Chapter Text
Tony’s heart freezes solid the moment he hears the hurried click-clack of Pepper’s boots on the tiles. She never interrupts his revelry, he thinks, fighting against the sudden dizziness. His ears begin to ring, heart rate racking up, as if his body knows it needs to work through the cocktail of drugs he’s snorted, injected, smoked and inhaled. His bedmates make concerned noises at him—Irrelevant. Move up. Cover yourself up. Something—
“James’ ship has been shot down.”
What? Tony blinks, trying to make sense of the words. She looks legit. She looks like Pepper, from the tasteful jacket to the towering platform boots. He counts the freckles on her nose, timing them to his breath. A-on-e-and-a-two-o-and-a-three-ee—
She removes his company without bothering with the typical high-handed condescension. The brisk behaviour shouldn’t add another band of constriction around his ribcage, but it does. It’s—Rhodey’s—It—His—
“Here. Drink this. Take a shower. Put on a nice outfit. Lady Makeba will have heard the broadcast. Move, Tony.”
On the rare occasion Tony Stark bothered with thinking about his life in any measure of depth or discernment, he always came out with a feeling of cynical amusement. It wasn’t that he wasn’t ambitious, oh no. It’s just that his logic processor developed ahead of his emotional one, and then proceeded to skew its counterpart’s growth. He was very young when he understood what a thing like him could do to the world, and then had this realisation seared into his mind by a five-year-old’s ability to fear.
Everything else followed suit. He became precisely what he needed to be: a useless, much-ridiculed harmless wastrel. Barring Pep, Rhodey and the occasional well-meaning telepath, everyone from prince to pauper knew what he was and what he could do. Tony Stark didn’t start wars. Tony Stark never even played competitive sports, much less fought a battle. No, Tony Sark took drugs and fucked strangers and never spoke to anyone, if he could help it.
What, then, is the world going to do with a Tony Stark plunged into a maddened rage by the tragic death of his best friend? Rhodey—His Rhodey was—They shot him down from the sky like an animal, in a conflict Tony couldn’t even bring himself to think about much. They—Why would they even do this? He could vaguely recall that Obie’d said something about conflicts across the water, something about the Carter family getting some sort of deal from Fury, but—
Is it his imagination or is the noise getting louder? It has to be. Tony knows how to manage his Attribute inconspicuously. He’s been self-medicating for it since before he hit puberty. He never would have guessed a time would come when his methods would fail. Howard and Maria’s deaths were one thing. Hells, even Jarvis’ death didn’t make him slip. But Rhodey dying for nothing, for a fictitious conflict—“
“It’s gotta be Axpa.” He manages to open his eyes for long enough to give Pepper a look. “They’re running out or building Attributed weapons or something.” It’s always fucking Axpa—
She’s lost weight, he notes. Back to smoking, too. You know shit’s bad when Virginia Potts falters and stumbles back into her working-class roots. “Why would they risk it? He was flying out for peace talks. They never—Rogers isn’t that sort of general.”
It would be better if the fury crushing his ribcage was fire-bright and pure. This is—Tony isn’t a superstitious man, but he thinks he might see a monster lurking behind him if he turned his head fast enough. He isn’t violent. He made sure to dull his edges and build walls around his temper so it only turns inwards. Why, then, is his mind screaming for him to go and burn and destroy until there is nothing left from Fury’s band of mercs than cautionary myths? He can’t breathe with how much he wants it—
“Apparently he is,” he says. “He shot down the ‘craft of a man sent for peace talks. And I don’t even—” Breathe. Breathe through it. You can’t get justice if you keel over into a ball of pain. “I haven’t given them much to fear. Indolent Stark King, bleating about sanctions and taxing, what is there to worry about?” Unwise of them, all told. Nou Dral is, by far, the richest land in the New World where Axpa is concerned. If this is the field they want to challenge him on, then best believe he can oblige.
Pep’s expression is complicated, made even more inscrutable by the dramatic makeup she chose to wear. “Do you—Do you think it’s for the best? James—James so loved peace.”
