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Tony stumbles across the desert with his jacket wrapped around his head. It looks like he’s been walking for hours.
As crosses a hill, two helicopters fly overhead.
“Hey!” Tony yells falling to his knees raising a peace sign over his head.
The helicopter lands and Rhodey and other soldiers come running out.
“How was the fun-vee?” Rhodey asks.
“Wow, way to rub it in.” Happy mutters.
“Hey, it that was the only thing I could think of to say.” Rhodey defends.
“It’s okay, I knew what you meant.” Tony says, genuinely grateful for his friend.
Tony squeezes his eyes shut and smile.
Rhodey kneels in front of him, placing an hand on his shoulder. “Next time you ride with me, okay?”
They hug.
Rhodey and Tony share a grateful smile.
The plane lands in America, where Pepper and Happy wait by a car.
A rap lowers from the plane as Tony rises from a wheelchair with his arm in a sling.
Rhodey takes his arm and leads him down. There’s a stretcher waiting for him, but Tony waves it off.
“Come on, Tony, just accept the help, alright.” Steve sighed.
“I didn’t need it.” Tony simply stated.
A bright smile stretches across Pepper’s face.
“Your eyes are red.” Tony says as he approaches her. “A few tears for your long-lost boss?”
“Tears of joy.” Pepper smiles. “I hate job hunting.”
“Couldn’t you have stayed on in the company?” Hope asked.
“And be alone with Obadiah?” Pepper asked incredulously. “No way, that guy was way too creepy for me.”
“Yeah, well vacation’s over.”
They slide into the car. “Where to sir?” Happy asks from the front seat.
“Take us to the hospital please, Happy.” Pepper says.
“No.” Tony cuts her off.
“No?”
“Tony, you really should have gone to the hospital.” T’Challa scolds him.
“No, no. I was fine.” Tony insists. “Besides, I had other things on my mind.”
“Oh? Like what?” Wanda asks.
Tony smirked. “You’ll see.”
They argue and talk over each other.
“Back to the same old flirting, I see?” Fury mutters.
“How is that flirting?” Steve asks.
“Well, you see, Miss Potts is the only person who Stark would let talk to him like this.” Fury explains. “And, of course, Stark is the most arrogant and disrespectful asshole anyone has the misfortune to meet, and yet, Pepper still gives him her time. Tell me, in what way are they not helplessly in love with each other?”
The room is stunned into silence by Fury’s assessment.
Tony and Pepper grinned at each other, trying to contain their laughter, because of course, Fury was right.
“Once a spy, always a spy.” Tony muttered.
“I’ve been in captivity for three months. There are two things I want to do. I want an American cheeseburger”
“Of course.” Scott says.
He pauses, “and the other…”
“That’s enough of that.” Pepper interrupts.
Steve sighed, exasperated.
“…is not what you think. I want you to call for a press conference now.”
Steve blinked. “Oh, that’s not what I was expecting.”
“Call for a press conference? What on earth for?”
“Hogan, drive. Cheeseburger first.” Tony orders.
They arrive at the conference where Obadiah is there to welcome them.
“Look at this!” He opens the door for Tony and pulls him into a tight hug. “We were going to meet at the hospital. Look at you.”
“God! I can’t believe he can act like this.” Rhodey scoffs. “So happy and cheerful when he did such horrible things.”
“What did he do?” Gamora asks.
“Spoilers.” Tony smirks, holding a finger to his lips.
Tony dismisses him as Happy brings up another Burger King bag for Tony.
“You had to have a burger, yeah?” Obadiah teases. “Did you get me one of those?”
“There’s only one left. I need it.” Tony states as they walk inside.
“You deserve it, my friend.” Thor said.
The panel applaud as Tony enters the room, pulling out another burger.
Pepper follows behind them and sighs at the familiar scene.
“Miss Potts?” A man stands next to her. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
“Hey! It’s Son of Col!” Thor pointed at the screen excitedly.
“Yes, I was unfortunate enough to be tasked with dealing with Stark.” Coulson sighed.
