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darsynia · 1 year

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Trust Fall | Ch 23

ARC by Eury Escodero | gif by @cindysmoon

Story Masterlist | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Summary: Tony/OC, ‘terrorists made us fall in love;’ IM1 timeline. In this chapter, Emory feels the effects of the serum withdrawal and gets some details about the mission she's been drafted into.

Length: 4,795

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

Excerpt:

Emote: You still have my shirt

Metal Man: I’m sleeping with it in lieu of you being here

Emote: Aww, that’s kind of sweet

Metal Man: Yeah, well, the next step is to dress Dum-E in it and roleplay little arguments about how much of my arm real estate is on display

She is entirely too shy to admit she’s been sleeping with his clothes, but her heart is full to bursting at the comparison. Unfortunately those thoughts could generate power, which is a bad idea in the car, so she goes for a joke to defuse the romance potential of their conversation.

Emote: That is so ridiculous!

Emote: I’m way shorter than that thing!

Metal Man: I was expecting you to object to the lack of boobs, but actually that was me. I object to the lack of boobs. I miss boobs. Yours in particular.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Heat Haze

“Apparently, I have a lawyer,” Emory tells Clint as she reads an article written about sightings of her over the past few days. ‘Emory Autumn’s lawyer’ asks for privacy as she builds her life back from scratch. Whoever wrote it isn’t wrong-- but she doesn’t remember being consulted about it. If it’s the same gentleman she spoke with by phone to discuss the forged POA papers, though, she trusts the man’s judgment. He’d done a lot to reassure her about that situation, and had promised to contact the police on her behalf.

“Good,” Clint says. “You’ll be able to defend against my civil suit for emotional distress after you ate the last of my seasonal chocolate.”

She lets half of the paper fall forward so she can glare at him. “You said I could have anything in the cupboards!”

“I forgot they were in there!” He flips a coin that lands in exactly the right way to knock a piece of wood into the window latch, releasing it so the hinged pane swings open. He tosses another at the opposite window, with the same result. The immediate crossbreeze is a blessing in the hot July temperatures. “They had Christmas wrappers, Emory. That should have been a sign.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor!” Emory argues, scooting forward on the couch in preparation to get up. “Do you know how demoralizing old chocolate can be? You are so ungrateful.” She goes to stand up, but her knees fail. It’s as if they’ve liquified and cannot hold her legs straight anymore. Emory falls back onto the couch, her insides flash-frozen from the splash of adrenaline and fear.

“Em?” Clint says, rushing over.

The now-familiar weight in the pit of her stomach sinks lower, and for the first time she recognizes its similarity to the aches and pains she’s been feeling in her joints over the past week.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

“Serum withdrawal?” he asks, concerned. All Emory can do is nod, but when she sees him go for his cell phone, she pushes herself to elaborate.

“I’ve been feeling ‘off’ for at least two weeks, but I figured I was just tired. I thought that bone-deep weight pain was anxiety!” she croaks, her vocal cords feeling thin and brittle. She pulls his lone couch pillow onto her lap and buries her face in it.

“You had one job,” Clint teases, sitting down beside her to rub her back with a wide, warm hand.

He’s right. She was taught a few maneuvers they wanted her to know, but the crux of the mission is based on the debilitating effects of serum withdrawal. Everyone is waiting for her to get sick, but the pain had crept up on her so subtly that she’d completely missed the signs.

“Hey, Nat. It’s time. She says they might have been happening for a while,” Clint’s saying into the phone. “Yeah, I agree. No more than ten days.”

Ten days sound like a lifetime to endure in terms of deterioration and far too soon when looking at her own preparedness. If the alternative is to progress through pain like this until she dies, though, Emory would rather face her fears, both real and imagined.

“I took your suggestion and offered to back up all the records, so there’ll be more than just SHIELD ops on these,” Rhodey says, setting down what sounds like a very heavy box onto the floor beside Tony’s desk. To check for sure, Tony reaches out a foot and pushes against it with his toes. It’s as solid as Gibraltar. He gets up and offers his seat to his friend.

