Archive of Our Own

Tony woke up slowly, groggily, and tried to take stock of his situation. He'd woken up in this state more than once throughout the years, though lately it tended to be the result of being bashed on the head by some bad guy, rather than an abundance of sex, drugs, and rock n roll. It made him feel incredibly old to realize that he barely missed the latter. At least the bad guys tended to monologue and clue him in to what he'd missed during his blackout. Much better than finding out from TMZ.

Now, casting his mind back, he found his last clear memory was from sneaking into the Mandarin's mansion, finding his filming space, and then— oh, Trevor. It was all a ruse to hide Killian's dirty work behind the facade of a common enemy. Then someone had hit him and now…

Keeping his eyes closed, Tony quietly began extending his senses. Aunt Peggy had taught him to do this after the first time he was kidnapped, and now it was practically second nature. Keep your eyes closed — but not squinted tight — and your breathing even. Use tiny shifts of motion to figure out if and how you're bound. Listen for clues and others breathing.

There were the ties around Tony's wrists and ankles — he was loosely spreadeagled against something metal and vaguely rectangular with posts. He couldn't feel a mattress, but something in the realm of a stripped bed frame would be his best guess. He was a bit sore, but the pain only emanated from his forehead, meaning he hadn't taken too many more blows after being knocked out. The slightest tug told Tony that his hands were bound with zip ties — relatively easy to get out of. Ripping them would hurt like a bitch, but it was faster and easier to get out of than duct tape or handcuffs.

He was still dressed, thankfully: Tony had very little body modesty, and knew how to keep fighting despite that, but it was more comfortable to still have his clothes. He even had his shoes, which would make it easier to run. As a kid, he'd preferred bare feet, because they were easier to sneak around on, and it was yet another sign of age catching up with him that Tony preferred to run away with good arch support. Today, however, it also meant that the smoke bombs hidden in his heels were probably still there. The hint of coolness at his wrist from the zipper meant he was still in his hoodie, even, which meant they probably hadn't found the special surprise he'd threaded through the drawstring hem.

Focusing on his hearing, Tony could distinguish two people breathing, out of sync. One nudged or kicked something and the clatter was loud in the silence. Faintly Tony could hear the sounds of outdoors — seabirds and waves — and further away the background drone of a large city. Combined with the humidity and temperature — roughly the same as before — Tony was fairly confident that he was still in the Mandarin — no, Killian's safehouse in Miami.

Before Tony could finish working out a plan — he already had the first three steps, but needed more data to decide which direction to take for step four through nine — both of his captors shifted. Two sets of footsteps came towards them — one striding, one tentatively following — and Tony took the chance to risk a brief peek at his surroundings while everyone was distracted.

The room had three levels, and his captors were at opposite ends of the room, facing towards a hallway on the top floor. Tony closed his eyes quickly, and slumped again. "Rise and shine, Tony," a man called out. Tony debated his options for a few seconds before deciding on temporary compliance. Opening his eyes fully, he found Killian striding into the room, followed by Maya Hansen.

"This does not look like the room service I ordered," Tony snarked.

Killian smiled as he came down the stairs. "You know what my old man used to say to me? One of his favorite of many sayings… 'The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.'"

Quickly running through contingencies in his mind, Tony snarked on autopilot, "You're not still pissed off about the Switzerland thing, are you?"

"How can I be pissed at you, Tony? I'm here to thank you." The crazy thing was that he appeared to actually believe that. Tony considered and discarded several ideas as Killian approached him, still acting friendly. Maya was hovering on the uppermost level, and one of the goons had left, though the other was still on the second landing.

Oblivious to Tony's racing thoughts, Killian continued, "You gave me the greatest gift that anybody's ever given me. Desperation." Tony barely refrained from rolling his eyes, but as long as Killian was monologuing, he'd keep plotting.

"If you think back to Switzerland, you said you'd meet me on the rooftop, right? Well, for the first 20 minutes, I actually thought you'd show up. And the next hour… I considered taking that one-step shortcut to the lobby. If you know what I mean."

Killian paused, clearly waiting for a reply, and Tony barely heard himself say something about a mouse as his mind calculated the angle needed to flip the bed frame so that he wouldn't topple over when he ripped his hands free.

Thankfully, Killian continued to monologue, and Tony completely tuned him out. Finally he became aware of silence, and he glanced back at Killian, who was frowning at him.

"I'm sorry, was I boring you?" Killian barely managed to maintain his polite facade this time, and Tony decided to poke the bear a little more.

"I mean, I thought leaving you on that roof all night would have made my intentions clear. That and the fact that you had to—" Tony tugged gently on his tied wrists (hardware store quality, not law enforcement), "—y'know, tie me up to get me to listen to you this time around. But sure, go ahead. Keep talking. Big plans or something. I'll totally pay attention this time."

Killian took a deep breath and then smiled again, though anger lurked in his eyes. "Well, for my next big plan, I wanted to repay you the selfsame gift that you so graciously imparted to me. Desperation."

His hand reached into Tony's line of sight, and he instinctively shied away, but he wasn't fast enough. Just as Tony wrenched one arm free and started to tip the bed frame backwards, something pricked his neck. The falling bed ripped Tony out of Killian's grasp, turning the small lance of pain in his neck into a jagged spike.

As the bed frame hit the ground, Tony wrenched his second arm free of the zip tie, leaving another trail of fire across his wrist. He slipped a finger inside his sneaker and pulled out the thin razor blade he'd tucked there. Then Tony quickly sawed through the zip ties around his ankles, just in time to dive to the side as the goon finally made it down the stairs and lunged at him.

Tony rolled off the bed, sending a kick at Killian, who backed off and fumbled in his pocket. Then Tony yanked the drawstring out of his hoodie, revealing the garrotte he'd tucked away. As the off-balance goon surged to his feet, Tony quickly wrapped it around his neck. The man froze, just as Killian pulled out a gun.

"Well, as much as I've enjoyed your hospitality, I'm gonna leave now," Tony said, backing towards the doorway. He stomped down hard on his heel, deploying the smoke bomb stashed there to screen his exit.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Tony," Killian said calmly.

"Really, great hospitality. Five stars on Yelp," Tony promised. "Just as soon as this human shield and I get, y'know, far away from you."

