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There is something about Tony Stark, something brilliant, something strange, that makes Pepper feel… uneasy.
He's always charming, always friendly, when he's not almost offensively irritating, but never threatening, and never ever violent. Even so, Pepper can feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as he grins, full-toothed and bright, and can't stop herself from shuddering when she meets his burning dark eyes.
He's charming and friendly, and Pepper still gets an impression of something with sharp teeth and bloody claws hiding beneath the façade of a human being.
There is something ferocious in him, in the way he builds weapons of mass destruction with barely any effort, in the way he manipulates the world around him without remorse, in the way he protects his people, his friends, with claws and teeth and thousands of serrated edges that rip his enemies into shreds. And especially so in the way he watches his competitors like he wants to eat them, really, literally eat them –
It's terrifying and awe-inspiring and it makes Pepper feel scared and vulnerable and alive, all at the same time.
She asks Rhodey once, when she can finally hide her shudders, when she realizes that everybody reacts the same way in Tony's presence. When she finally notices the terror, the awe, the devotion and fear he inspires in anyone who crosses his path.
Rhodey looks at her, long and hard and piercing, before taking a long gulp of his drink. "I don't know what the hell he is," he admits. His eyes are knowing in a way that makes it clear he understand exactly why she is asking. "But he's Tony."
And that is, surprisingly, enough.
…
Yinsen remembers Tony Stark from the conference in Bern, remembers him drunk and stumbling and slurring and still more capable than any other man in the room. Remembers the feeling of awe and wonder when he talked and the way Yinsen's own hands shook as he listened.
He sees him now, hurt and bleeding and struggling and he can't imagine him ever passing as human, even with the memory of how ordinary he can seem fresh at the forefront of his mind.
The blood sizzles, the flesh knits and reknits together and then rips apart once again against the metal shrapnel lodged deep into the chest. The metal, which is burning-hot, fire-bright and torturous to get rid of, deadly and sharp, is somehow not hurting the… creature at all. There is a brilliance to the almost-human body, intensely white and scorching, and Yinsen doesn't look, can't look, but there is still an impression of wings, of tentacles, of thousands of burning eyes, and oh it hurts –
Yinsen keeps him alive. He doesn't know how.
Tony Stark opens his eyes, night-dark, star-bright, cold and blazing, and too much, and Yinsen's never been so terrified in his life. "Where am I?" the creature asks – the voice is piercing, reverberating, and it scrapes directly against Yinsen's brain. He thinks his ears might be bleeding. "Who are you?"
"Yinsen," he whispers, the word snatched out of his throat. "Ten Rings." He assumes he will die here. He is almost looking forward to it.
"Yinsen," the creature says, and it looks human now, fully normal, save for the eyes that burn, burn, burn, and Yinsen can barely think.
He doesn't even hear Raza's men coming, doesn't even realize they're there until Yinsen and the strange being are surrounded. For the first time since he was captured, he doesn't fear them – he can't take his eyes off from the horrendous, awe-inspiring creature that is Tony Stark.
"Yinsen," Tony Stark repeats. The men startle, their weapons shaking in their suddenly too tight grips, and Yinsen can just about see Raza paling from the corner of his eye. He cannot muster any other emotion except overwhelming, tremendous terror, can't make himself feel even a smidge of self-satisfaction. "Close your eyes."
Yinsen closes his eyes. There is a flash of light so bright that it pierces through his eyelids, and he can't stop himself from screaming – it hurts, burns through his eyes right to the center of his brain, intense and sharp. The noise echoes through the cave – Raza's men are eerily quiet.
"Come on, Yinsen," Tony Stark says, and for the first time, he sounds human. "Open your eyes."
Yinsen does. For a moment, there is an otherworldly being in front of him, incomprehensible, unfathomable and monstrous, with dozens of boneless appendages and serrated teeth dripping red. He blinks, and it's only Tony Stark, fully human and smiling, loose-limbed and at ease. He is dressed in torn rags, his face is lined with age and mundane worries and there are scars where the shrapnel used to be, just about visible through the rags of his shirt – nevertheless, he looks like a conqueror over a field of battle, a god above prostrated worshipers. Yinsen's heart almost stops out of horror.
Raza and his men are nowhere to be seen.
"Let's get you back to your village," Tony Stark says.
Yinsen doesn't remember mentioning Gulmira. He goes anyway.
He doesn't think that he has any other choice.
…
The last two weeks have been a clusterfuck Nick never wants to see repeated again.
First, Tony Goddamn Stark gets himself kidnapped, and then somehow saves himself without any help whatsoever, what the hell? Then, he stops all weapons manufacturing in his company and Obadiah Stane, his most fervent detractor and a goddamn traitor, mysteriously falls over dead. And then, because of course fucking Tony Stark can't do things halfway and make it in any way easier for Nick, he goes and accuses Stane of dealing with terrorists, proves it to the FBI and declares an all-out war on anyone who's gotten his weapons illegally.
