Chapter Text
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The Purpose of Aeries
Daedalus Bound
Part 07: Waves
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Look who makes their own bed
Lies right down within it
And what will you have left?
– Bastille, “Icarus”
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“Anthony Edward Stark,” James called out as he slammed open the door to the mansion. He was livid. Hell, it went beyond that. If it was just Tony running off in a piece of experimental tech to a terrorist incursion without government sanction, James would have been mad, but he could have excused it as just Tony being his normal impulsive self. But now there was someone else to consider, someone depending on Tony to not toss his life away on reckless stunts. Harry’s status was far from secure in any way. SHIELD wasn’t the only agency sniffing around him, asking questions. The only thing keeping the kid from disappearing into some government-controlled pit was how visible Tony was.
And Tony had risked everything by going back to Afghanistan.
“JARVIS, where is he?”
“Sir is in his workshop,” JARVIS answered immediately. “He is uninjured but having difficulties removing the armor due to damage sustained in the battle. How is Captain Sinclair?”
“Oh, he’s fine, thanks to Tones,” James growled as he stomped to the stairs that led below, “but he would never have been in any danger if it wasn’t for Tony, either!” He punched in his code with a bit more force than strictly necessary before shoving open the reinforced glass door. “Anthony Edward Stark, get your ass out here this minute.”
“Uh, see, I would,” Tony answered from farther into the space. James headed towards his voice. “There’s just a little problem, honeybear.” Tony gave him a sheepish grin as he rounded the wall of tool cabinets that separated the portions of workshop. All his limbs were captured by mechanical arms that were trying to remove the pieces of what must be the tech he had used in Gulmira. “Hi, platypus. What brings you to my humble abode at this delightful hour of the day?”
“You,” James snapped, “and your goddamn idiocy! Do you have any idea how many people I had chewing my ass because of this stunt? This isn’t MIT anymore, Tony! You can’t keep pulling this shit!”
“I know, I do, but it was sort of a spur of the moment thing and it just got out of hand—”
“Out of hand? Tony, I saw the footage! They shot at you from a fucking tank. Out of hand was a few hours before that, maybe somewhere in the twenty-two hours it takes to get to Afghanistan from here! Are you trying to get yourself killed? I could murder you myself, man!”
“NO!”
Before James could process that the cry hadn’t come from Tony, there was a tiny body in front of Tony’s trapped form. Harry had his arms thrown out to both sides. Only because James knew what to look for could he tell that the kid’s weight was balanced enough that a blow was unlikely to knock him to the ground. Anger licked at James’ mind for an entirely different reason than frustration with Tony’s self-destructive habits, because no child should have known how to do that, and seeing Harry demonstrate it just served to remind James of just how much he wanted to rip apart the kid’s previous guardians.
“Not Tony,” Harry begged, his green eyes wide and dark with fear. He looked even paler than he normally did, but his little chin was still raised in determination. Any thoughts of anger crumbled to dust under the realization that Harry thought James was serious about his threat. “Me! I can take it! Please! Please not Tony.”
James felt like he was going to throw up. That went beyond simply thinking that James was serious. What the fuck had those monsters taught the kid? What the hell did he mean by he could take it?
“Tony—”
“No! Not Tony! Me,” Harry insisted.
Harry charged forward, so different from the way he normally shied away people other than Tony. His hands fisted in the fabric of James’ uniform pants and all James could think about was how far he had to look down to see the kid’s face. He couldn’t move, not with Harry practically standing on his feet, and he didn’t dare reach out for the kid while he was thinking James was really going to hurt either of them. He could hear Tony fighting more desperately with the mechanical arms, but all he could see was Harry’s dark green eyes against a darkening landscape.
“Harry—” James cut himself off, uncertain what he was going to say. For all that he recognized the similarities between Tony and Harry, this was nothing like how Tony would react to something. Tony tended to lash out when he got defensive, usually verbally and very rarely physically, even when that defensiveness was for someone else. Yet the kid wasn’t attacking, just clinging and begging for James to take his anger out on him instead. It was sickening, especially as Harry worked himself up to the point that he couldn’t even form words any more.
The choking sounds that replaced those words finally snapped him out of his confusion. He could think about things later. Right now he needed to focus on acting, because the kid was going to make himself sick at this rate. With a motion that should not fell as natural as it did, James scooped up the kid. He tried not to think about how even almost a month later, Harry still felt too light in his arms. Harry didn’t relax into limpness like he normally did.
