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The media likes to call Tony the face of the future; his innovative technology has kind of won him that title. What most people don’t recognize, though, is that Stark is the face of the future for more than the technology he’s created and keeps on creating. Tony’s like the embodiment of the disillusionment the new generations are getting with the world they’ve been thrusted into. He’s the embodiment of the decline in happiness that technology has created recently. Tony’s the embodiment of the disillusionment with heroes that had stalled the Avengers initiative and created the drive for the SHRA.
Or maybe, Fury chuckles darkly to himself as he sees the medics working on Stark’s chest through the glass, maybe that’s just your old man thinking. He doesn’t think he’s so far off the mark, though, as he reminisces about the changes Tony had gone through as he aged. Changes brought on not only by the father he was burdened with, but by the world he’d made to experience since he was a child.
***
Fury had been a green, fresh faced member of SHIELD when he’d met a tiny, chubby four year old Tony at a staff party orchestrated by the top members of the organization. Nick had been young, but he was ambitious and he’d been climbing the latter with alarming speed. He had been, by that point, on Agent Carter and Stark Senior’s radar as a potential higher up of the organization. Spoke to Howard on a first name basis despite their age differences, and so had gotten to meet the rest of the family. Despite the fact that Nick had respected Howard for his genius, he had detested the man interacted with people. Sure, Nick was quiet and intensely focused when talking to people, but he was never condescending or elitist the way Howard could be at that point. More than that, Nick had hated the way Howard spoke to his baby of a son whenever they were out together. Judging by Agent Carter’s pursed looks as she guarded over the pair, neither did she.
Tony, or Anthony as Howard preferred people to call him, had always been small for his age. At age four, when he’d already completed his own circuit board all on his lonesome, he’d looked more like a two year old. He’d been adorable, though, quietly mischievous and giggly like any other child his age. Howard hadn’t tainted him much yet. The day of the party Peggy and Nick had seen him sneak out of the board room where the get together was occurring and with a brief nod from the other agent Nick had followed him to one of the R&D rooms on that floor.
He’d been getting his chubby little fingers on any piece of technology that he could find, and seeing him so excited had given Nick pause in trying to get him back to his parents. So, trained to be silent and almost invisible, he’d snuck behind Tony and kept out sight of the tiny little genius. He can’t remember how long they were there that night, but one thing that had made an impression on Fury was how utterly delighted the kid had been in getting so much freedom. He’d kept talking to himself as he had an audience, and it had been sad to realize that Tony had had an imaginary friend to whom he explained his thought process to. Even then, he’d spoken really fast as if his thoughts went so far and at such speed that he tripped over his words and the clumsiness of his baby fingers trying to get it all out of his head. Nick had let him enjoy himself for a while until he’d been startled by voices coming down the hall.
Quickly, the kid had replaced the object in his hand to its rightful place and was looking around, a panicked look on his face, for somewhere to hide. They’d both kept still as the voices carried on down the hall, and perhaps most importantly to Tony, when they’d realize none of the voices had belonged to Howard Stark. Tony had looked back longingly at whatever he’d been fiddling with before sighing in resignation, and moving to the door. Fury had decided it was his turn to intervene.
“What are you doing here, kid?” he was slightly uneasy at the way the toddler jumped. His already big puppy brown eyes widened in alarm, and his chubby cheeks paled. One had went up with a thumb dangerously close to his mouth before he seemed to remember something and tugged at his hair instead. He looked adorably terrified, in his tiny three piece suit and little bow tie, looking at the imposing figure of the agent.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said quietly. He had a faint lisp, perhaps because of the tooth missing from his mouth. He managed to give Fury a sheepish grin before looking down at the floor again. “I just wanted to see what Father has been working on.”
“You want to be like your dad, kid?” Nick had asked him softly.
“No,” the kid had said quickly, and then had stared up at Fury with a horrified expression on his face and backpedaled. “I mean, yes. Yes, I do. Sir. Yes, I do, sir.” He had opened his mouth to say something else, but there was the sound of people outside the door again and he’d looked worriedly from the door to Fury again.
