's face. "You've built all this stuff into my suit, stuff that'll make sure what happened won't happen again. You've obviously been thinking about it, but, Tony, I know you, you're swamped, you're working too hard and too fast and I get it. I know why," the words came out quick and sudden, in the uncontrolled and passionate way of a concerned friend. Rhodey lifted his arms slightly and opened and closed his hands, like he wanted to do something with them but wasn't sure he could. Finally, he sighed tiredly, "I know why. And I know that I can't get you to stop, but I don't want my problems to get in the way of more important things."

"There's nothing more important than this," Tony told him simply, wondering why he even had to say it.

Rhodey chuffed quietly through his nose and glanced away, smiling in a pained kind of way and looking for all the world like he'd just lost an argument. "Yeah, but what about you?"

Tony was really starting to hate this conversation. It didn't make sense. What about him? There were more important things to do than worry about himself. Like protecting his friends. And his team. And his company. And the world. He didn't really have time for anything else.

"You've got visitors, Boss," FRIDAY's voice interrupted, "Observation deck."

They craned their necks upward and searched the balcony against the glare of the morning sun through the skylights. "Who is it, Fri?"

"Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne."

Tony deflated into himself, groaning plaintively, and dropped his head until his chin nearly bumped against his chest. "Why?" he whined. "I don't like them, they don't like me. Why are they here?"

"Maybe you should go ask them," FRIDAY suggested, and her tone made it impossible to tell if she was being helpful or cheeky, but Tony was willing to bet on the latter.

"Wow," Rhodey mused, his gaze roving from the two figures above them back to Tony. "How long's it been?"

Tony hummed in thought. "Not since before dad died. And Pym's mistrust of him kind of just translated to me. Completely unwarranted."

"Uh-huh," Rhodey scoffed, rolling his eyes so dramatically Tony thought he'd lose them inside his brain, "I'm sure it had nothing to do with you and your whole 'oh look at me I'm 22 and I'm already richer than you and I can get more action in one night than you can get in a decade' vibe."

Tony physically turned himself towards Rhodey, thrusting his head forward slightly like he'd misheard, lips parted in a moment of bafflement. "If those words ever came out of my mouth - they would've been completely accurate, by the way - but if I did actually say that, it's because I was drunk."

Rhodey smirked impishly, raising his hands in surrender and shaking his head innocently. Tony frowned at him before shuffling away. "And don't say vibe," he carped irritably, "Your 80s is showing again."

Tony trudged slowly up the stairs to the observation balcony, mentally chanting shit shit shit to the beat of feet falling on the steps. His family's history of relationships with Hank Pym had been toxic at best, and completely nuclear at worst. But he and Tony had eventually reached a place where they mutually ignored each other's existence, so the fact that he was willing enough to initiate contact sent Tony reeling into a defensive mode. Pym wanted something. And Tony had spent his entire life surrounded by people who wanted something, he knew to be wary of them.

"Pym," Tony greeted curtly as he approached them.

Hank Pym swiveled to face him, his eyes guarded and deliberately civil, "Stark."

Tony tilted his head to gaze around Pym at his daughter who had yet to show any acknowledgment of his presence. She was standing straight-backed with her hips squared confidently to the railing of the edge of the balcony, her face tilted downward as she watched the team drill on the floor below, her hair shielding her eyes like black walls.

"Hey, Princess," Tony waved at her shoulder, resurrecting the childhood nickname that he'd made for her years and years ago. Pym and Hope would come by the house, sometimes while Tony was home from school. Hank would disappear to his father's lab (where world war 3 would eventually break out if he stayed longer than four hours) and Hope would perch on the sofa in their living room, reading a new book every time and having Jarvis shuttle her cups of tea. She was, like, six at the time. In a spark of annoyance, Tony had dubbed her Princess of the Stark Estate.

The nickname got her attention and she lifted her head to face Tony, folding her arms against her chest and smiling like she was figuring out the most efficient way to kill him.

"Great," Tony hissed under his breath, instantly regretting his immediate reflex to antagonize her. He cleared his throat, "What are you doing here, Pym?"

Hank clasped his hands behind his back, a sleek black briefcase hanging from one of his fists. He smiled, his eyes remaining calculatedly cool, "We're here to talk."

Talk.

Tony could think of about 42 other things he'd rather do with Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne. 14 of those things included fire, three of them ended with him jumping from the balcony, 25 had him most likely facing a law suit of some kind, and all of them would be less painful than this. "Fine," he consented with a smile, gesturing with one arm behind him where a hallway would lead them to the common area.

Hank strode at his side and Hope trailed a short distance behind them. Tony's neck prickled under her frosty stare. Only half a minute into this meeting and he already wanted to light himself on fire.

"Congratulations, by the way," Hank began, his voice neutral. "The technology world is raving about your company's new product. Stark Industries' step forward in biomechatronics is revolutionary. Very impressive."

"Thank you," Tony returned in his own emotionless, insincere tone. "And let's just agree right now to not waste each other's time. Starting with you admitting that you're not impressed, you're just pissed that I got there before Pym Technologies."

Hank shrugged, unperturbed, "I can admit that. But that's not why I'm here."

"Why are you here then?" The glass doors of the conference side of the common area sliced open as they approached and Tony led them to the same table where Ross had confronted the team with the Accords only a few months ago. None of them sat down, and Tony figured that was appropriate. "It's definitely not to talk business. Oh, maybe because you want to ream me out for making your friend, Scott Lang, an international fugitive. And if that's the case, I'll just have to ask you to make an appointment like everybody else. I'm backed up until the year 2020."

They took up positions on different sides of the table, Tony standing on one and Hank and Hope squared up against him on the opposite side. To his credit, Pym didn't let Tony's coarseness ruffle him, "That's not why we're here either. I gave Scott the Ant Man suit because I thought that he could do good with it. I thought maybe that it could help him turn his life around. But I don't appreciate that suit being used to help him become a war criminal. It puts a bad name on me and my company."

Hope looked up from where she'd been occupied inspecting her already immaculate fingernails, "Pym Technologies released an official statement in May denouncing his actions and denying our involvement or support of him or Steve Rogers. We had no idea what he was up to until it was all over the news."

"Whatever the hell that kid did when he was wearing my suit, whatever mess Scott Lang is in right now, it's his own damn fault as far as I'm concerned," Pym declared, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking comfortably on the balls of his feet.

Tony knew better than to be fooled by his flippancy. "You miss him."

Pym sighed, his face twisting in a scowl of acceptance, "Unfortunately."

"And you," Tony grinned at Hope, "You like him."

"Unfortunately," Hank repeated.

Hope rolled her neck so she was glaring up at the ceiling and shook her head in bored, irritated sort of way that told Tony that this conversation was a dinner-table regular. "Dad, enough."

"O-kay," Tony raised his hands in a halting motion, cutting off Pym's reply as it sat on his lips. "Let's get back to the part where you tell me why you're here. I'm not in the mood to play family therapist."