“We will have peace,” he says, screaming in his mind finally settling into something reasonable. “When I’ve torn down their walls and dragged them out into the streets like animals as they did to my Rhodey. Then we will have peace.” His hands are trembling, but he feels, finally and suddenly, like there is a path forward from this mess. “I will have to go off-grid for a while. If you need me, send a message with POT or DUM-E. They will find JARVIS.”
Pep digs long, sharp nails reinforced with graphite into the meat of her palms. Around her neck, POT the Serpent glints emerald and gold. “Wow, speak of the devil. I haven’t seen her in a while.” He tips his head in the vague direction of the crude automaton. “Bit bellow your usual, isn’t it?”
“Fuck a duck,” she drawls, all dockyard bluster, consonants twisting and swallowing up typically crisp, smooth vowels. “You can buy me all the fancy nonsense you want, but POT is a treasure I only dare wear when I must.”
And now he’s getting sentimental. He eyes the peace he’s made—Fuck, how long ago was it, even? Ten years? Fifteen? She has barely more than a gram of Axpa, and the less said about her circuitry the better, but—Well, she is cute, in that disarming way of really ugly puppies. “When this is all done, bring her down to the shop, I can make something decent out of her—”
“Try it and die screaming.” The forced banter does help her settle down some, and she stands, straightening gout the fabric rumpling under her corset. “I won’t ask where you’re going. It’s best I don’t know. Lord Stane sent word that he’s handling the official side of things, which will finally give me some time to make sense of your private finances. I’ve finally managed to purchase a couple of calculations from Nithlith that I’ve been tracking down for years.”
Arithmancers, he thinks, hit with a rush of fondness so concentrated it manages to break through the haze of destruction. Crazy to the last one.
Having cultivated a reputation of a flighty ne’er-do-well comes in handy, depressingly enough. Tony’s relationship with Rhodey and Pepper is well-known and much derided. Their marriage did little to kill the rumours he was fucking one or both of them. Now, the sudden and savage death of his lover almost makes it expected their princeling will go off the rails in some bombastic but ultimately forgettable way.
Obie comes to see him off, expression drawn tight with pain. Makes sense. Tony is a lot for an empath on a good day. When he feels moments away from combating into flames from impotent, frothing fury, it must be a trial.
“Send word,” Obie says quietly. “Do what rituals you need and return to us safely. I will hold the fort until then, but have mercy on an old man and don’t take longer than you must.”
Tony’s face hurts from the smile he forces upon resisting muscles. He owes Obie a lot, not least that he made his necessary lifestyle possible. “Yeah. Of course. Don’t worry. I’m leaving but it’s—” The words it’s different this time stick in his throat. He said them, Gods, so many times. Typically after a near brush with cardiac arrest or a panicked rush to the nearest Attributed healer. “I’ll make it right. It will—” He swallows around another lump. He only has a hazy outline of an idea, but the volume and potency of his rage should be enough. The last time he was feeling so much and was willing to let go he made JARVIS. Now—“I will have justice.”
“That’s my boy,” Obie says. To his shame, Tony can barely hear him over the din of rage well on its way to maturing into hatred.
“Sir, I really must protest.”
Tony huffs a laugh and tucks the little owl further under the cover of his hood. “It’s just a little rain, baby.”
“The amount of rain in Nou Dral is already excessive, Sir. This situation brings to mind epithets like torrential and world-ending.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. And you’re made from gold and Axpa. It’s not like you can rust.”
JARVIS makes a disgusted little noise and hops up and to the left, straight into the collar of his shirt. He doesn’t stop there, the bastard, and burrows right next to his neck, little talons hooking into his collarbone.
“Mean.”
“I cannot fathom what you mean, Sir,” comes the muffled voice. “I am merely trying to prevent a malfunction in my mechanism.”
“Whatever. Stay there, it’s fine. We should be there soon, anyway.”
“I find it behoves me to introduce a beloved fable into the conversation. Namely, The Boy who cried Wolf.”
