Who: Tony Stark & Edwin Jarvis What: Hiding out at home base. Where: Tony's penthouse. When: Right after the train ride back from the demonstration in District Eight.
One of the most prominent features of Tony's home was its view. The windows excited comment almost as much as anything he'd ever set out on the table, or splashed across the walls, or pulled out of a closet: they were tall, they were wide, and they were on offer in just about every direction. It would have been something like living in a fishbowl, except he was too high up for very many other people to see in. Most of the time, he liked that. There was always something to see, and everyone was so reliably, breathlessly impressed with nothing more than a stroll out onto the balcony. It was a prime feature.
But tonight he'd run about as far away from all of that as he could. Immediately upon returning home, still dressed in the quasi-uniform he only ever put on for official functions and that now forever smelled to him like District Eight's dust and sweat and wretched crowds, he'd holed up in one of the only rooms in the place that didn't look out onto anything. Even this was less a room than a corridor, a little nook between two more open spaces, but the fireplace on one wall and the massive mirror on the other meant there was no room for windows. A couple chairs, some purely ornamental books, a plant or two, and he had somewhere to take people if they wanted somewhere 'cozy.'
Or where he could sit and pretend he never had to go outside again. Either of those.
It was here that he'd dropped himself into a chair with a big glass of scotch; now, with elbows resting on his knees, rubbing miserably at his temples, he was trying to think of how and what kind of trouble he was in. When he'd been packed onto the train mere hours after the demonstration had gone south, he'd been the one calling the shots, more or less. They'd agreed to his demands to let him personally collect his belongings from his rooms in the Mayor's complex. They'd been fairly forthcoming about the security risks that made it a good idea to go back to the Capitol rather than finish the rest of his stay. No one had bothered him on the train ride home - which was just as well, because he'd spent it lock-jawed and at best monosyllabic. The message he'd received from the higher-ups calling for a meeting tomorrow hadn't seemed particularly ominous. And now he was home, unmolested.
So why did he feel like something very wrong was happening?
Possibly it was because an acute flurry of fear and physical exertion followed by hours of sitting tense and immobile had left him feeling like some muscle in his back was trying to rip out a rib or two, but - more possibly it had to do with the look on Rogers' face and the unspeakable sound from the people who'd gathered to see him. He'd wanted to pour it out to Jarvis the minute he'd seen him, but of course privacy in transit was never assured. And now that he could ... he was gripped by that feeling that had been chasing him all day and that made him feel turned around, torn between screaming at someone or just slinking away to a corner. (Obviously, he'd chosen the latter.)
"Could you hear it?" he asked when he finally looked up from his hands, reaching out for his drink. "It was so - loud." He'd left his vocabulary somewhere back east. His mind wasn't on description, anyway. He couldn't have found words for what he'd heard, and he was far, far more concerned with whether he was going to need to be prepared to launch into an argument. That was part of what was coiling up his spine like a spring: he'd been ready to be deeply defensive, on a serious hair-trigger, ever since he'd dragged Rogers off the stage. I didn't mean to was practically written on his forehead.