Recur
The drone paid him no mind as it shot through the air. Jay was wary at first, expecting it to turn and shoot at him, but it appeared to have not noticed he was even following – or perhaps it did notice, and Jay was giving it exactly what it wanted. Even if that was the case, though, he couldn’t just let it go back to its master to kill another day; no, he had to see this through to the end, find out who was controlling these drones and to what end.
Their flight took longer than Jay had been truly expecting, racing through the skies, darting around clouds, listening to JARVIS in his ear giving updates on the team’s progress following him out.
Then, almost out of nowhere, the drone suddenly dove, making for the ground with reckless abandon as Jay followed suit.
“Sir,” JARVIS said suddenly, voice concerned and ever-so-slightly confused, “Sir, these coordinates match the location of an old Stark Industries warehouse, one that was decommissioned.”
“Decommissioned? For how long? And why?” The ground was steadily hurtling closer as he spoke, wind whipping by as Jay followed the drone’s descent.
“It appears to have been a primary location for weapons storage and was closed in 2008, after your announcement following your return from Afghanistan.” The drone landed, a small pinprick on the ground that quickly disappeared inside what looked to be a dilapidated warehouse. Jay touched down a moment later, landing in a three-point stance before straightening. His suit scanned the building quickly, gliding over the rusted metal roof and cracked concrete walls, sliding past shattered windows and unhinged doorways before his HUD screen flashed the results of his signs of life scan at one. One single person inside this nightmare-induced building, the leader of the drones, Jay was certain.
Still, Jay hesitated. Could he handle one person? Probably, unless that person was far more superpowered than anyone they’d run up against so far. But considering the fact that his most recent attempt at influencing the drones had nearly landed him on his ass – he wasn’t sure he could count on being able to take down the drones with his technopathy, and there was no telling how many drones were inside since they wouldn’t register on his scans.
“How far out is the team?” he asked quietly, though he wasn’t sure why; whoever was here had to already know they had guests, so if someone here wanted to attack him, his quietness did nothing to protect him at the moment. Still, there was something about the atmosphere that made him reluctant to speak much louder than a whisper. Perhaps it was the stillness of the air, the sense of abandonment that cloaked the place; perhaps it was the eerie silence that permeated the area despite the fact that Jay knew there was at least one person and one being (creature? Entity? How did one refer to a drone?) in the building. Whatever the case may be, his old building demanded some form of respect.
“I estimate three minutes until their arrival,” JARVIS responded, and Jay nodded.
“May as well wait on them, then,” he decided; he was fairly confident this was the drone’s home base and that its puppeteer wouldn’t be going anywhere else, so he could afford to give the team a minute to catch up.
“A wise decision, Sir,” JARVIS approved, and Jay hid a smile. He was pretty sure he was going to get reamed for ditching the team after Ross had been killed – good Lord, Ross had been killed - by Steve and James already, so he could only hope his apparent responsible decision-making right now would save him from also getting yelled at by JARVIS.
“What do you think, J?” Jay asked quietly, and he could feel his AI thinking, processing.
“I think that I wish it were within my power to convince you to return to the Compound immediately, Sir,” JARVIS responded finally, his voice similarly soft, laced with a mixture of concern, trepidation, and resignation that Jay would’ve done anything to remove. Well, almost anything – he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the mission, not when he might be the team’s best chance at stopping whoever the drone-puppeteer was, considering his technological knowledge.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he whispered finally, and he felt his AI brush gently against the back of his mind, offering comfort.
The quinjet touched down a moment later, landing silently a few feet from Jay, and the team piled out, already looking on edge. Jay retracted his helmet with a thought, face solemn as they approached.
“Report, Iron Man,” Steve snapped, in full Captain America mode as the team gathered.
“Accords HQ has been ransacked, Ross is dead and an unknown number of agents and civilians are down. I spotted a drone as it flew away from Ross’s cell, tried to interface with it and failed, so I flew after it. It landed here and went inside this decommissioned SI building. JARVIS scanned and found one lifeform inside, though he wouldn’t be able to pick up the drones, so we’re uncertain as to what sort of numbers we’re facing. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to stop them this time, if they’re all like the drone I followed here,” Jay responded, and the team exchanged ominous looks.
“Acknowledged,” Steve said, eyes distant as their tactician thought through the best way to proceed. “Ant Man, you’re on recon, go in and let us know what we’re up against.”
