Part 1 - Chp 3
As ever, generous application of money and technology are all that's really needed to get what he wants; by the time SHIELD realizes that anything's changed, there won't be much they can do about it.
It looks easy. Too easy. His stomach knots and what sleep he gets is restless, bone-chilling; he wakes up with feeling like there's ice along his spine, in his blood, dreams forgotten but heart thundering and half-remember fragments that he can never recall enough to get a clear picture. Details he'd overlooked before suddenly become important--why did he think the pickup location was at all safe, why the hell did he not notice that agent's background, the camera in a hall entirely away from the planned route that he has no hooks in.
None of it should matter, but he changes it all anyway. It feels important, manic tinged by sleeplessness to avoid the dreams that keep coming, that try to edge into waking.
(Ice. Ice and blue and green-green-green.)
It is important.
***
"You were right," Natasha says, flat.
Tony doesn't smirk. He can barely think, and what thoughts he has flit too too fast between each other.
"How right?" Tony asks, watching as she sets the case down. "Do you need a new job right? Is Fury aware?"
He hopes he wasn't that right about how far down the corruption at SHIELD goes--he's practically grown up with the organization and it's not entirely bad. Mostly.
"He suspects," Natasha says. "I grabbed what I could."
"Excellent," Tony says, turning to the door. "Where's Barton?"
"Second backup route. There were complications." Tony turns to find Natasha watching him--she's aware of what he changed. "You knew that we would need it."
Tony's mouth is dry.
"I had a hunch," he says.
***
Tony has no idea how he knew what to change.
***
Natasha and Barton are soulmates--the platonic sort, the kind that need each other back and forth their entire lives. At the same time, they're the two best covert operatives in the world. Tony had approached them knowing that he could get them to help him so long as he presented them with the strange double records and dealings in SHIELD--the things that had him suspecting something rotten in the state of Rome.
He has no idea how he knew that, only that it needed to be them and that it worked.
(It needed to be Barton, and Tony doesn't think that that has anything to do with the Tesseract.)
***
He and Natasha are going over what she brought back and what he's found, trying to crack it open while Jarvis runs interference on the tracking that keeps trying to alert someone.
Neither of them think it's SHIELD--at least not Fury, and that raises even more questions.
They aren't making much progress when Jarvis interrupts to announce that Barton's made it. Tony nearly vomits, the hair on the back of his neck raising like the approach of a storm, missing a step as he begins to move for the garage. Natasha is looking at him strangely, but he ignores her.
He's fine.
(Nothing about this situation is fine, but Tony doesn't know why.)
Barton's already out of his vehicle helping the other misbegotten gain out when Tony and Natasha arrive; bundled up in what looks like a blanket, so its not like Tony can see anything else. The air is thick and above all cold--like he's breathing inside of a freezer, and Tony's surprised that the air isn't clouding in front of his mouth the way his insides are already twisting up with the chill.
"Glad to see you finally--"
Green. Green and green and green.
He feels like completion, the exhilaration of finding the elusive piece of a complex problem, the finishing touch of a new suit design. He feels, for one moment, whole.
Distantly, he registers Natasha and Barton both swearing, but more importantly (there is nothing more important than this) he hears "Yes," a hiss of triumph that only makes Tony feel brighter, more alive; he doesn't remember closing the distance, doesn't remember moving, but then how could he not, what would possibly keep him away from--from--
This. Too thin hands and brilliant green eyes, swirling poisonous chemical green, a form barely held together into something like a man that Tony's hands wrap around like they've always known this half-shape, always known this-this--
"Yes," the god hisses again, fingers tracing Tony's face, and Tony grins, feral and triumphant and whole.