#so that he would be the one handling the sale of her father’s Stark Industries stock

[daydreamerdrew]

Iron Man (1968) #63

[avengerscompound]

The Hamptons’ House: 2009 - 2

The Hamptons’ House:  A Iron Man Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 1803

Pairing:  Tony Stark x F!Reader

Warnings: Angst, mentions of torture, illness, and PTSD

Synopsis: When Tony goes missing for three months in Afghanistan you grieve his death.  His subsequent return and outing as Iron Man means your first time seeing him in the Hamptons carries a lot of emotion and questions.

2009: Part 2

Tony woke just as the sun began to rise and he crawled out from between the pocket that you and Kurt had made around him.  He was reluctant to get up.  It was nice to wake up cuddled up with other people and he really relished his time with you.  He’d like to just lie there until you both woke and then spend the morning finding other reasons to stay in bed, but he had a few things to take care of before you woke, and it would be nice to take the time to watch the sunrise over the ocean.  He wasn’t completely sure he’d get another chance to see it.

He went to the workbench in his room.  It hadn’t changed much since he’d installed JARVIS.  The only new thing on there was the device he had made to check his blood toxicity level.

He’d known when he’d first made the miniaturized arc reactor having it embedded in his chest would be dangerous.  Palladium was toxic, but the toxins would kill him much slower than the pieces of shrapnel floating around in his chest so he’d hoped that he’d be able to find some alternative to the palladium, preferably before it killed him.  In the meantime, he was trying to live a little healthier.  He’d been drinking chlorophyll smoothies to try and negate the poisoning.

He pricked his finger and watched as the display lit up.

Blood Toxicity 06%.

Not too bad - he could work with that.  He would need to figure out how to get that under control though because at the rate it was going up, he was barely going to clear his next birthday.

He put the device aside and looked out the window.  He could worry about that later.  Now he had to worry about how he was going to tell you what had happened to him and how it was still not over.

He hadn’t really told anyone what had happened.  Not all of it anyway.  Some people knew parts.  Everyone knew he had been in the cave and about inventing the arc.  No one knew about the waterboarding or how from months after he got home when he got in the shower and the water hit his face - he would flinch.  Pepper, Rhodey, and some of SHIELD knew about Obidiah - but no one else.  No one knew about the dance with Pepper or how he’d realized he was falling in love with her and he was fairly certain she felt the same way.

He wanted to tell you.  You of all people wouldn’t hold any of it against him or pressure him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with.  It wasn’t going to be easy though.

“Tony?”

You spoke at barely above a whisper and yet the sound startled him in the quiet room.  He jumped a little and spun around in his chair.  Kurt still slept soundly, but you were sitting up, looking at him.  You’d pulled the sheet up to cover yourself but your breast was exposed.  He could see the look of worry on your face and a wave of guilt hit him.  He hated how upset you’d been last night.  He’d wished he could have protected you from that fear, and he had been grateful that he’d never actually started dating you in the first place.  He could only imagine how panicked you’d be if it had just been the two of you.

Tony’s automatic reaction was to smile.  It wasn’t real and he knew you’d see through it.  He hated using that smile on you, but it had become so natural to wear it.  When he realized what he was doing he let the facade fall again.  “Hey,” he whispered.  “Go back to sleep.  It’s early.”

You climbed out of bed and moved to him.  When you reached him, he wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you close, resting his forehead on your bare chest.  “Why are you up?” You whispered.

“Guess I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.  “Needed to get my thoughts in order.”

“Yeah?” You asked.  “Like what?”

He pulled back and looked up at you.  “Maybe we should go downstairs so we don’t wake, Kurt.”

You nodded and pulled away, going to your bag and pulling out a sleep shirt and a robe.  The two of you headed downstairs together.  The house was a hive of activity.  In the kitchen, the cooks were preparing breakfast-to-go for the party guests that were sleeping off the events of last night.  Tony paused just long enough to ask them to bring you something out to the patio before moving on.  There were maids and cleaners and Happy’s security team waking up people and moving them on as they cleaned up.  All over the living room and out on the deck people were blearily getting dressed and making their way to the buffet table that had been set up with tea, coffee, and juice and was being laden down with toast and breakfast sandwiches.

People called out happy birthday to him, but no one tried very hard to engage.  He was glad of that at least.  You followed him to the hammock and when he was comfortably lying in it, he pulled you down on top of him.

The sun was now a semi-circle on the horizon making the sky a mix of orange, pink, and purple.  You settled against him, resting your head on his shoulder, and staring out over the ocean with hooded eyes.  There was a pain in his chest where you were leaning against him.  He hurt most of the time since Afghanistan.  Having a hole carved out of your ribs and a battery shoved in where they used to be was bound to be painful.  Still, he took it.  Pain meant he was alive, and right now, that meant he was here with you.

“You gonna tell me everything?”  You asked quietly.

He rubbed your back and gave a small nod.  “Yeah,” he said.  “But I need you to promise me something, you can’t tell anyone.  Not Kurt.  Not some random friend you know who doesn’t know me.  Not Rhodey.  Especially not Rhodey.  He’ll just worry and get in my way and … I can’t do that to him.”

“You’re scaring me, Tony,” you said.

“Promise me, Cookie.  Promise me or I won’t tell you anything,” he said.

You took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  You looked up into his eyes and gave a small nod.  “I promise.  It stays between you and me.”

Tony kissed you softly and ran his palm up and down your back.  This was it.  He was going to unburden himself of everything and he hoped that you were the person he could do that with without regrets.

“I was making a sale in Afghanistan.  Obidiah had convinced me it was better if we did the demonstration on site.  I ate it up…”

Tony told you everything.  About how he’d been arguing with Rhodey before it happened.  How he’d been joking with the soldiers just before the explosion.  How he’d watched those soldiers die right in front of his eyes just before a bomb landed beside him with the Stark Industries’ logo on it and everything had gone black.

He told you about waking up with them making a recording for Obidiah (though he hadn’t known it at the time).  He told you about waking up again and how Yinsen had saved his life by putting a battery in his chest.  How he’d been asked to make more weapons and that when he refused they’d tortured him.  The fact that Yinsen kept trying to befriend him, and by the time Tony did trust the man, he’d already built the miniature arc reactor and had started making the metal suit.

He told you about fighting his way out.  Watching Yinsen die.  Blowing up as many of his own weapons as he could.  Rhodey finding him in the desert.  Deciding he was changing the direction of the company.  Of building a new arc reactor.  A new suit.  How Obidiah had been the one that ordered the hit.  How the man who had acted like his stand-in-father had stolen his heart right out of his chest and left him to die.  How Tony had ended up killing him with Pepper’s help and some secret government organization had covered it up.

He didn’t just tell you about the events that led him to become Iron Man though.  He’d also told you about the dance with Pepper and how he was definitely in love with her and that he was pretty sure she felt the same way but neither of them seemed to be willing to do anything about it.  He told you part of the reason why he wasn’t willing to move it forward was that the very device keeping him alive was also killing him and he didn’t have it in him to put her through losing him if they moved from being boss and employee to lovers.

He didn’t leave out one single thing.  The staff brought you both breakfast and left it on a table beside the hammock.  You both left it practically untouched as he spoke, just pausing to sip his chlorophyll smoothie or coffee briefly from time to time.  When he was done the house had cleared out and was almost completely clean, and the sun was up.  You were crying silently, tear tracks staining your cheeks.

“Oh, Tony,” you whispered.

“Please,” he said.  “I don’t want pity, okay?  I’m working on it.  You’re the only one I trust to tell all this to.”

“It’s so much, Tony,” you said.  “You need help.”

He sighed and pressed his lips to the top of your head.  “I promise, I can handle it.  And if it gets to the point that it’s too much, I’ll tell Rhodey.  But I invented this thing -” he tapped the casing on the arc, “- in a cave, under pressure, by myself.  I’m the best one to fix it.  If Rhodey and Pepper are worrying too much, it’ll just distract me.”