Hank glared at him, his eyebrows drawing low over his now smoldering eyes, "Are you ever in the right mood, Stark?"

"I don't know. Are you ever nice?"

"No. Are you?"

"Oh, dear God," Hope snapped, taking the briefcase from her father's grip and slamming it onto the glass table. "We're here because I signed the damn Accords."

Tony froze halfway through his next retort to Hank. "Uh, what?" he asked intelligently.

Hope flicked open the locks on the case and removed a copy of the revised edition of the Accords, sliding it across the table for Tony to take. "I signed them. I want to be on the team."

Tony felt his face do something distasteful and completely reflexive. He gave Pym a look across the table, tapping a finger on the cover of the document in front of him. "You want to me," he started slowly, pointing at his own chest, "to babysit your daughter?" he finished incredulously, twisting his hand around so he was pointing to Hope who was in turn glaring, like it was her most basic function.

Hank smacked his lips and looked over his glasses at him, unimpressed, "Something tells me that it'll be the other way around."

"Right. And what makes you think that we need you?" he turned his attention to Hope, challenging. The last thing he wanted on this team that he'd just barely gotten out of the mud was the volatile daughter of the man who wanted to roast his intestines on a stick.

But he thought of the sleepless nights he'd spent the last week laying the foundation for POLARIS. He thought of the dream that haunted him even when he wasn't thinking about it, with a curse he was born with and glowing stones, a hostile universe and merciless laughter. Glass he couldn't break.

"Cut the crap, Stark," Pym fumed from his side of the table. "Half of your team is in the wind, you're building up from the ground. You want Hope on your side."

"Do I?" Tony choked the question out in a doubtful kind of way, with a side order of legitimate fear. "Because she looks like she could kill me in my sleep with a smile on her face."

"Listen," Hank elaborated hotly, placing both palms flat on the table and leaning forward, "you made an incredible mess of the Avengers, Stark."

Tony stood his ground, true anger shooting through him like an anchor. Anger that was partially the product of the knowledge that Pym was right. "I did what I could to keep us together."

Hank scowled, "You could've done better."

Tony spread his hands, letting his words bounce off of him harmlessly. "You're preaching to the choir, Pym. I can always do better. I'm in the business of doing better. You and I both are. But you're right, I made mistakes. I put too much trust in people who didn't deserve it."

"Ross?" Hope asked.

Tony nodded, "Ross."

"That's another thing," Pym swung back into the debate, jabbing an accusing finger at Tony's chest. "I'm not going to have my daughter be under the thumb of a man like that."

"We're not under anybody's thumb," Tony grit out, stunned that he was reliving this argument in the same room where the first one took place.

"Really?" Hank laughed condescendingly, "Well, you could've fooled me."

Tony's nerves felt like they were on fire, he wanted to put his fist through this table and feel the shards rip into his palm. He wanted to feel something other than anger. "If you've read the Accords then you would understand that that's not true," he retorted, ironing his voice into something low and even. "They call for accountability, not submission. And if that distinction is too hard for you to make, then you shouldn't be here. Besides, I'm not an idiot. I've known Ross for years. He's corrupt and he's good at it and I'm always looking for ways to prove it."

Hank was silent for a second, the lines in his face smoothing out as he calmed a fraction. He straightened from his aggressive position stretching towards Tony across the table. He twisted his jaw thoughtfully, "It's a good speech, Stark. Do you mean it?"

"I guess you'll just have to trust me."

"I trust you."

If the joints in their necks were made of metal, then they would've screeched and shattered with the speed and force at which Tony and Hank both snapped their heads in their hurry to look at Hope.

Pym opened and closed his mouth like a fish on dry land, trying to find the words to reach his daughter. He finally decided on: "What?"

"I do," Hope repeated strongly, her gaze fastening tightly on Tony. "He acts like an infant and I don't really like him, but I trust him to do the right thing by me and the world."

Tony looked back and forth between Pym and Hope as the silence stretched on and on. Finally, after an indeterminate and painfully uncomfortable amount of time, Hank nodded once. "Okay," he said, reaching to refasten the locks on his briefcase. He stood back and swept both of them with a careful gaze which lingered on Tony long enough to turn into something very close to lethal. Then he left.

Hope and Tony stared at each other wordlessly and the air conditioning cycled to life, interrupting the silence. Tony's feet twitched in his shoes and he bounced back and forth on his toes, tapping a random rhythm on his leg through the pocket of his pants. Hope stared.

"Welcome to the Avengers, Princess," Tony broke the silence bluntly, pulling a plate of Laura Barton's leftover chocolate chip cookies across the table and offering them to Hope. "Cookie?"

XxX

Tony relocated to the tower that night, seeking refuge from Hope van Dyne and her imperious attitude and her ruler-straight hair, with corners sharp enough to puncture a lung.

He didn't have an excuse for why he ended up at the bar though. It was just one of those days. The kind where he gave up because he was tired and sometimes he liked to sit in the dark with a bottle and not think about anything in particular, fascinated by the feeling of the cogs and belts in his head slowing into something more tolerable, not the usual blistering heat and noise of machinery pounding through information at a thousand miles per hour.

It was relaxing, or at least, it was for about 15 minutes. Then Nicholas Fury invited himself to the party, sitting down with hard finality on the stool next to Tony without announcement or ceremony.

"Jesus!" he yelped, bracing himself against the countertop with one hand and dropping his head between his shoulders. Once he got his heart rate back under control, he glared at the man next to him. "You know, there's a doorbell."

"I know," Fury agreed, fixing him under his one-eyed gaze. "And I don't trust it."

They spent a moment staring at each other in perfect silence. "I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," Tony said finally, going innocently back to his drink.

"Oh, I think you do," Fury said, and Tony smirked into the bottom of his glass as it hid his face. "You still owe SHIELD half a million dollars in damage fees."

Tony wagged a finger at him, munching on a cube of ice, "SHIELD doesn't exist anymore, so technically I don't owe it anything."

Fury heaved one of his weary, what did I do to deserve this? sighs reserved exclusively for Tony, "You and your goddamn technicalities." He reached blindly under the counter for the bottle of scotch that Tony had used to fill his tumbler and grasped it by the neck, drawing it closer to him.

Tony wordlessly slid him a crystal tumbler and watched dimly as Fury raised his eyebrows at the bottle in his hand. "I know when people fall off the wagon they fall hard, but Stark, this is hard, even for you."

"Give me some credit," Tony mumbled into his glass, "I'm not getting drunk."

Fury brandished the bottle, amber liquid sloshing against the glass frame inside, "You could take a whiff of this and be seeing double for the next three days."

Tony snorted humorlessly and looked sideways at him, "That's because you're not me. It must be genetic or something. And I'm not getting drunk. It's not fun anymore. It's a temporary fix with even bigger problems in the morning. And it comes with a complimentary headache."

Fury leaned forward, the leather of his trench coat squeaking softly underneath him, his face pinched into an intense scowl and his eye narrowed into a fierce squint.