James didn’t take Harry farther than the motor box that ran the mechanical arms. Separating Tony and Harry was only going to get him two panicking koala-cats, which honestly, after the morning he had had, James wasn’t certain that he was up to handling. He lifted one of Harry’s hand and placed it against his chest. He focused on breathing instead of the memories that were now screaming in his head from the skin contact. Breathing was better than throwing up or giving into the urge to start screaming himself.
Harry already thought the worst because James had lost his temper. No need to confirm that. No need to affirm the similarities that Harry had seen between James and the blond horse in his memories. Seriously, mutation or not, who the fuck does that shit to a kid? James couldn’t give into imagining the things he wanted to do to the people who had hurt Harry before Tony had managed to get him home, not when he didn’t know if Harry could see fantasies as well as memories.
Instead, he focused on all the stupid situations he had caught Tony in over their twenty-plus years of whatever they were. He focused on how often he had just scooped the dumbass up and carried him off to that ugly red couch that U had ended up setting on fire during Pepper’s first day on the job. He focused the fear he had felt every time he had found Tony hurt or missing, the terror he had felt finding Tony’s broken phone surrounded by dead servicemen, the heartbreak of watching the kid curled up against Jarvis in that hospital bed.
An echo grew amongst the memories that James was trying to will Harry to see. It sounded vaguely like JARVIS except not at the same time. It wasn’t until the words became clearer that James realized that it wasn’t JARVIS speaking them, but Jarvis, meaning that Harry had to have picked them up from Tony.
“If someone tries to kill you, poppet,” Jarvis was saying, “you try to kill them right back. Do you understand? Every single time, and don’t you dare hesitate, do you hear? That’s what you can do if you really feel that you have to make up for this. Ana would not have wished for anything else.”
The haze of memories cleared, taking with it the feeling of pressure that James hadn’t even noticed before it was gone. Harry’s tiny hand had fisted around the ribbons decorating the left breast of James’s uniform. It felt icy under James’s hand, like the kid was suddenly freezing. James found himself staring into Harry’s eyes. The cat-like green enthralled him; it seemed impossible that a human would have such a brilliant color. Harry blinked slowly three times.
“Rhodey,” he said before slumping forward as he fell unconscious. James barely managed to catch the kid from the suddenness. From nearby, James heard the name echoed but with more frustration. Tony was still fighting to get the last bit of mechanical armor off.
“Harry appears to be only sleeping,” JARVIS answered before either man could think to ask the question. “His glucose level does appear to be a bit low, but not dangerously so and his system appears to be correcting that a bit. He will require substance when he wakes, and I recommend not causing him any more stress for the next few days, if at all possible.”
“I didn’t mean to—” James started only to be interrupted by JARVIS.
“I understand, Col. Rhodes,” JARVIS said mechanically enough that James winced. JARVIS tended to show his anger by sounding increasingly robotic. “You were unaware that Harry had already witnessed Sir arrival after nearly dying from an icing issue during his first flight in the suit and then had watched the same battle from the suit’s camera feed. He had already had one prolonged panic attack and then several more acute ones prior to your unorthodox arrival. My consolation with an expert suggested that emotional equilibrium should be restored after decent sleep and a return to the previously established schedule.”
“Consolation with an expert?” James asked. Tony was suddenly by his side, gently taking Harry from him.
“J’s been tattling to IRIS,” he said before carrying Harry over to the sectional. “Apparently, we’re having guests in a few weeks, which no one has bothered to make sure that I knew about, and now with all of this—” Tony gestured towards the mechanical arms and a decidedly crushed car that James was going to ask about later. “—I have no clue whether that’s a good idea.”
“Mama did mention wanting to meet Harry.”
“That’s what Jenny said, right before telling me that I got to tell her if I canceled.” Tony settled Harry down in the spot he had been sleeping since they had arrived from Afghanistan. The boy turned into the fingers Tony ran over his cheek.
“Well, I’m not gonna tell her,” James said, ignoring how his heart melted at the gesture.
“Rude, platypus,” Tony countered, not looking up from Harry. “I am sorry, you know. It’s just that when we saw the news footage, we couldn’t—” Tony looked up then. His eyes were haunted. “There was another captive there. He didn’t make it out.”
“Tony, you don’t have to—”
“He was from Gulmira.”