Almost before he'd finished speaking, Killian fired, and the goon's head snapped back onto Tony's shoulder, before he became a dead weight. Hardly believing what had just happened, Tony kicked into flight, spinning and running down the hall. He turned as quickly as he was able, hoping to dodge the line of fire and find a familiar route out.

No further shots followed him, so Tony figured he was in the clear as he raced through a room full of camera equipment. Suddenly, Killian's voice echoed through loudspeakers around the building.

"You can run, Tony, but it's too late. See, at this very moment, our Extremis is coursing through your veins. Pretty soon, you'll begin to feel it as it worms its way into your brain. And then, once your whole body is flooded with it, things are going to get a little hot, and a lot painful. For a while, you'll be caught in this state, where the body is trying to decide whether to accept Extremis or just give up. And if it gives up, I have to say, the detonation is quite spectacular. But until that point, it's really just a lot of pain. Of course, if you survive, you'll need our help to maintain it. The thermoregulation, without our assistance is… well let's just say it's pretty difficult, as I believe you've witnessed. So really, there's no point in hiding now, when you're just going to have to come crawling back later."

Tony wasn't sure if it was his imagination or not, but he thought he could feel the fire spreading through his body. It was definitely getting uncomfortably warm in his hoodie. Resolutely he pushed that information out of his mind. Maybe if he ignored it it would go away.

Rounding a corner, Tony found a set of stairs spiraling down. He almost ignored them, but he caught a hint of words, "…still cozy in there, Colonel Rhodes?" Well that changed things.

Pushing the pain out of his mind was a well-practiced trick for Tony since Afghanistan, and he did it now. Patting himself down, he found the smaller dart gun he'd made still tucked into his sock, and pulled it out. Between that and the garrotte he should be able to get a real weapon away from someone. As ready as he was going to be, Tony slunk down the stairs.

He darted two scientists standing at a console across the room, then looped the garotte around the neck of the unsuspecting man at the foot of the stairs. Since that man was currently using a grinder to attempt to cut through the War Machine — Tony was never using that stupid propaganda name — Tony felt justified in yanking him back and looping the cord around the stair railing.

Then, yanking the grinder out of his hand, Tony slipped over to the foot of the stairs. Peering around the corner, he found two guards down the hall. The first went down to his last remaining dart, while the second took the butt of the grinder to his temple and dropped like a stone. When the area appeared clear, Tony walked over to the console and began figuring out how to release the chains holding up the armor. "Hey Sourpatch," he said cheerfully.

"Tony," Rhodey's relief was audible, even through the armor. As soon as the chain released, he dropped a few feet to the ground and shook himself out.

"What did you let them do to my suit this time?" Tony asked.

"Your suit?" Rhodey questioned.

Someone shouted "Hey!" down the hall and Tony ducked to put the console between himself and the reinforcements.

"Never mind. You operational?"

"I've only got one hand stabilizer," Rhodey admitted.

"Good enough," Tony decided. They'd both had plenty of practice flying without their hand repulsors, for when they needed to carry people to safety. "Let's go!" Tony flung himself at Rhodey's side, feeling the damaged arm curling around him as Rhodey took off.

As they shot up through the window into the sunlight, Tony felt the pain he'd suppressed beginning to surge again. His chest was becoming uncomfortably warm, and Tony felt the casing of the reactor starting to heat up.

Knowing his voice would be snatched away by the wind, Tony quickly hand signaled to Rhodey to land. As soon as he did, on the roof of a large skyscraper, the faceplate flew up. "Gimmie," Tony said, making grabbing motions at the helmet.

Thankfully Rhodey didn't question him, but simply detached and handed over the helmet. "JARVIS?" Tony asked as he slid it over his own head. It wasn't perfectly molded to fit his head like the Iron Man helmets, but it would do in a pinch.

"It's good to hear you, Sir," JARVIS replied smoothly.

"You too, buddy," Tony said, doing his best to breathe evenly through the pain. "Listen, JARVIS, override code Platinum Delta Thirteen Eeyore."

There was a brief pause, noticeable only to someone who was used to working at the lightning speed that Tony and JARVIS routinely did. Finally, "Override Platinum Delta Thirteen Eeyore accepted, Sir. Plan EDITH activated; authorized user Colonel James Rhodes."

"Good," Tony gritted out. "Get the Legion in the air as soon as possible to back him up J."

"Yes Sir," JARVIS replied. "Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"May I ask— is this a permanent override?"

"I hope not, J," Tony said, quickly pulling the helmet off. Despite having put these contingencies in place a few years ago, he'd thought after he'd kicked the palladium poisoning that he wouldn't have to use them so soon. But Tony had always been a big believer that it was better to be overprepared rather than underprepared.

"There you go, Platypus," Tony said, handing the helmet back over. "I'd appreciate it if you could drop me off somewhere safe — not that I have any idea what would be considered safe right now — before you go off saving the world."

"Tony?"

In answer, Tony unzipped his hoodie. Even with the white t-shirt on, it was impossible to miss the bright red-orange light pooling in his chest, or the way the red-hot reactor casing was starting to burn through the fabric. "If you can put me somewhere where I won't kill anyone if I, y'know, explode, that'd be good," he joked.

"Jesus, Tony," Rhodey gasped, looking horrified. "If you think I'm gonna leave you alone while you—"

"Nope," Tony cut him off. "You're the hero now. You've gotta go stop Killian. Starks don't leave the work unfinished. You're a deputized Stark now; got your suit and everything. Though I'd appreciate it if you change the paint job back later. You lo— you look like a Captain America cosplayer in that star-spangled get up."

"I'll let you paint the next one you make me," Rhodey countered.

Tony wanted to argue, but black was starting to edge into his vision, so he just huffed. "You can't even humor me when I'm dying…"

Rhodey snorted, but his reply was lost on Tony, who finally succumbed to his fight against the darkness, and the roaring wash of orange pain that followed it.

"Good Morning, Sir," JARVIS's voice cut through the hazy fog of Tony waking up. "It's seven AM on January seventh. The weather in New York is currently 33 degrees, cloudy, with an expected high of 38 degrees and flurries in the evening."

"JARVIS?" Tony asked, struggling to open his eyes.

The somewhat neutral tone immediately shifted to hopeful. "Sir? Are you awake?"