Terrorists and warlords have been turning up dead and their weapons missing. Nobody knows how. Not even SHIELD.
So here he sits, twiddling his thumbs and hoping with empty sort of desperation that Stark comes home before his goddamn AI and its goddamn built-in weapons wake up and make a Swiss cheese out of him.
Nick feels him before he sees him – he's never met Stark in person, but somewhere deep in his hindbrain he recognizes the sensation. It's a steady itch at the back of his neck, an intense need to have a gun in his hand. His muscles tense, his mind goes mile a minute and he's still not ready when Tony Stark enters the room.
Stark's eyes sweep over the darkness, coolly, predatorily, and he meets Nick's gaze with a steady sort of calm that means nothing good. He shouldn't even be able to see Nick's face, not with the way the lighting in the room is purposely arranged.
Nick abruptly recalls Coulson's spooked expression after his first meeting with Stark, and recalculates.
"Who are you?" The question is a perfunctory expression of curiosity, and there is no alarm on Stark's face. Nick would have ascribed it to innate arrogance if there wasn't something in the back of his mind insisting he should run, run, run.
Nick decides that, for once, honesty might just be the best course of action. "Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. I want to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative." Because Stark may not be any good in physical alteration – and Nick is not so sure about that anymore; those terrorists are not killing themselves – but he's just about the most useful man they could have for the project.
Stark, though, is still nonchalant – too nonchalant, for finding an armed stranger in his home, in his safe place, and doesn't that make Nick all kinds of wary? His eyes are burning with curiosity, though, too bright, too hungry, and Nick has to stop himself from glancing away. He thinks he can hear something rustling behind his back, a skittering, crawlingly chilly sound, but doesn't quite dare to turn around and look, not with the inventor's full attention on him. "Well, Nicky. Go on. I'm listening." Stark smiles, widely. Nick doesn't remember being so terrified in his life.
He keeps a hand on his gun through the entire conversation.
…
Stern is kind of an idiot, Rhodey decides as he watches the senator bait Tony, even though he is sweating like a pig under the inventor's steady, scorching gaze. Justin Hammer is even a bigger one, since he actually tries to play in Tony's sandbox, and it would have been sad, if it wasn’t so hilarious.
Tony is perfectly behaved through the whole hearing, though – Rhodey doesn't count the hacking and the sass at the US senators; that's just Tony being himself. But there isn't even a hint of fang, every limb stays proportional to his body and Rhodey can't see anything unnatural out of the corner of his eye. He is kinda impressed that Tony's keeping his temper so well – God knows Rhodey would have been much less calm if Stern tried the same bullshit on him; SI's contracts with the government are all fulfilled, and there's literally no leg to stand on if they want more weapons.
But later, when it's only him and Pepper and Tony, his best friend… lets go.
Rhodey is used to it, to the head-hurting, non-Euclidean way Tony's true form looks like as he spreads out. He doesn't look at his friend directly – he doesn't think he can, even beyond the instinctive terror. There is madness in the way Tony's very being is constructed, insanity in the way he writhes and stretches and squirms, and Rhodey really doesn't want to risk his mind.
Pepper, stern-faced and unflinching, even as her cheek is brushed by a half-corporeal, razor-edged wing, says, "Was the drama really necessary, Tony?"
"Yes," Rhodey grumbles under his breath.
"They deserved it," Tony says, and there is a cacophony of sounds in his tone, a polyphony that almost hurts the ear to hear. "Did you see Hammer's face?"
Rhodey remembers the sick look of dawning horror on the man's face as Tony looked at him firmly with eyes that are just a touch too bright to be human, and it makes him snicker.
"Well, legally, they don't have anything they can throw at us," Pepper says. "But that doesn't mean Stern can't make our lives difficult."
"I could get rid of him," Tony offers, enticingly, the abnormal limbs flexing. Rhodey's never quite sure he's kidding.
"Too conspicuous," Pepper says, and her lips quirk upwards.
"And, you know, murder," adds Rhodey, feeling the need to be the voice of reason. Pepper sometimes takes Tony's peculiarities a little too well.
Tony sighs in disappointment, and it feels as if the whole room is suddenly sucked out of air. There is a hint of snapping jaws somewhere to their left but nobody pays it any attention. "We could always get him sacked."
"Good enough for me," Rhodey says. He completely ignores half-phantom limbs, unnatural and terrifying, that slither over his back.
That's just Tony being Tony. And Rhodey has never been afraid of his best friend.
