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Tony swears when he crashes again onto the hood of one of his cars, safety protocols automatically shutting down the suit's systems. Groaning, he rolls over and lands on the floor with a thump. After the world has stopped spinning, he pries at and detaches the pieces from his hands and feet.
"Don't you dare," he warns Dummy again when the fire extinguisher nozzle swivels in his direction. The machine beeps disconsolately.
He stumbles over to where Castiel is seated at one of the workshop tables and peers over his shoulder to find out what the angel is staring at so seriously, snickering when he sees that he's engrossed in a game of Tetris on the table top screen. Reaching out, he flicks through a history list and sees that JARVIS has cycled Cas through Pac-Man, Bubble Shooter and Super Mario.
"JARVIS, I've never been so proud of you! Why, introducing our resident angel to all the classics!"
"Thank you, sir," the AI drones wryly. "I do try."
Castiel ignores them, attention entirely focused on getting the colourful blocks to line up properly. It had taken several attempts and many power outages in the workshop, but the angel had finally learned how to operate electronics without short-circuiting them. It's actually a miracle and a half that, for some indiscernible reason, Castiel has never had an effect on his arc reactor. He suspects it has something to do with the palladium, and has had JARVIS make a note of it for further study later. Grinning, Tony sits next to him and starts fiddling around with some holographic schematics, stretching to work out the knots in his neck and shoulder.
"Sir, you've wrecked five of your cars over the past two days. Two can be fixed within a few hours if you so choose, while the other three would require entirely new frames and a significant amount of repairs. What would you like to do?"
"Trash the two. Sell them, donate them, send them to a junkyard, whatever. Order whatever parts we need for the other three and put it on my list. And calculate the difference in power levels if I change the connectors here, here and here." He jabs at three different spots in the holographic wire array.
"Calculating. Would you like to put in orders for new cars, sir?"
Behind him, heels click down the stairs. "Hmmm. Get me any two limited edition cars that haven't been released yet, you know my parameters."
Pepper gasps at the shattered glass walls, picking her way around the debris in the workshop to Tony, setting down her handful of documents and a box which he ignores. "Tony, everything's a mess!"
"Not really, I can still find anything I need. Or rather, JARVIS will find it for me."
"I've just placed an order for an Audi and an Alfa Romeo, sir," JARVIS informs him.
That gives Tony pause. He twists around towards Cas. "What colour's the Alfa?"
"Purple, sir. Would you like a different colour?"
Tony shakes his head slowly. "Nah, it's fine. Damn, honeybee, guess you really are a fortune teller."
'GAME OVER' flashes on the angel's screen and Cas finally looks up at him. "That is not an accurate description of what I am."
"Do I even want to know what you're talking about?" Pepper sets her hands on her hips. "Castiel, are you sure you don't want to go upstairs? There's food and a TV."
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, Ms Potts." He waves a hand to indicate the workshop in general. "Cas can watch TV here if he wants, that's what the holos are for."
Pepper rolls her eyes. "I meant more along the lines of being away from you. I can't believe he's not sick of you yet, you guys have been down here for days."
Tony holds his hand to his chest in an imitation of anguish.
"I do not object to Tony's presence," Castiel tells Pepper solemnly.
"That'll be a first," his assistant shakes her head at the angel fondly. Tony knows she's baffled by Cas, mainly because Tony just introduced him to her randomly a week after his return from Afghanistan and declared that he had full access to the Malibu mansion, and because Castiel gets along with the billionaire in a way that she's only seen with Rhodey. Not that it's difficult to get along with the angel; you just have to realise that Cas takes things a little too literally, and figure out the right way to talk to him. Plus, he totally digs the angel's opinions on humanity and its inventions.
Also, Cas sits with him at four in the morning when he wakes up choking from nightmares of hands pushing his head down below water, and watches with non-judgemental eyes as he shivers violently and wraps himself up in blankets. Afterwards, the angel will let himself be dragged down to the workshop and be obsessively scanned for readings as Tony buries himself in his work in an attempt at distraction.