Tony set his tumbler down and rubbed a hand over his face, "Please stop," he muttered, his voice muffled by his fingers, "It hurts just to watch you."

Fury tilted his head at him inquisitively, "Are you dying?"

"I hope not."

Fury stared at him for a while longer and Tony eventually got the uncomfortable feeling like he was a particularly intriguing museum exhibit. "What do you need, Nick?"

Fury sat back, propping an elbow up on the counter and putting his chin in his hand. "Who says I need anything?"

Tony smiled and it felt brittle, like old plastic, "Somebody always needs something."

"I'm here because I know all about the shit that you've been wading through these past few months. I know you, Stark, better than most. You say you're fine when you're not. And you've been trying to convince the world that you're fine for a while now. And I'm not your damn therapist, but I do care. I've known you since I got put on a SHIELD security detail tasked with following your family around back in the day, ever since you were just a tiny little shit. Now you're a bigger little shit and I still, for some reason, care about you."

Tony rolled his eyes, "And?"

"And," Fury looked away for the first time, his voice becoming more serious, guilty, even. "I need your help."

"Yeah?" Tony asked resignedly, scratching at his cheek. "My help with what?"

"Barton's coming back."

"Huh," Tony grunted, absorbing that information, not entirely surprised, but not excited about it either. Last time he'd seen Clint, the guy had had the audacity to attack him with Rhodey's injury and Tony couldn't just let that slide by. Maybe it was pettiness, maybe it wasn't. But whatever it was, Tony knew that he had to let it slide. This whole thing was an exercise in forgiveness, and every moment of it took more and more out of him, yet he continued to come back stronger than before. "You want me to talk to the UN, make him a deal."

Fury nodded.

Tony fingered the rim of his tumbler, suddenly losing his taste for the scotch, "When's the deadline?"

"Well," Fury pulled a slim phone from one of the deep pockets in his coat and passed it casually from hand to hand without really doing anything with it, "I have Barton set up in an old safehouse in Morocco until the end of this week, then he's moving to Mumbai, and Barcelona after that. I'm hoping to put a couple thousand travel miles between him and Wakanda. I think a month should be long enough to get word to the UN that Clint Barton's looking to make a deal and do some political string-pulling to get him back."

Tony dipped his head in understanding, tilting his glass to Fury, "So Barton's going to bounce around the globe until I can get a contract finalized and when the UN starts to get curious after he pops back into society, there'll be a pretty long trail leading to nowhere special. Assuming they don't look back far enough."

"Barton's going underground, I'm assuming that they won't be able to track him at all."

Tony snorted, smiling at Fury's confidence in his ability to hide somebody. "You're not that good."

"No, no, I am," Fury countered knowingly, leaning closer to Tony, "You're just better at finding people than anybody I know. You might be able to track Barton, but the UN doesn't have your brains or resources. They won't be able to. And even if they can, their investigators won't be able to follow a trail back far enough to find anything that matters."

Tony murmured his agreement, rolling the tumbler in lazy circles on the bar. "What have you been up to, Nick?"

"Oh, you know," Fury exhaled loudly, taking an enthusiastic gulp of scotch, "Taking down Hydra offshoot groups. Hydra had a far reach and they influenced a lot of people. Some of them are cheap knockoffs, but others have real potential to be serious threats. What do you think, should I recruit Cap? He's probably losing his head with nothing to do. You know how he is."

"Yeah," Tony drawled slowly, taking another sip of his drink just so he had something to do. "I know how he is. You can ask Rogers to do whatever the hell you want, you don't need my approval. I don't really care about what he's doing as long as it's not making more problems for me."

Fury's mouth twisted but he said nothing, downed the rest of his glass, and made to leave. But as he stood, Tony found himself once again the the spotlight of his perceptive gaze. "You know, not every problem is one that you have to solve. Cap gets caught? Maybe that should be on him. His choices, his responsibility. Have you ever thought of that? You don't have to fix everything. Some things are meant to be broken so others can figure out how to fix them."

"Really?" Tony turned on his stool so he could face Fury in a moment of honesty. "Because I don't trust other people to fix things when I know that I can do it better. Do you?"

"I trust you."

Tony stared blankly, "You trust me?"

Fury tilted his head in thought. "Don't actively distrust," he amended.

"That's better."

Fury chuckled and started to stroll away, but he left Tony with one final thought. "Maybe not everything is your fault, Stark."

And then he was gone, leaving Tony as he started. Alone in the dark with a bottle of scotch, the gears in his head punching back into rhythm, filling his head with fire and the smell of burning.

XxX

September 3 and Clint is back, haggard looking and tired, but he's back.

It was a tension filled moment when Clint pulled up to the United Nations building in a nondescript taxi. The ten man security detail flanked the car, weapons at the ready, and Tony stood in his suit at the center of the courtyard. Natasha vibrated with anxiety at his shoulder, playing unconsciously with the holster strap of her sidearm. Behind them, Everett Ross, Alan Sabbe, and Secretary Ross were waiting at a safe distance with a small escort team.

Tony had tried to convince them that their security efforts were a waste of time and energy, worried that a nervous tick might be misinterpreted and the situation would escalate into something unnecessarily violent. But the UN had assured him that their safety protocols were simply precautionary measures, not that Tony could entirely blame them. Only four months ago, Clint had been part of the faction of the Avengers that had gone rogue. They didn't know what to expect.

But Clint stepped out of the backseat with his arms raised calmly, and Tony and Natasha moved forward to greet him. One of the security detail removed a pair of cuffs from a pocket in his tactical vest, but backed off pretty quickly when the glowing blue eyes of Tony's helmet locked onto him ominously.

"Clint," Natasha smiled, but only Tony knew how nervous she was beneath her smooth exterior. She wanted this to go right, she needed this to go right.

"Hey, Nat," Clint grinned back at her, slowly lowering his hands back to his sides as the security detail relaxed around them. His smile grew tighter when he looked to Tony, not with anger but with something deeper and less hostile. He pushed through it and extended his hand, "Hey, Tony."

A pulse of warmth blossomed in his chest, reluctantly at first, then stronger, and some of the tension eased out of his muscles. Tony's helmet clicked apart and folded down into the suit and he smiled, reaching out to shake his hand. "Hey, Clint."

"So, uh," Clint retracted his hand and looked around defensively, clearly on edge, "how is this going to work?"

"You sign the Accords," Everett Ross explained with his usual gravitas, coming up behind Tony, with the other Ross glowering at him a step behind. "The newly revised Accords, that is. We take you inside, record your statement in which you will confess to your actions while in league with Steve Rogers and acknowledge the terms of your probation. A generous three months of non-active duty as a newly reinstated member of the Avengers."

Clint shifted on his feet, eyes flashing, and whispered, "Oh, is that all?" Natasha stomped on his toe discreetly and he adopted a blatantly fake smile, "I mean, yay! Probation!"

