Chapter 3
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" It had to be asked. This was Tony after all and some of the thoughts that routinely came out of his mouth.....
The presently preoccupied man never even looked up from his hand-held computer but instead made a careless dismissing motion with one impatient hand." Good idea? Of course its a good idea! Its a brilliant idea!" Outside the windows beside him spread the tower's view of the city. Faint etchings of sharp metallic angles and texture, like the view of mountain ranges from a plane flying far above, nearly indistinct under the harsh wash of glaring winter sunlight.
But it was clear on the faces of everyone else in the room that brilliant was not how they would have labeled that plan. Well not Peter, Thor, and Loki because their baby was too young to understand and the aliens were still not yet wholly familiar to certain aspects of life on Earth to realize what Stark was insanely proposing.
"It sounds risky." Natasha. Caution like tending/stealing faded heirloom silk with the anticipation of pins ...or booby-traps.
Gritty dirt in Tony's oil as the more ground/earth oriented disapproved pessimistically.
Jarvis was a silver needle and baby-blanket quality yarn that was worry smoothed into the focus of tending to his charges.
" Bah! Risky shmishky, nothing more than a bit of plastic surgery." Backlit by the spotlight-bright shine the genius inventor's silhouette was a dark featureless impression in danger of being obscured completely.
A familiar thin grey string flew through the air and thwapted itself to DUM-E's wheel track. Peter let out a gleeful squeal. The little robot jerked to a stop with a squeal of his own. It didn't take someone with Tony's level to comprehend from the metal gestures that the bot was expressing both startlement and fear that he could accidently pull the little boy and hurt him if he moved. The adults closest to the two simply automatically reached for their nearest bottles of special extra-gentle dissolvent, that they had learned to always have on hand, going through the motions of ' sticky Peter clean-up' with the air of routine long rehearsed familiarity.
" All surgeries have risk -they're surgery. And you're not talking about a minor surgery here but a highly complicated heart surgery! Tony we've seen your medical files," But only after both Tony and JARVIS had very hesitantly, to the point of noticeably having had to force themselves to, released it to the rest of them and even so it still would have not been at all surprising if there had been yet more other information that they hadn't so much as not disclosed as completely deleted and purged from memory of existence . The worse part of it had been the nearly suppressed pain and fear underscoring Tony's joke-that-was-not-a-joke- but- a-warning- and-plea at the time that they 'try not to set off the Obie Countermeasures okay? ' that had let them know just how wary of another betrayal he was.
" You have chunks of ribs missing for starters! You can't just remove the arc reactor, fish out the embedded shrapnel, then sew everything back up good as new! " Tony, and all his doctors, would have already done so long before now if that was true. "It too complicated for that."
" Well duh! Don't worry I got everything all covered! Including the rib thing. I'll get artificial replacements or grow new ones-." Pepper flinched from words that burned like hot embers, causing Tony to guiltily cut the rest of that line of thought off unsaid. But they didn't have to be. Tony had his own version of Extremis and his body was full of the nanites. It was not the same thing at all. "Pep?"
"I'm okay. I'm good." The way her fingers clenched the armrests of her chair so hard it looked like her polished nails were digging in hard enough to puncture right through the leather said the opposite.
Tony's response to that was to go to her and sink down. Resting his arms across her knees and looking up into her down-turned eyes. "They are all gone. I made sure. You're safe. I promise." The look in his eyes was a mixture of warm comforting chocolate and diamond-hard dedication. The quirk that, in the right light and setting, could transform his eyes to a brilliant dark blue shared their brightness clearing the muddy darkness from her light sky gaze. But then inside his was a waver.
There was something going on with Tony,....well more-so than usual for him, that wasn't feeling right to their non-physical touch. Not a black, gaping, charred hole like Bucky had been in Steve( that was nolonger there instead the still raw and reddened piece was reinserted in place with its severed deadened connections stubbornly rehealing themselves defiantly). No this was unsurprisingly centered in a trouble area for all of them.
Something had again added more acid to Tony Stark's sense of self-value.......and capability.
"Yes." I trust you. She had no doubts that he had fully saved her even if something was now trying to press them on him.
" That's another point. You have so much machinery-." Iron Man was the personification of the refined heavy metal that had always dwelt in the restless breeze of Tony Stark the same way the vibrinium shield had always been a part of Steve Rogers even without the aid laboratory chemicals induced to living muscles.
" I'm practically a cyborg I know. I'll take care of dealing with mechanical hardware while the docs deal with the squishy stuff."
"How are you-? Who do you have who can do that?"
" Me obviously. Its my work and I'm the only one who understands it..well other than the J's." JARVIS a looming presence in the background of Tony that hide even bigger universes.
" You Are Not going to be conscious for Open Chest Surgery!" Bubbling over chemicals on the shell encasing the oceans of simmering lava as Bruce's agitation level rose.
" Why not? I mostly was for the first one. And this time I'll have my hands free to help along with much better equitment- Oh and better drugs this time will definatly be a big improvement-...." The genius multibillionaire blinked in confusion. "What?"
Banner was green-tinged and getting greener. " I need to go be alone someplace quiet right now." Shoulders hunched and preceding to charge at the door like the inadimate object had somehow become entirely responsible for everything wrong in his life Bruce still managed to pause long enough to turn a rumbling growled "No." on the other scientist. Then was gone.
The object of that denied permission blinked.....then had the audacity to pout. The real kind that added a scary amount of child-like fragility to the vestige of someone with so long and vast experience ill-reputed activities.
" Tony if this is about what happened with the War Machine armor-." Yes Rhodey apparently could harp on about his own perceived failures just as much as he did Tony's 'insanities'.
" No! Well actually yes but not what you're way too obviously thinking." Tony took a calming breath then blurted out. " JARVIS was almost hacked again. Me also. It might even have succeeded unnoticed until too late if not for the latest bashing everything ended up getting which resulted in absolutely everything having to be gone over.....Even then it was only thanks to the Jarvis's protective magic."
A tangled knot noticeably unraveled within the Air Force officer and the smaller bodied entrepreneur unexpectedly found himself enfolded in a fierce hug from behind.
" Do you know who?" Already Clint's fingers were feathering touches on his closest weapons.
"Lots of possibilities. One of my best guesses?...Norman Osborn. And let's just say that as a person he's definitely the type of guy who's kid I don't ever want to have Peter to be hanging around with."
" But what does this have to do with deciding to have your chest split open?"
"Eeh! Nice imagery there."
" All part of the plan. Right Loki?"
The midnight- haired Asgardian/Ice Giant prince was now glaring at him though. " I believe not." One icy hand tugged the collar of his complicated, crystalline-white, long-furred get-up in the distinctly put-out manner he was so good at....even when sitting, and therefore should have been undignifiedly, on Thor's sapphire clad lap. " You appear to have omitted significant factors."