"Course I am. You did the wake up thing," Tony mumbled. "How much did I drink last night?" He was having trouble pulling up any memories of what he'd last been working on.

"I shall alert Colonel Rhodes at once," JARVIS said instead of answering.

Tony rifled through his brain, searching for an explanation. It was just before Christmas… Hang on, hadn't he been in Malibu, escaping the dreary winter weather? When had he arrived in New York? And JARVIS had said it was January— "J, why can't I remember anything from the last two weeks?" He hadn't had a blackout that bad since just after his parents died.

"One moment, Sir," JARVIS hedged. That was definitely his 'I'm hiding something' voice. "I think Colonel Rhodes would be better able to explain."

"You're keeping things from me now, JARVIS?" Tony asked. "Is that what we're doing?" He managed to pry open his crusty eyes, but everything was too bright, and he squinted for a moment before closing them.

"Only when you've enacted the EDITH protocol, Sir," JARVIS said softly, his tone worried.

EDITH? That was supposed to be used when— oh. "Killian? Extremis?" Tony asked as the memories came rushing back.

"Tony!" Rhodey said, bursting into the room.

"Ow. Loud," Tony protested.

"Sorry," Rhodey said, not sounding sorry in the least. "Man it's good to hear your voice again." Tony heard him come closer to the bed, and felt it dip as Rhodey sat beside him. A moment later a warm, damp washcloth was being brushed over his eyes: clearly JARVIS had forewarned him.

"Yeah. Looks like I didn't explode, huh?" Tony's throat was dry, but he figured he'd take care of that once he could see again.

"Not for lack of trying," Rhodey joked. "Try opening now," he instructed softly.

Tony did, blinking furiously, and found it much easier to see. "Did we save the day?"

"I saved the day," Rhodey snarked. "You did a lot of lying around." Still, Tony could now see the fear and relief on his face.

"Even comatose, I'm the hero," Tony countered weakly. He looked around for something to drink, and noticed an IV bag hanging from a pole, running down to a port in his arm. Clearly someone medically inclined had taken a look at him while he was out.

"Okay, yeah, whatever." Rhodey rolled his eyes, but grabbed a water bottle from the bedside table and cracked the top before handing it over. Tony forced himself to sip slowly, not interested in rushing and puking it all back up with this headache. "Yes, we saved the President, and we and JARVIS blew up Killian in a suit. Maya Hansen turned over some notes to Pepper before SHIELD vanished her into some deep dark hole, so we know the basics of what that serum did to you. She's still hopeful you can fully stabilize the formula. JARVIS also did some digging on AIM's servers before we blew them up with prejudice. Apparently you're some kind of super soldier now."

"I'm not putting on a spangly suit," Tony protested weakly, but his brain was whirling faster than ever. He handed the bottle back to Rhodey on autopilot and sank back into the pillows. A super soldier. He was enhanced now. Like Rogers. Like Bruce. Well, hopefully not too much like Bruce. But from what he'd seen of those Extremis soldiers in Rose Hill right before they went 'boom', the comparison could be made.

A super soldier.

Tony had always prided himself on being a 'baseline' human. He'd grown up on stories of Steve Rogers and how he'd been a good man before the serum. Howard always talked a big game about how great Rogers was both before and after the fact, but every so often he'd get drunk and rambly, right before he crossed the line into belligerent. And in those rare moments, Howard had shared his opinion that Rogers would have been nothing without himself and Erskin. "Everything special about him came out of a bottle! Our bottle!" he'd exclaimed one night when Tony was seven. "Without our science he'd have still been some scrawny kid dead in an alley somewhere!"

The rest of the time, Howard had toed the propaganda line about how "good made great", and Steve Rogers had to have been special for the serum to work, but Tony had never forgotten that night. Even in a cave in Afghanistan, Tony had remembered. Without the serum, Rogers was nothing. Without the suit, Tony was the guy who'd made the suit.

Howard always said "Starks don't leave the work unfinished." It was why he'd spent decades and billions of dollars looking for Steve Rogers in the ice. It was the mantra he'd used to sell the public all kinds of gadgets and gizmos. "Stark products get the job done." "Stark weapons don't leave the job unfinished." "Stark: when it has to be done right, the first time." That was why Tony had made the Mark II, why he had decided to get his weapons back. He couldn't leave the job unfinished, or in someone else's hands. (Other than Rhodey, who was an honorary Stark at this point.)

Howard had been dead for decades, and Tony had still heard his voice echoing in his ears. "Stark weapons don't leave the job unfinished." "Everything special about him came out of a bottle!" When Tony became Iron Man, it wasn't because of someone else's science bottled up and injected into him. It was because he had been good enough — smart enough — to make the suit himself. To get the job done.

Tony hadn't meant to parrot his father the first time he'd run into the Capsicle on the helicarrier, but the words were out before he could stop himself. Because in that moment, with Rogers standing in Tony's lab being useless while Tony did all the work? Howard was right: Rogers would be nothing without their science. And in the battle after that, Tony had held his own beside the super soldier with nothing but his brains and his inventions. Tony had seen SHIELD's files; he knew that Romanoff had her own knock off brand of the serum. Tony had stood beside three variants of super soldier and a literal alien god and he'd held his own. Actually, according to the after action reports, he'd done more damage than anyone but Thor. And Thor had lightning, which everyone knew was cheating. (Tony carefully ignored how his own missiles would probably also be considered cheating by the team on the ground.)

Howard hadn't been alive to see him, but Tony knew he'd proved his point, at least to himself. Tony had stood among super soldiers and gods, and he hadn't just held his own: he'd outstripped them. And as he was falling back to earth, he'd wondered if Howard — the Howard of those stolen moments — would have been proud of him. Steve might think that his speech about cutting the wire had been some kind of motivation, but he'd never understood Tony. Tony had done what he needed to do, because he could. Because as a Stark he had to. Had to finish the job. Because he — normal, unenhanced human Tony — had managed something through pure engineering and spite that even the legendary Captain America wouldn't have been able to do.

And no matter what Justin Hammer and the government thought, not just anyone could pilot the armor if they got their hands on it. Even Rhodey — literal rocket scientist Rhodey — had had trouble piloting the stripped down War Machine Mark 1, until Tony had turned off a couple of the feedback displays and given JARVIS even more autonomy. Rhodey had put on Tony's helmet once and said if he'd had to look at all of that in flight he'd probably vomit. Other countries might manage to build a metal suit of armor some day, but without a pilot like Tony, they'd never recreate Iron Man.

