#LIKE he had to have known this shit before im1

[the-faultofdaedalus]

truly don’t think mcu media makes enough of a big deal about the fact that cold fusion reactors (or just really tiny normal fusion reactors) are basically solved for energy use

[darsynia]

Trust Fall | Ch 18b

ARC image by Eury Escodero | gif by @skiplo-wave

Story Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Summary: Tony/OC, ‘terrorists made us fall in love;’ IM1 timeline. In this chapter, Emory further bonds with Natasha and Clint, and Tony does his very first test flight.

Length: 3,520

Taglist: @starryeyes2000 @raith-way @arrthurpendragon @themaradaniels @starksbf @chickensarentcheap @tiny-anne

Excerpt:

“How are you not a dad?” Emory asks him incredulously.

“Having bark is a perfectly good reason to name that tree after a dog, Natasha. And don’t think I don’t see you dodging my question, Em.”

“The call was lovely,” Emory says, turning fully towards Natasha. “Tony seems to have decided that in the absence of any ability to tell me what’s been going on thanks to my governmental overlords, he should instead spend the time being overwhelmingly adorable. And, let me tell you--” Emory leans into the feeling in a way she hadn’t been able to, hours before. She closes her eyes and grins, remembering the over-the-top endearments that Tony had lavished on her in a clear attempt to be revolting to everyone else who had chosen to listen in. “Mission accomplished.”

“Well, Schmoopsie Pie, if I’d known it was that effective, I’d have pushed for more airtime,” Tony’s voice says from behind her.

Chapter Eighteen: Halogen

For a good half hour, she tries to listen to what Natasha’s teaching her while struggling nullify the energy she keeps accumulating. Unfortunately, the static snowfield she usually pictures isn’t dampening anything today. Instead of a stabilizing snowdrift, all she can muster are artificial plastic flakes that make a mess and muffle nothing. Soon, her fear that she can’t de-escalate starts contributing to the sheath of power already accumulated. 

“All right, two on one, just do your best,” Natasha says, immediately launching an attack with her leg. Emory tries to fall back, but Clint is there. She dodges sideways with an arm movement that protects her core from Natasha’s kick. She’d been taught how to prevent the way Barton’s trying to lock her arms to her sides, but she’s in the wrong position. Desperately, Emory tries to move fast enough to twist free.

Instead, her powers respond. The tornadic boost that spins her out of the way sweeps Clint into the wall behind them.

“Shit!” Emory yelps, watching him shake his head on his hands and knees for a second before getting up. “I’m sorry, Agent Barton!”

“It’s fine.” Clint gestures down at himself as if to challenge her to find an injury. “You set me up for that,” he says with grim amusement, leaning over to point behind Emory at Natasha. “Three seconds different and it would have been you playing pinball, Nat.”

“Not my fault you get complacent in training,” Natasha says with a smug half-smile.

Neither of them seem surprised by what just happened.

Emory still feels terrible. “I’m trying to clear my mind, but it’s not working the way it usually does, and--”

“You’re able to control it with mental exercises?” Natasha interrupts sharply. Gathering up her courage, Emory nods. It looks like the agent is interested, not upset. “Tell me exactly what you do.”

Emory explains the visualization, adding that it’s never failed this badly before.

“What’s different today?” Clint asks, when she’s done. His focused excitement drags the truth from her lips before she realizes what she’s saying.

"I feel like a refugee rescued with everything I own, and instead of getting to go home I've been forced to give it all up, piece by piece, to prove I'm worth saving. Nothing I've learned here feels like it's about me, except what you two have taught- and that's just to keep me alive and out of your hair." She scrunches her eyes shut, her fists balling at her sides. There's a sleeve of power coating her skin, and the fear that usually chases it away is magnifying it instead. "I'm… I'm lost," she gasps miserably.

“Look at me,” Natasha says. “Picture me surrounded by your static.” She stands directly in front of Emory, expression neutral, eyes locked to hers.