Tony smirked in spite of himself, tongue thrust into the side of his cheek in a halfhearted effort to keep the grin off his face. He hadn't realized it until now, but he'd missed Clint and his stupid sense of humor. Everett Ross looked at Clint with his lips pinched into something between and frown and a smile and shook his head slightly.

One deposition, two signed documents, and an infinity amount of political banalities later, Tony and Natasha were flying back to New York with an even more haggard Clint Barton in their company. Oh, and Secretary Ross, who needed to be back in America for an upcoming hearing and had been shoved on the soonest flight, which, as misfortune would have it, was their's.

"I wonder if they expect you to be an expert at frowning when you interview for a government job," Tony wondered with exaggerated volume, reclining in a chair next to Clint along one side of the quinjet. They were watching Ross from across the aisle as he tapped emotionlessly on a tablet.

"I can hear you, Stark," Ross grumbled without looking up.

"You can't tell, but deep down, I'm terrified," Tony returned sarcastically.

Ross glanced up, and Tony couldn't tell if it was something in his eyes or just the reflection of light from his tablet, but something made him suddenly uneasy. "You should be," Ross said darkly, but then he sneered like he was joking and went back to his work.

"Tell me about the new team," Clint said conversationally, perhaps a little forced, but still genuinely interested.

"Well there's Hope van Dyne. I've known her since she was five. Our dads were, well, calling them business partners is too much of a stretch, they actually hated each other. Anyways, she's a quiet type, real piece of work. Got a haircut like the female version of Spock. Thinks she knows better than God."

Clint smiled knowingly, "So, you like her then?"

Tony grunted noncommittally, "I like her enough."

"They had a rocky start," Natasha called from the cockpit of the jet, twisting in the pilot's chair to look over her shoulder at them. "Tony was convinced that her father had planted her on the team for the sole purpose of getting close enough to kill him, so he refused to be in the same room with her without somebody else for two weeks. Then he saw her make a new pot of coffee after she finished the last of the old one and realized that she wasn't Satan incarnate."

Clint's smile grew wider, "I think I like her already. Who else? What about that spider guy from the airport in Leipzig?"

"That's Peter," Tony said, softer now, his voice low enough so it wouldn't carry to Ross over the hum of the jet engines. "He's in high school."

Clint waited expectantly for Tony to elaborate. "And?" he pressed.

Tony shrugged wildly with his hands, "And that's literally all you have to know about him other than he can stick to walls and shoot webs. He's a golden retriever puppy with pubescent mood swings."

Clint fell into silence, moving around in his seat like he couldn't get comfortable and taking deeper breaths at odd times like he was constantly on the verge of saying something, but swallowed the words every time.

Tony knew what he wanted to say, and he knew why it was hard for him to say it. So he coughed mildly and brushed a lone string of fabric from the sleeve of his suit jacket, "Rhodey's doing well. He's flying now, actually. We've been working him up to combat duty for the past month."

Clint looked miserably relieved, "Really? How - how'd you figure that out?"

Tony gave him a look, "You mean walking?"

"Yeah," Clint said, his voice subdued with more hidden emotion than Tony wanted to decipher.

"Don't you watch the news?" he asked.

"Fury's had me bouncing around the world for a month," Clint reminded him quietly, shooting a furtive glance at Ross who was now engaged in a heated argument over the phone. "I haven't been able to catch very much of the news since the hearing after Burundi."

"Stark Industries is launching a new product this winter. It's a leg brace with proprioception technology, capable of stimulating rehabilitation in partial paralysis victims. It can't cure it completely, and I'm still working on a more effective way to counter full paralysis, but for now, they'll be used as a way to stall musculoskeletal atrophy in more severe cases. We're calling it Genesis."

Clint tilted his chin in a version of a nod, "I guess that's appropriate." Then he fell into silence, discovering a renewed fascination with his combat boots and he scuffed them around under the chair, something unsaid hanging between them, reeking of unmistakable eventuality.

Since Clint had surrendered himself this morning, they had been treading on eggshells around each other; all clipped politeness and phatic communication and strained smiles. Not entirely out of contempt, but because there was something that needed to be addressed between them, but both were feebly hoping that they could ignore it and move on.

The remainder of the flight passed quickly and unextraordinarily; the only other noteworthy moment was when, after Ross disconnected from his lengthy and strenuously cryptic call, Tony teased him about being on rough ground with his girlfriend. To which Ross snapped back with a response layered with double meaning, "Don't ask questions that you don't want to know the answer to, Stark."

Ross always put Tony off, but there was something different about him today that made his nerves send blasts of cold fire through his body. Something dangerous.

The floor inside the quinjet grumbled and vibrated as the landing gear activated and Natasha set them down expertly on the circular pad. The docking ramp hissed open, letting in a fresh burst of fall air and afternoon sunlight. Tony stood and led Clint down the ramp and into the compound in the direction of the team's living quarters.

Natasha caught up to them on the stairs after having supervised Ross' journey through the compound and into an awaiting car which would shuttle him back to Washington. Tony didn't trust Ross as far as he could throw him, but Natasha trusted him even less.

She positioned herself at her usual spot by Tony's right shoulder, consciously marking her loyalties with him. It was incredibly reassuring, in a guilty and selfish way. Tony would be lying if he said that he hadn't been worried about how Clint's coming back to the team would affect his relationship with Natasha, which was still healing and their trust rebuilding. She and Clint were close, compromisingly so, and Tony had more than once caught himself wondering if Natasha would simply realign herself with her friend.

But her solid presence, stalwart and determined, gave him all the confidence he needed that she was here to stay.

They stopped outside a door in one of the hallways close to the solarium and Clint let himself into the room, cautiously and without much conviction. Natasha followed him in but Tony hung back by the doorway, watching mutely and with undercurrents of apprehension. He wanted this to work. He didn't want this to be a mistake.

Clint stopped in the middle of the room, taking in the simple wooden bed frame, the dresser, and the bookshelves that Tony had stocked with some of the same titles that he'd seen lying around at the Barton's farmhouse. He'd tried to incorporate the feel of Clint's home, a place he'd spent quite a bit of time in recently, into the design of his room. Homely, basic. The essentials, nothing elaborate or ornate.

At first, still wrestling with vestiges of anger, Tony had spitefully ordered Ikea crap to furnish Clint's quarters. Impersonal and cheap. What he deserves, he'd thought, trying to feel justified in ordering things with impossible names and failing to convince himself that it was true. Because Clint didn't actually deserve that. He'd made a mistake, chosen the wrong side, and said something in a moment of defensive hatred. Besides, Clint had already taken the first step in repairing what had been broken when he'd decided to come back, and Tony couldn't justify taking a reciprocal step in the opposite direction. So he took a step forward, too, designing the room as if he was doing it for a friend. Because they had been friends, they'd just gotten lost somewhere along the way.

He watched Clint flash the smallest but most authentic smile he'd seen all day when he saw the dartboard hanging on the wall. "This is nice, Tony. Thank you."