“On it, boss!” Scott said immediately, pressing a button and shrinking.
Steve turned to the rest of them while they waited for their teammate to get far enough in to have anything to report. “Once we go in, Iron Man will take point. See if you can take them out with your powers first. If not, fall back and let Winter Soldier and me take point – we have the most experience with close combat, and I don’t imagine there will be much room to maneuver in that building. No matter what, stick together, team. Don’t let them separate us – we don’t know what their numbers are, and we’re a lot easier to pick off if we’re split up.”
The team was nodding as Scott’s voice came over the coms. “Uh, so far all I’m finding are a lot of creepy half-broken dead robot things. You don’t think they’re, like, pretending to be dead to lure me in and that they’ll all suddenly come to life and kill me, right? Because that is not the way I want to go.”
“Scott, this isn’t a Terminator movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t going to be bahck,” Jay said exasperatedly, a small smile tugging at his lips despite the seriousness of the situation.
“Do you know that, though?” Scott pressed, sounding worried.
“C’mon, Tic Tac, you got this,” Sam reassured him wryly.
“Right, right,” Scott muttered over the coms, sounding more like he was talking to himself instead of them. “I’m the boss, I’m the boss, I’m the boss.”
“Anything other than broken bots, Ant Man?” Steve asked.
“Negative, Captain,” Scott reported, the epitome of professionalism, and Jay had to hold back a snicker, knowing the other engineer wouldn’t take kindly to it - but it had been clear from the beginning that Scott was a huge Captain America fanboy and sought out Steve’s approval at any time. “No signs of - wait.”
A moment of silence. “Ant Man?” Steve barked out. “Report. Are you okay?”
“You need to get in here. Now,” came the response. The team formed up immediately, Jay’s helmet snapping up as he took point with Steve and James at his heels.
Jay walked through the half-unhinged front door without hesitation but with no small amount of trepidation. His eyes flicked over the surroundings, searching for threats or anything that could’ve caused Scott’s alarm. Nothing was visible, but it was immediately clear Scott must be further inside; they were standing in a small entryway, what Jay assumed had been a sort of registration desk collapsed in on itself on the other side of the room. The room stank of mildew and rot, the stench of abandonment wafting around decayed furnishings and streaked walls.
Seeing no danger, Jay pressed forward, the team at his back, as they stepped past the registration desk and through a dark doorway, entering a stale corridor that ended in a creaking stairwell. At this point, Jay’s hackles were raised, and he didn’t blame Scott for making movie references anymore – if this had been a horror movie, they’d have been the dumb teens heading toward clear danger right now. As it was, Jay wasn’t certain he could necessarily discount them as fitting that stereotype, but they pressed on regardless.
Steve’s breath was hot on his neck, and Jay had a gauntlet raised and glowing to light the way as they descended the staircase, the light disappearing slowly but surely behind them, closing them in. Jay had the sudden sensation that they were being swallowed whole by the building, as though the corridor they’d just left would collapse now that they weren’t in it, prohibiting their retreat. It was silly, he knew, but he could help the ominous feeling he had the further they descended.
“I feel it, too, Sir,” JARVIS whispered in his ear, picking up the direction of his thoughts through Extremis.
“Stay close to me,” Jay whispered back, and JARVIS brushed against the back of his mind in response. Ahead of them, the HUD screen registered two lifeforms, red-hot blobs in the darkness, hidden behind a last doorway at the end of the staircase.
“We’re close,” Jay called quietly to the rest of the team, getting murmurs of acknowledgment in return. They crept closer, and Jay could hear his teammates readying their weapons as he reached out for the doorknob, turning it and pushing the door open.
“Hey, guys, I found Dr. Cho,” Scott greeted them with a small, intensely freaked-out smile from his position squatting beside a very distraught-looking Helen Cho, whose back was against the wall on the other side of the door.
“Helen,” Jay breathed, taking in her disarrayed hair, her dirtied clothes, the haunted look in her eyes as she looked at him. He retracted his helmet and dropped down beside her immediately, taking one of her trembling hands as the team filed in behind him and the door closed with a definitive ‘clang.’
“Tony, I’m sorry,” she choked out, eyes wide and pleading with him for forgiveness. “I’m so, so sorry.” Jay jolted at his name, and Scott stiffened beside her, looking at her questioningly, but she had eyes only for Jay.