“They just let you hobble out with decades of this stuff?” Tony asks, crossing his arms and looking down into the box. It’s a collection of hard drives of varying ages, all jumbled together like tetris pieces.

“They wanted me to find something to do while on desk duty with this leg, so I did,” Rhodey shrugs. “It’s not like there isn't a warehouse somewhere with all the paper copies.”

Colonel Rhodes had been one of the airmen injured when an improperly secured load gave way. Tony still hasn’t found out whether he sprained his ankle running away or being struck by something, which really only matters for the teasing.

“In reality, I’m doing you all a favor, is what you’re saying,” he says, lifting out the first ancient-as-hell hard drive.

Tony heads over to rummage in a drawer of cables, looking for the right connector to start copying over the data. There’s something symbolic about the fact that his father had kept exactly the right kind of cables for the copy, but had never rigged up this basement lab space with the kind of airflow that made it bearable in the summer. Howard Stark always did prioritize machines over people, except maybe when Steve Rogers was involved.

“Either that or you’ll piss them off by helping me do it too quickly.”

“There’s no reason why you can’t just wait to tell them you’re done, Mr. Eagle Scout!” Tony points out. “I’ll text Happy to go grab some of the terabyte drives we have in storage. We’ll expense them to your boss, and you can take two boxes in when you go back to work.” Rhodes is notoriously reticent with pain medication, so Tony pushes that button, just because. “On second thought, maybe just one at a time. You’re probably on some pretty hefty drugs, and those hand cart dolly things count as heavy machinery.”

“Speaking of heavy machinery, are you ready to let me take a look at the device you keep hinting at? The one that you said let you know what it’s like to fly?” Rhodey asks, completely ignoring his jab.

Tony doesn’t want to show Rhodes the suit. It wasn’t built for war, but he’s not naive, not after all the years he’d spent consulting for the military. There are five, maybe ten places in the carapace that could be modified for weaponry, and that’s just off the top of his head. They’ve been best friends for years, but James Rhodes is a model soldier. He’ll see the practical applications right away, but once his colleagues get ahold of the armor, they’ll want to add weapons to it, guaranteed.

He brushes off those thoughts and tosses a flippant comment at Rhodey.

“I thought you liked airplanes, Orville.”

“The Wright brothers were as fascinated with the design process as they were with flight, you know that, don’t you? From what you’ve implied, the thing you came up with involves both.”

Tony leans over to make sure the copy’s going, but when he straightens up, he lets a big grin cross his face. “Almost better than sex. Almost.”

“Even with that woman you were--”

“Are,” Tony corrects. “And that’s why you’re doing this for me. Shield’s got their claws in her, and I’m going to get my claws in them.” Since Rhodey had been teasing him about settling down or catastrophically falling in love for years, he changes the subject. “You guys good to find another weapons supplier? Anyone but Hammer, okay?”

“Maybe we should. Watching the troops struggle with that guy’s shitty designs might be enough to change your mind,” Rhodes tells him. He reaches down as if to scratch his leg and frowns at the bulky boot that encases the lower half of it. “Damn. It’s really tempting to sleep for a week, if only to stop my damned leg from driving me crazy inside this thing.”

“Yeah, the itching is the worst. I’ve got this, okay? Most of it doesn’t need much more than mild supervision,” Tony tells him. “Skedaddle, Daddio.”

“I’ll go on one condition: you never say that again. Ever.”

“Fair enough. I’ll call you when I get those drives, this’ll take a few days, tops. I’ve got multiple computers that can work on this. Go rest.”

Rhodes agrees, and Tony walks with him to the car. He’s happy his friend chose to have a driver for this visit, and even happier that circumstances had worked out to give him access to those records. Just like with the SHIELD agent before, Rhodes’ hired car had parked out front, and Tony watches it drive off from the front door, almost thumping his forehead against the frame in a form of violent stress relief. There are probably still cameras watching the front of his house, though, so he ostentatiously scratches his face with a middle finger and goes back inside.

