WHO: Skye & Tony WHEN: After Skye returns from impromptu visit with Dad. WHERE: Tower, Tony's labs. WHAT:"You're not a monster, Skye." He looked at her. "Sins of the father -- it doesn't work like that."
“Yeah it does, Tony. We’re sitting inside yours and I’m living inside mine. It sucks, but it does. And we can’t escape it, but bully for trying.” ___
It wasn’t expedient to see May. It wasn’t expedient to see Ward. It wasn’t expedient to confess unto Phil Coulson and lay all her monstrosities bare when he could barely contort himself into a modicum of humanity. But Skye (who, beneath the veil of Stark Tower, developed flushed cheeks and shaking hands) found herself standing like a foundling in Tony Stark’s doorway. Skye, who’d seen the true nature of her father on high display, knew herself to be what she’d feared most. And Skye, who needed some sort of reassurance she wasn’t going to burst forth and excoriate the earth, found herself seeking out companionship.
He can take it, she told herself.
Better than Fitz. Better than Sam.
“Yo, Man of Iron.”
"084, this is not a surprise that you've gained clearance to a level you shouldn't have clearance for." Pantera muted by 2 decibels with a thought, Tony swiveled in his chair away from his wall of monitors to Skye. The girl was all spark and flint but there was brittleness there. He knew the look. "Oh look at that face. That's a face in need of reinforcements. Scotch, gin, or vodka. Pick your poison."
“Fuckin --” she walked in the shop, hand heavy on the pristine surfaces until she got closer and peered at his face. “You know it’s easy, right? It’s like all the puzzle pieces just float together … and JARVIS thinks I’m cute. So suck it, you’re not as secure as you think.” She winked.
Then, a breath.
“Yeah, gin. What’re you doing?”
“You’ve seduced my AI, you…succubus,” he accused, giving her the dirty eye. “He was mine before he was yours.” There was a bar (there was always a bar), and he pulled out Plymouth, Hendricks, and tonic water in turn. In another life, he could’ve been a bartender, flare and flirting in spades. The glasses even came with wedges of lime. “Trying to become an expert on infectious disease in 72 hours, create body armor that’s both durable and lightweight enough not to upset the forces of flight, synthetic electromagnetic metal… heard you ruffled a lot of feathers on your team. Again.”
Levering herself upon his work table, she watched the master at work and let herself be impressed that even Tony Stark (who should have probably had a robot do this dirty work for him) could throw together a fabulous drink. And her appreciation was illustrated in a smack of her lips and a heaved out sigh.
“Wait what, infectious diseases. And hadn’t you ever thought about trying to use the metallurgic --” but she stopped herself, eyes narrowing.
“Is this the internet brain again?”
“Avengers-wide distress call. The Director practices his batting arm on civilians in a coffee shop. You go AWOL.” He paused, palmed his own glass and then leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been a good boy. So. What did you do? I hope it was worth it. I’ve seen the scary faces that Coulson’s second makes.”
“ … yeah, it was kinda worth it. Raina was there, and everybody was focused on not me so I went to see my dad.” She let that sink in for a moment, her lower lip sawing between her teeth as one leg curled and the sole of her boot laid flush against her side.
“He choked Raina out, and I had my gun on him. Then, he freaked out and ran.”
Sink in, it did. He raised his glass to her. “To fathers. May they continue to disappoint.” His toast was exceedingly liberal, the bitter edge bit into his tongue as complement to his words. “So, that happened.”
“You know, at this point, it’s such a joke.” And the gin was done in a stroke, its empty contents placed on the table as she observed the tang with which he gave said toast. Tony Stark’s relationship with his father was rocky as a matter of course (rocky enough to push her to dress like Howard Stark for Janet Van Dyne’s Halloween party) -- but this was different. This was real life actual Tony.
“Except for the anger part, and the monster part. Hey, at least you can take me out if I decide to explode and wear Ward like a suit one day … or Coulson. I think Coulson would make a super cute suit.”
He raised his brows at the empty glass, casting a glance back up at her that was half-amazed, half-admiring. “A suit in a suit. Points for thoroughness.” One last take off his drink, and he slid it over to her across the desk. “You know, it’s funny. Looking at you now, you’re one of the most human people I know.”
And what was beneath the suit and the suit? She thought she’d known. But there seemed to be no true north; no direction, at least not at the present. May would have a page, a plot, a book. To be unbound, now, and to be in the company of one who understood this. Glorious.
“Then you know a lot of shitty humans.” Unhooking her leg to let it again splay (her lack of stillness inherent in a tapping toe in time to the soft strains of fucking Pantera) in the air, she took his glass and finished it in a draught. Catching the excess liquid with the back of her hand, she took in a breath to let the alcoholic fire sear her throat.
“Come here.”
"Humans, by definition, are shitty." When the second glass joined the first (a pattern, he admitted, he was well familiar with), he stared up at her, dark hair framing her face, dark searing gaze meeting his steadily. Monster, human, woman. Forget the past, present tense works and lasts.