Pepper thinks Castiel's not quite right in the head, because he introduced himself as an angel of the Lord. Tony doesn't bother correcting her, because she'll think he's not quite right in the head. And okay, Tony knows he was already fucked up before Afghanistan, let alone after, but in this one thing he knows he's not hallucinating. He's got the feather in a plastic takeaway box tucked away in his sock drawer, witnessed Castiel teleporting in and out of the mansion, and JARVIS has all sorts of fascinating readouts from his scans of the angel. It could be some kind of tech, but Tony's not very inclined to explore all the nitty-gritty details right now, only has the data stored in encrypted files to be investigated at some point in the future.
Call it a show of faith.
After his assistant leaves, he orders Thai takeout and, for a change in scenery, drags Cas up to the kitchen to eat. The angel pretty much only eats when Tony tells him to, so he's made it a point to introduce him to as wide a variety of food as possible. Admittedly, the 'variety' has mostly consisted of different types of takeout and coffee.
Tony still doesn't know exactly why Castiel is hanging around. It's certainly not to help him, because he asked flat out about how the SI weapons had ended up with the Ten Rings, and had received a response of "I have been ordered not to interfere further." The angel occasionally vanishes for long stretches of time, and when Tony bugs him about it, he gets a convoluted reply involving someone called Dean trapped somewhere, another two people called Samuel and Ruby, and seals. He really doesn't understand what marine animals have to do with the three people mentioned, is it an angel thing? Mostly, Tony gets the sense that Castiel is waiting for orders from the higher-ups, and in the meantime doesn't have anything else to do other than tag along after the only human he's familiar with on Earth.
Which is totally cool with Tony. He'll bet a million dollars no one else has an angel in their mansion playing Tetris.
************
"This is screwed up. Fucking Obie. Stabbing me in the back." Tony has to stop and bend over for a moment, panting at the sheer absurdity of it all. The man who had practically raised him, decades of trust ripped to shreds. "Fuck."
"What are you going to do?" the question is asked calmly by the angel standing by the doors.
"What the hell does it look like I'm doing?" He gestures at the gleaming red and gold suit. "JARVIS, run a final diagnostic."
There's a brief silence as JARVIS works. Tony braces his hands against the countertop and breathes steadily. In, out, in, out.
"Hey, Cas," he rasps, "d'you think Yinsen went to whatever his version of Heaven is? Saw his family again?"
"I know he did," comes the solemn response, and Tony wants to laugh and cry at the same time. The roiling betrayal thrumming through him slowly fades away to be replaced by cold rage and single-minded purpose.
"Sir, diagnostic is complete. Mark II is ready for deployment."
Don't waste it. Don't waste your life.
"Suit up."
************
Then, because his hands are shaking and his eyesight blurry as he comes down from the adrenaline, he tells JARVIS to wake him when Pepper arrives, and goes to crash.
A minute or an hour later, he wakes up gagging on the stench of blood and gunpowder, seeing afterimages of gory bodies and hearing agonised screams. He rolls over and lands on the carpeted floor heavily, panting and dry heaving in turns as panic coils in his chest, turning his vision a hazy red and black.
Someone crouches in front of him silently. Tony latches on, burying his face against a tan trench coat and shuddering, gasping in the familiar sharp scent of ozone. A steady hand rests soothingly on the back of his neck. Numbness spreads throughout his body, easing the hot tight hysteria trying to claw up his throat.
He's hauled back onto the bed effortlessly, and he lies for several minutes blankly, staring up at the ceiling.
"Why do you care?"
"You are a good man."
Tony sobs a hiccupping laugh.
"You regret your past, and you are attempting to do the right thing now. That is all I need to know to conclude that you are a good man and worthy of salvation." The bed dips gently under Castiel's weight, and blue eyes appearing in his field of vision pin him in place. "You will not believe me now, but the future is a strange thing, and you will save many, many lives, Anthony Stark."
Lethargy creeps up on him slowly as the angel watches him calmly. Between one heavy blink and the next, Tony sees impossibilities in that ancient gaze. A tall tower reaching into the sky, an eclectic group of people, numerous creatures swarming a metropolitan street, something huge and green. A dark empty void, and falling, falling –
As the soft fuzzy haze of sleep descends, a calloused hand touches his forehead gently. "Rest, Tony."
"You'll still be here?" he slurs, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"I will be leaving temporarily to attend to other duties," Castiel's voice reverberates above him, "but I will return. Now sleep."
Tony does.