“I--”

Natasha angrily claps twice. “You’re in crisis. This is good practice! Focus on me, make everything else static. Do it now.” The agent schools her expression back to calm, but the shift had been sudden and shocking, enough of a touchstone for Emory to refocus. 

She breathes in and out, letting the jolt of resentment leech into her bloodstream, on its way to be filtered away like any other toxic substance. Emory tries to picture large, sound-muffling snowflakes falling around Natasha, blocking her view of Clint, of the room, of this trap she’s found herself stuck in. Just as before, the visual is not quite right-- plastic flakes with no depth. Emory’s irritation surges a double layer of power that ruffles her hair and tickles her neck, further annoying her.

“Talk it out,” Natasha instructs, her voice more gentle than before.

Emory shakes her head. “I can’t. If this is how SHIELD treats me when I’ve been compliant, then…” She lets her voice trail off, unwilling to give voice to her fear. “I can’t find that scientist myself.”

Natasha nods thoughtfully, digging into a pocket in her fighting suit. Looking over at Barton, she says, “Lock the door?”

A surge of horrified fear coats Emory in energy so thick she feels like she’s suffocating.

“Em!” Clint calls out on the way to the door. When she looks over, he locks eyes with her, sincerity written across his forehead creases. “I won’t let you fall. Remember?”

Emory hasn’t known him long, but Clint Barton strikes her as one of the most genuine people she’s ever met. Despite everything, she trusts him. His words loosen the band of fear constricting her lungs, allowing her to suck in a huge relieved breath. As she lets it out, Natasha throws two objects at the ceiling corners, one from each hand. They spark a blue-white arc of electricity that engulfs identical round, black fixtures. Emory stares at them, confused, until Clint jogs over and explains, pointing up to the nearest one.

“Surveillance. Those last what? Fifteen, twenty minutes, Nat?”

“Twenty-five. Old system,” Natasha says. “It’ll take a while to notice, even longer to figure out what to do about it.” She crosses her arms and offers a crooked grin, her eyes impish. “I think Fury took today off.”

“Feel safe yet?” Clint asks, nudging her shoulder.

Inside her head, Tony’s voice whispers something equal to the look of mischief in Natasha’s eyes. Emory goes for it.

“This is about how much you two are fans of Rory Fall and were planning to torture me into revealing her inner secrets, right? I mean, if anyone asks?” she says, using her journalist wrangling voice.

“Like how she’s really blonde and can’t sing? Yep. Solid plan.” Clint clears his throat as if he expects blow-back. “I read that somewhere.” At Natasha’s raised eyebrows, he adds, “What? Stake-outs are boring.”

Telling them how she feels goes better than Emory had expected. Throughout, she stares at her own feet to avoid jumping to conclusions based on the agents’ faces, though. There’s something inherently cathartic in explaining the bizarre similarity between being held in a cave in Afghanistan and in a seemingly hostile government building in the US. After her final declaration (‘No one should have to feel like this.’), she keeps her eyes downcast, waiting.

“Well shit, I wouldn’t trust me either,” Clint finally says. “Though I gotta say, if this is a front? If you were brainwashed into being a terrorist infiltrator after three months of indoctrination, you’ve got the character down pat. Impressive stuff.”

On hearing this, Emory risks peeking at Natasha, who is frowning.

“I’m not sure I like how easily I can follow Fury’s line of thinking about this,” Natasha says darkly. She looks at Emory and gestures at the ceiling. “Your issue is not going to be as simple to derail. Probably not until after--”

“--the mission. Yeah, I figured.” Emory’s stored-up energy flares up around her head and shoulders at this disappointing reminder. The motion twists her hair up, soothing the flush of embarrassment from interrupting Natasha. It’s the second time she’d forgotten the energy she’d accumulated, a worrying trend. Add it to the pile.

“So we shelve it. Crush the mission, deal with this after, once none of us can do without you,” Clint says, grinning.

All of Emory’s power evaporates instantly. Her knees buckle, and she leans over to steady them, dipping her head down. “Well, that did it. Thanks, I guess,” she manages. “It didn’t occur to me-- I thought I’d get to--” Her head swimming, Emory slumps onto the floor on her knees, sitting back on her heels and hugging her arms to her chest.