“I was still worried,” James admitted. He crossed the room. “You were gone for three months, man. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. Then you come back and you’re safe, but there’s all these conspiracies. Any one of them would be dangerous enough, but together? Now you want to be, what, a superhero?”
“I know that I’m not really what anyone would call a hero—”
“That’s Howard talking,” James interrupted. “I should have punched the bastard when I had the chance.” He sighed deeply. Tony had settled on the couch next to Harry and was running his fingers through Harry’s wild curls. “My superiors are demanding answers, especially with the audit going on and weapon production halted. If you want to keep doing this, you can’t do it under the radar or things like what happened today will keep happening.”
“I know,” Tony agreed. His eyes dropped back to Harry’s face. “Is the pilot okay?”
“He’s fine, Tones.” James forced cheer into his tone. “I wasn’t joking about you owing me a new plane, you know.”
“I maintain that he hit me,” Tony countered, his press persona sliding into place. “Pink alright with you?”
“Standard gray will be fine.”
“Spoilsport.”
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Debriefing with Rhodey was a lot easier when it involved danger that didn’t involve Harry. Without Harry involved, there was less stress to find the right words to shroud things while not seeming to be hiding anything. Dancing the line on propriety tech was a much more familiar dance. Rhodey had left with the report, confident that they could work out something that would allow Tony to operate more or less independently while still being on the sanctioned side of things.
The moment Rhodey had cleared the driveway, Tony had set JARVIS to researching this General Turner, because as much as he loved his platypus, all the military branches had their version of General Ross and under no circumstances would Tony ever work under such a person’s direct command. Thankfully Turner seemed to have almost as sparkling record as Rhodey did. He was newly appointed to his rank, too, which meant that Tony would have five years before needing to worry about dealing with a replacement.
Heeding what JARVIS had said about Harry needing to eat, Tony headed upstairs to see what they had in the way of real food. Smoothies and dried fruit were great, but Tony had a hankering for something with noodles like Italian or Chinese. He wasn’t certain what Harry would like, but spaghetti was simple and always a hit with kids, right? Tony had loved it when he was a kid, when Maria had the rare day when she had both the time and energy to make it.
“Hey, JARVIS,” Tony said as he opened a cupboard at random, “do we have any pasta?”
There was no answer.
Tony paused his search of the cupboards, sensing danger for the first time since coming up from the lab. He could feel it now, the way the air held a tension. The growing shadows of dusk seemed thicker, almost restless. Shadows have been acting funny since Tony had met Harry, though, like they had something more in them, so that didn’t worry him as much as the missing hum of JARVIS.
He wandered out of the kitchen, checking the staircase down to the workshop. Protocols would have secured the doors as soon as JARVIS lost connection with the house, but glass could still break and there was still that gaping hole over the cars. The lab was still set to nighttime parameters, but Tony could see Dummy calmly organizing things on the front project table. No intruder down there, then. Dummy would never be that sedate if a stranger was near Harry, not without Tony or JARVIS to mediate and not so soon after the upset earlier.
Tony moved into the front room, regretting for the first time the open floorplan he had used for the space. It was stylish and nothing like the compact floorplan of the Stark Manor, but it also gave no cover if he was attacked. The hairs on the back of his neck raised. Whatever the threat was, it was in this room, even if he couldn’t see it.
The rarely used house phone started ringing from somewhere near the sectional. The sound was muffled, suggesting that the displaced pillow near the center might be covering it. Tony moved towards it despite his instincts screaming at him. He didn’t have any more immediate way of getting answers.
Instead of identifying a caller, the call simply said ‘rebooting; Stane.’
Tony twisted even as his senses were overcome by a burst of barely perceivable sound. Obie shushed him like he was an upset child as he lowered Tony’s now-unresponsive body to the couch. Tony’s heart pounded against the back of the reactor as the paralysis made the muscles of his chest seize just enough that it was impossible to get a full breath. Anyone else might have been fine, maybe just a little winded.
Those people hadn’t lost an estimated twenty percent of their lung capacity due to a dubious surgery in an Afghan cave performed by a physicist.
The numbers spun out as his mind raced through the calculations of how long he had before hypoxia set in and he started experiencing tissue death. The odds were not in his favor, not even with the reduced average time of the paralysis in him. The strange thought of how angry JARVIS was going to be about Harry’s emotional equilibrium had been upset yet again crossed Tony’s mind.