You frowned and nodded.  He tilted your chin up to face him.  “Now, you know,” he said.  “But the world out there isn’t part of what we have here.  Right?”

You nodded.  “Right.”

“So, we’re just going to do what we always do,” he said.  “Hang by the pool.  Relax.  Fuck.  Enjoy ourselves.  Right?”

“Right,” you agreed.  He smiled and leaned in and kissed you.  You hummed, wrapping your arms around his neck.

The sliding door opened and closed and he pulled back, looking over to see Kurt watching you both.

“Where’d you guys go?”  He asked.

Tony smirked and held out his hand.  “Why don’t you get over here and find out?”

// NEXT

[a-tragedy-told-in-metals]

A Tragedy Told In Metals: Copper & Arsenic

Chapter: 2 link AO3

Playlist (Youtube) Playlist (Spotify)

Songs 4-8 apply to this chapter

CW: past child sexual abuse, past child abuse, vomiting, panic attacks

Toni jumped awake, her heart beating in her chest a million miles an hour. She glanced around to find what was attacking her, but she wasn't even sure what to look for. The racing calmed down as her eyes and mind adjusted to being awake, and she saw Rhodey standing in her room.

“Rhodey bear!” Toni pushed herself up “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“Not kill you, just wake you up,” Rhodey said, sitting next to her on the bed

“You weren’t supposed to be coming today. Right?”

“No, but I was sent to give you this.”

Toni took a manila envelope from Rhodey and squinted at the writing in the dim light of her bedroom. Toi’s mouth ran dry at the words.

“They want my armour this bad,” Toni muttered.

“Well, yeah.”

“They can’t have it. I told them that months ago.”

“The US military is not big on the word ‘no’”

“I’m aware. “ Toni said through gritted teeth

“Look, I tried to tell them off, but I’m not exactly in a position to be telling the top brass what to do. Not to mention I’m known as a biased party.”

“I really don’t want to go in front of Congress.”

“They can subpoena people.”

“I know. But I’m just mad they think they have a right to my things. They are my things, what the fuck do they think they’re gonna do with it? They can’t even get their drones to shoot straight, they think they can understand the Iron Queen?”

“ I’m pretty sure they want to blow stuff up, they don’t care about understanding the tech. Not to mention this would bring Stark Industries back under the thumb of the military.

“Iron Queen has JARVIS built into it, no one knows about him.”

“Look I’m not saying give ‘em the full suit. But you do have to come to the meeting. For me?”

“Fine, whatever,” Toni grumbled.

“Thanks, baby girl.” Rhodey kissed the top of her head.

~~~~~

Toni was in her most official looking clothes, sitting on the stupid bench and being followed by both celebrity paparazzi and political news junkies. This is what always happens, everyone has to have an opinion. Having Happy and Rhodey backing her was nice; they made sure no creeps were right behind her. Rhodey gave her a reassuring smile from across the aisle. Toni just rolled her eyes back.

The Senators filed in, and Toni's stomach flopped when she spotted Stern amongst the assembled blowhards. The irritation she’d been carrying turned into thick repulsion.

The stupid hearing was called to start and Toni squeezed the edge of the seat hard to keep herself in the moment.

“Ms. Stark, we have called this hearing to discuss the matter of the weapon you call the Iron Queen armour. Do you understand?” Senator Williams, the head of the committee.

A spike of annoyance cut through the inky depths of shame and fear at his condescending tone “It’s not a weapon.”

“Then what is it, exactly?

“As you said, it’s armour. Not just some bomb or gun.”

A new Senator spoke, “We recognize it’s a complex weapon. Which is why we need it, this kind of tech could be so effective in the hands of people who have the ability to regulate it.”

“You don’t know how to regulate it-- also, since I’m the only one with it, isn't it already regulated?”

“Right now you’re the only one, but other people are already trying to replicate your weapon.”

A video of poor copies of her tech played over. The Senators listed the countries imitating her. None of them even had the repulsor tech to get the suits into flight. Not to mention none of them had a proper reactor; their poor copies of her arc reactor were dying before they could even get the first shot off.

“None of those people are even close to what I’ve made. Those aren’t a threat to anyone.”

“Right now none of them are. But you owe it to your country to allow us to have the tech to protect people. It’s what SI has been known to do, both Obadiah Stane and your father understood that. Your company has a history of patriotism, it would be a shame to let them down. ”

Toni glared at them. She stole a glance of Rhodey who had an expression that read “Oh fuck” and Toni took a deep breath.

“No, you see, I don't owe you anything. I said no more weapons sales and I meant it, and Iron Queen isn’t even Stark Industries property. I’ve been spending the last months giving back by protecting people and cleaning up the messes that Stark Industries has created, thanks to me and those men that you hold in such high esteem. By not giving it to you or anyone else, I'm already protecting people,” Toni said, her tone as measured as possible.

“But you have no right to monopolize this tech. A civilian shouldn’t have this power, especially not someone with your record of irresponsibility. Those suits are dangerous and rightfully belong to the government so you don’t cause any more mayhem. You will be compensated.” Senator Stern growled.

To her genuine surprise, her fear completely left her, rage burning through her veins instead as she stared down the man who had tried to rape her. She wanted more than anything to just punch him in his dumb, possessive mouth so he would never talk down to her again.

“Oh, but you see the armour and I are one and the same. I can’t give you just the suit. Buying the suit would be like buying me, a person. That sounds like prostitution which I’m sure the Senate doesn’t want to be a party too. Though now that I’m thinking about it, you have some experience in the area of buying women’s...no, girls’ bodies, don’t you Senator Stern?” Toni said, her voice sickly sweet and laced with venom.

Stern turned bright red and shouted “How dare you! You are accusing a United States Senator of such a thing?”

“Can we all calm down?” Senator Wiliams shouted

Toni leaned back in her chair and smiled. All the pompous dicks had their feathers all ruffled, it was kind of fun to cause such a fuss.

“Back to the topic at hand,” The now annoyed Senator Williams said, “I understand you have... reservations about sharing your work with us, but be advised we will continue to try and re-create your technology. Having your guidance would make the process run smoother.”

“Who are you having build it right now?” Toni asked, confused.

“Hammer tech.”

Toni snorted, they were so low on her radar. “Why even bother? They couldn’t make a Model One Stark phone without screwing it up.”

“Well, we don’t have many options considering you won’t work with us.”

“Then just stop trying to mess with things you don’t understand.” Toni shot back.

“Do you even understand what you are messing with, Ms. Stark? It’s dangerous to fly around in a weapon. People trained for combat should do it, don’t you think? You’re just not the right kind of person to operate this. Let people who understand national security and fighting wars handle this. You can handle the mechanics, that’s what you're good at. But you just don’t have the right temperament or skill set to do this.” Some really old man Toni had never seen before said fixing her with a faux kind look.

Yeah, no, he did not get to talk to her like that. Toni fixed the man with her best stare. “You never questioned if I knew what I was messing with when you got the stuff I built. You’re only butting in now because you don’t get to own it. You want to control it and use it in your wars, but for the thousandth time, Iron Queen is not a weapon to use in anybody's war. It's more than that. I built it to help people and to avoid collateral damage, not cause it.  You don’t own me, or The Iron Queen armour. And you never fucking will!”

Toni stood up and turned to leave. Happy thankfully jumped in front of her to part the sea of bodies. The flashing lights threatened to blind her, but she fumbled forward. Getting in her car, she sat down and closed her eyes. Toni flinched slightly when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s me, Toni,” Pepper said softly.

“Sorry for all that,” Toni said with a half laugh.

“Yeah, that’s gonna take some clean up. I think Rhodey is the one who’s gonna need an apology, though. He works with those men. Also, our PR department. They have to field the calls.”

Toni just grunted. Half way home they had to pull over for Toni to throw up her coffee. It was still humiliating to puke in front of Pepper, even if she had seen Toni wigged out and naked once.