Clint is apologetic. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, okay? I don’t speak for SHIELD--”

“It’s probably naive to think they’ll cut ties, and we did need her to drop all that power she had stored up,” Natasha breaks in. “Emory. Look at me.”

Her voice is kind, and Emory’s file was right. She is obedient. She crushes down her despair and looks up.

Natasha crouches down to make eye contact. “You can only change what’s changeable. Have you ever seen those ball, rope, and ring puzzles? You have to get the ball from one side of the rope to the other, but it doesn’t fit through any of the rings. You solve the puzzle by giving up on trying to fit the ball where it can’t go and manipulate the rope instead.” Natasha smiles. The expression lights up her face. Emory can’t look away. “The ball moves last in the sequence. Up until that point, it looks impossible. Change what’s changeable, step by step. Maybe by the time the ball swaps sides, it’s too late to stop it.”

“Please tell me this isn’t a defection metaphor?” Clint jokes.

Natasha straightens. “Which would you rather have, a captive teammate building hidden resentment until she blows up the building, or a full teammate you can count on, with actual superpowers? Ones she can control?”

“So we’re the ring?”

“Go unlock the door, Barton,” Natasha groans. She straightens and holds out her hand to help Emory up, but she doesn’t let go right away, squeezing to emphasize what she says next. “A lot of people join SHIELD on purpose. They want power, adventure, control. You’ve probably already seen that, from what I hear.”

Natasha’s trying to distract her, and it’s working. Emory huffs out an exasperated laugh, thinking about Peter. “Yes.”

“Other people join it for a family. To right wrongs. To make good. Neither side of the spectrum is ideal.”

“Join for Fury’s wife’s birthday cookies, with a side of extrajudicial murder,” Clint whispers, leaning over to put his head near both of theirs.

“You are not helping,” Natasha hisses.

“She’s mad because she didn’t earn a cookie last year.”

Clint dances away, and Emory slips free while Natasha is distracted. She sees that the ceiling glow is dimming on the nearest camera and jogs over to catch the metal balls as they drop free. There’s no time to get across to the other, so on a whim, she tries to force enough power to gust them up till she gets there, using the encouragement from the two veteran agents as fuel.

It works. The powerful burst of air current makes it in time to stop their fall with no excess for her to soothe away. She’s able to snag them out of midair, feeling the unnatural uplift she’d created disperse harmlessly. It’s a breakthrough. One that might even be enough to balance out the knowledge that these two people expect her to stay at SHIELD beyond the mission she’s been manipulated to take part in.

But only because the sooner she can control her abilities, the sooner she can use them to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Nice,” Clint says.

Grinning but instinctively repressing her joy to just below the place that might lift it to ‘power generation’ level, Emory walks over to Natasha and offers her the handful of spy gadgets.

“Keep them,” is the surprising answer. “Might come in handy.”

Emory nods, biting her lip. She might be able to use them for her call with Tony. Before she can ask who would get in trouble if she uses the objects on SHIELD tech the second time in a week, there’s a knock at the door, and a voice calls out to ask if everything is all right. Natasha makes a face and heads for the door, immediately launching into a highly technical description of the objects they were ‘testing.’ Clint walks over to Emory.

In a low voice, he tells her, “Fury’s got a lot on his plate at the moment. I doubt either of us would be able to schedule a meeting objecting to his…” He clears his throat. “Recruitment methods, for a couple of weeks.”

“Bummer,” Emory says, heartened. She’s pretty sure he’s telling her that they don’t intend to ‘tell on her’ for her concerns, but also implying that the concerns are valid.

“Yeah,” Clint continues. “Fun to picture his face when I explain about the shifting balls. Ahh well.” He rocks back on his heels, looking directly up at the nearest camera. “If it helps your mood at all, if what I’ve heard about Stark’s obsession with you is true, we probably need you more than you need us.” With that, Clint chuckles and looks down at her, winking. “Competence is one of many ways to ride under the radar here, but Natasha’s sure a pro at it.”

