Chapter 4
The first thing Tony sees when he gets off the plane is wonderful beautiful Pepper. Standing next to her is Happy with what almost looks like tears in his eyes, funny he didn’t know Happy could cry. The one person he wants to see the most is nowhere to be found but he expected nothing less since he’s currently being hidden from his lone father figure. Doesn’t mean it hurts any less that his favorite person can’t be there with him after so long without seeing him. As he climbs into the car with Pepper and Happy he goes through what he’s going to tell the press in the upcoming conference, he knows he has to shut down the weapons he saw what his company was doing and he needs to stop it. He may not have been the one to sell them, he may not have known about it but he is the owner of Stark Industries and he’ll be damned if he lets this continue to happen now that he does know about it. He knows how to take accountability and he needs to set an example for his son. It’s going to hit everyone hard, the only thing Stark Industries has ever sold was weapons they’ve been in the business since before he was born and most of his shareholders will probably back out because they think the company will go under. The board will have his head too, not to mention Obie. His platypus will probably have questions for him. He’ll understand of course he will, but he’ll want to make sure this is actually what he wants before he helps him. He has to update the suit too. It was a good base but there’s a lot of improvements it’ll need before it will be ready to get his weapons back. He also has to think about whatever was happening on Obies face later. There was a look there when he got off the plane that screamed anger even if it was well hidden. That can wait until after the conference though when he won’t have to face what will turn into millions of people immediately afterwards. When he’ll be able to talk to Inko and Shouta to help sort through his thoughts. God he misses his family.
Once the press conference was through and he was ushered out and back home, Tony breathed a sigh of relief happy to be back in the sanctity of his own home where Jarvis can make sure he’s not being watched. Once he flops down on the couch he starts retracing how he got to this point, trying to figure out which part doesn’t fit the puzzle, which part he’s missing and why they feel like he’s smashing mismatched pieces together. He hates this feeling, he needs to feel in control of the things around him and right now the most obvious thing to him is that he’s not in control of anything. He sits there for over an hour just trying to mash ill-fitting solutions to the problem until he forces himself to visit the singular one he refused to give thought to because it would mean he was betrayed by one of the closest people to him. He visits the idea that Obie is the cause. He listened to Inko when she said not to tell him about Shouta, but he didn’t listen to her because he truly believed it possible that he could hurt his son, he did it because the kid didn’t deserve the media presence that would occur if he introduced him like he wanted to. No matter his personal feelings on the situation, it doesn’t change the fact that the only way this could’ve happened is Obie. The closest thing he’s ever had to a father and even that turned out to be absolute shit. Inko was right and goddamn he’s so lucky he listened to her. He needs to call her and tell her but first he needs to make sure he prepares for the worst, with his luck that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The first thing he does is send Christine Everhart a message through Jarvis requesting a meeting to get an exclusive of his story, no questions off the table on the condition that she stays absolutely silent about it until he gives the ok. If any reporter is trustworthy enough for this it’s her. She’s not scared of his name, his company, his power. She doesn’t think he’s just an idiot playboy that doesn’t hold any actual power. She’s perfect for the job because she cares about the truth not just what would sell the best. Once that’s all said and done he gets Jarvis to call his sister because fuck the rest of his to do list he needs to hear that his kid and they’re family are ok. As he expected Inko is sobbing as soon as she answers the phone.
“Inko, Ink, I’m ok. I’m fine I’m home and safe. Calm down I’d like to actually talk to you at some point you know. Can you breathe? There we go Ink I’m ok.”
“Tony we were so scared! Nothing for months and poor Shouta thought he lost you, are you sure you’re ok?”
“I promise I’m the picture of health. Everything’s ok now. We’ll that’s a lie but I’m fine physically.”
“Sir” Jarvis interrupts, “You have a broken arm fractured 3 ribs and have severe internal damage from electrocution and attempted drowning. Not to mention the shards of shrapnel headed toward your heart. You are in fact not the picture of health.”
“Tony..”
“… I have a feeling I’m not going to want to listen to whatever you’re about to say next.”
“I told you so.”
“And there it is. See Jarvis I called it. Knew I wasn’t going to want to listen to her. I’m a psychic.”
“Tony this isn’t a joke, not the least bit funny! You almost died. And I know! I know you’re ok now but just think about what this has done to us. Think about how this has affected our family. We won’t survive if this happens again we can’t lose you Tone. We can’t. Promise me you’ll be safe until you come back here. Promise.”
“I promise Ink. I’ll be careful. And I know you were right that’s why I have to fix this. I have to fix this so Shouta doesn’t have to hide from being part of our family anymore. If there’s one promise I ever intend to keep in my life it’s this one.”
“You better or I swear I’ll bring you back just to kill you myself.”