At least the kid should be safe in Rhodey’s care. All of his boys would be. Rhodey would take care of them. That plan had been in placed for decades. JARVIS would make sure that Harry was legally protected just the same as the bots. Obie had no reason to even suspect that Harry even existed, let alone was sleeping downstairs. Even if Obie’s plan wasn’t to just let Tony suffocate, the workshop was reinforced against anything short of a nuke.
“Ah, Tony,” Obie muttered as he removed the earbuds that Tony had developed along with the emitter, “when I ordered the hit on you, I had worried that I was killing the golden goose.”
He tucked the buds into a case on the sofa before smiling down at Tony. Obie pulled a strange device from the same case. A twist of the handle caused its spindly legs to retract. Dread flooded Tony as his mind provided him with how the dimensions matched the reactor perfectly. It washed away the measure of peace he had been feeling. Suffocation was relatively painless; feeling his heart being shredded would not be. Obie’s smile grew smugly satisfied as he placed his foot next to Tony’s hip to casually lean over him with the device in one hand.
“But as fate would have it, you still had one last golden egg to give,” Obie explained as he lined up the device. Tony grunted as it locked into place with the same magnetic pull that the reactor was using to keep the shrapnel from moving. He would have vomited if he could have as the man who had supported him after his parents’ accident removed physical representation of his heart.
Fuck, Obie was his godfather despite the double dealing that Tony was still gathering evidence on.
“Do you really think that just because you have an idea, that it belongs to you?” The glowing node cast strange shadows over Obie’s face as he leaned closer to Tony. “Your father helped give us the atomic bomb. Now what kind of world would we live in today if he had been as selfish as you?”
To punctuate the question, Obie yanked the reactor the last little bit needed to fully free it from Tony’s chest. Tony hadn’t even realized how used to the low thrum of it he had become until it was suddenly gone. He could feel the chill of the air hitting the plasmatic discharge that coated the cavity left by the missing reactor. Oh, Tesla, it felt like his heart was going to escape out the opening as he watched Obie openly admire the tech.
“This is your Ninth Symphony, Tony.” Obie sat beside Tony. The arm not holding up the node curled around Tony’s shoulders, as if they were holding a friendly conversation. The shadows of the room danced around them as if they were alive. “This is your legacy: a new generation of weapons with this at its heart. They will help steer the world back on course, return the balance of power to the right hands.” Obie pulled away to begin packing away both his extractor and the ARC reactor. He continued talking to Tony as if they weren’t in the middle of a murder. “I wish you could see my prototype, Tony. It’s not as, hm, conservative as yours, but then you always did think small.”
The click of the case locking sounded faintly like a tomb being sealed. Obie stood; his hand wrapped possessively around the handle of the case. He smiled down as Tony before speaking again.
“I really should thank you while I have the chance. They had been very reluctant to hand over the boy, despite receiving payment. Clearly, they had realized how valuable he was. I admit that I was a bit worried when I found that they had lost him around the same time you had wiggled loose. Imagine my delight when Agent Coulson asked me about your new ward. I will so enjoy getting to know him better, after you’re gone.”
Something dark roiled in Tony’s gut at the very thought of Obie anywhere near Harry. His fingers twitched with the urge to scratch Obie’s eyes out. Before anything else could be said, the elevator to the workshop opened its doors.
“Tony,” Harry called softly. The way Obie had positioned him, Tony had a perfect view of Harry standing there, rubbing an eye as if he was still waking up. The still unnamed bunny dangled from Harry’s other hand. “JARVIS?”
Tony saw the moment that Harry finally noticed the occupants of the front room. Harry’s green eyes went wide at the sight of Obie standing over him. Tony wanted to scream for Harry to run, to retreat back to the elevator and hide in the workshop, in that stupid nest that Tony had hated. Harry focused on Tony with a precision that he normally didn’t display at the distance currently between them.
“TONY!” he screamed before dropping his rabbit to race across the room.
Harry’s hands scrabbled over Tony’s chest, franticly covering the gaping hole. Tony twitched, wanting to comfort the distraught boy more than he wanted to breathe. Darkness was edging in on his vision, wrapping around Harry like a physical blanket. Harry suddenly stilled and turned towards Obie who was just watching the scene unfold.
“Give it back,” Harry demanded. His voice echoed strangely to Tony’s ears. Could someone get double-hearing like they got double-vision? The shadows felt as solid as Harry did. Tony could swear he felt something silky like a thick cloak sliding over his skin. “Give it back now.”
