Before and After
---A---
Excerpt from UN Resolution: S/RES/2616 “Threats to international peace and security caused by enhanced individuals”):
- For the purposes of these Accords, an "Enhanced Individual" (Enhanced) is defined as any person, human or otherwise, with superhuman capabilities. This includes individuals whose powers are an innate function of their biology as well as individuals who utilize highly advanced technology to grant themselves superhuman capabilities.
- An individual who utilizes an advanced prosthesis that allows capabilities beyond those of ordinary humans is not considered an Enhanced according to 42 CFR 440.120. However, individuals with advanced prostheses that do not follow the above definition will be classified as an Enhanced.
- Non-Enhanced individuals who operate either within an operation that is primarily composed of Enhanced individuals, or as a supportive role to an operation that is primarily composed of Enhanced individuals, are held accountable to the same standards identified for Enhanced.
[...]
- In the instance of an international conflict event, Enhanced must be given clearance by either a nation's government or the United Nations subcommittee before taking any action in that country, either on their own or as a part of an organization.
- Clearance is permissible by the government agency or entity employing of the Enhanced in international incidents where a less than 24-hour response is identified. The government agency will be held responsible for any damages incurred during the conflict including subsequent relief efforts.
- In events of catastrophic conflicts, in which the world as whole is jeopardized and imminent danger is identified, individuals will be granted authorization to cross international boundaries and allowed to take action in that country as an individual or as part of an organization.
- The creation of any and all artificial intelligence, consisting of a complex system that is able to function autonomously from human input, is forbidden.
---B---
Click. Snap. Click. Snap.
Tony toyed with the flip phone, opening and closing with his thumb in a continuous loop as he sprawled heavily on the couch in the workshop. He hurt. His chest was raw, spikes of pain tightening his jaw whenever he moved, and his hands were mincemeat from clawing at titanium alloy. He felt groggy from all the drugs that had been pumped in him over the past few days, and yet, somehow, this stupid phone kept him awake. Kept pushing him further and further away from sleep.
He could break it.
His hand tightened around the phone just to hear the small groan of cheap plastic protesting. It’d be easy. All it would take it one throw against the wall, and he would have no contact with Ste-Rogers. Wouldn’t have to worry if he was being tracked or if he’d become weak and call in the middle of the night when it became too hard, and it would be so easy just to call the one contact on the device, how was he supposed to-
Tony tensed on the couch at the sound of something crashing to the floor
Intruders? No. No, FRIDAY hadn’t said anything when he entered. He quickly craned his head back, clenching his teeth at the pain, and counted; one, two, three. The bots were accounted for, plugged into their charging stations as if understanding Tony couldn’t play and be jostled around. So they couldn’t have knocked over anything to make the noise.
“FRIDAY? Scan the room,” Tony said, frowning when the green sensors lining the room didn’t flash on. “FRIDAY?” He grunted and pushed himself up, ready to go to the main console to manually do it, maybe see if FRIDAY had switched onto a different server, when a thump came from the back of the workshop again. “FRIDAY, really need you to scan the room and confirm I’m the only one here.”
“Sir?”
His mouth went dry as a figure stepped into the light: Stealth Armor MK V. Built smaller than the rest of his armors, barely reaching his waist, that armor was one of the last armors he made before the Sokovia Accords were dropped like a bomb into his life. Made solely for drone reconnaissance, the armor had no pilot and thus was able to withstand a close-range RPG to the chest with minimal damage. It had been designed solely to be operated via a remote control console.
Except Tony wasn’t operating the drone and it was slowly walking towards him as if under its own free will.
Shit. It couldn’t be the Avengers. Ste-Rogers. Rogers wouldn’t have used his override to automate the armor, would he? He wouldn’t send one of his own armors to kill him? And Tony’s chest seized, because at this point in time he no longer knew the correct answer to that question.
A pop of static and the speakers embedded in the walls came to life. “Tony?” The armor took a jerky step forward and then stopped, causing a hissed sigh of relief to escape from Tony. There was his girl, always watching his back, albeit a little late. “Tony, you’re back.” A brief pause, “But you are injured. You shouldn’t be here in the workshop.”