~~~~~

Toni, Happy and Pepper were eating. The flight home from DC sucked. Toni had thrown up and then fallen asleep. But now the headache had faded enough for her to no longer feel like her head was spinning.

“You wanna let us know what all of that was?” Happy said gruffly.

“What do you mean? I just hate assholes like that.” Toni shrugged.

“Toni you were like the walking dead on the way home and threw up. That’s not just pissed off behaviour.”

“It’s just complicated and stupid.”

“Just tell us. If we couldn’t handle complicated then we wouldn’t be your friends.” Pepper replied

Toni looked up. The real reason she had lost control was because facing man who tried to rape he head on was not fun. Add on to that, the last man had sounded too much, too much like Obie. It hadn’t registered right away but now it was clear.  And of course, she really hated people wanting to use her, it felt shitty.

“Yeah, it wasn’t.”

“What was it?” Pepper said.

“Stern, he’s the man who... who drugged me that time Fury got me out. I wasn’t just being an ass, he really tried to buy me off to fuck him with drugs.”

“Bastard.” Happy muttered under his breath.

Toni half smiled at that. She met Pepper’s sympathetic expression and Happy mad on her behalf. She could tell them now. It was an opening, as organic a time as there ever would be. It wasn’t something they had to know, but they were her family. Toni wanted them to know, really.

“That’s not all though. It’s them wanting to use me, I’m tired of people always just wanting to control me.”

“I understand...” Pepper started.

“No, you don’t. Obi...Stane, you know he tried to kill me and stuff, but that’s not really the worst part. Starting when I was ten he...” Toni shuddered tears starting to flow from her eyes she looked away from both of them, “He sexually abused me till I was twenty. Do you remember when I thought I was pregnant Pep? He would have been the father.”

Pepper gasped bringing her hands to her mouth. Happy’s hand hit the counter with a grunt.

Staring at them, looking like they were in so much pain, Toni faltered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, I'm sorry,” was all she could think to say.

“God Toni, why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything wrong.” Pepper said.

To Tony's surprise, Happy brought her into a bone crushing hug, eliciting a small squeak from her.

“Sorry.” Happy said releasing her.

“It’s fine, you just caught me off guard,” Toni said giving him a smile.

“Why didn’t...why didn’t you tell us before?” Pepper asked.

Toni blew a harsh breath from her mouth, “I didn’t know it was wrong for a long time. I mean, I loved him, and I was ten, so I just assumed it had to be okay. It’s what am I good at anyway, ya know? So even when I realised it was kinda hinky for a grown man to have sex with an eleven-year-old I figured I’m a slut anyway, so how could it matter? I also assumed no one cared, or that you’d be mad at me, and if someone did do something I had no idea what I would do if someone took him away. It felt like it was my fault, still does a lot. I had to have done something wrong.. And I promised to never tell, so I didn't ever tell. I literally never told anybody until he died, I just let him do it.”

“Toni, it’s not your fault okay? And you’re not a slut. No one has the right to make someone else have sex with them,” Pepper said.

“And the only people who do that to kids are scum.” Happy said with a nod and an air of finality.

“Thanks,” Toni said.

It was nice to have people listen to her. She felt a tug in her chest, but it wasn’t sentimentality or rage. It was the burn of corroding skin.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Iron Man's Morality

by Damien F

Friday, 09 May 2008Damien F trys to figure out Iron Man's sense of right and wrong.~

This month saw the synthesised superhero Iron Man join the ever-increasing canon of Marvel characters adapted for the screen. Played Robert Downey Jr, and directed by Jon Favreau (who appears onscreen as some sort of unacknowledged personal assistant),

Iron Man refreshes Marvel's old metal-clad, commie-bashing trailblazer, who unknown but to a select few (which includes almost everyone. Iron Man has to be the least secret secret identity in the history of comic-books) is billionaire industrialist and genius arms manufacturer Tony Stark.

The best that can be said about this film is that it's not awful, raising it above the likes of Daredevil,The Fantastic Four and The Punisher, among others. It's a largely competent, if silly, two hours of Hollywood entertainment, and as the first blockbuster event-movie of the summer, it inspires hope that this season's offerings will be a significant improvement over last year's dreadful showing.

However, just as it avoids sinking to the lowest levels for this kind of film, it fails to hit the heights it aspires to. It lacks the intelligence and social consciousness that marked Batman Beyond and the X-Men series, as well as the sense of humanity that made the Spider-Man films essential for fans and newcomers alike.

Seemingly aware of this, Favreau has tried to inject Iron Man with another attribute: morality. The story, admirably faithful to the comic's origins, tells us of the playboy Stark who fails to recognise the consequences of his actions. Be they the friends left stranded at an award ceremony held in his honour while he parties with floozies at a Las Vegas casino, or the innocents killed by the weapons he produces. As he explains to a hostile reporter (shortly before bedding her), his products are essential in maintaining a global balance of power, which ultimately serves to save lives. He has a change of heart, however, when he is captured by terrorists in Afghanistan while displaying the latest Stark Industries weapon the "Jericho" to military officials. Here he sees the true effect his weapons are having on the world, as the terrorists are armed with his company's products. They demand he builds for them their own Jericho. Instead Tony builds an electric-powered suit of armour for himself under their noses and makes good his escape. Afterwards, vowing to protect the people put in harms way by his weaponry, he fashions a more sophisticated, stylish version of the suit and becomes Iron Man, flying around the world at super-sonic speed destroying the militias armed with Stark Industry weapons.

Unfortunately, his morality becomes the film's most critical malfunction. The Iron Man suit is armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers, and Tony expresses no qualms about killing those who apparently deserve being killed. Effectively, it's a weapon itself, and we're expected to accept that its presence makes the world safer when the sale of Jericho missiles represents such a threat? Perhaps the answer to this lies in who controls the weapons. Where as Stark missiles were sold on a free market, the Iron Man suit is owed and operated by nobody but Tony. However, just as he was naive to believe his weapons would only be used by forces interested in stabilising world peace, it transpires that Tony can't protect the technology for the suit falling into the wrong hands. The issue of a central a source of control of power is also belied by a scene where Iron Man confronts a group attacking an unidentified Middle-Eastern village. After killing the foot-soldiers, he delivers their leader to the villagers and invites them to do what they like with him before flying away and leaving them at it. We jump from highly central military control to mob justice in a single breath.

The confused nature of the films morality is not helped by its generic look at international conflicts. We are told that Tony is kidnapped in Afghanistan, but the true aims of his kidnappers are never fully explained. We can't write them off as the Taliban, as they seem to be a loose alliance of terrorists from all over the world. Following this the film alludes to ethnic-cleansing of regions by the same group, but we are never told why. The Marvel comics have rarely strayed from addressing real-life events such as Northern Ireland or 9/11 (the Marvel superheroes are currently being drafted to the image of the UN). These are usually discussed in a highly superficial way, but it's admirable that they have the nerve to discuss them at all. For a film that seeks to address the affects of Western military involvement in the developing world, it would have been refreshing if they referred directly to the arming of real-life militias, such as the Taliban by Western governments rather than just gutlessly allude to it.

It should be said, however, that one real-life conflict does get a look in. We are given numerous references to World War Two, as we are repeatedly told how Tony's father worked on the Manhattan Project. Presumably the building of the atomic bomb is meant to serve as a metaphor for the construction of a hyper-powered suit of armour. Prior to his kidnapping, Tony tells us that the ideal weapon is not one you never have to use but one you only have to use once. The allusion to the atomic bomb is clear. The trouble with this is that Tony is never asked to consider if the bomb was a mistake. For all the people who mention his father's role in the project, nobody asks if he regretted this or stood by the project. An internal debate over the true nature of nuclear weapons, be they war at its most corrupt and evil or the single stabilising factor in conflicts between super-states, might have serve to address the flaws in the films muddied morality. As it stands, this is just a wasted opportunity.