Because that had been all Tony. His brains and his hands and his spite and his determination to finish the job, despite the number of people telling him he shouldn't, couldn't, or wouldn't.

And now he was pumped full of some bastardized super soldier serum, like a knock off Captain America doll. Like every inch of self he'd clawed back from the abyss in a cave in Afghanistan was now stripped away. Instead of being a baseline human who held his own, he was now one of the 'roided up masses. SHIELD was practically tripping over super soldiers on every other street corner, and Tony was just like them now. Everything he did from here on out would be attributed to his serum, — to the bottle — not his brain.

Well fuck that.

Tony opened his eyes, unsure of when he'd closed them. It was dark, and Rhodey had obviously left at some point. Instead of following, or asking for an update, Tony closed his eyes again and rolled over, uncaring if he tangled his IV line. Burying his face in his pillow, Tony squeezed his eyes shut and, for the first time in years, allowed himself to cry.

Tony managed to avoid the world for another week, until Rhodey finally yanked the sheets out from under him and dumped him on his ass. Of course, Tony's resulting anger had made his chest glow and the glass behind Rhodey to crack, so he'd stomped down to his lab and enacted blackout mode.

JARVIS had been unimpressed, but overriding his blackout was not part of the EDITH package, so Rhodey was stuck on the outside. It didn't stop him from sending passive aggressive notes through the pizza box slot with his meals, but it was good enough for Tony.

After pouring over all of AIM's research for several days, Tony had a few working theories and even less desire to ever leave his lab again. There were videos of Killian, Savin, and two other high ranked Extremis Soldiers managing to breathe fire when they got going. Tony didn't even want to contemplate how ridiculous he'd look if he attempted that.

One of the more brainy AIM types had also figured out how to transmit heat through the air, though it lost a lot of energy in the transfer, so Killian tended to ignore that skill. Tony was now pretty sure that when he'd been glaring a hole through Rhodey before, he'd quite literally been glaring a heat wave hole through the window, causing the crack. Which meant that he needed to stay locked in his lab for everyone's safety; at least until he figured out how to either turn this off and make it go away, or control it.

He was hoping for the former.

The other thing that AIM's notes had shown was that for all that Killian was a megalomaniac with a god complex, he'd had some smart people working for him. Not just Maya, but several others who had made good contributions to the process. One of them had even been former SHIELD, and Tony was pretty sure that's where the watered down super soldier serum had entered the equation. Because, oh yes, dear old dad's work would never stop following Tony home.

Regardless, because Tony happened to have samples from Rogers, Bruce, and Romanoff in his system, taken when his medical team had patched them up after the invasion, he was able to throw his own new and old blood samples into the mix and compare and contrast. He also had time to go over his own medical notes from the past two weeks he'd been unconscious. He'd had such a strong reaction to the Extremis — much longer than anyone in SHIELD's or AIM's notes — because of the arc reactor, which was obvious in retrospect.

Extremis was designed to repair every aspect of the body. In Tony's case, that meant quite literally shoving the shrapnel out of his body and near-instantly healing up the holes left behind. But it also meant that his body was attempting to repair the damage to Tony's lungs, sternum, and muscles, but were running into the reactor casing that was in their way. It, of course, had melted fairly quickly, despite the extra-strong alloys Tony used.

That was where things had gotten weird. The Extremis should have expelled that metal, like it did with the shrapnel and the palladium residue in his organs and bone marrow. It also should have ejected the nodes he'd just implanted that allowed him to call the Mark 42 to himself.

Instead, the Extremis had absorbed the Starkanium and seemed to have united with it. The Mark 42 nodes were right where they were supposed to be, and a new, flat metal circle resided where the reactor had sat.

JARVIS took new scans of him, and Tony could see that his lungs and other organs had been healed, but it was like his brand new sternum had fused with the metal and Starkanium. It wasn't set deeply into his chest anymore, impinging on his lungs, but it sat right at the surface, creating a near seamless blend of metal and skin around the rim.

Tony's new accessory meant that, when he concentrated — or, more frustratingly, lost concentration while upset — Tony could create his very own unibeam from his chest. With a little nudging, he was able to recreate the repulsor effect in his hands as well. In fact, most of his Extremis effects, including the glowing eyes, came out reactor blue instead of Extremis orange, and far hotter than the highest temperatures AIM had recorded.

Most of their foot soldiers had topped out around one thousand Kelvin: slightly hotter than a standard house fire, and able to melt the softer metals. Killian and the stronger soldiers had maxed out around 1,700 Kelvin. Hot enough to melt iron and steel, and they'd probably win a fight with a volcano, but their powers weren't high enough to even tickle the refractory metals like Tungsten.

The Starkanium had amplified the Extremis, turning Tony's own DNA into a power source on par with the sun itself when it revved up. If he'd still had the reactor, he would have been able to power it for a thousand years with just a pipet of his blood. He actually tied a piece of tungsten into a bow, just to see if he could.

After that successful experiment, Tony had beaten his training dummy into splinters and then incinerated it for good measure. He'd then made JARVIS manufacture new, reinforced, dummies with Killian's, Howard's, and Hammer's face for good measure, and spent an afternoon destroying those as well.

He'd finally fallen into an exhausted sleep on the old couch in the corner, only to wake up and do it all again the next few days. But no matter how many times he re-ran the tests, or how many new samples he took, nothing changed, and he found himself back at the training dummies, letting off steam. Literally.

Finally, several days later and completely drained, Tony sat down at his work table and tried to fix it. There had to be a way he could turn off the Extremis, maybe make it go dormant. Most super soldier serums needed some kind of radiation to activate: though he didn't have full files on what the Red Room had used for their version. Bruce's gamma rays and Howard's vita rays were the obvious examples, but they'd clearly had something else.

Extremis, however, didn't seem to need that step. So it was possible, Tony reasoned, that radiation might actually reverse the effect, deactivating the Extremis already in his body. Fortunately Buce had all kinds of toys in his lab, and Tony was able to snag some of them to irradiate his blood samples with.