“Yeah, yeah. I swear, I remember you being polite and charming. Debonair, even. Where is that owl, hmm, and who is this fussing, nagging pigeon—Ow, ow, okay, jeez. No pecking. I can feel it. We’ll be there in a day at most.”
“Capital, capital. I can barely contain my enthusiasm, Sir. I am brought low by the thrill of the coming weeks and months. Owls are, after all, world-renowned miners.” Viciously, he presses his cold, metal feathers into the softest parts of his neck. “Why, it was only last week I spoke to Ms Garna in accounting and I told her, Ms Garna, I said, can you believe it’s been almost a fortnight and I haven’t swung a pickaxe with my beak—”
Damn. Tony swallows, eyes helplessly caught by the unearthly blue light. He—He always knew where this road will take him but—
It’s not just in his head, either. JARVIS only stops snarking in life-or-death situations, and even then it can be grading. He is silent now, as disturbed by the theoretically expected but staggering majesty of their catch as Tony is.
“We did it, JAR.”
The ensuing pause is apt. Tony feels not a single urge to fill it. “We did something, Sir. I—I hesitate to make any value judgements past that.”
True. The scientific consensus is firm. A vein of Axpa this large and pure should not be possible. Tony, who spent most of his days desperately ignoring what his Attribute was telling him and where it would lead him, doesn’t even need to consult the instruments he brought. He does, still, because finding the fuel is but step one, but he knows what he has.
“JAR—” This close to the purest form of magic their world has to offer, the ever-present noise in his head grows quiet. Content. This is what Tony is good for. This is what he never wanted to do. “JAR, I think we need to talk about this a little. I think we need to figure this out. I—”
“Yes, Sir,” JARVIS prompts when no further words leave his mouth. “We very much do. You’ve not made me to be a lap-owl, and so I am not one. What you decide to do now will be written in history books for generations to come and I dare say I won’t stand and watch you make the wrong choice.”
Yeah. Yeah. And what Tony wants—
“I don’t—” It didn’t seem real, before. Raining hellfire is all well and good, but he can detonate the whole of Oufrithran with a fraction of this—“We gotta talk safeguards, baby-bird. We gotta talk contingencies and plans and—I am not going to destroy Earth over a broken heart. I am not.”
“Very good, Sir. As it happens, I have been tinkering with a few such concepts. Thought experiments, one might say. If you would care to follow me, we can leave this wretched tunnel for the day and retire to our quarters.”
Desperately, he focuses on the flow of JAR’s snooty voice, overlaid over the familiar click-clack of his feathers settling and re-settling. It’s okay. Tony may be a reckless, brutish maniac, but JARVIS is a God among Automatons. He will not lead Tony astray.
Two months go by in Theasand, followed by another four in Slypheck for smithing and carving, and, finally, another three back in Theasand for final calibrations and assembly. He wouldn’t say he was building his Magnum Opus—that’s firmly JARVIS—but what he is doing is damn-near revolutionary.
“I’m glad we did it this way,” he says, when they are finished with the mechanical aspects and it’s time to carve the equations and fill this thing with so much magic, it will live to see the heat death of their Universe. “What about you? Any last thoughts? Complaints? Alterations?”
“Not a one, Sir. Our actions were propelled by daring and shaped by paranoia. Spirits of dead Mechanists look upon us in envy.”
Hah. “Sweetheart, they’ve done so since the day you fluffed your pretty golden feathers. This is just—Showmanship.”
“We are Starks,” JARVIS says. His son acknowledging their relationship is rare, which means it hits hard when he does. That’s probably what he’s going for, the worm. “Sleights of hand are our bread and butter. Metaphorically speaking. And, I daresay, this is going to ring a lot louder than the silly little bird you’ve made just complex enough to move and receive messages.”
Hah. “True. Never let them know where the power lies, hey? Alright. Send a message to Pep that we’re entering the final stretch and focus. I wouldn’t dare attempt something like this without you guiding me every step of the way.”