Tony shrugged away his gratitude with a flick of his hand, feeling unspoken permission to step into the room, "It was nothing. Oh, and I wasn't going to say this with Ross sitting ten feet away, but I've arranged for Laura and the kids to come up and visit at the end of the week. I figured it would be a good idea to put some time in between you getting back and seeing them," Tony explained, blind to the way that the new friendliness in Clint's eyes evaporated into mist when he began talking about his family, "You know, get you settled here, let some of the heat die down."

"So," Clint said hotly, his arms coming up to cross aggressively in front of his chest, "You don't have a family of your own so you decided to cozy up with mine?"

Tony took an involuntary step back, reeling like Clint had reached out and struck him. He was back in the Raft, the full force of Clint's fear and betrayal battering against him, convinced that the only reason he hadn't been torn apart was the four inch glass and interspaced iron bars that separated them.

Clint had the decency to look horrified when the magnitude of his words finally hit him. "No, God. Tony. That - that's not what I meant. I was - Jesus," he whispered hoarsely, trailing off miserably.

Natasha stood stock still, her eyes wide and glaring at him with enraged mortification. Clint obviously knew about his parents, but Tony didn't believe that he'd be cold enough to use them as a way to guilt trip him out of his new closeness with Laura and the kids. But that wasn't exactly comforting.

Nobody said anything for a long time, allowing a poisonous silence to take over. Clint finally stumbled back until he was sitting hunched over on the bed, putting his hands in his hair and breathing deeply, shoulders tense. "What happened to us?" he wondered brokenly.

"We kept secrets," Tony answered automatically, thinking of all of the things that had lead to this moment: the three of them standing in a room filled with so much uncertainty and hurt, speaking words that could kill.

Natasha looked at him with concern and took a faltering step in his direction. Tony raised a hand to stop her and backed out of the room. He didn't want to talk.

"I'm sorry, Tony," Clint said, looking up and finding him with red eyes. "Please. I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry."

Tony gave him a tired smile, one side of his mouth twitching upwards, "Yeah, me too."

He left Clint and Natasha together and tried not to run down the hall, his heart pounding in his chest and light searing in his eyes, trailing a hand on the wall next to him as he walked to anchor himself to something real. He ghosted past the kitchen where Hope was sitting at a counter twirling a spoon in her tea and watching Vision as he performed Attempt #27 in replicating Laura Barton's cookie recipe. Rhodey might've said something to him from the couch, but Tony couldn't remember and he continued on without stopping, walking down the observation balcony above the sim room and crossing the skywalk into the managerial side of the compound.

He wanted to sit at a desk, send an email to Julia about legal strings that needed tying so Clint's deal had no chance of unravelling down the line, and maybe call Pepper about the beginning stages of product testing for Genesis. A little normality would be good for him.

Unfortunately, Thaddeus Ross had no intention of letting him get that far.

He was waiting for him inside his office, playing with an intricate model of the SR-71 Blackbird that Tony kept on his desk. Tony froze on the spot when he saw him, mentally and emotionally unprepared to have this conversation. He tried to sneak back out of the office, but Ross saw him in the reflection of the windows and turned, "Stark, about time. I need to talk to you."

Tony forced the sound of his mother gasping for air as she died out of his mind, slipping into a convincing projection of confidence and okay-ness. "Ross, I thought Natasha saw you out."

"She did," Ross said, flipping the model once more in his hand and returning it back to Tony's desk. "I came back."

"Yeah, I can see that," Tony noted, striding around Ross to stand behind his desk. He didn't sit down. "Why?"

Ross paced with his hands comfortably in his pockets, eyes never straying from Tony's face and his nerves screamed at him that this was wrong. "That was convenient, you working to clear Clint Barton for reinstatement just in time for him to come back."

Tony growled, "Are you accusing me of something?"

"I'm just saying that it was convenient," Ross said gruffly. Then he swept on, sitting stiffly on the couch. Tony didn't sit. Ross would have to look up at him to talk. "I need your help."

Tony's internal alarms were blaring now. He wanted something. And people who wanted something were dangerous. "With what?"

Ross leaned forward on the couch to reach for Tony's collection of scotch and tumblers that were organized neatly in a glass tray on the coffee table. "Your father," he started, removing the crystal stopper of one bottle and drawing it under his nose before grimacing and putting it back. "He had something of interest to me. I want it, and I think you can get it for me."

"My father had a lot of interesting things," Tony countered irritably, watching Ross with the blood boiling in his veins. He wasn't going to help, of course he wasn't, but he wanted to know what was so important to Ross that had him acting so strangely. "You have to be more specific."

Ross uncorked a different bottle and seemed satisfied, pouring himself a drink while maintaining perfect eye contact with Tony. "Think, Captain America. Bucky Barnes."

Tony understood and the heat in his blood turned instantly to ice. "Supersoldiers," he finished. Then he chuckled humorlessly, "You've got to find a new obsession, sir. Stamp collecting, quilting, baking. Vision could teach you how to make one mean muffin, you know, with that delicious strudel stuff on - "

"Cut the crap, Stark," Ross broke in domineeringly, rising to his feet with his tumbler in hand. "I have sources that tell me that Howard had successfully recreated the super soldier serum before his death. I want it."

The sirens in his head were deafening now. "That doesn't sound very legal," Tony ventured elusively, raising his eyebrows.

Ross took a relaxed sip from his tumbler, and Tony reminded himself to melt the entire glassware set to slag later, "It won't matter whether or not it was legal when we get what we want."

"Well, what makes you think that I'll give it to you?" Tony squinted at him, genuinely confused. There was something bigger here, something that Ross had tucked away in his box of tricks. Something to ensure that he'd get what he came for.

"Let's just say that if I don't have your cooperation within the next," he drew out the word as he pulled back the sleeve of his suit to consider his wristwatch, "72 hours, there'll be consequences. You have that long to give me your decision," Ross leered at him and slammed back the rest of his drink, setting the empty glass back on the table. "I hope it's the right one."

Tony watched him march out, confident as all hell, and disappear down the hallway. He stayed on his feet for minutes after Ross left, his mind moving at the speed of light and churning out numbers and theories. Screaming heat. Finally, when he was sure that Ross wasn't coming back, he fell into the chair behind his desk, exhausted. "Did you get all that, Fri?"

"Every word, Boss," FRIDAY answered from the ceiling, calmly and familiar.

Tony sighed, reaching for his model of the SR-71 and sliding it across the surface of his desk until it was back in its proper place, "Good."

"Should I share the file with your contacts at the Department of Justice?" she asked helpfully.

Tony twined his fingers together and rocked back in his chair, bouncing softly and looking at spot he had seen Ross' back vanish, "Not yet. Let's sit on it for a while. I want to see what he does."

FRIDAY paused briefly and when she spoke again, she sounded worried. "Voice stress analysis of the recording taken of Secretary Ross suggest that his threat is real, Boss."

Tony bobbed his head from side to side, weighing the probabilities. "Mutually assured destruction, FRIDAY," he pointed out finally. "He knows that he can't hurt me without hurting himself."