“And there it is. Now where’s my kid? I want to see him.”
“In Izuku’s room he didn’t know when you’d end up calling so he hid himself away there to stop from pacing in the kitchen. He missed you a lot Tone he’ll be so happy to talk to you.”
“Same here I didn’t think I’d ever miss anyone as much as I missed that kid. The entire time I just thought about getting home because I refused to let him lose anymore people.”
“Alright well hold on I’ll go get him. Izuku should go down for a nap anyways which will give you guys some time alone to talk. I love you Tony.”
“Love you too Inko. Go get my kid.” There’s silence on her end of the phone for a couple minutes before it’s finally picked up again and he hears tell-tale signs of sniffling from his son. “Hey kid. Did ya miss me?”
“Dad…” and Shouta breaks apart. Full bodied sobs as he clutches the phone to him holding a single hand over his mouth and sobbing hysterically. He never thought he’d see his dad again, even when he was told they’d found him, even when Auntie Pep said he was alive, and that he was ok. Even just now when Auntie Inko said that he was on the phone waiting for him the doubt was still there that he would ever get to talk to his dad again, and hearing his voice, seeing the tears and the smile his dad had reserved just for him broke all restraint he had. It took him a few minutes to slow his crying down from full bodied sobbing to just tears and sniffling. “Of course I missed you! I never thought I’d see you again, I was so scared.”
“Like you’ll ever get rid of me. I’m not that easy to blow off you know,” and nobody would believe you if you said Tony Stark started tearing up listening to his kid air out his fears from the last few months but it’s what happened. “I missed you too kid. You’re the only thing that kept me going sometimes. But I promise you, I’ll try as hard as I can so you never have to go through that again alright?”
“… I know you can’t promise that I’ll never go through this again, I appreciate you not making promises you can’t keep dad.”
“Yeah we’ll I’m not one for empty platitudes. When I make a promise I intend to keep it. By the way, you’re calling me dad, that’s new.”
“Is it alright?”
“Whatever makes you comfortable kid. I like it. You think it suits me?”
“Not as much as idiot does but c’est la vie there’s only so much I can do without being a miracle worker.”
“Wow the sass has gotten stronger where’d you learn that from?”
“I don’t know really this old guy in cheesy sunglasses that make him look like a prick just started talking to me one day and I picked up some of his habits.”
“Oh and a smart ass too welcome to the family kid!” Both father and son begin laughing and they spend the next couple hours catching up on what Tony missed, and he thinks to himself that he’ll do anything for this kid to make sure that he is happy and loved.
After he and Shouta hang up for the night he goes back to his laundry list of things he has to prepare for. Starting with finding evidence against Obie. That ones easy enough, he grabs an encrypted usb drive connected to Jarvis’ mainframe and sends a text to Pepper letting her know she has to stick it in any computer she sees Obie using the most. Next he starts work on designing what he’s designating as the Mark II, the improved version of the suit he used to escape the cave. That takes him a couple hours and by the time he’s done with that the sun has started to rise and he’s about ready to pass out on his workbench. He has to wait for pepper before he can fall asleep though to make sure she uses the right usb. Once that’s safely settled into her purse he finally takes the opportunity to pass the fuck out on the couch closest to him and sleeps for several long hours. He wakes up just after noon to the smell of pizza and coffee and immediately knows that Rhodes has stopped by. Taking the coffee that Rhodey placed in front of his face to wake him up he turns to face him and opens with “It was Obie.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah I know. What the fuck do I do Platypus?”
“We figure it out together. But why? Why would he do this?”
“He’s been double dealing. Most of the terrorists were using SI weapons. I built weapons to protect us and they’re the thing killing us. It’s almost funny in an ironic world-shattering kind of way you know?”
“Oh Tones”
“It’s the only thing that adds up. I went through every equation in my head of how this happened and it was like mixing millions of different puzzle pieces that didn’t belong together to form a picture. It wasn’t right they didn’t fit correctly nothing made sense. And then it did. It had to be him.”
“You have the worst luck with parental figures Tones.”
“You’re telling me Rhodey-bear. Maybe I should just stay an orphan next time.”
“Probably best for the world.”
“On that note I’m going to need your help.”
“Oh god. You have that look on your face. The one that screams trouble for everyone but nobody can talk you out of doing. With your luck we’ll be lucky to get out of this alive.”
“Probably.”
“Spill it you know I can’t let you die. You’re my brother Tones.” And so he did. Tony explained in detail what he’d need from Rhodey to make sure he’d be able to succeed in getting his weapons back and killing everyone involved in trying to kill him, and stabbing him in the back double dealing his weapons.