Ideally, he’d have wanted to fly back immediately, but he knew his work. A Machinist knows that a project with many moving parts is almost bound to fail a few times, and Tony and JARVIS only had one shot. Consequently—and, perhaps, predictably—their process went something like this. First, fuck things up spectacularly. Second, channel all that mortal terror into creative energy with which to save yourselves and, probably, the hemisphere. Needless to say, the aftermath was—Interesting.
I have to say, Sir, this is most undignified.
Yeah, well, suck it up, he thinks, moderating his head-voice as much as possible. It’s not peaches for me, either.
Would you care to trade? I will just return to having one physical body, as my Creator designed me to be, and you can try your hand at three.
Don’t be dramatic. Honestly. You have one and a half, at best. This is just—Telepathy. Sort of.
Devil, as they say, is in the details, Sir. Case in point, you still are not working on even the most rudimentary shields. The practicalities of the human condition have never been a source of great interest.
Snark. Such snark. I’ll get there. Just as soon as I figure out—My situation.
I sympathise and would nevertheless urge you to reconsider that timeline. While our work was, overall, productive, I am rather convinced that studying the aftereffects will take a lifetime. I would rather not get any clearer insight into the carnal side of sexual congress than I have already. I am but a humble Automaton. Some things should remain beyond our ken.
Working on it. Pinky swear. Shields are absolutely priority number one, right after I figure out how not to be a paralysed, drooling fleshbag.
Much obliged.
Recovery from even a cosmetic Axpa-based surgery tends to take six months. Tony and JARVIS’ optimistic timeline was closer to a year. And yet—
Sir, I have received a most concerning message from Ms Potts.
Tony snaps out of his pseudo-mediative daze faster than he would if he was dunked in ice water. Play it. No, wait. Out loud. For my ears. Don’t fry my brain any more than it already is.
Naturally.
Pep’s voice comes out of JAR’s beak, further obstructed by ambient noises of what sounds like laboured breathing and hurried movement. If he wasn’t already on full alert, this is when he’d begin to sweat.
“Tony, it’s Stane. He’s double-dealing. He’s—He ordered James’ ship be shot down. I’ve proof and I sent it to every news outlet I could reach. Don’t come back. It’s not safe here. Stay where you are. I’m going to ground. Hopefully, by the time you finish whatever it is you’re doing, I’ll have made it out. Stay safe. I love you.”
He—
What—
“I am tracking POT,” JARVIS says, out loud for once. “Ms Potts is still in Nou Dral, if they are, indeed, still together. I am inclined to believe they are since Ms Potts was so careful to keep up the appearance that POT is a mundane, if sentimental, ornament.”
Alright. Think, Stark. Walk before you run, yeah. Good axiom to live by. Great. Inspirational, even. “Baby-bird, we’ve a Pepper to pick up. Hold onto your feathers. Let’s take this bad boy out for a spin.”
Tony chose to go back to Theasand precisely because it was so remote. It’s kicking his ass, now. Flight or not, magic or not, it takes hours to fly across the archipelago and to Nou Dral. Hours he spends listening to every news broadcast in the country screaming about Starch Technologies’ corruption, the missing whistleblower, and Stark King’s year-long absence.
Good. Let them talk. Let them get all this out while they can. Soon—
Ms Potts knows Nou Dral like the palm of her hand, Sir. No man can hope to catch her on her turf.
He checks on his shields—holding steady—just in case. He doesn’t need to distract the pilot with his worry. Bad enough he’s in such obvious distress, JAR felt the need to split his attention at least this much. That said—
“Yeah,” he says out loud. “I’m not worried. Pep can run circles around Ob—Around Stane.” Stane. Stane. StaneStaneStane. How—Why? He had everything he wanted, surely? Tony let him run the kingdom as he pleased. He had wealth, prestige and power. He was a well-respected member of the community. Why jeopardise that for—What? A little extra gold? Axpa?