For those interested in seeing this film, these flaws should not dissuade you. Fans of the comics can rejoice the film's faithfulness to its source material. They even manage to fit in Iron Man's original clunky, aesthetically displeasing armour. Praise can also be bestowed on Downey's performance as Tony Stark. A few eyebrows were raised when the decision to give him the role was announced, as it was doubted the former wild-boy could handle a leading role on such a major production, and his physic could hardly be described as super-powered. However, I suspect fans were delighted with the casting, as his hell-raising antics were suitably in tune with the charismatic Stark. On screen, the choice seems inspired. Jeff Bridges also has a ball as the villain Ironmonger. However, Gwyneth Paltrow is simply annoying as the love interest Pepper Potts. And then there's that bloody reporter, who keeps turning up like a crazed stalker ex-girlfriend.

The special effects for the suit are a joy to watch, but the action sequences lack a required energy. Watching metallic men fight serves only to remind us how much more fun last year's Transformers was. Overall, Iron Man is far from essential, but enjoyable enough if you do give it a chance. I just wish they figured out the sermon before taking to the alter.

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TV & Movies

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Arthur B

at 13:15 on 2008-05-09The thing is, Tony Stark is basically a neo-con (witness his role in the recent

Civil War

storyline, which I have been glancing at from afar and tutting at), or rather a comic book writer's vision of a neo-con, so it's probably no surprise that his moral agenda is actually kind of silly and incoherent. From what you say, the film seems to bear this out. Before he's kidnapped he's a pre-9/11 neo-con, selling weapons to the world in the name of an American-dominated balance of terror. Then he has his own personal 9/11 experience, and realises that he can't let proxies do all the work, but has to go out into the world and kick ass all by himself, like George Bush rustlin' up a posse and ridin' out into Afghanistan (briefly) before tackling Iraq. The incoherent presentation of the enemy only matches the incoherent presentation of Terrorism by the Bush administration: are terrorists weak lunatics living in caves, or are they a vast international conspiracy devoted to taking over the world and imposing a global Caliphate? Are we in Iraq to fight terrorists or are we there to allow the Iraqis to choose the government they actually want (which might perhaps include a few terrorists)?

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:34 on 2008-05-21I read this with interest, having a couple of days ago been coaxed into going to see the film with a friend. I agree that it's not a terribly morally sophisticated film, and one might have wished for a bit more exploration of interesting problems. But I think there are a few things to say in its defence.

First, there's a bit of a suggestion here that the film is internally contradictory in that both Iron Man and the film itself appear to espouse a certain moral outlook but Iron Man then behaves in a way inconsistent with this outlook and the film appears to endorse this behaviour. There is an element of this, but not a great deal, I'd suggest.

For example, Damien says that "[t]he Iron Man suit is armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers, and Tony expresses no qualms about killing those who apparently deserve being killed." We need to distinguish between the two suits. The first one is certainly pretty heavily armed, and he does indeed use it to injure and kill people; but I'd say that's reasonably consistent and plausible in the context of the film as a whole, for several reasons. First, the materials from which he constructs this first suit are themselves armaments of various kinds, and the nature of the materials in such cases may tend to dictate the nature of the final product. Secondly, his main objective at this point is to escape from heavily armed captors who he reasonably believes intend to kill him, and even if we objectively don't accept that the life of one American millionaire is worth more than the lives of several dozen Afghan terrorists we can be reasonably forgiving if he takes the attitude that it's them or him and he knows which option he prefers. Thirdly, he hasn't at this stage had his full-blown epiphany, which seems only to occur with the death of the chap who helped him build the suit. So even if his behaviour at this point isn't especially moral it's at least not altogether hypocritical.

When it comes to the second suit, the criticism is much more deserved, but I would point out that the film makes some sort of attempt to deal with the problem. It's made clear that the initial idea is to make a suit that enables the wearer to fly, and that's it. What later turns out to be the main weapon is originally meant to be a flight-stabilizer, as we're told quite explicitly. He only conceives of using them destructively when, already in a state of considerable frustration, he discovers that his company is still deliberately selling weapons to terrorists. At this point he sets off to visit a terrorist camp and destroy said weapons. Arriving, he does a pretty reasonable job of destroying the artillery without undue injury to the terrorists themselves. When he finds civilians being held at gun-point he does then start killing off terrorists, but again that comes comfortably within what appear to be the film's moral rules since it's a necessary means of protecting innocent people. Where it really does fall down is the fact that he kills the hostage-takers with little shoulder-mounted rockety things that have no obvious flight-related function and must presumably have been intended as weapons when Stark designed the suit. Although that's still some distance from the suit being "armed with all manner of guns to rocket launchers", it still kind of undermines the 'it's only meant to fly' defence. But I still think it's worth noting that the film-makers have at least bothered to put the 'it's only meant to fly' defence in there in the first place, which shows some awareness of the problem of Stark looking self-contradictory.

There also seem to be an implication that the film is unclear or incoherent about what its moral stance is. Again I'm not sure that this is entirely deserved. It's possible to set out in fairly straightforward terms what the moral rules in the film seem to be:

- the USA is good;

- terrorists are bad;

- killing terrorists is okay, at least when they pose a real and moderately imminent threat to civilians and / or Americans;

- killing civilians is not okay;

- killing Americans is not okay unless they are evil super-villains;

- selling weapons to terrorists is bad;

- selling weapons to the US government is probably okay in principle but only with proper controls and mechanisms of accountability to ensure the weapons are used for 'good' ends (such as killing terrorists) and don't end up in the hands of terrorists.

Those rules probably accord pretty well with what a lot of Americans believe, and Iron Man's behaviour in the film by and large follows those rules. They even accommodate Stark facilitating the probably lynching of the bearded terrorist leader (which of course is a pretty close analogy for letting the Iraqis hang the not-wholly-dissimilar-looking Saddam), who is after all a terrorist. If it looks to us as though Stark's failing to live up to his new-found pacifism, it's because he's actually not a pacifist, and never says he is. We make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people for a maker and seller of weapons suddenly stopping making and selling weapons; but his conversion is actually a much more limited one that probably makes a lot more sense to the film's target audience.

Of course that brings us straight to what I think is Damien's main point, which is that it's rather disappointing that the film, having decided to ask questions about the arms-trade, comes up with such mainstream American answers without even exploring any other options with any sort of seriousness. That's absolutely right. But even here I'd raise a very partial defence by saying that we may be asking a bit much of the film given what it is. It doesn't tell us what the terrorists' aims are (well, actually it does tell us what their immediate aims are: they've been hired by Stane to kill Stark but when they find out who Stark is they decide he's worth more than what they've been paid and so they decide to force him to build them a big rocket; but it doesn't tell us about the over-all political cause to which this is, as it were, a side-quest). But if it did, wouldn't it then risk becoming a film about "is it right to sell weapons to these particular people in view of their political agenda?" rather than "is it right to sell weapons to terrorists in general?" And it's true that it doesn't engage very meaningfully with the point about the Manhattan project (though I must point out that Stark himself does at one point say he wishes he'd asked his father how he felt about his work). But then again wouldn't any remotely serious examination of the ethics of the atomic bomb be such a big subject as to entirely hijack a superhero action movie and turn it into something quite different?