Together him and Rhodes finish his final designs on the Mark 2 and start a Mark 3 with ideas that wouldn’t fit with the way the Mark 2 works. It helps to have a brother like Rhodey with ties to the government. They start making plans based on ways they think Stane might react next. He’ll be damned if he lets that asshole have another chance at taking him away from his loved ones who needed him. That’s how him and Rhodey spend the next 5 months, preparing for the battle they know lies ahead so they aren’t caught off guard from anything Stane might try. October is when everything starts going downhill and fast.
First thing to come up is a fundraiser that he never received an invitation to despite it being SI holding it. By this point he’d already been locked out of the SI accounts but luckily he still had his in with Pepper. She’s been helping him spy on Stane finding what computer was most likely to have the secrets he needed to air out on it. Was it cliche that it was the one he’d stolen from Tony’s office when he usurped his position? Rhodey thought so at least. So when Christine Everhart approached him with pictures of incidents from Gulmira clearly showing the SI labeled weapon cases. She was the heads up that it had started and with their interview safely stashed away awaiting finishing touches he leaves to confront Stane as will be expected of him after openly being approached by a known reporter who can’t stand him. He doesn’t have to fake the anger and betrayal he feels when Stane confirms he’s the one who isolated him from SI, he’s been angry and hurting all this time now he can just show it openly instead of playing nice with the man he used to wish was his actual father. Next he finds the last batch of his weapons and destroys everyone who he can get his hands on before it’s time for him to leave, destroying all the weapons that were stolen from him and sold to terrorists. It’s on the news later that night that those who he missed hadn’t escaped, he’s pretty sure he can thank Stane for finishing the clean-up job he started. Safe in the knowledge of exactly which computer will be the most likely to have the incriminating evidence, Pepper makes her way into Stanes office to download it all to Jarvis’ secure database just in time to meet one Agent Caulson and head off to his office with everything she needs to get a warrant for Stane. It was all going exactly as predicted, they’d worked out every detail of what he might do up until this point. They never thought he’d come back to the penthouse because they assumed he’d think that’s where the government official was headed with backup and bodyguards. They never planned for him to jam the frequencies in Jarvis’ server and sneak his way up to the penthouse. They forgot about the existence of the paralytic device. They didn’t lab for this and now here Tony is crawling his way to the elevator trying to get to the only arc reactor he has left in his workshop. He can feel each beat if his heart and the shrapnel inside his chest carving their way through. It’s probably part of the delirium from the cardiac arrest he’s undoubtedly about to experience but still he can feel it and it hurts. By the time he makes it down there he doesn’t think he’ll survive much longer and the reactor is just out of reach until one of his first children lowers their claw hand and the bot most in love with fire extinguishers hands him the one thing he needs to get back on his feet. By this time Rhodey is bounding down the stairs both him and Pepper realizing that he was about to die, as soon as he sees Tony standing, visibly on shaking legs and still out of breath, he crushes him in a hug.
They don’t stay in that position long because now they have an idea of what’s going to happen next. He has the arc reactor it’s not a hard guess to see what he’s planning. By the time he’s there and the battle is through Stane is dead Pepper is traumatized, Tony is traumatized, Rhodey is having a heart attack at the giant explosion that just about killed his brother and Inko is a sobbing mess on the phone. He doesn’t know how he survived but he did and shit he needs to lay down. With the damn government official there he can’t exactly talk his way out of the situation so they explain it as best they can before heading home with the promise to be debriefed in the morning. The first thing Tony does as he lays in his bed is call Christine Everhart and send her all the evidence they compiled against Stane and give her an in depth description of what happened. Including the suit when she’d asked about it. At first he contemplated listening to the last thing Agent said to him which was, if anyone asks he’s supposed to say that the suit was a hired bodyguard, and then she says that just because it may have been him in the suit it didn’t make him a hero just someone cleaning up their own mess, and that went out the window. The next call was to a frantic Inko and Shouta who made him promise that he’d fly out first chance he got after the press conference scheduled by Coulson. And then it was silent. It was a tired silence, not uncomfortable but nothing he could sit there and revel in. There was too much on his mind for him to go to sleep but not enough energy in his body to do anything with his thoughts so he laid there and contemplated everything that had happened in the past year.
By the time the press conference came around a couple of days later he’d admitted to being what they’d dubbed as Iron Man, which don’t even get him started on it’s not an accurate name because the suit is a titanium alloy not even a little iron, his life was hectic. He’d started the process on shutting down the weapons division, again, and started trying to recreate the arc reactor for clean energy. He’d funded the R&D department and replaced who he’d needed to in the board of SI to make the transition smooth from weapons to technology and energy. It wasn’t hard work but it was a lot of work so he was starting to get tired and was thankful that his flight left to go to Japan soon. As he’s sitting on the plane all he can think about is seeing his son again for the first time in months and wondering how much has changed.