“C’mon, let’s get you back to your parents,” Fury had told him, gesturing to the door. When Tony didn’t make a move, Nick figured he needed an incentive. “C’mon, I won’t tell if you don’t.”
The gap toothed smile and bright cheeks that had looked up at Fury then had been, even though the spy would never admit it, the reason why he’d been looking out for Tony for the following years.
It hadn’t been easy, by God, Tony had made it so much harder than it needed to be. Nick wasn’t a warm person, or even a friendly person, and though he’d kept watch over the kid whenever he could as he grew up he’d never managed to gain his trust. Peggy had, for a while, being the motherly comfort that Tony had needed, but had been taken from him when she’d openly questioned Howard. Then, Tony had gone to MIT and begun his career as both a genius and an alcoholic. Fury hadn’t thought Tony would live long enough to see twenty-five, but then the accident happened, and the bright eyed rebel that Tony had been had died. He’d already been a disillusioned child, his hopes for meeting someone valiant like Steve Rogers the hero his father had worshipped had been dashed long long before then, but the death of his parents shattered something more. Something deeper.
It’d made him blind on whom he trusted. First, it had been his trust on Obadiah. Obie had always been manipulative of the young genius, though he’d been smart enough to not make it look like that’s what he was doing. Without anyone else to depend on, and with Howard’s commiseration, Tony had trusted him. He’d always smelt dirty to Nick. Then there was Ty when Tony had barely been twenty two. God, Fury remembers the complete shit show that Tiberius Stone had been. Trying to talk Tony out of that, especially when Obie had been supporting him until the end. Nick secretly thought that Obadiah had supported the asshole hoping he’d keep Tony controlled. He’d had to back track when Tony had finally put his foot down and stopped the abuse. Seeing the reports of Tony’s visits to the hospital after that had been hard to swallow.
Tony had thrown himself into the company after that. Had kept building and building, had managed to work out the contracts with Rhodey’s help, and under the impression that Obadiah was sincere had allowed his weapons to go out into the world. Then he’d gotten kidnapped, and Nick had put all the information SHIELD could gather into the hands of the military so that Rhodes could find him. He’s fairly certain that if he hadn’t Tony would have died, though he’s never told the genius that. Tony’s cynicism and distrust tripled after that. Nobody was allowed in, nobody was trusted, even Pepper was kept at a distance until their relationship had slowly withered to a tentative friendship.
Then Fury had had to see life slowly draining away from Tony right before their eyes. Had had a whole unit of new agents frantically searching through Howard’s records for something that could keep him alive. Anything. Until they’d managed to send a small sample of files to Tony, and he’d managed to bring himself from the brink of death again. Things had been relatively simple after that until they weren’t. The Avengers had always been a risky business, and Fury had literally put everything on the line for them then. If they couldn’t work cohesively then they couldn’t function. Natasha’s evaluation, one that Nick hadn’t been at all involved with because of his partiality, had managed to prove that Tony was going to be the hardest link to be forced into the whole group. It wouldn’t do to simply be on call, he’d have to be part of a team. Dear Lord, that first meeting with Cap had been a bad sign. It’d made all of them think that it would never work. Then Loki attacked the hellicarrier, and in the stunned moment of getting up to reach the control room Fury had seen the way Cap’s led Tony out of the room with a hand on his waist. He’d seen Tony carry that nuke into space, and amidst the cheering couldn’t help the way his heart broke a bit at the thought losing Tony, the baby he’d seen so long ago, just like that.
After the Battle, the Avengers seemed to be as tight as any group could be. When the press had tried to get on Barton’s case, both Steve and Tony had fought back just as intensely as if they had been on the field. Tony had leaned on Cap, and vice versa for everything until. Until. Tony had known, Fury knows, that creating Ultron behind his team’s backs was not the best course of action, but by God he had tried so hard to protect them. To protect the people he loved. We need a security measure, Tony had told him when he’d tried to pitch the idea to him, something that will prevent our guys from being frozen seventy years in ice because some madman with a weapon wants to take over the world. The Avengers are good, but we can’t be everywhere in the world at once. Fury had heard what he hadn’t said, that he needed a safety net so that Steve would never feel as though his death was the only way to keep the world safe.