“God, Fri, took you long enough.” He grinned at the mild scolding as he collapsed back into the couch, tension bleeding from him as he flapped his aching arm towards the armor. “What happened here? Did Dummy roll over the remote? Send it off?” The grin faded as the silence, which should have been filled with FRIDAY’s sarcastic response, crept ever on.
“Fri?”
The eye slits flickered between neon blue and dull tempered glass when the armor completed another jerky step, which in turn made the helmet flop in a jagged semi-circle that was eerily reminiscent of a person with a broken neck.
Something was very wrong.
Tony swallow clicked against the lump in his throat and he tried to remember that he shouldn't be afraid of the armor. That the hand twitching as if preparing to fire, wouldn’t actually flip up, palm forward, to blow Tony’s head off. Except all that did is remind him of another time when he didn’t think he’d be hurt, with blue eyes flashing in rage as a shield came down onto his chest and-
“Sir, something’s happened,” FRIDAY said, voice in stereo as it came from both the wall and the armor in front of him, “I didn’t think to inform you of this incident.” The armor shuddered and halted halfway between a step. “I thought it would be better for you to see it for yourself.” FRIDAY continued, the armor crashing face first to the ground a punctuation to her statement.
Okay, so the whole incident could no longer be chalked up to a bad case of painkillers, Tony thought. Just another bead on a ‘what else could go wrong?’-necklace, except Tony had already lost JARVIS, and he couldn’t lose FRIDAY so soon; he hurt. He just wanted someone who was his, who was there for him and wouldn’t leave.
“Fri?”
When the dust from the cracked concrete settled, and Tony could see that the armor wasn’t moving, he gingerly stood up. The concrete was freezing on his thin-socked feet, but Tony knew the shiver wasn't due to the drop in temperature. Maybe Rogers had taken over the drone, he thought with rising panic. Hacked FRIDAY and used her overrides to control all the armors, Tony thought as he stared, wide-eyed, at the armor that was no longer moving.
“Fri, please answer me,” He asked again, taking a few more steps closer, “Let me know what happened?”
The armor didn’t remove in response to his question, but the external speakers of the armor crackled to life. Every single hair on Tony’s body stood on end as soft static filled the room, originating from the armor. Only from the armor.
“Sir...Tony.” She sounded so quiet. “Something happened.”
“Fri, why aren’t you in the servers?” Tony asked, refusing to think of what may have happened while he was gone. Of what had happened to JARVIS last time. Of it happening again. When he repeated the question, a small sound, almost like a sob, echoed from the downed armor’s speaker.
“I...I made a mistake.”
Oh no.
“FRIDAY?” Tony asked, his stomach dropping to the floor when the armor attempted to wriggle in place and the speakers throughout the room stayed quiet. This was bad, real bad.
“You were trapped, and I needed to get to you, and you were hurt. Hurt real bad!” FRIDAY blabbered, something she wasn’t programmed to ever do, and Tony swallowed against bile as she continued to speak, “-couldn’t get you. I had to get to you! You’re mine, all I have, and-” The speakers blared something that sounded like an old internet connection, “I should have asked, but I needed to do this. For you.”
And Tony’s body became lead.
FRIDAY was in the armor. FRIDAY made the decision to export herself to the armor. FRIDAY-She-did it without Tony’s permission. She could make her own choices now. She-
“No, no, no.” Tony muttered, stumbling back onto the couch and ignoring the throb of his bones as he landed on the soft cushions. This couldn’t be happening. Not now, not while-God, the Accords. The Accords that were in the process of being modified due to the Avengers mess. The Accords that had so many edits and changes, but had one thing was included in every revision: The ‘no AI’-clause, sneered each meeting by Secretary Ross. As if Tony would make an AI that could make its own choices. He learned from his mistakes, but FRIDAY-
Tony shakily laughed and hid his face from the fluorescent lighting. “It’s fine, Fri.” He closed his eyes and felt his mind start spinning in its tracks, thinking what to do? what to do? what to do? “I’ll fix this.”