Again, I don't want to say that the film isn't rather superficial in its treatment of moral questions and rather banal and unchallenging in its answers to those questions. It is. But at least it does (1) show a very limited awareness that the questions exist, (2) come up with a reasonably coherent (if irritatingly Bush-compatible) moral framework, and (3) make some effort to make sense of the apparent paradox of a chap using weapons-technology to destroy weapons. I'm not really sure it could have done much more while still being a superhero block-buster, just like Juno couldn't really do justice to the question of abortion while still being a cute romantic / tennage-pregnancy comedy. X-Men can do more because it does it by metaphor (mutant = black / gay / foreign) and therefore doesn't have to engage with the complex details of real situations. Spider-Man can do more because it concentrates on character and issues that occur on the ordinary human level rather than the social or political level. I'm not sure that Iron Man, given what it was, could really have done much better than it did.

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Dan H

at 09:34 on 2008-05-23Jamie pretty much sums up everything I was going to say about this (although I've not seen the film, I don't see anything inherently contradictory about "it's okay to sell weapons to some people but not others" - it's the same "contradiction" you get in pretty much all movies, books, or whatever with a strong action element. Good Guys pretty much always kill a whole mess o' folks).

What I actually wanted to say was that this reminds me of something a friend of mine once said about

Batman Begins

- on the one level it's trying to be a serious exploration of the nature of fear, but ultimately it's a movie about a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime. I think the simple fact is that superhero movies have to work with the themes which their frequently ludicrous premises allow.

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Wardog

at 16:37 on 2008-05-23Mmmm...I'm almost curious now, thanks to Damien and Jamie, but Iron Man has never really appealed to my imagination. I don't know, although I can get behind a man who wants to dress a bat and fight crime, I can't work up the enthusiasm for a guy who makes himself a robot-suit and blows up terrorists.

(I feel terrible - Jamie and Dan and Arthur have said all these insightful things and I've just made this pointlessly frivolous observation)

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Damien F

at 11:18 on 2008-05-27Jamie, I see where you're coming from. Your points on the first suit are spot on, but to be honest I really wasn't considering the first suit when writing the piece. Also, I suppose it's true it does come up with a Bush-flavoured morality (which is a trend I've noticed running through the comics for many years now). Stark arms terrorists and then takes it upon himself to disarm them. The problem I have with this is that it simply ignores the outcomes of these actions, in a pretty literal scenes. Look at your liking of leaving the beardy terrorist to civilians to the lynch-mob "justice" handed down to Saddam (which is something I admit I didn't spot myself). After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

There was also a point I wanted to work into the piece but couldn't figure out how. At one point shortly before the fore-mention scene, Iron Man's computer-Jervis-thing distinguishes the terrorists from civilians and dispatches them accordingly. This is a horribly black-and-white approach to its subject matter.

There are two further points I wish to dispute. First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.

Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.

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Arthur B

at 11:43 on 2008-05-27

After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

Are you sure that the film-makers weren't intending you to come away with the impression that Iron Man is a bit lazy and irresponsible? I've not seen the film, so it's down to those that have to make the call, but when I saw the trailers they seemed to suggest a bit of moral ambiguity on Stark's part (which would make sense given his not-exactly-clean history in the comics).

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Jamie Johnston

at 17:35 on 2008-05-27After this scene, Iron Man simply flies away, refusing accountability for what might happen. This was in my opinion lazy and irresponsible, on both Iron Man's part and the film-makers.

Yes, that was certainly the moment that put the greatest strain on my efforts to regard him as heroic. Arthur may be right to guess that at that point in the film we were supposed to be feeling a bit uneasy about his behaviour, especially since that's followed by what must have been quite a challenging scene for a patriotic American audience, in which a handful of US fighter 'planes try to shoot Iron Man down and he ends up (albeit accidentally) causing one of them to crash. Possibly we were only meant to come fully behind Iron Man when he saves the bailed-out pilot. It's hard to say.

Actually that brings to mind another point I hadn't thought about: the most morally problematic parts of the film are these bits in the middle, where he's engaged in his minimally thought-out anti-terrorist exercise. It gets much simpler when he comes back and gets stuck in to the 'main' plot of (1) stopping the technology falling into the hands of the clear-cut crazy villain and (2) trying not to get killed by the clear-cut crazy villain. Which I guess is one of the main things about super-heroes in general: much of the time, the thing that stops us regarding them as morally questionable is the fact that they're clearly better than whatever implausibly evil villain they're fighting. And that's a point that I suppose supports your argument more than mine, in that the least morally successful bits of the film are, as you've said, the ones where Iron Man is engaging with vaguely real-world issues like terrorism and the international arms trade.

First, your argument that a more socially-conscious film would have spoilt its blockbuster fun. It may have been harder to make such a film, but not impossible. Since the Victorian days, good sci-fi has always been allegorical.

Ah, well, yes, I wouldn't want to say it's impossible, but I think your point about allegory is important, and it links with my rather brief earlier comparison to the 'X-Men' films. The latter are genuinely allegorical, and I'd say that's what makes it easier for them to produce both moderately worthwhile moral / social commentary and super-hero blockbuster fun. What they don't do is what 'Iron Man' does attempt and, as you say, doesn't do very well, which is to have the characters get literally involved in real-world situations. The X-Men don't literally fight against homophobes or xenophobes, and they don't literally get hauled up before the Committee On Un-American Activities. If they did, then I'd say there's a good chance those films would end up just as unsatisfactory in that respect as 'Iron Man', because when you allegorize you can both simplify and dramatize much more easily and effectively.

Second, the assertion that "we make that assumption because it's the most obvious explanation to an audience of arty young British thinking people". I'm Irish.

Ah, my apologies! Actually so am I, at least on paper, thanks to Ireland's wonderfully welcoming rules of citizenship. My new harp-emblazoned passport is in the post at the moment, in fact. But you know what I mean. :)

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Wardog

at 16:46 on 2008-05-28I'm just going to start wildly throwing out opinions here despite not having seen the movie because, well, hey it's never stopped me before. I think the thing about X-Men which is, as you say, genuinely allegorical is that although if you were to Take It Very Seriously you could say it's about social acceptance / xenophobia, what it's most convincingly about is being a teenager, specifically the sort of clever, socially-awkward, comic-reading sort of teeanger that I and, ahem, I suspect several of us here were once upon a time - feeling different to, and excluded from, the rest of the world. And because it's very personal it doesn't strain credibility. Whereas it seems to me (from my position of total ignorance) that using comic book heroes to comment on wider social / political issues only draws attention to how necessarily and inappropriately simplistic such commentary must be.

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:28 on 2008-06-02Mmm, yes, I hadn't thought of that but you're quite right. I guess that comes out better in the films than in the comics, in some ways, because (apart from periodic returns to The Original Point) the comics have tended to forget about the teenaged and school-based part of the X-Men scenario. Not that adult characters living in secret headquarters in a volcano / on the moon / wherever can't also be metaphors for awkward brainy teenagers, but less so.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/kVNzzlR0hezU7J7swspEMkT_LFLpag--#8a2c5

at 23:00 on 2012-07-10

the true aims of his kidnappers are never fully explained

OK, I know this article isn't exactly new, but I have to point out: we find out near the end why Tony was abducted by the militia -- it's in the video Pepper finds when she's spying for Tony. Obediah hired them to kill Tony; they tried to do so with big explosives from a distance; when they failed and saw him close up, they recognized him, so they took him hostage and forced their captive doctor to patch him up so they could get some weapons out of him on the cheap before finishing the job (after extorting more money out of Obediah, of course).

If you mean the overarching aims, the stuff they want the weapons for, I don't actually think that's necessary. In fact, I think that by leaving it open, it makes it more obvious 1, how many nasty things go on in that part of the world, often aided and abetted by the US Military and 2, how little Tony really knows about what's going on with his business.