It took three days of experiments before Tony had to admit defeat. At best, the radiation did nothing, and at worst it made the Extremis even stronger, and thus more prone to blowing up. The last thing Tony wanted was to overload and blow up his Tower, or hurt someone he cared about.

Moreover, Tony actually discovered that, comparing the biomarkers AIM had recorded in their subjects — and was it ever galling to have to go back to his old biology textbooks to figure out some of the more esoteric references. Tony was an engineer, damn it, not one for the squishy people sciences! — but somehow, the missing piece to stabilizing Extremis was Starkanium. Oh, Tony found a way to do it without that, in the course of trying to hack it out of his system, but the Starkanium had done the job just as well, if not better.

Compared to AIM's notes, Tony had an uncommonly delicate control over his powers. Whereas many of the test subjects had trouble regulating how hot they were when they 'turned on', Tony was able to heat up a single finger without cranking the rest of his body beyond 37 degrees. He'd actually held an ice cube in one hand while melting a steel bar with the other, and as long as he held his hands far enough apart to dissipate the ambient heat, the ice cube stayed frozen.

As long as Tony remembered to control his thermoregulation when he was upset, he should be entirely stable. Strong emotions had been the most destabilizing force on AIM's soldiers, and even Tony wasn't completely immune, despite his uncommon control. But considering he had managed to destroy three Rogers-proof fighting dummies without even breaking a mild fever, his general control seemed to be just fine.

More importantly, he couldn't turn it off. Despite his genius, and JARVIS running every simulation under the sun, Tony couldn't find a way to reverse the effects. He had a potential counter agent that might neutralize the serum right after it was injected, before it could bake itself into the host, and he'd figured out how to lower the death rate from 50/50 to around four percent, but he couldn't figure out how to scrub the damn stuff out of his own body's code once it was already welded in!

Somewhere around the end of the second or third week, — Tony had finally gotten JARVIS to stop listing off the date and the weather rather pointedly by informing him that it didn't matter if the sky turned gold and rained unicorns, he wasn't leaving the lab — Tony decided to get blackout drunk, to see if that would help anything. Unfortunately, it just made the Extremis more unstable. Not unstable enough to get rid of it, of course, but the kind of unstable where he was at a very real risk of blowing up his lab. (Later, he would discover an unexpected upside to this result when a bad guy drugged him to ensure his compliance and accidentally turned Tony into an untouchable fireball that reduced his base to rubble. But at the moment he was simply depressed.)

Grudgingly, Tony allowed Dum-E to remove the bottle of Balvenie 40 from the lab, and let JARVIS purge the rest of the alcohol from the Tower. Because of course, that's what would happen in the fucked up story of Tony Stark's life. Bruce and Steve got the kind of serum that meant they never got drunk or had a hangover again, and Tony got the kind of serum where two drinks fried his control and made him almost literally explode. It wasn't fair!

As soon as he had the thought, Tony froze, then slumped down onto the floor of the lab, his strong emotions slipping away. He'd known better than to use that phrase by the time he was four. Howard had no patience for people who whined about life being unfair instead of making the most of whatever they had. Even as a child, Tony had known better.

If one discounted the couple of months he'd spent completely wasted after his parents' death, Tony hadn't thrown a temper tantrum like this since he was a literal toddler. He'd been moody, pissed, and even depressed in turns, but no tantrums. He'd refused to give Howard — even dead — the satisfaction. And here he was, throwing his toys across the lab and complaining that life wasn't fair. Part of Tony thought that maybe he was allowed to throw a fit once every two decades, despite Howard's rules, but he ruthlessly tried to suppress that thought. Now was not the time to go soft.

Tony lay on the cool floor, completely spent, for some time, letting his thoughts drift in and out of his mind. He rarely let himself float so mindlessly — his brain was constantly churning — and in the past it had taken epicly mind-blowing sex, large amounts of illicit substances, or torture-fueld depression to get his mind to shut down like this. Frankly, it felt like his mental buffers were overloaded and he needed to defrag everything and reboot to get himself back on an even keel. So, just for a moment, Tony let himself be.

When JARVIS flicked the extra lights on — when had it gotten dark outside? — it felt like several hours had passed, but Tony had never been a great judge of that kind of thing. His 'couple of hours' in the lab was most people's week, as he'd been repeatedly scolded in the past. But finally, a new thought wormed its way into his for once silent brain.

Now what?

Looking at it logically, the Extremis malware was already installed in Tony's system, and nothing short of an alien miracle — which after the last few years he wasn't quite ruling out yet — would untether it from Tony's DNA. He'd done the anger thing; he'd done the science thing; he'd done the blackout drunk thing; he'd even done the childish temper tantrum thing… So now what?

Glancing around the lab for inspiration, Tony saw a familiar looking box on the far table. Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.

He had no idea why that, of all things, had been saved from the Malibu house. Though it had been down in the vault, so like the Legion, it had survived the initial attack. Whoever JARVIS and Rhodey had arranged to pack up Tony's stuff must have just grabbed it with the rest.

Tony hated it, which was why it had been shoved down into the vault in the first place. It was a reminder of the torture and pain he'd gone through, of the fact that his body was no longer entirely his own. And nowadays it was a reminder that he'd been the kind of person who actually needed to prove to people that he had a heart. He'd done his best to distance himself from Howard and his legacy, and then Tony had gone and grown up into exactly the same man. He'd covered it with snark and innuendo, and talked a good game about SI's life saving innovations, but Tony had truly earned the name Merchant of Death. And for years he'd ignored the consequences of his gleeful desire to make a better weapon than Howard ever had. (Tony just made them. Aiming them in the 'right' direction was someone else's job.)

It had been easy, and guilt-less, and prideful. And where had it gotten him? Stuck in a cave, hooked up to a car battery, staring Death in the face. And he'd decided to let Death take him.

"Why should I do anything? They're going to kill me, you. Either way I'll probably be dead in a week."

"Well then, this is a very important week for you, isn't it?"

Yinsen, of all people, had made Tony fight. Had made him decide to give Death the finger and keep on living. Tony had done it in a cave, and he would do it now in his lab. Yinsen had told him not to waste his life, and Tony had done his best to live up to that dying instruction. He'd started caring about other people again, he'd stopped selling weapons, he'd made Iron Man, he'd saved the world.

And he'd done it all as a baseline human.