---A---
The door slid open, a gentle ‘snick’ as it entered the wall seamlessly, and Rhodes knew he had walked, figuratively, into a potential minefield.
Tony faced away, looking out the reinforced windows at the changing foliage, but he noticed how the other man flinched at his entrance. How the Kevlar-encased shoulders twitched upwards when the wheelchair made a gentle thump transitioning from hardwood flooring to the carpet. Rhodey had almost forgotten how the gentle hum of machinery heralded his entrance, which meant Tony had been stewing here, avoiding him. That did explain the odd look Tony’s secretary had given him when he’d approached the Director’s Office a few hours ago. Tony had probably already been long gone.
Rhodey stopped a few paces from his friend and wondered when it all went to shit. Unaware, or maybe too aware, that Tony was probably thinking the same thing. He hated this. Hated the position he had been forced into. Dreaded asking what he needed to ask.
“Tony. You know what I need. I’m sure you have someone on my staff who was able to find out, and you know I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t being backed into a corner,” Rhodey said, swallowing when Tony refused to turn and look at him and instead chose to take a sip from the glass in his hand, “And I’m not saying that you wouldn’t be able to do this, but with how Ellis used SHIELD…” He stopped to turn his gaze down into his lap, afraid of uttering the next phrase that had always worked on Tony. Afraid that Tony would finally refuse.
“I need your help.”
A moment passed and Rhodey swallowed against the hard lump in his throat at Tony’s silence. Maybe things had become too frayed, too fragile, following the past year of hell. Maybe Tony had finally realized that Rhodey wasn’t- “And I know I haven’t been a good friend, that-”
“No.”
Rhodey snapped his head up, hands digging into his braced and useless legs for purchase. “I-Tony, Tones, I can-”
Tony sighed and turned away from the window, leaning against it to stare at him with moist eyes. “You’ve been the best friend. At least, you’ve done the best you could with the shit show we’re in now.” He seemed to crumple against the glass, a motion that worried Rhodey; automatically flipping the switch in his head that changed all his priorities into getting a sandwich and hot chocolate into Tony within the next fifteen-minutes.
“I just don’t think I can do this,” Tony continued, hand rubbing at the right side of his face. “I want to do it, but Rhodey, graham cracker, you know what this’ll mean.” He pulled at his shirt collar, a nervous gesture that had originated while he had practiced his first thesis defense so long ago, and Rhodey swore he could see the shimmer of the Iron Man undersuit, but when he looked closer the shirt had been re-buttoned by Tony’s fidgeting hand. “I’ll be in the public eye again. You know what they’ll say about me suddenly stepping into that position? Especially with you by my side, rooting for me? Favoritism at its worse.”
Rhodey snorted and shifted in his chair, “Tones. You know Ross had it coming. I can’t officially announce that, but everyone knows. Hell, even FOX news knows. And now we’re without a Secretary of State. And everyone is going to be asking for you. They don’t know about SHIELD, they... I don’t want to ask you to take on this position, especially one that potentially puts you in direct contact with...them.”
Tony crossed the distance between them, placing his empty glass on a side table before he dropped onto the couch perpendicular to Rhodey’s wheelchair. “It’s not that. We were fine fighting together with Thanos, it’s just…”
“I can protect you. You and Friday.” At his words, Tony sunk into the couch and his eyes slid closed. His strings had been cut and the tension seemed to bleed out of him in one huge wave.
“The Accords are already being revised to become something more realistic to be enforced,” Rhodey said, unable to swallow the pride in his voice as he continued, “I know you can magic up a turn of phrase that’ll make it so that she’ll be protected.” James leaned forward in his chair, hand reaching out to grip Tony’s thigh tightly and giving it a slight shake. “I’m giving you the opportunity to make it easier. Make sure that nobody like Ross comes to power again. So we’ll be better prepared in the future.”
Silence filled the room once again and Rhodes waited. Knew that Tony would follow him to the ends of the Earth, just as he had did for him during the last crisis, and this was just one more journey for them to complete together. It was always better when they were together.