************
The guy – Coleston? Carson? Whatever, Agent – from the organisation with the long-ass name smiles tolerantly. "Just stick to the official statement, Mr Stark, and this will all be behind you soon."
The door leading out to the private exit hallway opens and Castiel strides in, trench coat flapping dramatically as he swerves and makes directly for Tony. Agent frowns at him, eyebrows creased together with just a hint of alarm. Pepper sighs in exasperation but smiles in welcome.
"Hey, honeybee!" He grins at Cas, the tiny nagging voice in the back of his head at the angel's absence finally shutting up. "You missed the party, there were some really great explosions. I blew up my own buildings!"
The angel is way inside his personal space as usual, but Tony's used to it by now and slings a friendly arm around his shoulders.
"This has escalated far more swiftly than I anticipated." Cas' head turns to scrutinise his face, then reaches out to tap his fingers against his forehead. Pulling away, Tony pauses, then cautiously stretches his arms out. The dull ache all over his body from being thrown around by Stane has vanished, and he'll bet that beneath the makeup applied by Pepper, the cuts and bruises on his face are gone too.
"You," he declares, "are awesome."
"Who is this?" Agent is asking. "How did he get past security?"
Tony ignores him. "So, angelfish, here to tell me what I should say at the press conference?"
"I have discovered over the last few months," Cas responds dryly, "that you rarely do what others tell you to. You can make your own decisions."
He beams at the angel, feeling a burst of affection that he will never admit to. Someone pops their head in to say that they're starting soon.
"I wish to speak to Tony privately, Ms Potts," Cas says to Pepper. Tony raises his eyebrows, because that's never happened before. But then, most of the time Castiel is around him alone without anyone listening in to their bizarre conversations. JARVIS doesn't count.
"Just for a minute, Pep," he cuts across Pepper's protests. Cas does his adorable puppy head tilt, and his assistant caves. Tony wishes he could do that too, impersonate a beagle to get Pepper to do what he wants.
"One minute!" she warns and ushers Agent out of the room, the latter throwing Cas another unreadable look.
Cas speaks as soon as they're alone. "Tony, I'm leaving."
A stone settles in the pit of his stomach. "I assume you don't mean that in the way of 'Oh I'm disappearing for a bit but I'm going to pop back in when you're in the shower and scare the bejeezus out of you a few hours later'."
"Events are cumulating and I have received new orders. I have been stationed to remain close and keep watch on Dean."
"So I've graduated from diapers and can wear the big boy pants now, huh? No need to babysit me anymore. Guess I should be happy about that." But he's not. He knew this was coming, but he doesn't want Cas to leave. Really, though, what can he do? Cas is an angel of the Lord and is doing important things, far more important than hanging around a genius billionaire.
"Tony." The angel waits until he looks back at him before speaking in an earnest tone of voice. "You are the first human I interacted with here on Earth, and you have confirmed what I have always believed of humanity, that it is my Father's most beautiful creation. Even flawed and broken, you have immense capacity for change, and you have changed for the better. Yinsen would have been proud of you."
Breaking eye contact, Tony shoves his hands into his pockets, blinking rapidly against the burning sensation in his eyes. When he manages to find his voice, no acknowledgment is made of Castiel's words. "This is goodbye, huh?"
"For now," Cas agrees. "Our paths may yet cross again in the future."
"You know you can drop by any time, right? JARVIS has you programmed into our system."
Cas inclines his head solemnly. "I will keep that in mind. Stay safe, Tony."
He bumps a companionable shoulder against the angel's. "You too, feathers."
************
During a lull as some new code is being tested in the background, he pulls up an inventory list of all the crap he has in storage, and yes, there's the Captain America shield. The visions or whatever they were from Castiel had been too fleeting for him to remember facial features, but certain details had stuck out. For example, the blue, red and white colour combination had been immediately distinctive.
Couple that with what Fury said, and some interesting possibilities are being raised. He drums his fingers against his thigh thoughtfully. It's probably quite a bit further in the future, judging from the glimpse of a very different version of his armour, but it never hurts to be prepared. He opens up another encrypted file and notes down big green guy, bow, hammer, red hair, CA shield, and saves it in the same folder as the readouts from Castiel, buried under a ton of firewalls.
"Hey, JARVIS, after we're done with the upgrades, how do you feel about a spot of hacking?"