[tisfan]

Holiday Spending

All I Buy For Christmas - Renting in the New Year - Will you Steal My Valentine - Up for (Mardi) Grabs - Hopping Down the Money Trail - (In) Memorial Day Sale - (Folding) Paper Anniversary | (Financial) Independence Day

A/N: I swear, I spend all my time apologizing to you guys about this fic, don’t I? Anyway, warning for blood, warning for gore, and warning for cliffhanger.

SERIOUSLY. You have been warned. If you can’t handle a cliffhanger, you want to stop reading now and come back in September when I post the next chapter. (And I totally don’t blame you if that’s your choice!)

Still, happy ending (eventually) so, you know, just read with caution. (This fic is NOT a deathfic. Just saying.)

Chapter Nine: Back to School Fundraiser

Things were never as simple as Tony made them out to be. They were certainly never as simple as he wanted them to be.

First off, after consulting with the head of security for Stark Industries, Happy Hogan, he’d discovered that there was no way that Bucky could possibly be the entirety of Tony’s security. The fact that Tony even had a head of security was mind-bogglingly weird. It wasn’t that he didn’t know his father had bodyguards from time to time, especially for out-of-the-country appearances, but it really hadn’t occurred to Tony that these things would transfer, along with the ownership of the company itself.

Bucky had turned in his two weeks notice at the Red Room, and he’d also -- on Happy’s recommendation -- signed up for a two-week refresher course. Technically, Bucky had never done the basic course, but after some performance reviews with a trainer, it was decided that his years as special forces and his work as a bouncer had given him a lot of the basics and he mostly just needed things like disarming techniques and a few pointers.

Which meant for the beginning of the semester, at least, Tony was on rotation with some of the new bodyguards that had been assigned to him.

Which further meant that Tony had to do a lot of paperwork for making sure his bodyguards were allowed on campus.

He liked Sunset, she was one of the women who’d come in for the interviews -- Happy had suggested that he talk with the various assignees before accepting them into his detail -- and had been polished, intelligent, easy on the eyes. She’d also been frighteningly competent. Tony had watched her in the gym while she did a demonstration, taking down half a dozen men who’d been promised a five thousand dollar bonus if they could pin her for three seconds.

They’d all failed. Spectacularly.

The nicest thing about Sunset was, however, the fact that she didn’t terrify people. (Or Tony. Tony didn’t really want to admit that Eugene Thompson scared him. Just a bit.)

The week before classes started, Tony spent several days on the campus. Several of his teachers had expressed sympathy with the situations that had caused him to withdraw last semester. Perhaps not unexpectedly, his female professors had been more sympathetic about Rumlow’s attack, and the others had been concerned about Tony’s losing his parents. Tony was pretty sure someone at SI was pushing, at least, a huge financial contribution to allow him the opportunity to do some make-up tests.

The tests, if he passed them, would give him credit for those classes he’d been forced to withdraw from that previous semester. If he failed, or got a grade lower than a B, he could chose to take the classes over again with no penalty.

It was an elegant solution, Tony thought, to the problems that the whole mess had been; it gave him the opportunity to prove his intelligence. Could he pass the finals after missing half the course materials in presentations? If yes, he wouldn’t fall behind in his work. MIT, after all, had both a reputation to maintain and the Stark legacy to consider. If Tony fell behind, would he decide that his degree wasn’t worth the effort? After all, the company came to him, it’s not like he needed the credentials. And even the stupidest, most stalwart defender of “he needs to earn those grades” philosophy would see that losing Tony as a student would be a blow.

After all, alumni donations were a beautiful thing.

(more below the cut, or read on A03)

Tony sighed. He hadn’t wanted his money to matter, in the case of his schooling, but this was still a better solution than most.

Already, various members of the board were pressing for his opinion, his attendance at board meetings, a direction to steer the company in. He was going to have to make it official; let Obadiah run the company in his name, at least until Tony finished school. Which meant having to sit down and have meetings with Obie about what directions Tony wanted the company steered.

But first, tests.

Tony stared back at his exam booklet. He could feel Sunset’s eyes on him. Despite the fact that she technically wasn’t supposed to be in the room -- it should have been just him and the proctor -- she’d gotten some sort of special dispensation.

Sometimes the whole thing felt ridiculous. Who the fuck was going to take a shot at Tony while he was taking his Advanced Engineering and Motivations exam?

On the other hand, there was a dead body in the morgue and the tampered steering column of Howard’s car.

Tony sighed and got back to work. The test wasn’t all that hard. Even if he’d missed half the semester’s worth of material, at least half of the exam was from the previous material, so he finished that part relatively quickly. Eidetic memory was useful for a few more things than vibrantly and vividly replaying all the worst memories of his life.

The second half of the semester’s material was harder, although some of it he thought he did okay on, based on that fact that he read relatively quickly and had been reading ahead in the course material just because the information was both fascinating and somewhat out of date.

That was a question he had a lot of trouble with, when he came across problem-solving for a situation in which new developments vastly outstripped the tech as presented in the materials. Did he give the answer as the test expected; what the professor or his TAs would be grading on, or did he present the better, more elegant solution based on current updates.

Tony sighed and filled it out for the right practical answer, rather than the correct test scores solution. He’d defend the answer, if he had to, but he couldn’t bring himself to write down a poor practical.

He checked the clock on the wall. Thirty-four minutes left in the exam time. He glanced at the proctor, bored out of her mind and staring at her fingernails. She also wasn’t allowed to have her phone on her during the exam, and really, Tony hadn’t done anything aside from sit there and scribble frantically in his exam booklet for the better part of an hour.

Glanced at the booklet again. Wondered if it would be worth his time to double check his work. Probably not. He could recall the entire test if he needed to, without even looking at it, and despite everything people might have thought about Tony Stark, his handwriting was impeccable. Good, readable handwriting was a stone-cold necessity if you were going to work with other engineers.

He signed his name on the front cover, put the pencil down, and handed in his booklet.

The proctor gave him a wan smile. “Thank God,” she said. “I was running late this morning and I didn’t have time for a coffee.”

“Well, that’s a tragedy in the making,” Tony said. “Thanks for this.” He knew she was a volunteer; the situation was highly irregular.

“Not to worry,” she said. “We’ve all heard about you. You’re going places. I’d hate to be one of the reasons you didn’t get there.”

“Oh, I’ll get there, all right,” Tony said. “Just might have taken me a little longer without your assistance.”

“Good luck,” she said.

“Don’t need luck. Scientifically, luck has a poor prognosis.”

“That’s why they call it luck,” she pointed out.

Tony pocketed his pencil on the way to the door and collected his body guard. Sunset did not look bored. She looked alert and vivacious and pretty. “How was the test, boss?”

“Pretty sure I at least got a B,” Tony said.

It was stupidly hot outside the class building; every year it just seemed to get hotter. The sidewalk was particularly ghastly and Tony crossed the green on the grass, even though there were signs everywhere that said not to walk on it, just because honestly, his feet were getting torched inside his shoes.

He was just considering the pros and cons of an iced coffee (pro -- coffee. Con -- iced. Icky. watered down. But it’s so hot today. And, you know, coffee.) when he heard a voice that he absolutely did not want to hear.

“Hey, hey, hey, Tony. Wait up, man.”

Tony gritted his jaw. He didn’t turn. He didn’t stop. He just kept walking.

“Take care of it, Ms. Bain,” he said, not looking at her either.

“No, come on, Tony, don’t be like that.” Rumlow’s hand came down on Tony’s shoulder and pulled him to a halt.

The training modules weren’t hard, Bucky was discovering. In fact, they were a lot easier than the things he’d done in high school. Some of it was on par to his sniper training, and other course material he’d had to learn as part of his stint in the military.