“That’s definitely true,” Emory says, a little stunned by what he’s telling her. She kind of wishes she had a hidden audio recorder to listen back over everything both agents have said to her this afternoon, because it seems like all of it is important. Most of all the sly suggestion by Clint that maybe SHIELD isn’t the one who holds all of the leverage.

Emory slips her hand down into her pocket around the static spheres Natasha had given her, taking courage from them as she slips out of the sparring room to continue her day.

Tony finishes his first full suit prototype thirty hours before his call with Emory. The Disrobe-Bot works perfectly, which wasn’t a given, though the real test will be getting back out (something he wants to perfect before he shows up to perform Emory Autumn’s third kidnapping in four months’ time). The last piece is his faceplate, and Tony calls out to JARVIS as he puts it on. He’s looking forward to hearing the swap as his AI moves from the basement speakers to the built-in earpieces in his helmet.

“JARVIS, you there?”

“At your service, Sir.”

The AI’s voice sounds just right in Tony’s ears. Excellent. “Engage Heads-up Display, import all relevant preferences from home interface.” 

The HUD is even better than he’d hoped. The visuals are just right, cycling through various data points at just the right speed for him to get a heightened feel for his surroundings. Tony turns his head, and the AI highlights DUM-E’s outline, naming the robot with a small but readable label before shifting to identify the coffeemaker on the shelf many feet behind it.

He can’t wait to see what this will look like out in the world. “All right, what do you say?” Tony asks, hoping there isn’t some last-minute roadblock to the thing he wants to do.

“I have indeed been uploaded, sir. We are online and ready.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” Tony knows what he should be doing. He should test the Disrobe-Bot right away, because he doesn’t want to be stuck in the suit for more time than it takes for his bladder to fill. He definitely shouldn’t go out where someone could catch him on surveillance… but, what if he could get high enough before that happened? “Do a check on control surfaces,” he says, walking over to the door that separates the lab from the garage. The display shows the integrity of each tire, with a label for the vehicle.

The check doesn’t take long, as Tony has left space for quite a few modifications that aren’t necessary for the rescue mission. He’s left out anything offensive except for the repulsors and some targeting mechanics, mostly because he wants to stick it to Nick Fucking Fury if the man tries to make anything up about the kind of threat Tony poses during the rescue.

“Tests complete. Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics, which should be ready and waiting for you when you wake up.”

“Uh, change of plan,” Tony says, trying to sound like he’s only just made up his mind. “Link up with ATC, do a weather check, and start listening in on ground control.”

“Sir, there are terabytes of calculations needed before--”

“JARVIS,” Tony chastises, grinning as he walks through the garage to hit the button for the sliding door. “Sometimes you’ve gotta run before you can walk.”

If he had Emory’s abilities, Tony would be charged up with enough power to fly without the repulsors.

“Hey, make sure you get a recording of this,” he tells JARVIS, stepping out into the warm June night.

“Certainly, sir. Wouldn’t want to miss the chance to identify any design flaws or operator errors that might occur.”

“Settle down,” Tony says.

The suit handles like a dream. It’s worth every minute he may have to spend locked into it, should his robotic Yinsen not do its job properly. Tony flies out over the water, pushing his speed for five solid minutes before looping around to avoid the shipping lanes. Thinking about Yinsen is actually what makes him pull back, stops him from climbing too far skyward, too far ocean-ward.

Turns out the lump in his throat isn’t affected by gravity or acceleration.

If it weren’t for Yinsen, he wouldn’t be here at all, and Tony is pretty sure that if it weren’t for his plans to rescue Emory, she’d be stuck with permanent shrapnel threatening her heart, too.

Tony smirks. Well, he is often described as magnetic.

On the day Tony’s going to call, Emory wakes up at 5 AM and spends the next hour picturing gently drifting snow. She can basically tell him nothing. Her personal struggles are off-limits to SHIELD, who will definitely be eavesdropping, and her mission is off-limits to Tony, who would definitely be interested in ‘helping.’ Since that day in the sparring room, Natasha’s training has shifted to control, with Clint coming along more often than not.

