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‘The perimeter is secure.’
Tony looked up at the familiar voice and blinked in slight surprise when he recognised one Natalie Rushman. She was Fury’s spy the whole time? ‘You’re fired.’
She gave him a smug smirk. ‘That’s not up to you.’
Clearly, she didn’t actually know how the law worked or she thought he didn’t. Tony leaned back in his seat. ‘JARVIS, Protocol 3.’
His AI answered from inside his suit. ‘Very good, sir.’
***
Across the city, three phones beeped and the following conversation was transmitted to them.
***
The next time Natasha Romanoff walked into SI, she was promptly arrested for espionage.
***
Coulson’s attempt to keep Tony under arrest in his own home was highly illegal and Coulson and his entire team were arrested on the spot, leaving Tony to study his father’s notes in peace. Without the place crawling with invading agents, Tony had a space and time to make his way through them.
And he found his father’s incomplete element quicker.
He even called Pepper up and told her he needed a scan of his father’s old model because he believed it was part of a formula for a new element Howard never managed to complete. With the reveal of SHIELD’s infiltration, his friends had been illuminated to Tony’s condition so Pepper sent it right over.
Tony’s medical condition meant Rhodey also returned the suit he’d taken. After all, if Tony was suffering from heavy metal poisoning and had a spy that specialised in manipulation whispering in his ear, then Tony’s reckless behaviour suddenly was a lot more reasonable. The brass were angry about it, but they couldn’t say much. The suit was technically stolen property.
Rhodey was then subjected to a rant from Tony as he scrapped the HammerTech alterations.
‘Well, you didn’t tell me about the palladium,’ Rhodey pointed out.
‘That’s no excuse for letting Hammer touch this!’ Tony retorted. ‘The guy couldn’t engineer his way out of a wet paper bag!’
***
The court case in which SHIELD was charged for espionage went ahead, splashing Natasha’s face all over the news.
It was also found that SHIELD had a lot of Howard’s property that should be in Tony’s hands, and they were ordered to turn it all over. They resisted to the point that they were raided by the FBI, and slapped with fine after fine after fine. In the end, everything was returned to Tony.
Including the Tesseract.
***
When Steve was pulled from the ice, Fury tried to use him as bait to draw Tony in.
That was when Tony worked it out.
‘They’re trying to get you emotionally invested in them?’ Pepper asked when he was talking to her about it.
Tony shrugged. ‘Yeah. I guess dad was.’
‘Which would explain where they got the idea,’ Happy remarked as he followed along behind them.
‘But that’s not how you deal with your contracts. That’s how Howard taught yo—oh.’
Tony chuckled bitterly. ‘I guess he knew he was in trouble but he was already in too deep, so he taught me not to repeat his mistakes.’