There was no way this should have sounded sympathetic; Tony was supposed to be pissed and that wasn't the answer he wanted, it wasn't going to help him find his girl and was way too much for Tony to process at once. This kind of sincerity from Nick wasn't familiar-- usually Nick started espousing bullshit that Tony really wanted to believe and was so far from true. He was a spy, he was good at it. Was this supposed to work the other way, honesty that Tony didn't want to hear? He didn't want to hear what kind of love it took, when Nick knew exactly how fucked up his own life was, to force it onto another innocent person. Maybe that was just a father's curse.
"So you trained a teenage girl to be one of the greatest secret agents in the universe," Tony summed up, not that Nick needed the compliment, "assuming she had the maturity and life experience to not disappear with all of those lessons, take my--" He pinched the bridge of his nose, second guessing his approach and wondering what he could say to get them to a place where he wasn't so disappointed. "I always had your back, Nick," he finally said, arms still folded across his chest to try to push back the emotion that threatened to waver his voice. Maybe it was hard to see the whole picture with one good eye. Tony wasn't the wunderkind that Nick needed, and perpetually unreliable, he knew that, and maybe he didn't always make the call that Nick wanted him to, but Tony was sure it was the one he needed. Like he needed Tony now to talk to Wicked and find the rest of these kids before one of them (more of them?) got killed under Nick Fury's regime.