But now, Tony wasn't baseline anymore. He was enhanced, and fuck if he could change that. So instead of pouting, he needed to reset his thinking. Instead of wasting more time, he was going to thrive. He was on his third or fourth chance, depending on who was counting, and he wasn't going to waste it. Killian had wanted to change Tony, to make him dependent on AIM and whatever boosters and chemicals they used to tame their Extremis.

Well Tony didn't need them or their treatments. His Extremis was stable. His body was healed from the damage he'd taken in Afghanistan and since then. And he had almost as much strength and power outside of the suit as in it. Tony might not be baseline anymore, but he was still fucking Iron Man. Stark Tech had always been the best, and Tony had firmly believed that the only unfair advantage was the one your enemy had over you. He'd repeated Howard's mantra about having a bigger stick more than once to reporters and in the boardroom. Merchant of Death Tony 1.0 was gone, and now baseline superhero Tony 2.0 was gone too. But super soldier Tony 3.0 was here, holding a bigger, enhanced stick, and he was damn well gonna use it on the other guy. Even if it had come out of a bottle.

"JARVIS, open a new project," Tony instructed, bouncing to his feet. Even the general aches and pains that came from being forty were gone, leaving him feeling more like his college-aged self. "We're building a new suit."

"Another one, Sir?" JARVIS asked with just the mildest hint of disapproval.

"Not like the rest of the Legion, J," Tony said, grabbing a slice of cold pizza and striding over to his work table. "This one's gonna be special."

"Yes Sir," JARVIS said neutrally.

As Tony quickly began rearranging and scrapping parts on the hologram, he felt the Extremis thrumming within his veins. Not rising to meet some danger, or threatening to hurt him, but practically singing with excitement. Even the new 'reactor' in his chest glowed a little bit brighter with his glee. "Starks don't leave the work unfinished." And Tony had work to do.

Tony took in the scene at a glance, and quickly determined the best way to help. He directed his two accompanying Legionnaires to take up flanking positions, ready to assist as needed. Then he directed one of his new experimental missiles at the guy who was currently doing his best to peel the roof off the Cap's car with his bare hands, just as he reared up and smashed the windshield.

Instead of blowing anyone up, this missile detonated into an anti-riot polymer which expanded around the assailant like a marshmallow, preventing them from moving. The bad guy dodged, jumping off the car roof and rolling to the side, narrowly avoiding being run over in the process.

As the car skidded to a stop, Tony landed in front of it, keeping one hand aimed at — "The Winter Soldier, Sir," Jarvis quickly supplied — and popping up his facemask. "Hey kids, you miss me?" Tony asked, grinning at the trio in the car.

"Stark?" Steve asked, seemingly bewildered. Natashalie gave him a small smile, which was practically a cheer, from anyone else. New guy seemed confused, but obviously recognized him.

The Winter Soldier popped up to his feet, and Tony instantly zeroed in on him, letting the facemask fall back into place with barely a thought. Tony fired two more anti-riot rounds before he had to take flight to dodge a grenade launcher from the side. Tony easily deployed a small missile to harmlessly detonate the grenade before it hit someone else, and turned to face the new threat.

Which turned out to be a hummer full of agents that his system quickly identified as enemy combatants. Tony shot a repulsor at their engine, blowing up their ride and any back up weapons they might have as the soldiers dove for cover. Ignoring them as small potatoes, and trusting his proximity sensors to tell Tony if they fired another grenade at him, Tony dove back around to check on his first opponent.

He'd managed to dodge the anti-riot rounds again, and was currently going hand to hand with the Cap and Romanoff as the new guy switched between covering them and taking potshots at the gaggle around the burning hummer.

The Winter Soldier had to be enhanced, to be going toe to toe with the other two, and Tony quickly changed his plan to account for that. He didn't want to fire anything too lethal with the others right there, so he went for the anti-riot polymer again. This time, however, he led with a brilliant flash of light from the reactor, temporarily blinding everyone who wasn't behind a specially tinted Iron Man HUD, before liberally spraying the entire area in the marshmallowy goo and instantly hardening it with another UV burst.

When the smoke cleared, it was evident Tony had succeeded, as the Soldier, Steve, and Natashalie were all bound in the sticky gunk. They were frozen in the act: the Soldier caught bringing down a knife towards Steve's face, Steve blocking his wrist with both hands, and Romanoff actually caught in mid air, swinging Steve's shield at the Soldier's back.

Satisfied that none of them were going anywhere, Tony tapped his wrist and released a compartment holding a small bottle of the antidote. Tossing it to the new guy, he called out, "Make sure none of their noses or mouths are covered. It only takes a drop, and don't drip it directly into their eyes or airways. Wipe it off as soon as it dissolves the polymer. J, supervise."

As one of the Legionnaires moved in to make sure the new guy didn't accidentally poison anyone, Tony turned back to the burning hummer. The bad guys had rallied around an abandoned car, and started shooting at him again almost as soon as he turned to face them. "J, what kind of bad guys are we talking about here? Do I need to keep them alive to get answers from or what?" Tony asked, easily ignoring their regular bullets that pinged off the armor. As long as they were shooting at him and not the living sculpture he'd made behind himself, he didn't need to rush.

"They appear to be a SHIELD STRIKE team, Sir," JARVIS said, clearly puzzled. "I am unsure why they have turned on their own allies."

"Alive to answer questions, got it," Tony decided. Another distracting flash of light later, they were also caught up in the anti-riot goo. As his second Legionnaire escort was dispatched to ensure all of his captured agents stayed alive and breathing, Tony landed and walked over to the new guy, raising his faceplate again. He quickly took in the state of the three combatants, and found them all breathing easily. The Soldier's face mask had been removed, though his goggles were partially visible beneath the goo. Clearly the new guy had listened, and avoided the eyes.

"Good work, New Guy," he declared cheerfully.

"Uh Sam. Wilson. Falcon," he managed to say.

"Air Force Staff Sergeant in the Falcon project, Sir," JARVIS helpfully explained through his earbud. "Using the Alpha Six prototype. Retired after the death of his teammate. Now working as a counselor at the local VA hospital. Scans show an object suspiciously similar in size and shape to the Alpha Six prototype wings sitting in the trunk of the car Sergeant Wilson was driving."