He heads back in after waving goodbye at the retreating vehicle, anxious to get started on the protective armor he’d started designing for Emory. As cool as it is that she can fly under her own power, the emotion-based nature of that power leaves her dangerously exposed, as does the idea of using air as any kind of protective barrier. The trick had been finding a material that’s light enough not to need significantly more power consumption to stay aloft, but Tony’s pretty sure he’d found the right combination. As a bonus, he’d been able to devise a fastening system that she can easily get in and out of, something that wouldn’t work with his heavier, thicker metal plates. That part isn’t fabricated yet, though. He doesn’t have a Bridgeport at the New York house, but despite JARVIS’s jokes about his rapport with the lab guys, they haven’t minded him stopping by to make a few things. They’d liked the attention.

Emory’s mission can’t be more than three weeks off, not that he expects that they’ll let him know very far in advance. There are a few more tests to run on the efficacy of her armor, tests that would be easier if he could ask Emory to spin air around the prototype while he tested how much mitigation that adds-- but Tony would rather surprise her. The plan is to fly back to LA tomorrow for a day and a half so he can use Stark Industries’ wind tunnel. It’s just a shame the palladium shipment won’t be there yet. Tony’s own improved arc reactor design allows for palladium inserts rather than a depletable ring, so he can at least build the power core for her suit without having to wait for Obie to show up with it next week.

When he gets back to his workroom, Tony heads for the boot he’d been doing wirework on. On the table beside it is a floor-incorporated design for the Disrobe-Bot, but he pushes that aside for now. The wiring for Emory’s suit has taken a little longer than his own, mostly due to him having left the best tools in Malibu. He tells JARVIS to make a note that he should pack some of them up to bring back to New York.

“Certainly sir. In addition, you should know that the preliminary results from our SHIELD analysis are proving concerning,” JARVIS says.

“I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise,” Tony mutters under his breath. Director Fury has yet to call, not that he’s surprised. He’s observed that, quite often it’s the ‘little guys’ who are more trustworthy than upper management. Barton and Romanoff feel like they’re legit, if mysterious. Coulson and Fury? Conniving at best, duplicitous at worst. “Lay it on me,” he says, louder.

“Drawing solely from public data, there is a twenty-two percent overlap of SHIELD ops at locations where adverse events occur within a week’s time. I believe the deviation from random chance is enough to warrant more investigation. However, this may change when the confidential missions are factored in.”

Tony squints one eye, then another, as he tries to figure out what his AI is suggesting. He tosses out a guess. “Are you saying that SHIELD has managed to schedule actions that coincide with crisis events so often it might be on purpose? That’s far more likely to be bad luck, wouldn’t it?”

“The number of occurrences are statistically significant.”

“Not to question your diligence, J, but have you factored in the idea that at least some of those missions were designed to prevent the catastrophes in question? That the public facing part is a smokescreen?”

“I have.”

Tony stands in silence digesting that idea as the soldering iron he’s just turned on heats up. “That’s… bad, right?”

“Quite possibly. More data is required.”

Tony shuts off power to the soldering iron and shoots a text to Hogan saying he’ll pick up the hard drives himself. He’ll see what computers are laying around unused and bring some of those home to expedite the copying process. It seems like the most important thing he can do to protect Emory right now is find out what her new buddies are really up to.

He’d love to find out the location of her mission, too, but that will be more tricky. If SHIELD finds out he’s even thinking about that, they’ll probably trump up enough charges to keep him tied up in legal knots for years.

The benefit to being covert in D.C. is the proliferation of governmental offices. Emory knows that she’s being watched mostly tangentially by the press; thankfully Tony’s reappearance on the social scene and her extreme ordinariness has done a lot to neutralize Rory’s accusations. The general consensus is that she’s working with ‘the government’ in relation to the kidnapping, something that Tony can’t do because of how busy and difficult he is. Any residual talk about the whole thing has been more about the nasty letter Tony’s lawyers reportedly sent to Rory.