“It was an honourable sacrifice.” Hill smirked.
“I’m not part of the press conference, but it’s about to begin right now.”
“I’m not a reporter. I’m Agent Phil Coulson, with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” He hands her his card.
“That’s quite a mouthful.” She says dryly accepting the card.
“I know, we’re working on it.”
“Shouldn’t you already have ‘SHIELD’ as your name by now?” Steve asked.
“We did, we just didn’t want Tony to get wind that SHIELD was interested in him at this time.” Coulson said. “His ego was already large enough.”
Pepper sighs. “You know, we’ve been approached already by the DOD, the FBI, the CIA…”
“We’re a separate division with a more specific focus.” Coulson interrupts. “We need to debrief Mr. Stark about the circumstances of his escape.”
“I’ll put something in the book, shall I?”
“Thank you.”
“You never got your meeting did you?” Steve sighed.
Coulson shrugged. “It depends on how you define ‘meeting’.”
The conference starts as Obadiah stands at the microphone, clearly at a loss for words of what they are doing there.
“Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?” Tony calls from the floor. “Why don’t you just sit down? That way you can see me, and I can… a little less formal and…” He takes a bite of his burger.
Quill watched, in awe, and slightly envious, at how one man could hold such a presence in the room. Even when sitting down and injured, he seemed like the largest man there.
Obadiah sits down next to him.
“What’s up with the love-in?” Rhodey whispers to Pepper.
“Don’t look at me.” Pepper responds. “I don’t know what he’s up to.”
“Good to see you.” Tony says to Obadiah, who returns the sentiment and places a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“I never got to say goodbye to Dad.” Tony cuts him off.
Bucky grimmiced, a flash of guilt passing through him, as it always did when Howard was mentioned.
“I never got to say goodbye to my father.” He puts down the burger. “There’s questions I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. If he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts. Or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels. I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”
Wanda frowned. So maybe he did have a conscience after all.
A series of hands are raised from the reporters.
“What happened over there?” One of them asks.
Tony pauses for a moment before standing and walking over to the microphone. “I had my eyes opened. I came to realise that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up.”
“Really?” Rocket asked. “What else is there?”
“And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International…”
“Oh damn.” Sam muttered.
Chaos erupts. Everyone immediately stands, questions and outrage drowning Tony out. Obadiah stands too, attempting to push Tony away from the microphone. But Tony continues to command the mic.
“You see? You gotta command the mic.” Tony said in his teacher’s voice. “Don’t let others shut you up. Stand and say your whole piece.”
“That’s some good words there, Tony.” Fury said.
“…until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be. What direction it should take, one that I’m comfortable with and is consistent with the highest good for this country, as well.”
Steve sighed. “Well, that’s a start, I guess.”
Obadiah finally gets Tony to step away from the mic. Rhodey looks on with an expression of disappointment and betrayal.
“Seriously, dude?” Sam said. “You can’t be supportive of your friend trying to do the right thing?”
“Look.” Rhodey defended. “I’m all for Tony’s moment of elitenment, but you can’t just upend a system like that. Tony was our primary weapons manufacturer and he still didn’t realise or consider the massive repercussions that his decision would make.”
“It’s true.” Pepper agreed. “Even though Tony had good intentions, he still acted rashly and didn’t consider all the consequences of his actions.”
Meanwhile, Obadiah tries to take back control of the conference. “What we should take away from this is that Tony’s back! And he’s healthier than ever. We’re going to have a little internal discussion and we’ll get back to you with the follow-up.”
Shuri rolled her eyes. “You can practically smell the bullshit from space.”
The setting fades into the one of Stark Industries. Obadiah pulls up on a segway.
“How can he of all people make one of those look cool?” Scott laughed.
“Where is he?” He demands to Happy who tell him Tony’s inside.
Inside, Tony stands gazing at the large arc reactor whirring in the centre of the room.
Obadiah places his fists on his hips and sighs. “Well, that… that went well.”
“Did I just paint a target on the back of my head?” Tony deadpans.