…
"Watch him," Fury said, something much too close to fear in his one good eye. "Learn every goddamn twitch and tic and whim he has. And Romanoff? Be careful."
The last one is what worries Natasha. Fury doesn't do that – he doesn't warn his agents of danger, he doesn't make sure they are ready. He expects it of them, demands competence and preparedness, and doesn't give a damn if they think he cares.
He told her to be careful of Tony Stark.
She doesn't really get it until she walks into the Stark Industries. All she knows about Stark comes from the media and a short briefing she was afforded at SHIELD – none of those make him look like a threat and certainly not one that could get Fury spooked. But his employees offer her a very different source of information. The people working at SI are capable, efficient, the best of the best in their fields, none of them faint-hearted or easy to rattle. And every one of them is terrified of their boss.
It doesn't seem to be caused by cruelty or unfairness or even bad temper. The respect is there, the awe, the loyalty, even protectiveness for a man who seems to be weird and off, but who is still theirs. Nevertheless, everything is imbued with a faint sense of fear that makes it clear Tony Stark is not a man to cross. That nobody here – the people who know him personally and work with him every day – would actually dare to cross him.
And then Natasha actually meets the man.
The instinctive reaction that flares inside her at the mere sight of the inventor almost makes her lose her composure and abandon her mission. She wants to run. She wants to kill him. Her hands itch for a gun, or a knife, or even a garrote. She desperately needs to make herself safe. And Tony Stark looks at her, and it's not threatening, it's not even particularly piercing, but it sears a brand across her skin and she wants to gauge his eyes out.
For the first time in her life, she is not sure if she can.
Pepper Potts bears his full attention without even a shudder, doesn't shift a muscle underneath his burning – like fire, like stars, too hot and too much – gaze, and Natasha doesn't remember ever respecting somebody so much.
She watches Stark's every movement, and he looks normal, moves like a human, but that feeling… She looks and looks and looks, and doesn't actually see anything unusual. But from the corner of her eye, just at the edge of her vision… a tentacle, a tip of a razor-sharp wing, gaping maws with serrated teeth, dripping red with blood –
Her head hurts from it. She doesn't know if it's even true.
As soon as she's back in Natalie Rushman's apartment she dials Fury's direct line. "What the hell, sir?" She is proud that her voice doesn't shake.
"Hell might be just the thing, Romanoff," Fury says, as dry as a desert and dead serious.
Natasha can't bring herself to feel disbelief. "That… I don't think that's human, sir. I don't know what it is, but it's not human."
"Is Stark a threat?"
"Yes," the word is out before Natasha can even think about it. She doesn't take it back. "To anyone who tries to harm him." He didn't do anything to Natasha, even though she's infiltrating his company. And he left Fury unhurt, though Natasha knows that the director spoke with Stark privately.
"Can we contain him?"
"I don't know." She doesn't even know what he is, let alone how they might subdue him.
And isn't that the crux of the problem?
…
Phil doesn't want to go to the Stark Tower, doesn't want to be anywhere in close proximity to Tony Stark, but he has his orders and the fate of the world is more important than his irrational fear.
Pepper is a perfect hostess, polite and pleasant, and doesn't even make it obvious she's upset at him for just barging in. But there is a tread of hostility in the way Stark looks at him, dark and burning and malevolent – Phil feels a strange slithering at the small of his back, hears something rustling just outside of his field of vision, and there is something off about Stark, there always is, and –
Phil can't concentrate.
Pepper is a calming presence – Phil is ready to fall to his knees and worship at her feet when she drags Stark away and somehow convinces him to take a look at the files. The interactive holograms that appear are magnificent, magical, and Stark handles them with an idle sort of carelessness that makes it clear just how normal it is for him to be surrounded by the best of everything.
And then Stark sees the Tesseract.
Everything in the room stills. All sounds are gone, and Phil can hear his steadily quicker breathing, his heartbeat getting increasingly rapid. Stark's eyes are riveted on the image of the cube, and there is hunger in them, a world-rending want that Phil will never be able to forget.
Phil's hand drifts to the handle of his gun without permission.
"So SHIELD has the Tesseract?" The question is seemingly idle, but Phil can hear the echoes as Stark talks, thousands of voices repeating the same sentence over and over again. The shudder that crosses his spine is impossible to stop.
"Yes," he grits out. "We had it, but Loki took it."
"Huh," Stark says. His hands cradle the holographic cube gently, lovingly, and Phil has to talk to Fury, has to tell him that Stark is interested in – fixated on, obsessed with – Tesseract, but he can't bring himself to move. The shadows around him are stretching unnaturally, writhing and wiggling, and Phil chokes on his own terror. "Guess I'll be helping your merry band of superheroes, then."