Emory’s lawyer has strictly instructed her to avoid any contact with her former boss (not that there’s been an attempt, which she supposes would hurt more if she hadn’t been forcibly removed from Rory by the kidnapping in the first place), and to stick to ‘no comment’ if/when she’s asked about it. That’s only happened a few times, though. The car that SHIELD sends for her blends in with all of the other cars like it, and sometimes they even duck into a nondescript parking garage and wait a while, just to muddy the waters.

As she often does to pass the time during the ride, Emory sends Tony a text through his private messaging app. He’d explained the high level of encryption to her in a note he’d sent with the phone, which she’d thought was adorable. The entire thing read like complete gibberish to her. At first she’d felt stupid and insecure about it, but eventually Emory realized that he’d taken the time to explain, rather than assuming she’d never understand.Someday she’ll ask how much is made-up tech speak, which, knowing Tony, has a 20% chance of being true.

Tony is inordinately proud of the fact that his pre-existing music-related username is even more apropos nowadays.

Emote: You still have my shirt

Metal Man: I’m sleeping with it in lieu of you being here

Emote: Aww, that’s kind of sweet

Metal Man: Yeah, well, the next step is to dress Dum-E in it and roleplay little arguments about how much of my arm real estate is on display

Emote: That is so ridiculous!

Emote: I’m way shorter than that thing!

Metal Man: I was expecting you to object to the lack of boobs, but actually that was me. I object to the lack of boobs. I miss boobs. Yours in particular.

Everything she can think of to say is based on his reputation as a womanizer, so Emory just sits there like a rock, biting her lip and staring at the phone waiting for him to say something else.

Two minutes go by.

She can’t take it anymore.

Emote: Tony?

Metal Man: I’m sorry, I got distracted.

Emote: Please tell me you weren’t thinking about physically modifying your robot so it can wear my shirt!

Metal Man: I was not

Metal Man: I was thinking that I’d rather talk about your boobs on a voice call. In detail. You free tonight?

Her hair blows into her face from the jolt of energy that prompts. Emory does what she’d practiced: she sets the gathered ball of power in motion around her head like an invisible crown. The energy packet will ruffle her hair and eventually blow out or knock itself free, but it won’t disrupt anything too badly. It’s a precursor to the actual shielding she’d tried before, but with a bit more density per ‘ball.’

That’s her power dealt with, but her body’s physical reaction is still raging. Because, yes, she does want to hear his voice, low and teasing, telling her to do things, explaining what he’s doing in response.

Metal Man: Please tell me you’re busy thinking about that.

Swearing under her breath, Emory scoots her body away from the back of the seat and adds another packet spinning around her shoulders.

Emote: Guilty as charged.

Emote: I can barely hold my phone now, I can’t even imagine what a mess I’ll be if you’re serious about this!

Metal Man: Oh, sweetheart, our hands will be too busy. That’s what speakerphone is for.

Fuck, she can picture that in full technicolor surround sound. The car comes to a complete stop and she looks up, surprised and certain something’s wrong, but they’re already at the Triskelion.

Emote: Speechless. Car ride over. Yes to the call.

Emote: !

It’s all she can do to send her stored up energy spinning up into the sky above her before she steps into the huge lobby. Her phone vibrates, but Emory doesn’t let herself check it till she’s more calm. It’s been a while since she’d gotten so flustered, power-wise, but really, SHIELD would deserve it if she flattened a few fancy sculptures after the bullshit they’ve pulled on her so far.

Tony’s message is worth it, when she gets to peek at it in the elevator.

Metal Man: Good, looking forward to it. I’ll even promise not to make ‘Stark naked’ jokes.

She taps out a response, lips curving into an indulgent smile.

Emote: Don’t make promises you can’t keep!

She ducks into a bathroom and splashes water on her red face, trying to settle her imagination down. Both of their sexual encounters had included dim or nonexistent lighting, and she hadn’t even seen his mansion bedroom… but the images in her mind’s eye capture Tony with so much realism that she’s breathless.