“My dear boy—"
Harry screamed. It sounded like the cry of a hawk, full of defiant warning. The shadows moved in a way that was undeniably alive, wrapping around Obie like a shroud. Tighter and tighter, the shadows twisted around Obie. From the thick mass arose crunching and slurping like something was feasting messily on something. Tony found himself morbidly fascinated with the idea despite the quickly impending death he was facing.
Who turned out the lights, indeed?
Shadows untwisted, leaving nothing that Tony could see without being able to look down. Harry fell to his knees, fumbling with something before rising again. The reactor’s glow looked more beautiful than even that first glimpse of Rhodey after the cave had been. With the deftness that Tony had come to expect from him, Harry slotted the reactor back in place. The jolt of the electromagnet coming back online forced the nearby muscles to unlock. Grateful for it, Tony sucked in as deep a breath as he could anymore.
The rush of oxygen was better than the bite of caffeine after the twentieth hour in the workshop. The shadows retreated back to normal as Tony sat there breathing. The paralysis retreated but left an achy stiffness behind. The urge to medicate it away with a stiff scotch brought with it the memory of why that was no longer an option. Tony looked around, knowing that Harry wouldn’t have wandered too far.
Harry stood just out of immediate reach. His entire body trembled with the tension running through his little body. He had his chin raised just slightly even if the rest of him looked like he was bracing for a blow. Something in Tony relaxed slightly at the small show of defiance in Harry’s clear expectation of punishment. Seeing it felt like a victory all its own, because Tony knew that Harry would never have dared to show it back in the cave.
He had come so far in barely more than three weeks.
Tony leaned forward, ignoring how Harry flinched to pull the tiny boy into his lap. Harry instantly melted against him. His fists bunched in Tony’s shirt as he shook with silent sobs. Tony held him through the tears, letting the chaotic whirlwind of memories swirl through them and nudging it gently away from the darker aspects. The universe spun around them, sharply clear in the same way it had been back in that endless moment in the cave but unimportant compared to the boy shivering against Tony’s chest.
“I’ve got you, little bug,” Tony assured him, “and I’m never going to let you go.”
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“Last month, I stood before you and told you about the security breach that had resulted in Stark Industry weapons technology in the hands of unauthorized parties,” Tony opened. The crowd of reporters was politely silent. “I promised a full investigation as well as a halt of further weapons production until such a time as I could be certain that a recurrence of this issue could be prevented. It has now become clear that the only way to do that is to no longer produce weapons entirely. Effective immediately, Stark Industries will no longer produce weapons.”
There was an explosion of shouting as the reporters tried to ask their questions all at once. Tony waited until the fervor had died a bit to pick one to answer. It was not Christine Everhart who was sitting quietly on the front row, her smile smug like she thought she knew something. Tony was going to enjoy rubbing her face in it.
“Mr. Stark, what of your military contracts? Are you backing out of them?”
“Stark Industries will not be abandoning our government contracts entirely,” Tony explained. He just barely managed not to roll his eyes. Why did everyone forget that SI was more than just a weapons company? “It may have slipped your minds, but we are more than iron mongers now. SI is the leading producer in three different fields, which we are also contracted to provide for the government.”
Christine raised her hand. The satisfied grin on her face made Tony almost regret how much he was going to enjoy destroying her paradigm. But the Vanity Fair journalist didn’t know that Tony already knew about the scoop she thought she had. Tony pointed at her. With the same scary efficiency that people tended to overlook in Pepper, she rose to her feet.
“What about the mechanical armor that was seen freeing the town of Gulmira last week? Is the iron man Stark Industry tech?”
“Iron man?” Tony repeated, rubbing a hand over his beard. He looked over the crowd to where Harry was standing next to Pepper. The boy pushed his new glasses up his nose. Tony hummed thoughtfully. “Catchy. I like it. The Iron Man suit is not Stark Industry technology. It’s mine.” Tony gave the room a rakish grin. “It’s a personal prosthetic.”
“Do you really expect us to believe that? Even after seeing its capabilities in Gulmira? Tell us the truth, Mr. Stark.”
Tony looked back at Harry, still watching him beside Pepper. From behind him, Tony heard Rhodey give a quiet sigh of resignation. Tony focused back on Christine, letting his eyes meet her challenging gaze.
“The truth is,” Tony said with every bit of feeling he had on the matter, “I am Iron Man.”
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An Ending
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