"Cool," Tony declared. "Good job and all that, Sergeant. Maybe when this is over you can give me your feedback about the wings. I'm always curious if the reports I get from the Brass actually match what the men in the field think about my prototypes."

Wilson stared blankly for a moment before nodding. "Sure, whenever we get the time."

"Great!" Tony turned to Rogers, who was looking at him like he was an alien. "Something on my face, Mon Capitan?"

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Saving the day!" Tony said cheerfully. "I was in town talking to a couple of folks from Congress, when JARVIS told me about your little adventures. It wasn't hard to track you here. Especially with the parade of evil black hummers also tailing you."

"You just had to interject yourself," Romanoff scoffed gently, though her smile belied her tone.

"Why yes, Natashalie, I did. And, uh, you're welcome," Tony pointed out. "Unless you'd rather have had the Winter Wonder here peel open your car like a sardine tin and have you all for lunch."

"We were handling it," Steve protested.

"No we weren't," Wilson muttered.

"Transportation has arrived, Sir," JARVIS informed him.

"Right!" Tony clapped his hands. "Well, as much as I'm sure the local commuters would love for us to stand around and chat in the middle of the freeway for a few more hours, I've got places to be, so let's say we get this show on the road by getting it off the road?"

Right on queue, — because let no one say that Rhodey didn't have fantastically dramatic timing, — a quinjet uncloaked right above his head. It took hardly any time for him to land, and between the two of them, Falcon, and the Legionnaires, they had both Stay Puft people statues loaded into the quinjet by the time local law enforcement arrived. Leaving the cleaning up to the cops and tow trucks, Tony quickly took off and set the quinjet's autopilot to head to the airport. He wasn't going to risk returning to SHIELD until he figured out why they were picking a fight with Captain America in the middle of a bunch of civilians.

As soon as they were in the air and headed in the right direction, Tony slipped out of the Iron Man suit and headed back to the holding bay.

"You gonna leave them like that?" Wilson asked, nodding at the two groups that were still stuck together.

Tony grinned. "It's tempting; I do love the post-Destructor battle look. But no."

"What is this stuff, anyway?" Steve asked. Tony could tell he was doing his best to wiggle and squirm, but Tony had made sure the polymer was super soldier proof. It wouldn't hold up against the heat of an Extremis soldier, and he'd yet to have a chance to test it on the Hulk, but the 'regular' kind of enhanced, like Steve and Romanoff, wouldn't be getting free any time soon.

"Stark Industry's latest, soon to be law enforcement standard issue," Tony replied cheerfully. "Fast acting, anti-riot polymer. I want to call it Time Out Goo, but Pep's a stick in the mud and she's insisting on more serious branding."

"So that bottle you gave me is the anti-goo goo?" Wilson asked, unable to hide his grin.

"Quick fix. It's mildly toxic in high doses, though, which is why it should only be used to clear breathing space until the slower, safer, method can be used to get rid of the rest."

Stripping off his under armor glove, Tony waited for someone to ask the right question.

In seconds, Natashalie willingly gave him the set up. "What's the safer method?"

Heating his hand to a very specific temperature, Tony held it out over her encased arms and made a deliberate pass. The polymer began evaporating beneath his fingers. "A highly specific combination of heat and light wavelengths," he explained cheerfully as the trio gaped. "Sitting outside in the sun for a few days is enough to vaporize any leftovers, so the whole city won't eventually be covered in it."

"Your hand is glowing," Wilson stated as Tony finished freeing Romanoff's hands and moved to her waist.

"Yup! It does that now. Of course we've developed a kind of combo heat gun and flashlight to hand out to law enforcement. Looks kind of like a hairdryer, but it does the job. I just happen to have a faster method." He was aware that Rhodey had gotten out of his own suit and charged up the reversal gun, and was now using it to free the SHIELD agents' hands and feet, before cuffing them, and then releasing them the rest of the way.

"Did you really experiment on yourself to be able to get rid of something called Time Out Goo?" Romanoff asked.

Tony scoffed. "That's a pretty judgemental way of saying 'thank you for freeing me right now instead of leaving me in the sun for three days', Agent Romanoff," he scolded. "And no, this is just a byproduct of something else." He was absolutely not going to get into his recent changes in front of Wilson and the STRIKE team.

Never let it be said that Natashalie didn't know which way the wind was blowing. "Thank you for freeing me right now instead of leaving me in the sun for three days, Stark," she parroted with a little smirk.

"There, that wasn't so hard!" Tony cheered as he freed her calf, allowing her to step away from the others. She quickly moved to Wilson's side to observe while staying out of the way. Tony switched to Steve, angling his hand carefully to keep from releasing the Winter Soldier at the same time. "So, what madcap adventure were you kids off on before the Winter Wonder here and STRIKE over there objected?"

"That's classified," Rogers said, tilting his chin up mulishly — at least as far as it would tilt while his hair was caught up in the hardened polymer.

"I have Top Secret clearance with the DoD as a defense contractor," Tony pointed out mildly. He doubted SHIELD would tell Steve something that highly classified anyway, since Fury did love his secrets. But Steve had actually found those energy weapons on the helicarrier during Loki's invasion, so it was entirely possible he'd lucked his way into something serious.

"This is higher than that," Rogers replied stubbornly.

Tony rolled his eyes, and gestured at Wilson with his free hand. "Right. But it was fine and dandy to tell a guy you met at the jogging track last week." Wilson looked chagrined, but Steve just dug his feet in.

"Sam's in the military—"

"Staff Sergeant Wilson is retired," Rhodey said, striding across the cargo hold. "Unlike myself, who is an active duty Colonel in the Air Force." Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Wilson stiffen up and give a salute, which Rhodey returned almost unconsciously. "Believe me, anything you think you can tell him, you can definitely tell me."

"Steve," Romanoff said softly. "They could help. You heard Sitwell — Stark's on the list too."

"But after what we saw—"

"That's why Stark has more reason than any of us to want to take down Hydra," she countered.

Tony could tell the moment that Steve capitulated, even though he was in the middle of thawing out his legs; the tension seemed to drain out of him all at once. Finished, Tony stood up, deciding to leave the Winter Soldier in place for the moment. He did have super soldier strength cuffs on the quinjet, but he'd rather not risk it without more information. "So, finally decided to clue me in?"

"We found out Hydra is alive and well and hiding inside SHIELD," Rogers spat out, which, kudos to him, actually managed to surprise Tony.