The intense feelings of longing she’d felt in the cave had retreated while she was trapped at SHIELD, but they’re back now that she’s back in the modern world. Just as Yinsen had implied about his time confined with his future wife, Emory had expected that the rush of affection and desire she felt for Tony was about seeing him so often, learning his quirks, watching him hammer on metal, arms slick with sweat. But even though they’re separated by more than two hundred miles, she still wakes up expecting to catch a glimpse of Tony changing shirts, or see him angrily brushing back his shaggy hair as he glares at a schematic. She hasn’t gotten to trace her hands along the angles of his bare back like she’d promised herself she’d be brave enough to do someday.

“Shit, I swear I stepped in here for something more than cooling off, but what--” Emory mutters to herself. At least her frequent ‘thirsty’ thoughts lately have helped with keeping her power generation at bay. In addition, the flood of endorphins from her favorite coping mechanism eases the chronic ache from serum withdrawal. It’s a hell of a silver lining, but she’ll take it.

A text from Natasha pops up reminding her to take her pain medicine. Emory smacks her head in remembrance, shoots off a thank you text to Nat, and takes the pills, rushing back out to be on her way. There are two checkpoints to get into the conference room, and once she’s inside, Emory hears the hum of an odd-sounding machine.

“Sound scrambler,” the woman at the head of the table says. It’s Agent Sharon Harris, who seems to be leading the mission briefing. Harris offers a thin smile. “It’s probably overkill, but this will be the culmination of over two years of work, most of it undercover, all of it vital. We’re just waiting for Agent Barton to finish up with one of our suppliers, and we’ll get started.”

Emory hadn’t seen Clint, but Harris nods over to an alcove in the room where he is speaking on a landline in another language.

“I didn’t take his seat, did I?” Emory asks Natasha in dismay.

Before Nat can answer, Clint does it for her. “Nah, you’re good.” He says to Harris, “Transport’s on, sightseeing tour is a go. The Army reserve ‘World War II in Two Weeks’ group will stop to see the Nazi massacre site of Baron Kovačevi’s private army early in the AM. One scenic drive later, we’ll be in position around noon.”

Nat watches him sit down across the conference table and remarks, “We’re going to another location directly before heading into Sokovia for that, right? I have some candidates.”

“Not that one,” Clint says, pointing with narrowed eyes. “We do not need to be hung over for this.”

“It’s not my fault you can’t hold your liquor,” Natasha purrs.

“If that’s settled, we can start with the overview,” Agent Harris says with the barest hint of a smile.

While folders of information are passed out, Emory whispers to Nat, “Is she your superior or is the leader different for each mission?”

She holds up two fingers, probably meaning option #2.

Despite her enduring dislike for her, Emory gains a new respect for Agent Sharon ‘Nurse Kate’ Harris as the hour-long briefing unfolds. Far from an opportunistic mission unlocked by her own unexpected capture, the lead-up to the assault on the serum scientist has been going for eighteen months or more. Harris has been undercover for much of it, posing as a negotiator for a dying crime boss from a place called Madripoor. After his death, she’d been offered a job working as a liaison between their target, the scientist, and his victims. Emory’s appearance had been fortuitous, shifting the focus of the assault to one where Emory, guided by Sharon, would suggest offering the serum to Tony Stark in an attempt to appeal to their target’s ego.

“Ms. Autumn is meant to be seen as a sad, beaten person who is out of luck, money, and options. All she has left is influence,” Sharon tells the room.

“Valid, but ouch,” Emory says, as all eyes turn to her.

Not long after that, the assault support team is asked to break off into a separate room to discuss logistics and travel. Natasha gets up and speaks with one of the agents, who nods and leads the group of twenty of them out.

“Starting to feel like a rabbit in a trap,” Emory says. She has managed to keep her fear-based energy generation at a minimum today, but it’s not nonexistent. Natasha’s focus on her ability to control herself is making a lot more sense now that she has a better idea of what they’re up against. It seems pretty clear that this villainous scientist will view her as an adversary until Emory proves otherwise, and he’ll be prepared for her to have ‘magical’ abilities as a matter of course. A beaten-down supplicant is going to generate outrage at a different pace than a deceptive adversary.

“Do you need to go toss some tornadoes, for courage?” Clint teases.