The physical courses were fun. He enjoyed the challenges presented in urban combat, defensive firearms techniques, crowd-moving, and advanced control tactics. Most of it was just close enough to his bouncer training that he could lean on past experience. He certainly didn’t have the problems that some of the other guys in the course were having. Bucky had fought in enough bar fights that he wasn’t at all ashamed of using unsportsmanlike conduct, whereas some of these trainees were martial artists. Form, to them, was key. Elegance. Not hair pulling, or using the environment. The woman who was a judo expert was pretty good; Bucky’d enjoyed watching her work.

What he wasn’t having an easy time with was the theoreticals. He was good learning how to disarm a bomb -- but he had trouble with the idea that this was something that could happen. He learned how to conduct a car chase, in case of a primary kidnapping, and was haunted by the idea of Tony being bundled into someone else’s car, gun held to his temple, and having to hope that Bucky could catch them in traffic.

After one particularly descriptive lesson for infiltration attempts, Bucky found himself after class, in the halls, panting for breath. He didn’t even have to close his eyes to remember Rumlow pressed over Tony’s struggling body, the way the man had been tearing at Tony’s clothes, the flower of bruises over Tony’s throat.

“You sure you’re up to this job?” It was the woman -- Jennifer, Bucky thought her name was -- who’d impressed everyone in the takedown classes.

“Have t’ be,” Bucky said. “It’s against all sorts of practicals, but the primary--” he couldn’t help a sarcastic face at that “--my primary. Is my boyfriend. We’ve had some actual problems, and…”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Jennifer said. “You’re being used as an example in the other classes of what not to do. You’re compromised.”

“Because Tony’s my boyfriend,” Bucky said. “Yeah, I know. We all saw the damn Bodyguard movie.” Truthfully, Bucky’d only seen it because Tash had gone through a phase of terrible romance movies, and she’d forced a number of them on him. Personally, Bucky thought the movie was full of shit, and poorly acted on top of that, but it wasn’t a widely shared opinion, it seemed.

“If something happens to him --”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” Bucky interrupted. “I don’t plan to make this a career choice. It’s practical. If I’m going to be with him all the time anyway, I might as well know how to protect him, right?”

“Will you be able to live with yourself, if something happens?”

Bucky swallowed hard. “I don’t think that I’ll be able to live with it anyway,” he admitted. “So I need all the tools at my disposal, t’ make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Jennifer smiled, patted his arm. “I think it’s sweet that you love him so much,” she said. “Half of us are looking at protecting and possibly taking a bullet for a primary we don’t care about, the rest of us are looking into the Secret Service; taking a bullet for a politician, which has to be one of the hardest jobs there is. Being a political neutral in DC?”

Bucky knew he couldn’t do it; the assignments for the Secret Service were random, based on skill or other factors. Bucky wasn’t sure he could adequately protect, say, an anti-gay conservative, and he knew damn well that there were people in office that if someone pointed a gun at them, Bucky’d be tempted to help them with their aim. He wasn’t ashamed of that, but he could see the stress there. On the other hand, in the end, that was still just a job.

If someone shot Tony…

Well, Bucky wasn’t sure he could live with that.

But what he’d said was also the truth. He was going to die inside anyway, if that happened. Might as well be part of the prevention, right?

“Which half are you in?” Bucky rather liked Jennifer. She was smart, she was funny, and she had skills.

“I want to work for a movie star, or something like that. Get a glimpse of the glamorous life,” she said. “I wanted to model when I was younger, and then I hit this growth spurt at sixteen that destroyed any sort of Hollywood career. But, perhaps not unexpected, a lot of Hollywood big shots want pretty bodyguards, too. Image is everything out there, and I could make good money.”

That much was true, Jennifer was the tallest woman Bucky’d ever met, easily six and a half feet, muscular, and lean. And she was beautiful, stunningly so. She was pretty enough that it probably made up for the fact that she towered over most men. (Straight men could be so insecure, Bucky noticed.)

“I can put a word in for you with my boss,” Bucky joked. They were another week of classes out from getting their licenses, which wasn’t as good as practical experience, but there were enough vets on Tony’s team, one or two new people wouldn’t go amiss, and Bucky would honestly feel better if there was someone he knew and trusted looking out for his man.

“I’ll come by and meet him, if you want,” Jennifer said. It was almost unexpected; she might really have wanted to push out to California right away. Then again, bird in the hand and all that. Getting some experience with Tony Stark, up and coming CEO of the world’s most progressive weapons and technology company, would get her some street cred, experience, and all things considered, probably not too much work. Even with the suspected possible murderer after Tony’s life. At least she wouldn’t have to be dealing with groupies.

“Yeah, I’ll talk with him,” Bucky said. “He’s mostly getting his security from Stark Industries right now, but --”

“You don’t trust them,” Jennifer said.

“No, I don’t, actually.”

Jennifer leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You’re a sweet kid, Barnes. Call me next week, we’ll have lunch and I’ll impress your primary.”

Brock Rumlow got maybe two more words out that weren’t desperate repetitions of Tony’s name and something that might have been the start of an apology, before Sunset Bain stepped in and did what she was hired to do.

Tony didn’t have to look; the sounds were brutal and clear. The weight of Brock’s hand vanished from Tony’s shoulder and there was an awful thud of a body hitting the grassy lawn with breath-stealing force.

Brock was gasping for air and Sunset didn’t even pause; she came down on him like a ton of bricks, her pointy elbow aimed into his stomach, and Tony flinched. He understood that violence was necessary, he understood that by telling Sunset to take care of it, he’d signed a contract for her to do violence. There was a dark, angry part of Tony that wanted Sunset to kick Brock’s ass for him, to do it for vengeance, and to do it to protect. Tony would be straight up lying to himself if he tried to say he didn’t want Brock harmed. He was still waking up in the middle of the night, choking for air, trying to push an invisible force away. If Tony could go even a month without feeling that sickening dread, without waking Bucky up and letting his boyfriend talk him down out of a night terror, that would be great.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think that was going to be accomplished by Sunset removing Brock’s head from his shoulders.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s enough.” He hoped that was enough. He hoped Brock wasn’t going to be stupid, wasn’t going to take the fact that a woman half his size had just knocked him to the ground and had his wrist pinned up between his shoulder blades as some insult, and keep fighting.

Tony also hoped that he could get through the next five minutes without puking in terror. Just hearing Brock’s voice had been enough to send him right back there, in the smothering darkness, with no air in his chest, with his clothes torn open, knowing, knowing, that there was nothing he could do to prevent what was about to happen to him and resenting it.

Even with the bodyguards and Bucky looking out for him, Tony didn’t feel safe. He didn’t feel safe because there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t protect himself. He couldn’t build a suit of armor around his heart and keep the bad things out.

“Come on, Tony,” Brock said. He coughed a few times. “I just want to talk.”

“I can’t imagine there’s anything that I want to talk about with you,” Tony said. He still hadn’t looked around. He wasn’t sure if seeing Brock’s face was going to make things worse. He could imagine, at the moment, that Brock had a bloody nose, the beginnings of a black eye, that he might have terror and agony and humiliation painted over his features. Or he could just be spitting defiance.

“I’m sorry, man,” Brock said.

Of all the things that Brock could have said, this was not something that Tony had expected. Did rapists and attempted rapists ever apologize to a victim? Did that happen?

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Brock repeated. “Look, can… can I get up, here?”

“No,” Tony said. He still hadn’t turned. Didn’t want to see. Couldn’t look. “I don’t exactly feel sanguine about you being within fifty yards of me. What is it that you want?”

“To say I’m sorry,” Brock said. “That’s all. That’s… I was drunk an’ stupid and I just… got carried away. It wasn’t personal.”

“Sure as hell felt personal,” Tony snapped. “Drunk. Huh. That’s a great excuse. Were you drunk when you slipped rohypnol in my drink? Drunk when you planned to take me out of the party and into a back room where no one could hear you? Drunk? That’s some bender, Rumlow. Are you sorry because I was hurt, or are you sorry because you were caught? Because everyone on campus knows what you are?”