Phil doesn't know how he would have left if not for Pepper – steady, calm Pepper, who shows not a hint of fear as she tosses a quick goodbye to her ravenous boss – making him promise to drive her to the airport.
Sometimes, Phil hates his job.
…
Bruce doesn't know what to think about Tony Stark before he meets him.
Generally, he tries not to form misconceptions before he finds himself face-to-face with somebody, tries not to listen to the rumors and second-hand opinions. But it's kind of hard, considering just how well-known Stark is – Bruce has been bombarded with news about him for more than twenty years by now, and some things stick.
Brilliant. Playboy. Generous. Irritating. Ruthless. Infuriating. And many other things that the media likes to portray him as.
And then he is presented with Tony Stark's SHIELD file.
It is an… interesting read.
Bruce knows what SHIELD thinks of the Other Guy; he’s seen his file – though he’s sure he was given only the edited version – and there’s a way they write about Hulk that makes it clear they’re terrified of him, all their fear carefully masked by the bizarrely precise administrative language. There is a handful of phrases, a couple of cautiously worded sentences and some very pointed evasions showing just how much he frightens them.
They write about Tony Stark in an eerily similar manner.
Bruce can just about recognize the same sense of baffled terror, but he can’t put a finger on it – there is no reason listed, beyond Stark’s widely known abilities; and they, despite being stunningly awe-inspiring, are not enough to make SHIELD ready to lose their collective marbles.
And then he meets the man. And then he understands.
Tony Stark enters the room and the Other Guy goes quiet.
Bruce is almost too stunned by the sudden wariness coming from his hindbrain – from the Hulk – to notice the rest of the occupants. But the way Coulson is staying several feet away from Stark tells a lot, as does the way Romanoff – who recruited the Hulk without a flinch – stills and shudders, a barely noticeable motion that seems monumental in a suddenly too-small, too-crowded Helicarrier.
Thor, though. He looks at Stark only once, blue eyes wide and terrified and seeming almost half-mad, before he cringes and looks away. He is clutching his hammer like it’s a security blanket, and the way he flinches as Stark pats his arm is violently obvious. His gaze studiously skitters away from Stark’s form.
Stark is grinning, wide and toothy, as he shakes Bruce’s hand. The Other Guy whimpers. Bruce thinks he can see Stark’s skin rippling.
Stark speaks. It sounds like a clang of thousand bells. Bruce’s head hurts just from hearing it. “I want to talk to Loki.”
Not even Fury dares to deny him.
…
The man – the creature – they send to speak with him is horrifying.
Loki is sure that these mortals can hardly comprehend what they see in front of them. He doubts that even Thor can see much more than average mortal shell, which is, no doubt, enough to terrify him beyond reason. But Loki, who spent centuries mastering magic, who is a prodigy with illusions and who, most importantly, fell into the Void and continued falling for days – weeks, months, he doesn’t know – in the company of similar horrors – oh, Loki sees.
The mortal shell smiles at him. So do the other dozen mouths, with serrated teeth and dropping jaws, blood dripping from lips dark enough to seem black. There are thousands of eyes watching him, bright and brilliant and looking like a heart of a star.
It takes all self-control Loki has not to shudder. “And what could you want from me… Stark? I doubt I could give you anything you cannot take.”
Stark’s grin, impossibly, widens, until it takes over half of his face. The rictus looks grotesque on the painfully human visage. “I want the Tesseract,” he says, and Loki can hear it – the Void, the otherworldly silence filled with thousands of ear-piercing voices, millions of screams.
“I don’t have it,” Loki says truthfully. He wonders idly just how mad he’s become, to play at words with a creature like this.
Stark chuckles. It echoes. “But you know where it is.” There is something skittering, wriggling against his feet, but Loki doesn’t look down. He doubts very much that the reinforced glass of his cell is in any way a deterrent to Tony Stark.
“Why should I tell you?” Loki asks, and he’s playing with fire, he knows he is, but then again, he’s always liked fire best.
Stark shrugs. Thousands of brilliantly white wings shrug with him, one of the razor edges pointedly brushing against Loki’s neck. “I’ll let you live.”
Loki tilts his head and grins. He doesn’t spare Thanos another thought – he knows where his best chance of survival is, and staying on Stark’s good side seems like a decent option right now. “Oh, it’ll be delivered to you – straight to the Stark Tower.”
Stark looks at him for one, long moment and then throws his head back and laughs.
…
Tony Stark - he's only ever known himself as Tony Stark, though he can hardly call himself human – looks at the glowing blue cube in front of him and feels like he’s just come home.
He takes it, bare-handed and without hesitation.
His eyes – night-dark, star-bright, and too much to be entirely human – glow with blue light.
…
(Howard is working on the Tesseract when Maria finds him in his lab.
“Howard, I’m pregnant.”)