That day, in the barn, Fury can’t recall ever seeing Tony so defeated. Not even when the palladium that had kept him alive had slowly started to kill him. Seeing him banging at that tractor had proven just how human Tony actually was. Sure, he’d tried to blame his fear on the fact that he’d been responsible for his team’s death, but Fury knew it was more than that. He’d observed them, from out of the house, the way Steve was acting around Tony. That sense of betrayal that anyone could see was guiltily eating at Tony. So when Tony had tried to cover his true anxiety with that he’d let him rant, and then Fury had said his peace.
“I don’t doubt that’s what’s got you worried,” Nick had told him slowly. His one eye intensely focused on what the other man was doing. “But I know that’s not the whole story.”
“I saw my fam-friends dead, and the world in flames, tell me how that’s not what I should be afraid of,” Tony snapped at him. His dark brown eyes swimming in fear.
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be afraid of it, I just said that wasn’t everything.”
“Then pray tell what else there could be, Saint Nick,” Tony told him in that condescendingly exasperating way that would have had Fury snapping at him if his fear weren’t so evident.
“There’s no possible way for me to know, but I’m willing to bet it’s got something to do with the Captain,” the way Tony flinched at that was confirmation enough and they both knew it. The genius didn’t try to deny it. He just blew out a breath and pinched his nose.
“Every time he looks at me it’s like we’re strangers,” Tony told him quietly as he focused back on the tractor. His fingers moving in all directions though his mind was clearly far away. Trapped somewhere between what he was certain his future was, and the present he didn’t want to deal with. “He hasn’t call me Stark in a long time, and now it’s like… He was my best friend, but now he looks at me like he doesn’t even know who I am. Like he doesn’t know that, at the end of the day, it’s always gonna be me in his corner.” He violently tore out a hose, and Fury saw it as his cue to leave him to his thoughts.
By the end of the Ultron debacle, they were back to the tentative friendship they’d had after the Battle of New York. Tony had gone back to the tower, and Steve had stayed in the New Avengers’ facilities. Fury had watched the Captain then. Had seen him do his job, and then when there was time for him to lay back he’d get on his bike and speed off. He was back the next day, right on time for his training, but never said where he went. Everyone assumed he was still chasing dead leads for his best friend, but then Fury had caught him.
“—can’t possibly tell me you’ve eaten,” he was saying to someone. The clearly fondly exasperated tone in his voice had made Fury pause on his way past the private gyms.
“I swear, Dummy made me a smoothie,” the other man laughed. Fury had reared back in surprise. Neither of them had mentioned that they’d kept in contact.
“Nothing Dummy makes is fit for human consumption, Tones,” From the captain’s profile Fury had managed to see the amusing smirk on his lips. “And don’t even try to sell me that bullshit about Extremis. You still can’t drink it.”
There was a beep from Tony’s side of the line which managed to sound sad. “Dummy wants you to know that he is offended at your lack of trust in his skills,” Tony chastised him.
“I have plenty of trust in his skills. Just not in him keeping you alive,” Cap laughed.
“Well, that’s what you get for leaving me alone with faulty bots,” Tony told him. His voice sounded wistful, Fury noted.
“Just a few more days,” Steve replied just as quietly.
“And then?”
“Then you have me for a whole week, sweetheart.” Fury decided to leave the premises right after that. His mind a jumbled mess. From then on, Nick had tried to keep Cap’s responsibilities way out of his leisure time. There were times when Tony would call, and someone else would answer that Steve wasn’t there. That’s how the New Avengers, with the exception of Sam, figured when Steve was with Tony and when he was chasing cold leads.
A few months after that, when Steve’s absences were long past surprising and everyone was on the betting pool of when he and Stark would make it official, Fury was pulled out an important meeting by a young agent. He said that Natasha had called for him, and that she was busy speaking to a panic Steve on the phone. Fearing another threat of world imploding, Fury had hurried his step to the New Avengers communal floor.