Rhodey tensed when he saw Tony’s teeth grinding under the skin of his jaw, but then Tony exhaled shakily. “Fine. I’ll do it,” he said, hand grasping the back of Rhodey’s, which was still tight around his thigh. “But you need to give me at least a week or two. I have a doctor’s appointment coming up that I can’t miss. You know how much of a pain it is to reschedule those.”
Rhodey leaned back with a gusty sigh combined with a laugh, “Of course,” he said, “Just as long as you’re there. You know you’re always my first choice.” Finally. One thing off his plate that he actually decided without his cabinet trying to control his every move. Now he could start tackling the eight hundred other things required in his position. With Tony at his side, though, Rhodey could already feel the tension headache that had present for the last few months receding.
“You know I couldn’t do this without you.”
Tony smiled, a tired thing that creased the lines near his eyes, but Rhodey saw the glimmer of love and affection poorly lurking in the back of the expression. A constant after all these years that had started in MIT when Tony had puked on Rhodey’s shoes.
“Will that be all, Mr. President?”
Rhodes grinned and could feel his chest tighten in emotion at everything Tony had ever done for him. Now it was his time to try and protect him. To make up for the shoddy job he had performed during Thanos’s invasion.
“That will be all, Mr. Secretary.”
---B---
When Tony received an encrypted message that cleared his upcoming Thursday with only a location in the notes, he thought he knew who it would be. Imagined it would be Ste-Rogers. Rogers and the others who had left. Who had decided they had made the best decision for the world as a whole when it came to the incarceration and management of the Winter Soldier threat. Judge, jury, and executioners, but not responsible for the fallout afterwards.
With the looming threat of something coming, and the whole of the UN ready to crucify someone for the cause, Tony was looking for any type of reconciliation that would keep the team together. Or at least get them all in one place while keeping them from ripping out each other’s throats. Even if it wasn’t Rogers, maybe it was T’Challa finally coming to his senses of how hiding world-wide criminals was probably not keeping his country as secret as he’d wanted. Or perhaps Thor had finally returned from who knows where?
Tony was not expecting the twice-deceased Nicholas Joseph Fury to stride from the shadows. He also wasn’t expecting the man to hand over SHIELD, commanding Tony to watch over the agency since it seemed Captain America had gone rogue and Fury needed to contain the damage. Though filled with relief at someone, finally, changing their mind to agree with Tony on the accountability of the Avengers, he still waffled.
He didn’t want to be in the spotlight, even if it was the shadowed spotlight of the Director of SHIELD. He just wanted to prepare for the upcoming war (because it was going to be a war, not just a battle). Batten down the hatches. Find Bruce. Protect the tattered remains of his family.
The final nail in the coffin though was Fury’s concerns of SHIELD being used as the personal black-ops of President Matthew Ellis. A surprisingly valid threat with the upcoming election year shaking things up. It would be a pity if former Colonel James Rupert Rhodes, hailed as a black FDR in these troubling times, wasn’t able to run for office due to an impromptu accident.
Fury stared at Tony balefully. “You can’t protect him forever.”
Tony grit his teeth and the following day he stepped into the skin tight uniform at 0500 to report for his assigned duty. The glares of some of the agents when he landed on the newly built Helicarrier made Tony glad for the heavy holsters strapped to his shoulders and thigh. For a moment he thought of the flip phone sitting heavy in his breast pocket, only to dismiss the object when Hill came up to him with the daily docket of activities.
The one thing Tony had to give to Fury, even though he had thrown a wrench in his life by appointing him Interim Director, was that Tony no longer had the extra time to think about Siberia.
Thoughts of the delicate frost patterns that had swirled across the surface of his mangled suit no longer plagued him. How the twirling ice crystals had stopped two, then one, inch from his face as his exhaled breath continued to cool. How the hair on his head had frozen and the bristles of his goatee dripped cold, cold, cold, water into his mouth as he struggled to inhale. Tony was able to ignore all of this as he met up with the different division heads, drinking coffee that had gone stale and cold in-between his day-long meetings.