It’s been… fun. More than that, it’s helped her feel competent to control herself enough not to destroy her room this time.

Pepper makes Tony go to sleep at nine PM the night before the call. The joke’s on her, because Tony had planned to stay up all night and go to sleep right after (ha. HA HA), so he’d programmed JARVIS to make announcements leading up to the call at ten, five, and single minute intervals starting at a half hour prior. Since he’s calling into SHIELD with his cell phone, he can be anywhere in the house, so Tony sneaks into one of the many hidden spaces with a blanket and pillow and waits for all hell to break loose. By call time, he’ll be wide awake, which is good, because he can’t tell Emory anything he doesn’t want SHIELD to know, and that includes a good number of things they probably don’t want to know.

It’s… tempting to say most of them anyway in a blatant attempt to start a vomit chain in the surveillance room. It’s a real shame Coulson won’t be there. 

“So how did “The Call” go?” Clint asks ten hours later as they get out of the car and cross the field toward Fido, the mostly-destroyed tree they use for target practice.

“Audible air quotes are so early two-thousands,” Emory complains.

Natasha doesn’t even turn around as she says, “Co-signed.”

“Uh uh. You don’t get a vote, we decided this when you voted against ‘Fido,’” Clint says, actually wagging his finger back and forth.

“How are you not a dad?” Emory asks him incredulously.

“Having bark is a perfectly good reason to name it after a dog, Natasha. And don’t think I don’t see you dodging my question, Em.”

“The call was lovely,” Emory says, turning fully towards Natasha. “Tony seems to have decided that in the absence of any ability to tell me what’s been going on thanks to my governmental overlords, he should instead spend the time being overwhelmingly adorable. And, let me tell you--” Emory leans into the feeling in a way she hadn’t been able to, hours before. She closes her eyes and grins, remembering the over-the-top endearments that Tony had lavished on her in a clear attempt to be revolting to everyone else who had chosen to listen in. “Mission accomplished.”

“Well, Schmoopsie Pie, if I’d known it was that effective, I’d have pushed for more airtime,” Tony’s voice says from behind her.

Emory opens her eyes to see that both Clint and Natasha are standing in battle poses with clear surprise on their faces.

“Tony?” she asks, afraid to turn around and see that someone’s tricked her with a recording.

“It’s really me, Em,” he says, and the repressed excitement she can hear in his voice is what convinces her to turn around. Now she understands why her teammates reacted the way they did. He’s wearing a suit of shining armor.

“No white horse? Man, what a disappointment,” she says, all thoughts of soothing static and energy dissipation gone with the wind that’s whipping up around her.

“See, that, that right there? Is why there’s no horse,” Tony sasses back, grinning. 

Emory’s already running toward him, so wreathed with power and joy already that she lifts into the air for the last few feet. To her utter delight, Tony drops one palm down at his sides and gestures, lifting up just enough to catch her with the other arm. The uneven burst of power from his brand new suit starts them turning, and her accumulated energy continues it, spinning them around for a kiss every bit as scorching as the sun-warmed metal of his suit. 

Next chapter, Tony negotiates time away from SHIELD for Emory and gets to introduce her to Pepper and Happy.

[robertdowneyjjr]

(1) Another Tony idea- is that he looked like an intern when he first took over the company, like in the well made tux and polished look everyone knew 'oh thats tony stark' but the moment he put on his mechanic jeans and MIT t-shirt, he looked like an intern. Which he did not realize the first couple of times he wandered down to the labs (give him a break, he was tired) and since the ladies in lab 4 asked so nicely, he willing helped lift parts with them and made some food runs.

(2) but when the assholes in labs 1-3 demanded he go run coffee cause a (offensive language) boy could go get some since the girls are apparently “working” (cue straight white guy TM laughing), Tony just stares them down making them uncomfortable before turning and walking away. The guys are like haha weird (offensive language), and put the scene behind them, till Tony walks back in 20 minutes later dressed in his Stark Suit and stands silently till they notice him

(3) and OOOOOOOh man does Tony go after them and all of them are demoted if not out right fired. The ladies are worried cause fucking patriarchy, when Tony’s just like oh by the way your all promoted and are there more ladies needing jobs?