"Whatever you say, Boss," FRIDAY agreed reluctantly.

Tony waved his hand underneath the monitor on his desk and the computer screen blinked to life, an electronic keyboard glowing on the glass of the desk. He stretched his fingers, tried to quiet his mind, and did something normal. He sent his email to Julia, checked the stocks, and requested the preliminary reports on the Genesis product testing from the Stark International executive server. But the words bled together on the screen and the light wavered as his mind wandered elsewhere. By the time he dragged himself back from subconsciousness, he was halfway through an intense discussion with Peter Park about the mass manufacturable potential of spider silk for real world applications.

"I mean," Peter gushed, sprawled on the couch with his neck resting against the top of the cushions and his hands gesturing excitedly to the ceiling, "think about it. Something stronger than kevlar but as thin as a silk shirt."

Tony considered him, squinting, "How long you been here?"

Peter lifted his head from the couch and jabbed his thumb at the entrance of Tony's office, "Happy dropped me off after school." He looked closer at him, "You okay, Mr. Stark?"

"Fantastic," Tony hummed.

Just then a high-status report came through, a deep red alert banner overriding the file on Tony's screen and a serious tone rang obtrusively throughout the compound. Peter jumped, "What was that?"

"That," Tony said, hands flying over the keyboard, "was the call to assemble."

"Woah," Peter spluttered, flying up from the couch and leaping through the air over Tony's desk to land at his shoulder, "Assemble like Avengers assemble?"

Tony grinned up at him, "Is there any other assemble that matters?"

Peter's eyes went wide, trying to read the screen over Tony's back, "What for?"

"Agents from an extremist group, believed to be a derivative of Hydra, have been wreaking havoc in Oslo. We've just learned that they've planted bombs with an unknown payload throughout the city. The Norwegian government has requested help, the UN is calling us in," FRIDAY's disembodied voice informed them. "Vision, Natasha, Rhodey, and Hope are all en route to the quinjet. Waiting on you, Boss."

"Take me with you," Peter demanded immediately.

"Yeah, no," Tony smiled without sympathy and Peter frowned, "I'm not bringing you to Norway on a school night."

"It'll be fine," Peter tried, tripping over his feet in his hurry to follow Tony out of his office, his backpack swinging from his shoulder. "Come on, Mr. Stark! I've been training with the team for a month. I can do this!"

"You have a calculus unit final tomorrow," Tony reminded him coyly, leaving Peter standing behind him with the mask of his suit in hand. "Study hard!"

XxX

Peter did not study. Peter did not listen.

Peter hung to the bottom of a jet turbine as they shot across the Atlantic Ocean to Norway.

Peter could not wipe the shit-eating grin off his face when Tony found him waiting for them outside when the docking ramp lowered, unfazed by Tony's screaming and threatening to turn this jet right around and take him back home.

"How'd you even get FRIDAY to lie to me?" Tony seethed, staring Peter down through the suit. "I had her run an external scan when we left the compound. She didn't say anything about a stow away spider."

"Oh," Peter started proudly, "well I exploited one of her subroutines. The 'Help the Kid' one. Thanks for that by the way."

Hope snickered behind Tony and busied herself with running a final check on her suit when Tony swiveled to glare at her hard. She shrugged, smirking to Natasha who was smiling softly next to her, who looked immensely pleased to finally be allowed on a mission.

"FRIDAY?" Tony demanded angrily.

"Peter's instructions did not undermine any of your orders, or explicitly contradict my programming. Technically, I fulfilled my function as your AI," FRIDAY explained, and if she could sound smug, she did.

"Don't give me technicalities," Tony rebuked futilely, grudgingly accepting the fact that Peter was here and that he wasn't going anywhere.

"You love technicalities, Boss."

"Fine," Tony groaned, turning dramatically to face the rest of the team and rolling his eyes when he saw Peter pump his fists triumphantly and give Rhodey a high five. "Listen up, we're here to assist the Norwegians. There's a lot riding on this one, and not just politically. We need a win and we need to do it together. There's a lot of new blood here, and we need to get some traction. Hope, stop glaring at me, I'm trying to be sincere."

XxX

It wasn't anybody's fault, it just went wrong.

The bombs detonated before expected and the Hydra offshoot agents fled from the streets like rats. Tony sent Peter on reconnaissance after them while he, Rhodey, Vision, Natasha, and Hope managed damage control with the Oslo emergency responders. The bombs didn't explode into fire and shrapnel, but millions of nanites. It only took a few minutes for them to assemble into a massive, terrifying, nanotechnological monstrosity.

"FRIDAY!" Tony barked, regrouping at the end of a street with the rest of the team to watch the thing form.

"An intercepted outgoing transmission from the enemy base called it Technovore," FRIDAY explained hurriedly. "Composed entirely of nanobots, capable of disassembling itself into any shape or form, including a stream of single nanites which would enable it to fit into extremely small places. Based on my scans, each nanite appears to contain an entire digital consciousness."

"So it can rebuild itself from a single nanite," Tony summarized, ignoring the fearful buzz of Norwegian military and police personnel around him until it escalated in volume and urgency when the shimmering black mass reorganized itself into a centipede like monster and scampered away, towering over cars and civilians as they ran for cover. "Where's it going?"

"Calculating," FRIDAY said and Tony took to the air, Vision and Rhodey at his feet. They followed it at a distance, watching it do nothing. It wasn't hurting anybody and it wasn't attacking. Yet. "Boss, it's headed for the NEXUS."

Tony swore violently. "I know what it is," he said, keying up an open comm channel with the team. "It's a technological parasite. We can't let it get to the NEXUS, it'll suck up every byte of data. Names, locations, your last credit card purchase, international security secrets. Everything. New objective, stop it. This isn't one of those cheap knock-off Hydra divisions that Fury was talking about," Tony ventured to FRIDAY.

"You think?" she retorted and shifted the suit into combat mode.

It all went to shit after they engaged.

It didn't take Technovore very long to abandon its original target and lock onto a new one: arc reactor energy signatures. It went after Tony and Rhodey mercilessly, thick tendrils of nanites lashing out like deadly whips and hurling things through the air as they dodged and weaved in the sky. Rhodey was grounded, after a moment of true, heart-stopping terror when Technovore managed to land a blow to the chest piece of the War Machine armor, disabling the arc reactor. The suit fell through the sky for one terrible second before the emergency release finally activated and Rhodey and the parachute were ejected safely from the armor.

Technovore converged on Rhodey's empty armor and assimilated the suit's full technological and physical capabilities. Tony's repulsors became completely useless against it. Hope tried to use her own particle blasts, but the energy makeups of her rays and Tony's were too similar to have much of an effect and Technovore quickly adapted to her attack, too.