When he poured through the newly unredacted documents, Tony didn’t have time to dwell on the phantom pain of his man-made sternum splintering or remember the loud snap of grafted bone failing under point-stress. The only pain he had now, besides the migraines that were most likely due to the small, printed, text he was constantly reading, was if he stretched the wrong way and pulled at the still-healing skin of his chest. That pain was sharp, so different from the annoying ache in his left arm, and reminded him that the ARC reactor was back and anchored into a newly rebuilt chest.
Listening to the static of too many people speaking at once through his clipped-on communicator helped Tony forget the sound of FRIDAY from that day. How her responses quickly devolved from a quirkily said ‘bossman, it’s no time to be napping’ to a firm ‘sir’ to a desperate ‘Tony, please, you have to-’ to, once or twice, a screamed ‘daddy, no, you have to come home!’
Sometimes Tony would sit in his Director’s chair, behind the huge desk covered in tablets and paperwork, and turn up the volume of the headset. Drown out the jumbled thoughts and memories as he stared blankly into the distance; knowing he was doing this to protect the tattered remains of a family that once was all he had. Ignoring the phone cradle on his desk that was blinking with numerous missed or transferred calls, forwarded from his new secretary.
If Tony did remember Siberia, usually in the dull moments of a high-speed elevator ride, or while being yelled at by a member of the WSC, the old adage-‘Proof that Tony Stark has a heart’ would spring into his thoughts along the memory of flinty, blue eyes, bared teeth, and the cut of cold metal in his chest-
-and he’d laugh, and laugh, and laugh until he need to bite into his cheek muscle to stop his chuckles-
-and then it suddenly became easier to wear the under armor beneath his uniform. Throw on a bulky bulletproof vest when he left his office. Ignore the pain in his left arm when handed status reports. Concentrate on strengthening SHIELD as a US power. Actively recruit only the best and brightest before they were sucked in by the Army. Push SHIELD into the current century by opening new way stations throughout the continent. Convert the upstate training center into the SHIELD Northeast HUB of Operations.
Because Tony was nothing if a futurist, and if ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice-’, had ever taught Tony anything, it was to make sure that second event never happened.
---A---
The steam from the shower had fogged the mirror, but a swipe of his hand was enough for Tony to at least see the blurry outline of his goatee and dark hair.
“It’s just you and me now,” he said, leaning forward to rest his forehead against the reflective surface, savoring the cool feel of glass on his aching, tight, skin, “And only one of us is walking away from this.”
He leaned back and his hand lifted, fingers in the shape of a gun, and pressed it against his right temple. Dug the two pointed fingers into the area that had been scanned, poked and prodded by multiple specialists over the last three months. Finally knew the reason why all those migraines kept cropping up, more and more intense each incident, and it could no longer be attributed to the battle with Thanos.
Though the tumor, lump, thing, was only the size of a golf ball, a nervous scientist had informed the Interim Director that it would keep increasing in size. That it would eventually press against the shell of his skull, slowly crushing, and then suffocating, his brain. If Tony was able to get another year, he’d be lucky.
He breathed slowly through his bared teeth.
Rumpled sheets after a night with Maya flashed through his mind. Scans of Killian’s body, and the other failed test soldiers, taken only hours after post-implosion: he could find them, especially with SHIELD’s databases at his disposal. Digital copies of Pepper’s body were in storage; areas highlighted a bright red where her body had slowly started cooking the surrounding tissue.
Granted, he had less time, but it could work if he could modify what he had on-hand.
The Centipede serum research that was buried in his first load of un-redacted SHIELD files proved that Extremis could be stabilized, albeit by combining it with numerous other limiting agents. If Tony could just get a valid sample, one not associated with Pepper or SHIELD-affected agents, and develop a new language to talk to the nanotechnology to be injected. Maybe a direct-contact method of feedback by utilizing the old Iron Man armor receivers still embedded in his body...
Tony’s thumb twitched and imaginary brain matter splattered on the mirror to cover his glaring reflection.
He would fix this.
“Boom.”
Time to get to work.
---A---