“—waking up, Tasha!” Steve’s frantic yelling was the first thing Fury heard. He ran into the room just in time to see Colonel Rhodes taking off from behind the panoramic window. He swiveled his head to look at Romanov who had her arms crossed and a frown on her face. “Is medical on its way? Oh God, Tony. Wake up, sweetheart, come on. You can’t do this to me. Tasha, how long?”
“Rhodes and quinjet are on its way. You need to calm down, Steve.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down!” Steve’s voice snarled over the line. “I’m not fucking losing him like this!”
“We won’t, Steve,” Barton tried to sooth him. How long? He mouthed at Fury who was already tracking the progress of the quinjet. Thirty, Fury mothed back. “Medical will be there soon.”
As if on cue voices were heard over the line. There were the voices of the meds; Jackson and Prim, good, they were the best and the ones who knew how Extremis worked. Then the slightly hysterical voice of Steve arguing about having to be with his fella, and fuck you if you think you’ll get him out of my sight! And then Rhodes calming him down. There was a lot of commotion as the Avengers listened to their frantic leader, and then things went eerily silent except for Rhodes’s soothing voice, and Steve’s erratic breathing.
“Rhodey?” Steve had said quietly after a while. Rhodes had hummed in reply. “Is he gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,” Rhodes had told him even though it was clear as day he didn’t know the answer himself. “You know him better than anyone, you know he won’t just roll over.”
Turns out that, like the first near death experience Tony had, the thing that was supposed to keep him alive was killing him. He’d begun to develop extremis with the SHIELD scientists after they’d come back from Ultron as a way of restoring the many injuries agents suffered. They’d been trying to make it more stable so that people didn’t end up blowing up like with Killian’s experiments and had had relatively promising successes. That’s why a very small group of people knew exactly how the nanos worked. The gist of it was, what Fury understood anyway, that the nanos worked like the white blood cells fighting malicious activity in the body. In Tony’s case, the shrapnel that inched towards his chest. Though they’d managed to get a lot of it out when they injected extremis, enough of it to make damage had stayed inside Tony’s body, but was treated as normal. Basically, the shrapnel was a part of the genius so the Extremis virus didn’t view it as a threat. Having nothing to fight, extremis had begun to hurt its host. Tony had experienced a shock to the system due to his body warring with itself when Steve had found him. SHIELD meds had had to revert the process and flush out Extremis, which was horribly risky and something that had made Steve punch through a wall in fear and horror, until it was safe enough to reinsert the reactor. Thank God for Stark’s nostalgia because they had one that could be temporarily used until Tony was stable enough to work on a replacement. It had been touch and go for days after day; days of having to manhandle Steve out of the waiting room to get him to eat and shower before Tony opened his eyes.
Predictably, Tony’s first word upon waking up had been Steve’s name. Everyone had breathed a sigh of relief when the Cap smothered him in kisses, and Tony berated him for being a sap. Everything had been back to normal for a while, until.
***
It was pretty fucked up, Fury thought now as he watched the medics try to save Tony Stark’s life yet again, that all Tony seemed to be able to get was short bursts of happiness until something came to tear it all down. The bright blue of the reactor on the table to the side was both a beacon of hope and fear for Fury and Natasha who stood next to him now.
“Rogers?” Fury asked her quietly.
He heard her exasperated sigh and had to contain himself for saying something about it. She’d have to come around on her own. Something told Fury Steve was already suffering enough.
“Contained,” she said shortly. Her eyes never left Tony’s prone form and the bustling bodies of the medics who tried harder and harder each second to keep the genius alive.
“Meaning?”
“Sedated. Had to shove an IV on him to keep him hydrated,” the hitch in her voice betrayed her anger at the soldier. Fury smiled, but made sure it wasn’t reflected on the crystal in front of him. She was been torn in two, he well knew, between the two brothers she’d managed to get.
“Good,” Fury told her quietly as they turned back to watch.
“He doesn’t need to see this,” the words were barely out of his mouth before the beeping indicating Tony’s heart beat fell flat.