HAHA I love this. Men are such idiots.

But yes to all of this!! Tony obviously can wear a suit like nobody else, and he was raised and groomed to carry one like he came out of the womb wearing a three piece suit. But the truth is Tony hates it. He hates being put on display and he just wants to wear clothes that are comfortable to move around and do his work in.

So when he’s not expected at meetings, Tony isn’t gonna wear anything but jeans and a t-shirt and tank, or sometimes even just sweats. And he knows his eyes will be straining after a few hours of working, so he doesn’t even bother with contacts and puts on his nerdy little glasses instead because who’s gonna see him anyway?

Except one day after several hours of binge working he just really needed to stretch his legs and clear his head a little. He looks down at his clothes and decides to just change his shirt into one that’s clean but doesn’t bother with anything else, then walks out of his private lab and starts roaming the halls at SI.

I should make it clear also that at this point, Tony hasn’t grown his goatee yet (think the Forbes cover from IM1) so he looks incredibly young, especially in his glasses and looking as tired and dazed as he is while wandering around.

He’s only taken over SI for a couple weeks and he’d been busy dealing with the board and c-suite execs, so he hasn’t been able to meet any of the other teams yet, like his finance department or even the engineers, which was a gross oversight. So when he stumbles upon the R&D labs while wandering about, he decides to poke his head in and take a look at what his employees are working on.

The ladies in Lab 4 are clearly brilliant. Their work focuses on defense and energy, which Tony had always been passionate about but was too afraid to let his father or Stane know. But taking a look at the women’s work Tony can tell that they’re really an intelligent group and he’s impressed. The women come back from their lunch break and see Tony and think that he’s one of the new interns that started earlier that week so they greet him enthusiastically. They notice he’s not wearing a badge, but they figure that HR might be a little backed up at the moment so he’ll get it in a couple days. One of the women ask if he could help with some heavy lifting on a project since the guys in labs 1-3 are busy with their weapons projects and some of them aren’t very friendly anyway. Tony loves being in the presence of other smarties, so he happily agrees.

Then one particular group of guys in labs 1-3 appear at lab 4 for their daily wheedling session because they’re, surprise surprise, a big bunch of assholes. They see Tony and get kind of mad because, what the hell, why does lab 4 get an intern when 1-3 don’t? Labs 1-3 are the heart of the company. They’re the weapons guys. Shouldn’t they get an intern?

So these dicks turn to Tony and call him names and demand Tony goes get coffee for them. Tony’s burning up on the inside because how dare they? So he nods, turns around, and leaves. Presumably to get coffee.

Twenty minutes later Tony comes back in a three piece Gucci suit, Piaget watch on his left wrist, Oliver Peoples sunglasses shading his eyes, and Prada shoes on his feet. He clears his throat and everyone in the lab turns around to see he’s sipping on a coffee for himself and holding another tray for the lovely ladies of Lab 4. The men from the other labs get nothing.

Everyone gapes and the men are clearly starting to get antsy because oh shit, they messed with the wrong person. They all immediately scramble to try and pass off what they said before as jokes but Tony knows better. He gives the ladies their coffee and tells the stupid little fuckers to show him what they’re working on.

They do, and Tony immediately starts pointing out flaws in all of their projects. He tells them maybe if they spent as much time focusing on their work as they do harassing women, they’d be able to put out feasible machines instead of these horribly assembled products.

Tony reports all of them to HR and they have to attend sensitivity training for three weeks. Tony, as the chief engineer, becomes their direct supervisor and they never say an offensive word again.

When he has the time he escapes into Lab 4 to work with the ladies as well. He loves what they do and thinks that they should get a bigger budget to work on their projects. So he works out a financial plan for them and promotes them, and gives them the ability to hire more people to continue expanding on their work.

A month later Tony debuts what would be known as his trademark goatee. No one mistakes him for an intern again.