“No, but I’d take a time machine, if you’ve got one,” she jokes weakly. “I think Stark would be the better choice for a double agent.”

“Don’t worry,” Sharon says briskly. “Your demeanor only makes you more credible.” Without further pause, she starts in on a few of the things that she’d wanted to keep quiet from the rest of the team.

Most of it sails over Emory’s head, all but one (encouraging but astonishing) thing: through her liaison work, Sharon has managed to make allies of two of the people currently working as ‘minions’ because of their inability to pay for the life-sustaining serum injections. It’s encouraging in a way, but Emory’s incredibly grateful that this isn’t what they asked her to do. Talk about a rabbit in a trap!

In the car on the way back to Clint’s, Emory can’t help but wish Agent Harris felt more trustworthy. Her demeanor is hard to deal with, but the woman’s actions have been nothing but helpful. Sharon Harris reminds Emory of a kind of ‘reverse’ Rory Fall, at least up to the last couple of years. Rory had always been careless or neglectful, but her attitude had remained friendly, albeit needy. She’d played the part of a lost, desperate best friend who couldn’t do without Emory’s help, paying lip service to their relationship while always choosing what was best for herself. Eventually, the people they worked with got tired of dealing with her shortcomings, and the veneer slipped.

It should feel better to interact with someone trustworthy, whose actions speak louder than their brusque, dismissive words, but Emory almost feels conditioned to mistrust, at this point. She pulls out her phone and almost sends a message to Natasha about it, but the last thing Emory wants to do is look like less than a capable partner on the upcoming mission.

Clint will be gone for many hours yet, so when she gets inside the apartment, she locks it and heads into her bedroom, locking that door too. As they were leaving the conference room, Nat had asked her how her power generation control has gone lately. Emory was able to tell her truthfully that she sets aside some time every day to practice control during moments of strong emotion. That’s true, but it’s not always on purpose. Throwing herself onto the bed, she tries not to picture herself as a storm-tossed boat, but that’s hard.

She’s frightened by the pain of withdrawal.

She’s scared by the mission.

She’s angry at Rory.

She misses Tony.

These same emotions flash through her every day like lightning. Emory employs various strategies to dissipate any power that accumulates as a result, and she does try to learn how to diffuse the more powerful emotions before they get out of hand. All of that is reasonable, and it makes sense. The problem is that the most effective way to mitigate those strong emotions, the ones she’s wracked with when she curls up in bed, is… unorthodox, at best. She’d never be able to do it on a mission, in public, anywhere else, really. For the most part, Emory had avoided sex while working for Rory, and romance? Forget it. In a way, it makes sense that she’d be consumed by these feelings now. But something about her upbringing (or maybe the way she was almost never afforded privacy in her life as a PA) makes her feel like she’s doing something wrong.

Telling Tony she’s been touching herself for stress relief is impossible to imagine, even though he’s the person she thinks about the whole time. When he’d joked about phone sex, she’d nearly collapsed in on herself.

Emory rolls over on her side, pulling her phone from her pocket so it’s not uncomfortable. Suddenly, the familiar pain in her joints hits her. That’s new. Usually she has a mostly coherent, pain free existence until nighttime when the withdrawal pain catches up to her. But it’s three in the afternoon!

“Noooo. It’s too early, come on!” she groans.

A sudden buzzing sensation under her has her jolting upright. Everything on the dresser across from the bed flies off into a heap. Emory hobbles over, pain seizing up her joints, but nothing is broken. Her blast of energy dissipated almost as soon as it had appeared.

On the bed, her phone is ringing. She must have been lying on top of it and missed the quieted ringtone. It’s faster to throw herself onto the bed and roll over to reach the darned thing than take the pained steps to walk closer.

“Hello?” In her haste to answer it, she hadn’t checked who was calling, but only two or three people have the number anyway.

“Hey, gorgeous. Why do you sound like you’re dying? You’re not dying, are you? I have a strict ‘no dying’ policy.”

Next chapter... Tony calls Emory up and the two of them greatly enjoy the ensuing... conversation.