"I think," he said, barely able to put voice to it, "you should probably slow your roll."
“Okay then.” Eyeroll. That wasn’t necessarily music to her ears. And though she wanted to stand and make him understand, she sat on her ass and sighed.
Now it was all backchannel noise. “Yeah, probably. Whatever.”
It was like time extending into a long passage between them. He, a plus-forty-year-old man with enough baggage to fill a cargo ship, a generous love for booze, a steady fire-breathing girlfriend who had him by his financial and literal balls at nearly all times.
"Well, now I know you've hit rock bottom," he said unceremoniously, switching to scotch, old friend. "You're not a monster, Skye." He looked at her. "Sins of the father -- it doesn't work like that."
Her hand stretched out over the length of space between them for even if her fumbling and half-hearted attempt at seducing Tony Stark had been batted down, she still wanted the cold comfort of alcohol that would lubricate her joints and make it easy to feel less.
“Yeah it does, Tony. We’re sitting inside yours and I’m living inside mine. It sucks, but it does. And we can’t escape it, but bully for trying.”
For the first time in a long time, he had nothing to say to that. Take a picture, world.
"My father," he said, starting to put a few cubes of ice in his glass and then giving up the whole ordeal by grabbing the bottle by the neck and bringing it to his lips. "Gave Nazi scientists asylum in SHIELD because he saw value in them still. That was his greatest talent -- not seeing people for who they were, but what they could contribute."
And in spite of his earlier words, he held out the bottle to her. Is that what I am?
She was a little too kind to say anything to him about the amount of HYDRA he secreted beneath his own roof. From Bucky Barnes to Grant Ward, she was also doubly sure she didn’t know half of what he was doing. But what she did know was the burn of scotch in her throat and in her belly when she put the bottle to her lips.
Sometimes, you just gotta slide.
“So you contributed all you could, to get him to notice.”
“I don’t really know what he was expecting. The Second Coming of Steve Rogers, maybe.” He grinned, mirthless. “So, what’s it going to be, 084? Had any urges yet to just throttle someone? That kind of rage is personal. You must have to really want it, and mean it.”
“About five minutes ago, I wanted to throttle you?” She lifted the bottle, as if to say that this offered a stay of execution on his part. “But the truth is I saw him choke a girl who is totally …” she shook her head. “The records must be true. So, I should probably take my booze-fueled self and go lever a little hatred at somebody to see where it gets me.” Ward could put the puppy out. I just need to see if feeling is first.
A breath.
“Also you just totally Harry Pottered me. Don’t think I didn’t bag what you raked, Bellatrix Lestrange.”
"Anger isn't...everything I have ever done that mattered was done out of anger. I guess we can't all be noble and pure superheroes. Whoops." He walked over to her, slid his hand over the glass neck of the bottle and filched it from her hand. "But if you think that's what's gonna tip you over the edge, well, it cuts both ways, sometimes."
“That’s why you were always my favorite,” she said, even now the filter a little more off than she’d ever meant for it to be off. Hence the cosplay. That one time. But in the midst of this relatively bitter and hatefully honest conversation, she didn’t want to go that light. Especially not when at that time, she could ever imagine sitting in shop and trying to goad him into … something. Every girl had tried to bag her a Stark. And, she was pretty sure, she was the first one who could boast of failing.
“Yeah I guess even Jekyll and Hyde knew when they were useful to one another. Either that or I’m thinking of the sad ginger in the Sean Connery movie. Either way …” she pitched forward with the loss of the bottle, letting one shoulder roll up.
“It fits.”
His hand curled over her shoulder, steady. "A) I haven't seen Mr Hyde yet, and there's no need to give yourself the killer poke to find him. B) I believe Doctor Banner has that literary figure pegged, so get your own. Have you considered Hester Prynne? and C)...C is your taste in everything is totally fucked up." Movies and men.
“Oh my fucking God, Hawthorne? Whatever. Something tells me I’m a little more Frankenstein anyway, so that’s cool.”
Coiled now, she briefly wondered if launching at Tony would be grounds for immediate dismissal from SHIELD and the tower. And instead of letting her baser instinct take over, she grinned. “Yeah, sure it is.” And then, a wink -- “Look, why don’t you skedaddle. I’ll just hang out with JARVIS, mess up your liquor cabinet and sleep it off in the corner. No biggie.”
“J, if she touches anything, release the sleeping gas.” He was kidding. Maybe. “See that couch over there?” He nodded to the far corner, dimmer lighting, full plush rug, and a bookshelf of all things. “That’s the most comfortable couch in the entire world. I’ve slept on that couch more than in any other bed on the face of this planet.”
He looked her in the eye once, thought about other times and places, and then slid his hand down from her shoulder to enclose around her hand, bringing it between them. “And Skye? Frankenstein was the doctor.”
With that, he let go, curled the bottle of scotch into his chest, and left.
Skye determined that, in the course of the night, she’d think. She’d think on all that.