Vision's mind stone was the only thing that seemed to make a dent, and even that didn't work well enough to get them out on top. But it did get them time. The energy pulse would burn through the nanobots and Technovore would wail, a horrible, screeching whine that sounded like a faulty microphone and scissors on guitar string. It would withdraw and protect itself from a distance, waiting for the nanites to reassemble and heal itself. Then it would be back, angrier and smarter.

The only thing they had going for them was Peter, who had somehow managed to trail one of the agents back to their base in an underground, forgotten subway line. Natasha was providing his backup.

At some point, FRIDAY broke through the haze of the battle as she spoke into his ear on their private line. "Boss," she said with quiet intensity. "To your right, down that alley."

Tony risked a glance and FRIDAY enhanced his visuals. He almost fell out of the sky when he recognized the two people who were crouched in the darkness, watching him.

Steve and Sam.

"What the hell are they doing here?" Tony choked out, the fight fading to the background. He didn't know what to do. He'd thought about this; about meeting them eventually. He'd thought about being an ass and hauling them back to the UN and he'd thought about doing something surprisingly altruistic, like letting them go without a fight. But now, staring at Steve and seeing the recognition in his eyes, the fear, the desperate need to help but also incredible regret because he couldn't, Tony couldn't make himself do anything except stare.

Tony felt FRIDAY's voice vibrating in his head, trying to call him back, but he couldn't look away. By the time he heard her warning, it was too late, and he found himself flipping uncontrollably through the air and colliding with unforgiving brick, crashing through the wall of an apartment building and rolling for a few feet before scraping to a halt. His head collided roughly with the inside of his helmet and he recognized the all too familiar warmth of blood trickle down the side of his face. "What the hell?" he moaned, rolling to his knees as bricks and plaster fell from the ceiling. "Where am I hit?"

"Weapons systems offline," FRIDAY relayed quickly. "All other systems functional."

Tony shook his head, trying to clear it, but the movement just made his vision double and he gasped, breathing against the nausea. Concussion then. "Peter?" he called hopefully over the comms, "Please tell me you have something."

"Uh," Peter muttered, unsure. "Maybe. I'm at their control center, I think. Everybody completely cleared out, but they left all their tech. They saw you guys coming and set that thing on you to give them time to get away."

Tony pushed himself to his feet and fired his repulsors and shot out of the hole he'd just created in the side of somebody's kitchen wall. "Find a way to shut it down, Parker. We can't last much longer against this thing. It's adaptive. We can't fight it."

"Even Vision's attack isn't slowing it down anymore," Hope called, out of breath and shaken. "We need to do something now, kid."

"Okay, okay, okay," Peter stuttered, panicked. "We could try to get to it from the inside."

"It's not a machine," Rhodey reminded him, patched back into the team's channel using a communicator donated to him by the Norwegian military. "It's like an organism. There's not mechanics in there. You won't be able to just get in a hijack the controls, because there aren't any controls."

"No," Peter agreed, sounding overwhelmed. Then he was silent. "But there is programming. Mr. Stark, you said this thing can integrate other systems right?"

"That's what I said," Tony confirmed, barrel rolling to the side as Technovore flung a bus at him from down the street. It sailed past him, missing by an inch, and crumpled into the pavement, sparks flying and metal screaming. Tony looped back around and skimmed close to the ground, snatching a spear shaped strip of metal from the wreckage.

"So let's feed it something that'll make it sick," Peter suggested, his voice gaining some confidence back.

"A self-corrupting program could shut it down," Vision affirmed collectedly. He could be pummeled into glitter and he would still sound like he was talking about the weather.

"What are you going to put it in? We need Technovore to assimilate it, right?" Hope asked, and Tony waved the scrap sheet of metal at her as he streaked overhead. She understood immediately and as Tony launched the javelin like object through the air, she shot one of her stingers to intersect with its course. The metal and the stinger collided and electricity consumed the sheet just as it sunk into Technovore's chest. Arcs of lightning ripped through the swarm of nanobots and it wailed, falling back and cowering into itself. That would buy them a few minutes.

Tony landed next to Hope, hard, his vision swimming unsteadily as the electronic scream sliced through his head. "Peter, write the program and send it to FRIDAY. I'll put it in the suit and let Technovore have it. Keep it simple."

"Mutually assured destruction," Peter added enthusiastically. "It'll take the suit out, but then the suit'll take him out. Cool!"

Hope looked sideways at Tony and said nothing, but he saw newfound respect in her eyes.

"Okay, good plan," Natasha said, "Except how do you plan on getting out of there, Tony? Something tells me that you won't want to be in the suit when that thing starts eating it."

"I'll figure it out," Tony deflected easily, not really thinking about the problem she brought up, but a more important one. They could shut Technovore down, but there would be millions and millions of advanced nanobots left over and some of them were bound to fall through the cracks during cleanup. They couldn't afford to let even a single nanite get away, because each one carried an entire viral personality. Technovore could just be reborn if one of those nanites made it back into the wrong hands. It wasn't enough to shut it down, they needed to destroy it. "FRIDAY, when you get that program from Peter I need you to insert a malicious code. There needs to be fire and brimstone when this goes down," Tony ordered his AI over their private channel.

"Yes, Boss."

Technovore moved in front of them, the surface of it heaving as nanobots proliferated to fill empty spaces. It turned back towards them and roared, it's head like a jagged toothed demon, it's red eyes glowing like angry coals. Slender curls of electricity sparked over its body and it expanded to its full height, bearing down on them.

"Shit!" Hope spat eloquently, the delicate wings of her suit lifting her into the air next to Tony as they tried to gain some height advantage over it.

"Parker!" Tony snapped urgently over the comms, narrowly avoiding the first attack, a stream of nannies whipping past his face, humming with an electric current. "Where are you at with that virus?"

"Almost there, almost there," Peter muttered distractedly.

Tony's reply was cut off as Technovore wrapped a tentacle around another bus and launched it at them. They dove underneath it, watching as it flipped in the space above their heads. It served as a good distraction, because they were entirely unprepared for the instantaneous attack that followed. One moment, he and Hope were side by side in the air, and the next he was getting battered around inside the suit as he crashed to the ground, his HUD going fuzzy with the impact. He didn't know when he finally stopped moving because the entire world was spinning and his head felt like somebody had taken an icepick to his brain. FRIDAY was talking to him but he couldn't hear her, just the bells in his ears.

He was splayed on the broken concrete by that alleyway again, the one where he'd seen Steve and Sam, and he wondered dimly if they were still watching. He couldn't help but think that if Steve were here, he'd know what to do. The thought motivated him to his feet and he fired the repulsors, which sputtered intermittently and held him unevenly in the air. Steve wasn't here, not in a way that mattered. But Tony was, and he'd have to be enough.

He saw Hope lying motionless across the street, covered in dust and her suit sparking, and he shot over to her, panic clogging his throat. He covered the short distance in an instant and dropped to her side, crouching over her to shake her shoulder, "Hope." He shook harder, "Hope! Wake up, I need you. That thing's coming back. Come on, Princess!"