“I know you ain’t got a reason t’ believe me, but I did not drug your drink, Tony,” Brock said. His voice was low, servile, pleading. “I thought… I thought you were hittin’ on me. Ain’t like you don’t… didn’t…”

“My sexual proclivity is irrelevant,” Tony said, voice cold. “Once --”

“I know.” Brock’s voice broke. Tony really didn’t want to see that. He wasn’t sure he wanted Brock to apologize, to have excuses, to have Tony start doubting himself, to forgiving someone who’d hurt him so irrevocably. He wasn’t sure he could do that to himself. “Tony, come on, gimme a break, this is my life, an--”

“Oh, it’s your life, now, is it?” Tony whirled, finally facing Brock, staring at him. “What, exactly, did I do to your life? Did I make it so that you can’t sleep? Did I make it so that you wake up in the middle of dreams, choking to death. Did I make it so that you can’t bear to be touched, can’t stand to have someone hand you a glass? Did I make it so that you distrust the people in your life that you love, because you don’t know when someone’s going to turn on you? If I manage to affect your life to there merest percent of what you’ve done to me, I’ll be glad of it. So don’t you lay there on the ground with your pleading expressions and pretend that your life has been in any way devalued because of that night. Anything that happens to you, you deserved it. You deserve it.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Brock burst out. “I… it was an accident. I was drunk. I was stupid. You were… you were out of your goddamn mind and I didn’t know.”

“I don’t care.” Tony looked down at his fingernails. “I don’t believe you. And even if I did, I don’t care. I will live with what you did for the rest of my life. You might as well, too.”

“You know I have a perfectly good security team, right, baby?” Tony said. He was sitting in the cast-iron chair with two legs off the floor and his feet propped up on the patio table, which was going to be more annoying as soon as their food got out here.

Bucky grinned. Tony was joking around, light-hearted and showing off. He hadn’t been this relaxed in weeks, and Bucky was happy to see it.

The school had let him know the results of their investigation -- it wasn’t fair, maybe, but with Stark Industries’ powerful media machine behind it, the college had eventually found Brock Rumlow guilty and expelled him. “Using my powers for good,” Tony had called it. It sucked and there was a lot of backlash from people who were convinced that it was only Tony’s whiteness and maleness and money that let such a thing happen, when Rumlow was an athlete, and Bucky didn’t disagree. But it set precedent, and maybe, just maybe, it might push things in the right direction. A little bit.

“Here, get your feet off the table, asshole,” Bucky scolded him, and pulled Tony’s trim ankles into Bucky’s lap, sliding his fingers under the cuff of Tony’s slacks to tease at his calf. “You’re gonna scare Jenn off from her new job.”

“If you’re going to hire her no matter what I say, why are we having an interview at all?” Tony scoffed, but he let Bucky slide off Tony’s shoe and rubbed his foot against Bucky’s thigh. Oh, god, that felt good, and Bucky was half-tempted to blow off the interview and just take Tony straight home to bed.

“Mr. Stark,” Jenn said, coming up. She was wearing a white pant suit with a green blouse and those heels she fancied. She’d demonstrated to Bucky during class that she could both run in them and kick ass. “But why?” he’d demanded anyway. “I like being tall,” she said. Which was just nonsense. He had to admit, though, she looked thoroughly professional and rather intimidating.

Tony didn’t bother to stand up. “Have a seat, Ms. Walters. My overly paranoid bodyguard here has been singing your praises nonstop since you two graduated together, so you don’t need to give me your resume. You just need to convince me that you’ll do a good job.”

Jenn smiled and took a seat.

Bucky wasn’t really listening anymore; Tony kept rubbing his socked foot over Bucky’s thigh, nudging at the vee between Bucky’s legs with his toes. Evil, evil boyfriend. Bucky grabbed Tony’s wandering foot and jammed his thumb into the arch, which got a slightly deeper sigh and Tony almost melted in the chair, still trying to be somewhat professional, even if it was probably pretty obvious that they were playing footsie.

Jenn would roll her eyes, but she wouldn’t mind. Probably. Besides, if Jenn was going to work for Tony, she was going to have to get used to it. Bucky had no intentions of keep his hands off his boyfriend, and if Jenn wanted to go on to Hollywood and do work for actors or singers, she’d need to develop a poker face anyway.

“... good eye for spotting small details,” Jenn was saying, and Bucky let his eyes do the automatic search. It was a habit he’d gotten into during the war, picking out the sniper spots, and even when there wasn’t a sniper there, he liked knowing. Better, when he’d seen a few snipers and the unit had managed to get undercover before the shit came down.

He wasn’t entirely happy with letting Tony eat out of doors. Tony had laughed a little, said Bucky was getting paranoid, and just because Howard and Maria had been (probably) killed didn’t mean that anyone was going to shoot Tony. That was inelegant and too easily found.

“Not gonna matter to you, if you’re dead,” Bucky had retorted.

“It’s bad planning,” Tony had insisted. “It’s too soon. They need to let my parent’s investigation die down before making another move.”

“We get sloppy, you get dead, and I’m going to raise you back up just so I can yell I told you so in your face,” Bucky had responded, and Tony had agreed with his assessment, rather than continue to argue.

But he’d still insisted on carrying on with a normal life. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being afraid,” Tony had said.

Bucky glanced at the rooftops opposite them. One high-rise apartment, but it was freaking August, and this part of town was affluent enough to have building-wide air conditioning. No one had their windows open.

A flutter of movement. Slow, deliberate. He wouldn’t have seen it if his paranoia wasn’t ramped up to at least a seven, and Jenn wasn’t talking about line of sights, and not paying attention, because to her it was still just a job, and to Bucky it was Tony. It was not just one life, but his own.

The black of a long-range rifle, like a spot in the sky with no stars. A flicker of windowblinds. Had someone cut the glass? Bucky squinted.

No time to see if he was right or wrong.

Bucky moved, shoving Tony’s feet out of his lap.

“Halfway up the building, twenty-third, or fourth --”

Pain.

Instant and punishing.

He knew, Bucky knew, that bullets traveled faster than sound, and why was it still a shock that he didn’t hear the report of the rifle before the bullet struck him? He, of all people, should know better.

Bucky staggered a step.

Things happened in a series of flickers, staccato images.

Fuck.

The table was toppling over, the water glasses crashing to the ground.

Blink.

Jenn had Tony covered. Her jacket was splattered with blood.

Ow. Bucky was aware of pain, enormous pain. He couldn’t quite reach it, wasn’t sure if he was feeling it at all…

He reached behind him, brought his hand back soaked with blood.

“Get the shooter,” Bucky whispered. He staggered again.

“Bucky, no, Bucky, Bucky, baby, no, no no, no.” Tony was crying and not even aware of it, his hand reaching for Bucky’s.

“Ow.”

Bucky went to his knees. What… what had happened? He couldn’t think. The world was spinning.

Everything was distorted. Sounds stretching like taffy.

There was something… something he needed to say.

“Tony?”

“Yeah, yeah, baby, I’m here, hold on, somebody get me an ambulance! I’m right here, Bucky, honey, oh, god, oh my god, Bucky…”

“... someone shot me…”

He was laying down. When had that happened?

His back hurt. Oh, god. The pain was like a black horse, bearing down on him. Thud. Thud. Thud. That was his heartbeat. It throbbed in his ears and behind his eyelids.

He shifted a little, trying to look around. “... need t’ get inside…” There was so much blood.

“We’re fine, baby, you just hold on, okay, hold on, help is coming…”

Bucky couldn’t raise his hand. Everything was numb and heavy, like laying under a blanket of snow. Soft and cold and heavy. “... love you…”

“No, no, Bucky, come on, don’t you fucking leave me, don’t you dare, goddamnit where’s that ambulance?”

“... tony.”