Heavens’ wept, she probably doesn’t have a single man after her. She had to go and make the most reckless fucking play she possibly could. Any other normal human being would have faked a meeting in, say, the Old World, and made sure to be surrounded by a hundred well-payed, well-armed mercs before they leaked information like this. She could have—
Except Obie killed her husband. The love of her life. And Pepper is only human, hyper-competence aside. Fucking—
People start screaming when they spot them in the sky, which is an encouraging sign. Means they’re close to civilisation. Flight across Stou’mein will be interesting, but nothing in the world can match them. He is damn-well sure of that. Even with how unprepared they are for this flight, they are already miles ahead of what any airship can do.
“Just a little more Pep,” he finds himself saying. Praying. “Hold out a little more. We’re on our way.” Three hours more. Just three hours.
POT has, by all accounts, left the shores of Stou’mein, Sir. Should we—
Tony swallows and eyes their surroundings. They’re minutes away from reaching the mainlands and they’ve not been subtle. It must be a good day to be a journalist, he has to say. First the biggest corruption scandal of their lifetime and now this.
“Can you safely send a message?”
JAR gives this due attention. I dare not risk it. My grasp of flight mechanics is insufficient. Splitting my attention is likely to result in a crash. One would think that it would be easier, considering I, too, can fly. One would be mistaken.
“Don’t stress, pumpkin, gravity works a little differently, now. To say nothing of running two systems, so to speak. With that said—Do we follow POT, or do we raze Nou Dral until they produce Stane?”
Sir, your propensity for arson is beginning to worry me. There are whole swathes of the city where Stane would not deign to put a single foot. They are surely to be allowed to continue in peace.
Hah. “Works for me. We only torch the upper districts. Sounds like a good time. With that said—Do we raze or follow?”
The signal is moving away at an admirable speed. If Ms Potts has, indeed, secured an escape, she is on board a vessel beyond commercial capabilities. I would estimate she is on a military vessel.
That solved it, then.
“We’re following. Where are they headed?”
Oufrithran or Sheelounge would be my rough estimate.
That’s—Good, right?
Faster than an airship they might be, but this is, ostensibly, a rescue mission. The point is not to bring the ship down and kill everything on board, nor is it to potentially spook Pepper’s kidnappers. With that in mind, they swoop up and to the right, maintaining a careful and precise distance once they caught up.
A bit of relief hits when it becomes crystal clear they landed in Sheelounge, not Saugren. Tony’s awareness of foreign policy was as disgraceful as his grasp on classical poetry and dance, but Schmidt is a giant creep. Fury isn’t what you would call friendly and approachable either, but he looked less likely to have a basement full of eyeballs he liked to stroke in his downtime.
“Dramatic entry, petal,” he says. “Let’s give these assholes something to talk about.”
I have received a message from Ms Potts via POT. She sent her regard about the illusionist we contracted to spook Stane’s forces and that she managed to escape in the chaos.
Hah. Illusions? Makes sense, maybe. Definitely more than the alternative.
“Maybe a bit less of a dramatic entry, then,” he says, still checking and re-checking his equipment. “But still, y’know, pack a punch. Err on the side of terrifying them into good behaviour.”
Excellent. I admit I am looking forward to this. Hopefully, the spectacle will have made up for the recent string of indignities.
“One can only hope.”
Common knowledge about Sheelounge suggests they are populated by blank-faced, eternally unimpressed warrior-types who won’t flinch at the sight of the apocalypse. Another nugget of folk wisdom is that King Fury has plans for everything and that he made sure his people are impossibly quick to apply them.
Tony can personally attest that folk wisdom can go jump in a river, because the port Pep has landed in doesn’t have a single idea what to do with a twenty-five-ton of dragon Automaton bearing down on it, roaring out energy blasts like flames.
“Go-go-go,” he says, knowing JAR will hear him over the noise. “Give those throat mechanisms a workout.”
I can try.
They bank left and up, sweeping a careful wing to shift the paths of the incoming airships without downing them. They could be on the same side here.
“Miss Potts,” dragon-JARVIS’ voice thunders over the stricken port. “We apologise for our delay. As you can see, the undertaking ended up being more ambitious than we’d expected.” He swoops right, flying over the port in a menacing circle. “We are eager to meet your companions. All things considered, we would be very grateful if you could impress upon them the consequences of standing between us.”