And that confirmed for Jay in a way that nothing else had that something was very, very wrong – because he knew Helen would almost never forget to call him by his chosen name, but she would absolutely never ignore what that slip up would mean for Jay once she’d outed him.
“Helen, what – “ Jay started, but was interrupted.
“Tony, my boy,” said a voice straight out of Jay’s nightmares. Face freezing before sliding quickly into a blank mask, Jay straightened, turning and stepping so that he shielded Helen as he did so. He didn’t know what he’d expected to encounter when he turned, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him.
The warehouse was all but empty of the weapons that had covered every surface during SI’s weapons manufacturing days, a few half-trashed computers and empty casings and shells littering the floor, underfoot of what Jay estimated to be thirty drones standing at attention with glowing eyes focused on the Avengers huddled in the doorway.
And there, at the center, was a form he’d hoped never to see again – only the form had been twisted, a dangerous mockery that combined the two forms of a man Tony had once loved as a father.
“He made me,” Helen whimpered behind him, voice breaking. “He made me help him make a body free of technology. I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Tony, I – “ She broke off, and he could hear Scott calming her behind him, but he shook off his desire to comfort her. Show no weakness or affection in front of your enemies because, if you do, you’re showing them the best way to hurt you. It had been one of the worst lessons he’d learned from his former mentor – but one of the most useful at this moment.
“Obadiah,” he greeted, eyes hard but voice relaxed and flippant, taking a few casual steps forward. “That’s a new look for you. Valentino? Burberry?”
He was monstrous in appearance, looking as though someone had taken the Iron Monger suit and squished humanoid features onto the face before painting the whole thing in harsh shades of blue, silver, and black. Tony was reminded of Vision’s unnatural coloring and wondered absently how it was that Obadiah looked so much more inhuman than the synthezoid. But the overall advantage of this form was clear – for the body that his former mentor possessed appeared to have much of the gadgets that had been on the Iron Monger armor but was entirely organic and therefore outside the realm of Tony’s ability to influence.
“Ah, I’ve so missed your sense of humor, Tony,” Obadiah said, grinning a horrible, distorted grin.
“Yeah, sorry dude, but that’s not Tony, that’s his son,” Clint snapped, stepping up beside him, and Tony couldn’t quite hide a flinch. Obadiah, of course, noticed, and his smile widened.
“Lying to your teammates, my boy?” he clucked disapprovingly as he pinned Tony with a stare, eyes glinting with amused malice. “And you were so angry with the Captain for doing that to you. I never took you to be one for hypocrisy; other vices, yes – but you were always willing to own up to your own shortcomings. I suppose I should’ve known from that alone that you’d never be able to work with me in a business setting. Too soft, too…good.”
“How are you here?” Tony gritted out, ignoring his teammates at his back, head swirling in a confusing mixture of panic, fear, and fury that overtook all other thought, even the paralyzing anxiety of what his teammates would do now that his secret was in the open. From his periphery, he could see Natasha step up to his other side, offering silent support with a brush of her fingers against his wrist.
“I never left – not really,” Obadiah said, flashing his teeth in his parody of a smile. “I don’t know if you ever figured it out – I’m the one who got HYDRA to kill your parents – “ Tony froze, eyes wide and locked on Obadiah’s face, and he heard a choked noise that sounded like it came from James behind him. Obadiah paused, surveyed him and chuckled. “So you hadn’t figured that part out yet. I did wonder. Anyway, I got HYDRA to kill your parents in exchange for joining the organization. It was a very beneficial partnership – they got all the new weapons advancements they could ever want, and I got the path cleared for me to take over the company.”
“But you left me alive,” Tony said, voice flat but inquiry obvious.
“Of course,” Obadiah said as though it was obvious. “You were much more brilliant than your father, and you were young enough to be molded – or so we thought. Your…servant unfortunately had instilled a set of values in you we couldn’t seem to circumvent. Fortunately, we were able to distract you in other ways to keep you from looking too closely at what we were doing.”
“The drugs and alcohol,” Tony realized, recalling how some of the more hard-core drugs had landed in his lap the first time he’d been tipsy at a party, how easy it had been for him to get ahold of suppliers after that, despite his age and how well-known he was. Obadiah nodded, unrepentant in his role in purposely getting Tony addicted to dangerous substances for years of his life.
“With you sufficiently distracted from the day-to-day operations but still giving SI your inventions, we were in a prime position,” Obadiah said smugly.