“It’s not like you didn’t already have one.” Fury said.
“Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on me.” Tony sighed.
“Your head? What about my head?” Obadiah counters. “What do you think the over-under on the stock drop is gonna be tomorrow?”
“Uh, optimistically, 40 points.”
“It’s got to be more than that.” Strange said. “You basically closed your entire company.”
Tony shrugged. “It had to be done.”
“At minimum.” Obadiah sighs. “Tony, we’re a weapons manufacturer.”
“Obie, I just don’t want a body count to be our only legacy.”
Wanda sighed. As much as she hated Tony for all the lives he had destroyed, it really did seem like he wanted to make up for it.
“That’s what we do.” Obadiah cuts him off. “We’re iron mongers. We make weapons.”
“It’s my name on the side of the building.
“And what we do keeps the world from falling into chaos.”
“That sounds dangerously like HYDRA.” Steve said.
“Not based on what I saw. We’re not doing a good enough job. We can do better. We’re gonna do something else.”
“Like what? You want us to make baby bottles?” Obadiah snarks.
“Man, was he always so patronising?” Sam asked.
“Pretty much.” Tony said. “He’d known me since I was a kid, so to him, I would always be out of my league.”
“It’s also probably a manipulation tactic.” Natasha said. “To make Tony doubt himself and to keep him reliant on Obadiah only.”
“I think we should take another look into arc reactor technology.”
Obadiah scoffs. “Ah, come on. The arc reactor? That’s a publicity stunt! Tony, come on. We built that thing to shut the hippies up!”
“Oh, he totally knows about the miniaturised arc reactor.” Clint chuckled.
“It works.”
“Yeah, as a science project.” Obadiah rebukes. “The arc was never cost effective. We knew that before we built it. Arc reactor technology, that’s a dead end, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, stop messing with him.” T’Challa rolled his eyes. “Come on, he knows.”
“I wasn’t even sure I wanted him to know yet. Also it was kinda fun to watch him act dumb for a bit.” Tony smirked.
“Huh? Am I right? We haven’t had a breakthrough in that in what? 30 years.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Stop torturing him, Tony. It’s pitiful to watch him pretend he doesn’t know.” Natasha said.
They eye each other up.
“Could you have a lousier poker face? Just tell me, who told you?” Tony finally breaks.
“Never mind who told me. Show me.”
“It’s Rhodey or Pepper.”
“I want to see it.”
“Okay, Rhodey.”
Rhodey winced. “Sorry Tony, I kinda had to.”
“It’s alright, buddy.” Tony smiled at him.
Nevertheless, Tony unbuttons his shirt, revealing the glowing blue of the arc reactor.
As soon as Obadiah lays eyes on it, he becomes paranoid and buttons Tony back up. He chuckles.
“Alright, that’s suspicious and creepy.” Quill said. “He’s definitely got some anterior motive.”
“It works.” Tony confirms.
Obadiah sighs and places an arm around Tony possessively. “Listen to me, Tony. We’re a team. Do you understand? There’s nothing we can’t do if we stick together, like your father and I.”
“That is super creepy.” Clint cringed. “Like, that’s some serious red flags.”
“Yeah… he kinda did that a lot.” Tony winced.
“He’s manipulating you, Tony.” Natasha said. “Intimidation to make you feel small and to make him seem big. To make you feel like it’s both of you against the world, because he knows that you could go even further by yourself. He’s threatened by you.”
Tony smiled at her gratefully. “Thanks Nat.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads-up, okay? But if I had…”
“Tony. Tony, no more of this ‘ready, fire, aim’ business. You understand me?”
“That was Dad’s line.”
Bucky blinked. He remembered Howard saying that. He didn’t remember when or where, but he remembered something. A feeling bubbled inside him. Maybe, in time, he just might remember more.
“You gotta let me handle this. We’re gonna have to play a whole different kind of ball now. We’re going to have to take a lot of heat. I want you to promise me that you’re gonna lay low.”
“Tony Stark?” Strange asked sarcastically. “Easy.”