Re: Steve and Tony "No," Tony snapped back at him, riding his very real frustration with Rogers' heel-dragging to what would hopefully be a convincing desperation. "No, that's the last thing I want you to do. We can't come out of this with someone who's got a target on their back just as big as yours - what would be the point." He didn't need Rogers to win the Games - he just needed him to stay alive long enough to execute a plan. What that plan was, he hadn't the foggiest idea, not yet, but odds were he'd have to survive at least a few days. What was worth that, to Rogers? A chance to spread his message, maybe? Helping the chances of a particular victor? Or maybe just the same thing it always came back to: giving the people a better shot. "It can't be something obvious or intentional. It needs to be ..."
He pushed himself off the table to go stand by one of the shelves lining the walls, leaning his elbow in an empty space between two decorative bookends. The thought and effort on his face was real - just not directed in precisely the way he wanted Rogers to think it was. How did you get someone to choose something you needed them to choose, and have them believe they'd done it freely? There was a card trick his father had done, way back in the day, when he'd still played at things like games - and Tony had fallen for it every time, mystified, until he'd realized, one day, how ridiculously simple it was. Pick two suits, that was how it started. "Well. You won't let me bust you out. You won't win. So that only leaves you one thing, doesn't it." He turned his head to look at him, his chin buried in his hand. "You're going to die. So we have to choose how. It can be the way they plan it, or it can be the way we plan it. Those are the only two options." His voice was flat, his face pretty cold - sympathy, he figured, wouldn't pay all that well, here. "It can be useful to them, or it can be useful to us. Got a preference?"
And then, of course, it was just a matter of leading him down the right paths. Do you want to die immediately, before we have a chance to set the narrative? Or later, after we've written a story I can tell? Do you want to bend your neck and let them use you to demonstrate their power? Or fight back for a while, and show that such a thing is possible? The key to that card trick had always been knowing which card you wanted them to pick from the outset - that was literally all it was. If you knew where you wanted your mark to end up, it turned out it was pretty easy to drive him forward between the horns of a false dilemma until he got there.
At least, it was pretty easy if your mark was a four year-old Tony Stark. But for brains, he'd put them on about the same level.