“Then why pay the Ten Rings to kill me?” Tony demanded, and he heard sharp intakes of breath from behind him, realizing absently that he’d never detailed exactly what had happened with Obadiah – even SHIELD had only known pieces, and had never found out that Tony’s mentor had arranged his kidnapping and subsequent torture in Afghanistan. He’d kept that close to the chest, right by the arc reactor that had been ripped from him.
Obadiah shook his head wryly. “I got greedy, I admit it,” he said, holding out his arms in a gesture of openness. “I wanted the company to be mine in name as well as fact. It was a mistake, and one that I paid dearly for.”
“With your life,” Tony reiterated bluntly, piercing Obadiah with a stare. “So how are you here?”
Obadiah nodded almost contemplatively, as though taking Tony’s question very seriously. “I was getting to that. I’m sure the good Captain told you all about Zola and how he survived physical death by uploading his consciousness into a computer system.”
Tony turned to glance at Steve, whose face was white but who met his eyes briefly and gave a short nod. Obadiah grinned at the look in Tony’s eyes when he turned back to face his old mentor, a horrible guess at the truth already worming its way to the surface. “Yes, Tony, you’re starting to get it now, aren’t you? I’d heard about Zola’s technique. Our business is a dangerous one, so I was always worried about the eventuality that I’d be killed. So I stole Zola’s notes from HYDRA and took them to SI’s scientists. It took years, but they finally made what I asked for – a device that would upload my consciousness to a private SI server if my body died.
“But there was one eventuality I didn’t foresee – the server I was uploaded onto wasn’t being used, which meant I was kept dormant, stored in the server but unable to move anywhere. Until, that is, you acquired all the SHIELD files after they fell and needed another place to store them.”
“That was years ago, though,” Tony interrupted. “Why wait to reveal yourself till now?”
“Patience,” Obadiah chided, and Tony restrained the urge to smack the man, consequences be damned. “Because you had your AIs surveilling the files for information. I couldn’t do much to draw attention to myself. And when your first AI died – “ Tony twitched. “ – I didn’t know what the emptiness meant until your next AI came online. I thought I’d missed my chance entirely, that I’d never get out – and then I felt that emptiness again a few weeks ago, the very feeling that meant my domain wasn’t being surveilled, so I slipped out.”
“Ross,” Tony said dully, remembering how Natasha’d had to bring JARVIS online after FRIDAY had been knocked off, and Obadiah nodded.
“The General. I was jumping through the systems after he took out your AI and landed in his jet, where he had you. I admit I wasn’t able to hold myself back when I caught sight of you for the first time looking so much younger, and his techies noticed me in their systems. I wanted to bring the plane down immediately, get rid of you once and for all, but the General talked to me about the plans he had for you, so I waited. And then he failed to do as he promised, to get rid of you and destroy your legacy, and I was back to square one.
“I didn’t think it would be too hard to get rid of you, if I’m being honest - I live in technology, and you surround yourself with it, so I was surely well placed to take you out quietly, no mess, no fuss. But then I found out about your new superpowers. So I gathered those godawful Hammer Tech drones and sent them near enough to you that you’d be called out so I could see what I was up against. After that battle, I used the drones’ assessments to figure out how your power was working and figure out ways around it. The solution, in the end, was simple - you can’t control organic matter, only technology, so I just needed to figure out how to upload myself into an organic body that could control the drones. The only way for you to stop the drones would be to stop me, and your powers wouldn’t be able to do that.”
“So you kidnapped Helen,” Tony continued, and Obadiah grinned his horrible grin.
“And she performed magnificently,” he agreed, turning and showing off his new form. Muscles rippled, dim lights glinting off unnaturally-shiny blue skin. “I have everything that I need to take what I want now.”
Tony paused, eyeing him as Obadiah stood with his maniacal grin, eyes glinting. “And what do you want?” he demanded finally.
Obadiah tilted his disgusting shiny blue head, as though considering him. “What I’ve always wanted – for the company I built with my own two hands alongside your father to succeed.” He raised his hands, covered by grey almost-gauntlets, in demonstration, extending them toward Tony, who had to steel himself to prevent himself from stumbling backwards.
“Well, you’ve got that already – SI is a multibillion-dollar international company that’s revolutionized dozens of industries,” Tony spat, glaring at Obadiah, who shook his head slowly, sadly.
