Work Text:
The rush was like none other. Feeling the armor the way he did now, with nerves that all but merged with wires, the intuitive control, the spark of electricity through his system. He felt whole. No longer a man in a suit of metal, but a man with an armored second skin. At the ones, he had not had time to relish it; there had been too much pain, too much fear and hurry, he had been dying and living and trying to salvage lives all at once. But now, later, he could not believe how good it felt. Flying especially. Flight had always been in his soul; he had had dreams of flying without a plane for as long as he could remember. Not just floating peacefully as so many he heard of, but zooming across the globe, through fluffy clouds, past eagles and mountain peaks. He had achieved it, even though it had taken a threat to his life to get him there, to drag him out of comforts and tear the voluntary blindfold away from his eyes.
Idly he wondered if it hurt more to get blown up or rebuilt. Oddly enough he could think of it more or less detachedly now. Perhaps a coping mechanism, but it often felt as if those things had happened to someone else. In a way they had. Tony Stark before the abduction was not the man who had returned. Tony Stark before Extremis was not the man who had emerged from the cocoon. A transformation in the truest of senses, and he was, in every way, a better man.
“Maya,” he muttered to himself. She had given him a gift, though unintentionally or reluctantly (or pretending to be at least), and he was grateful. In fact…
Tony leaned back in his chair. It reclined just enough to fit his position, a readjustment of his center of gravity. Distractedly he did a few calculations on the forces applied to the seat at this moment, visualizing the vectors. In fact he should expand on Maya’s work. She was not in a position to do that right now, and he was. Her guilt must be catching up to her now – he knew how hard it was to avoid your own demons, ghosts and monsters when you are left at their mercy in a cell. Not only could he improve on the Extremis technology, but he might be able to help Maya come to terms as well. Perhaps he could even offer her a road to rehabilitation. He owed her that much, and a mind such as hers should not rot in jail. That his budding ideas would make Iron Man even more effective was of course a factor too, he was not going to pretend otherwise, but he would honestly like to help Maya as well. He sat up again, feeling gravity in action, and smiled. There was always improvements to be made - and it was time to make that full integration of neural interfacing.