"They're going to commandeer Project Insight to take out enemies of Hydra instead of SHIELD," Romanoff added.

"Huh. Not what I was expecting," Tony admitted. "JARVIS, use our backdoor into those helicarriers we designed to ground them until further notice."

"Done, Sir. Would you like the Project Insight satellites to be taken offline as well?"

"Why not? Let's be thorough," Tony agreed.

"Wise as always, Sir," JARVIS snarked back.

"Wait, you knew?" Steve looked stunned.

"About Hydra? Of course not. About Insight? Well yeah. Top Secret clearance, remember? Honestly I thought that might be what this was all about. You found out about Project Insight and got your morally righteous patriot panties in a bunch. I figured that was the most logical reason for you to be fighting against SHIELD agents," Tony waved vaguely at the gang still contained behind him. For a military man, Steve picked the strangest things to get hung up about sometimes, and SHIELD's shadier ideas were definitely the kinds of things that would usually set him off. "It wouldn't explain Natashalie, here, but she's switched teams before, so…" he shrugged.

She met his gaze blankly, neither protesting nor denying. "Hydra though, that's… actually surprising. J, when you're done saving the free world, pull up everything SHIELD's got on Hydra."

"Stark— Tony. Before you do that, there's something you should know," Romanoff placed her hand on his forearm gently, and she actually sounded concerned for Tony, which sent alarm bells ringing in his mind. Even when she was pretending to be his PA she hadn't sounded that caring towards him. Rhodey clearly had the same gut reaction, as he shifted ever so slightly closer to Tony's back.

"The… files we found… h— it was heavily implied that Hydra killed your parents. That it wasn't an accident."

Tony hadn't spent years hiding his feelings from sharks in both the press and the boardroom for nothing. And he'd learned a few extra tricks in self control from Bruce since gaining his fiery new enhancements. Immediately, Tony slammed down his internal shields and allowed a lazy press smile to spread across his face. He turned to look at the handful of men who were arrayed on the floor, bound hand and foot, gagged, and guarded by his Legionnaires. "Well, I suppose it's a good thing we've got some Hydra goons hanging out here just begging to be tort— oops, I mean questioned, isn't it?"

Tony smirked down at them, and quickly picked out the leader — he looked the least impressed with Tony's swagger. JARVIS followed his gaze and the nearest Legionnaire quickly slipped off the man's gag.

"You don't scare us, Stark," he spat. "You may have stopped us for a moment, but Hydra never fails. Cut off one head; two more shall take its place! When Insight launches, we'll kill you, Rhodes, and your CEO bitch. Even the Widow. You're nothing in the face of Hydra's might."

"Oh really?" Tony's smirk deepened. "At the risk of sounding like a cliche, do you even know who I am?"

"Yeah, Iron Man," he replied dismissively.

"And what does that mean?" Tony prompted.

"Iron Man. Threat level eight. Neutralize at all costs." Came an unexpected voice. Tony turned and found it belonged to the Winter Soldier. His eyes remained covered, but Tony had the unmistakable feeling that he was still — and had always been — paying very close attention.

"So?" Despite his words, the Hydra agent's voice had a note of fear in it, buried beneath the bravado. Tony latched onto it.

"Perhaps our dear Black Widow can help the slow section of the class," Tony said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Who was I before I was Iron Man?"

"Tony Stark," came the growl.

"No, the Merchant of Death," she corrected smugly.

"Merchant of Death. Threat level nine. Avoid." The Winter Soldier helpfully chimed in.

"Hang on, giving you a suit of armor made you lose a threat level?" Rhodey asked, baffled.

Natashalie chuckled. "No, gaining morals cost him a threat level. Iron Man's a good guy. That's why you're only a six, Rhodes."

"Well that's just uncalled for," Rhodey protested. "I'm literally a trained soldier—"

Tony tuned out their banter, closed his eyes, and focused. Deep inside him, the ember of Extremis sparked up and burned brightly. Tony knew from experimentation that the Starkanium blue had now seeped into his eyes, making them glow brightly. Opening his eyes and turning back to the Hydra agents, he saw fear draining the smugness from their faces.

Holding up a hand, Tony concentrated. He hadn't figured out how to create free floating fireballs without a chemical to ignite, but he had, through trial and error, managed to superheat the air over his hand hot enough to create a tiny ball of plasma. It also elevated the air around him to an alarming degree, so he couldn't hold it too close to Rhodey or anything he wanted un-singed, but it looked incredible from a reasonable distance and made his inner science nerd shout with glee. Rolling it back and forth over his fingers like a fidget toy, Tony said conversationally. "Did you know that lava, the stuff that comes out of a volcano, is only about 1,400 degrees Kelvin? The sun itself, by comparison, is just under 6,000 degrees Kelvin."

He shifted from his lazy, nothing-bothers-me smile to the razor sharp smirk that had always made CEOs twenty years his senior quake in their very expensive Italian shoes. "So when I tell you that this little ball of plasma right here is almost 8,000 degrees Kelvin, I want you to have an accurate frame of reference."

"Tony, no incinerating our enemies until after they've told us what we want to know," Rhodey said, projecting the perfect blend of scolding and indifference. He might have morals, but he'd spent years playing the straight man to Tony's crazy; he knew how to improvise and roll with the punches with the best of them. Tony was actually more surprised that Steve hadn't protested yet, though a glance told him the Capsicle was staring intently at the Winter Soldier.

"And that's why you're only a level six threat, Rhodes," Natashalie murmured cheekily.

To a man, their captives began tripping over themselves to spill their guts. If they hadn't been gagged the cacophony would have been annoyingly loud. Tony dissipated the plasma ball with a snap of his fingers, though the Extremis still smoldered beneath the surface, fueled by his continued anger. "All yours, Sugarbear, Widow," he said with false cheer. "Call me if anyone needs more… persuasion." With that he strode back to the cockpit to talk to JARVIS in private.

Tony was going to find out who in Hydra had ordered his parents' murder, (and who in SHIELD had covered it up for years) and who had intended Tony and his new family to join them now through Project Insight. And then he was going to destroy every single one of them. He was going to raze Hydra to the ground, burn out their nests, and cauterize every last head that Howard had missed the first time around. Because Starks don't leave the job unfinished.