“No, no, my boy – you’ve ruined our company. We’re weapons manufacturers, and you’ve made us…hippies. Green energy? Prosthetics? Technology? Tony, we’re iron mongers – or we should be,” he said softly, lovingly, almost crooning as he looked entreatingly at Tony, as though he thought a few words could sway Tony’s entire worldview back to what it had been decades ago.
“Never,” Tony snarled, tensing, and he felt more-so than saw his team inch closer behind him, as though preparing to back him up despite how confused they must’ve been. “We will never go back to that. I didn’t escape the shit you put me through in Afghanistan, become Iron Man, and transform my company just to go back to war profiteering.”
Obadiah’s expression saddened, and, despite himself, Tony couldn’t help but feel almost guilty with the need to wipe that expression off his former-mentor’s face – but dammit, Obie had been a father figure to him for years, and he’d always had daddy issues after Howard – there was no denying that, and he couldn’t be bothered to try. “Oh, my boy, I was so hoping you wouldn’t say that.” The drones’ eyes seemed to glow brighter beside him, shifting along with Obadiah’s mood. “Plan A was you and I returning our company to its former glory. You won’t like Plan B.”
“Plan B?” James asked, voice hard, and Tony glanced over to see the Winter Soldier written across James’s face.
“Plan B,” Obadiah confirmed, eyes glinting meanly. “Where I kill Tony Stark right here, right now and reveal his deception to the people.” He smiled, a cruel little smirk aimed at Tony. “People don’t like being lied to, Tony,” he said softly. “Your company will suffer and, in the power void, I’ll come forward and take my rightful place at the head of the company.”
“You’re crazy, dude,” Sam called out, voice strong and sure, and, despite the seriousness of the situation, Tony was swept with a wave of affection for these people who would back him up even now.
“Yeah, man, you really think you can beat all of the Avengers?” Scott scoffed, having left Helen’s side to stand solidly beside Natasha. Obadiah looked a little surprised, eyes widening.
“You would support him, even after he’s lied to you for so long?” he asked, doubtful and incredulous.
“Iron Man is our teammate, no matter what name he goes by,” Steve said firmly, stepping up beside Tony, and Tony had to tell himself firmly that now was not the goddamn time for his eyes to get all misty. They had a fight to win.
“So be it,” Obadiah snarled, and then he launched himself at them, the drones following in his wake.
Tony met his old mentor head on, helmet coming up quickly and shield forming around his arm. Obadiah’s first blow hit the shield, and Tony’s feet scraped across the concrete floor with the force of the blow, though he held firm. A drone came at him from the side, and Tony blasted it with a repulsor quickly – but Obadiah took advantage of his momentary distraction to backhand him, the force sending him skidding halfway across the room.
“Jay!” he heard Steve and Clint cry out, and, when he pushed himself to a seated position, Steve and James had engaged the blue monstrosity – and James had murder in his eyes, the Winter Soldier clear in his movements. Tony jumped quickly to his feet, rejoining the fray, blasting drones left and right.
To his left, Natasha was using her Widow Bites to their full advantage, sending drones to the ground with a hair-raising sizzle. Clint was alternating between using the EMP arrows Tony had made for him and simply saying ‘fuck it’ and punching the drones in the face – though Tony was fairly certain the latter method was much less effective than the former. Scott had disappeared, but Tony occasionally saw drones getting hoisted into the air as though by an invisible force before being chucked into something hard, or suddenly going down due to what Tony would guess was faulty wiring caused by the drones’ ‘conscience’ wreaking havoc.
Sam seemed to be having the most trouble; the Falcon wings weren’t made for this sort of fight, and his hand-to-hand combat experience, while extensive, wasn’t quite to the level of Nat’s and Clint’s. Tony blasted a few of the drones away from him, shooting over and standing back-to-back with the man to take on the small semi-circle that had surrounded him.
“Thanks, man,” Sam yelled over the din when the flock of drones had sufficiently cleared.
“No problem, Pigeon,” Tony called back, turning his attention back to Obadiah – just in time to see the creepy creature knock Steve on his ass. Tony quickly blasted Obadiah away from James before the man could take advantage.
Obadiah was too strong for any one of them to take down by themselves, and there were too many drones for enough of the Avengers to be able team up on Obadiah without everyone else being overwhelmed. God, if his fucking mentor had just still been in the goddamn computer it would be so much easier to get rid of him than with him inhabiting a body - wait.