Hope groaned and rolled sluggishly onto her back, weakly shoving his hand off her and glaring the best she could with glazed over eyes, "Fuck. You," she coughed, straining to get herself off the ground.

Tony offered one of his armored hands, smiling at her with fevered relief, and she let him pull her to her feet. They stood there together and watched as Vision darted around Technovore, doing as much damage as a fly, Hope's hand still gripping his gauntlet like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

"Done!" Peter shouted suddenly in Tony's ear and he winced, which only made his head hurt more. "I finished it! It's done. Mr. Stark, I'm sending FRIDAY the program now."

"Good work, kid," Tony breathed, his chest aching. Energy poured into his body now that there was something he knew he could do that would work, not just being swatted out of the sky by a technologically adaptable nanodroid with a bad attitude. "FRIDAY, you know what to do."

Hope released his arm and nodded at him, blood oozing from a cut above her eyebrow, "Make sure you get out of there before it eats you. I'd hate to see you become that thing's dinner."

Tony took off, blazing down the street back towards Technovore, buildings blurring past him on both sides. "Fri, I want you out of here before it takes over the armor," Tony ordered, falling out of flight into a controlled run until he slowed to a stop, standing in the center of the street. "I don't want it to get you, too."

"Understood," FRIDAY said. "Good luck, Boss." And then she was gone, leaving silence where her warm objectivity used to be. Tony didn't worry about what he was going to do if the manual release didn't work, and he most certainly didn't worry about how he was going to put enough distance between him and Technovore before it blew up (courtesy of friday's additions to peter's virus). He was seeing two of everything at this point, so he probably wouldn't make it that far running. Tony sighed heavily. This was probably going to hurt. No scratch that. He was probably going to die.

"Hey!" Tony shouted, the sound of his own voice sending fresh waves of pain crashing through him. He blasted his repulsors at Technovore and they were absorbed harmlessly, but they succeeded in annoying it enough to switch its attention from Vision to Tony. It's entire body turned towards him and it screeched, eyes smoldering with cold red. Yeah, he was probably going to die.

A tendril lashed out a wrapped itself around Tony's armor and the HUD blared and flashed frantically, telling him about systems malfunctions and armor breaches that didn't really matter because the suit was going down anyways. Technovore's eyes seemed to widen eagerly when it realized that it had an entire goldmine of untouched data literally in its grasp and it slithered closer sending out more cables of nanites to latch onto the suit. Tony's heart leaped painfully in his chest and his brain splintered as the shrieking grew louder around him. He hit the manual override button to release the armor.

And nothing happened.

Tony's immediate reaction was to be annoyed, running through all the numbers and schematics in his head, trying to figure out how he could fix this particular snag later. The next thing he did, was realize that there probably wouldn't be a later. And immediately after that, he completely erased the word 'probably' from his mind because this was bad and he was definitely going to die.

After that, he pounded desperately on the little catch on the inside of his wrist, cursing methodically. Eventually, something sparked and burst underneath Tony's fingers and the shock traveled up through his arm, roasting what was left of his brain. There was too much stress on the system, and things started malfunctioning quickly after that. Flight capabilities, life support, emergency power reserves, and finally the HUD, flickering spasmodically before it died completely. With it went all the voices in his head, which he realized had actually been his team trying to talk to him through the chaos, and then it was just silent. But not silent as in soundless. The noise around him was deafening, metal creaking and moaning and Technovore laughing in its scaly, digitalized whine and Tony heard it all - he could feel it. It was a kind of silent that came when somebody was scared. He was trapped in his suit, listening to it die, and he finally let himself be scared.

He wondered if this was how his mother had felt, unable to move but watch as death came for her, fighting it with everything she had. He wondered if she had been scared. Or if she had stared it down bravely, refusing to give it the satisfaction of watching her give in.

There was a click and a thin gust of wind on his shoulder and then Tony was falling through the back of his suit onto the street, looking up at his armor still wrapped up in ropes of nanites. Technovore drove a spike through the arc reactor, shattering it and tearing through the chest plate and into the suit where he'd been trapped seconds before. Sparks showered over Tony and he scrambled away on his hands, throwing up an arm to protect his face, "Holy shit!"

Hope popped into existence next to him, bending down to grab his elbow and hoist him to his feet, grinning fiercely, "Need some help, Princess?"

Tony squinted at her face, blurring in and out of focus, "Hope?"

"Yep," she said, dragging him away by his arm, his feet stumbling for traction underneath him. "Saved your life. I'll explain later. Let's get out of here."

Technovore squealed behind them and Tony turned his head over his shoulder to look. It's entire body pulsed as it absorbed the suit's technology. "No time. It's going to blow up," he told her, slipping his wrist out of her grip, "Run."

They sprinted away and Tony did pretty well for the first couple of steps until his scrambled brain told him the ground wasn't where it actually was and he tripped into a telephone pole, which probably would've been really hilarious if they weren't about to die. Hope skidded to a stop and reached for him, her eyes widening when she got a clear view of the thing behind them. It wailed, and the noise shredded through the air, shattering the windows of nearby buildings and Hope screamed curling into herself with her hands clapped over her ears.

Tony heard a different noise though; a low rumble and the district hum of an electricity surge. He gripped Hope and pulled her behind the closest car just as the explosion turned the air solid. It wasn't huge or full of fire, it was more localized and dense - hard and devastating, as millions of nanobots ruptured simultaneously.

The car saved their lives, protecting them from the full force of the detonation which would've crushed them instantly. Instead, they were blasted off their feet and tumbled through the air. All the breath was punched out of Tony's lungs when he landed on the concrete a dozen feet away. His head hit the ground for probably the tenth time in two hours and the world was covered by curtain of impenetrable black.

He didn't know how long he laid there, trying to suck in dusty air through the tightness in his chest and riding out waves of pain as he choked on it. He fought the darkness away, but it stayed at the edges of his vision, waiting for him to let his guard down. He twitched his hand and felt Hope next to him, but he couldn't turn his head to look at her, so he kept the back of his hand pressed against her leg so he wouldn't lose her. He stared at the sky, darkening and full of possibilities. He blinked and each time became harder for him to open his eyes again until he just didn't anymore.

And then there was a distant buzzing in his ears, a desperate vibration in his head that made him wrench his eyes open again. Somebody was kneeling above him. He could barely make out the outline of a head and he blinked again, trying to see something except shadows. Somebody was trying to talk to him, a hand on his chest, but that was a pretty much hopeless. Tony couldn't hear anything, so he focused on seeing. He blinked and worked the muscles in his eyes, lightning strikes of agony shooting through his brain at even the slightest movements until finally the figure above him snapped into painful clarity.

Steve, Tony thought hazily, confused. He felt Steve's heavy hand on his chest and he remembered, jerking away from him instinctively, driven by an animal response to get away.

Then he passed out.

XxX

I already have a plan for the next chapter, and I'm working on writing it. So it will, optimistically, be up within the next 1-2 weeks.

Huge thank you to all of the reviews and favorites and follows. They make me happy :)

mr-stank