Tony was struck by a thought – a memory, really, of something Obadiah had said. Without pausing his defense against the drones, Tony wracked his mind, trying to think of how Obadiah had phrased it – he’d said that he’d been essentially uploaded into the organic body by Helen, which could mean…
Tony reached out with his mind, quickly and silently instructing JARVIS to keep the suit fighting as much as possible. He could see the drones, but could also see how they were all interconnected, woven together by a bright, shining organic sliver that shielded them from his interference. But when Tony focused on Obadiah, he could see where an array of little organic slivers had coalesced, linking and interlocking as they stretched towards the center of Obadiah’s forehead, where the shining organic tendrils faded rapidly in intensity to the lightly glowing technological threads he was so much more familiar with.
And when Tony followed those threads, he closed in on what he’d been both hoping and dreading he’d find. The swirling mass of grey-black consciousness that roiled in Obadiah’s head was as slimy, oily, and gross as Tony’d have thought it would be, leaving greasy fingerprints on Tony’s mind as it slithered over him, and Tony shuddered inside the suit. But he set aside his squeamishness, steeling himself and pushing into the tangled web of thoughts, diving deep, deep, deeper, pulling at a loose thread here, another there, tugging and winding and pulling, until – until –
He felt it as Obadiah unraveled: the confusion, the bewilderment, the crushing, overwhelming fear as Tony tugged at the knot that remained of his mentor’s consciousness until it was a pile of limp thread.
He felt as those threads finished their disentanglement and fell still.
And he knew what he would find when he opened his eyes.
The drones had crashed to the floor, unable to stand on their own now that the strings holding them up had been cut. And Obadiah’s monstrous form lay limp and unseeing in the center, an expression of strangely-innocent confusion on his face as he stared into nothingness, an empty husk all that remained of a man Tony had once called his friend – his family.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Clint grumbled, breaking the silence and startling a laugh out of a few of the Avengers. But Tony couldn’t tear his eyes away from Obadiah, heart breaking all over again. How many times would he be betrayed by people he loved? How many times would he have to kill or watch his father figures die in front of his eyes?
“Tony, sweetheart, zvyozdochka,” Natasha murmured, stepping forward and turning Tony to face her, ripping his eyes away from Obadiah so he could meet her worried ones. “You’re okay, little one, he can’t hurt you anymore. He’s gone.”
“That’s what we thought last time,” Tony whispered, the unbalancing fear of facing an old nightmare making him more honest and vulnerable than usual. Nat made a distressed noise, pulling him to her chest and stroking his hair. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I know, zvezda moya. But you finished him yourself this time,” she reassured him softly, then paused. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? He fell and the drones followed, so I assumed you must’ve found a way…”
“Yeah,” he murmured, knowing his voice did nothing to hide the pain the word caused him. “Yeah, I figured out how to…to unravel his mind.”
Natasha said nothing, but her petting quickened, her grip around his back tightening. “You did what you had to. You saved us, and everyone else that he would have killed.”
Tony took a deep shuddering breath before forcing himself to pull back and giving her a tremulous smile when she let him recede a bit under an arms-length away and didn’t quite release him. “Thanks, Tash,” he said softly, and she gave him a quiet smile in return.
“So, uh, not to, like, bring up the elephant in the room, but…uhm, am I the only one wondering about the whole Tony thing?” Scott piped up, and Tony cringed, cursing under his breath. Natasha gave him an amused look, reluctantly releasing him in full and taking a step away so he could turn and face the rest of the team.
The other Avengers were in various states of disarray. Helen was still slumped against the wall, and Scott was next to her looking mostly unscathed but very confused – which, Tony was starting to think that might just be Scott’s permanent state of being. Sam, on the other hand, was looking much more banged-up, which Tony supposed made sense considering the Falcon wings weren’t exactly made for indoor combat in close quarters. Clint looked pretty chipper, all things considered, eyeing Tony with something closer to curiosity and hope than accusation. And Tony had saved the two most difficult to look at for last, dreading what he would see in their eyes – but was surprised to find that Steve was wearing an expression similar to Clint, hope practically spilling from his pores. James was harder to read, and though that had always been the case with him, it had Tony fidgeting nervously.
“May as well tell them, zvyozdochka,” Natasha murmured amusedly, and Tony gave her a side-eyed glare.
“Um. Right, well. So the thing is, I, uh – “
“Tell us, kotenok,” James said evenly, eyes piercing him. “Are you Tony Stark?”
Tony swallowed.