Too Little Too Late

Pepper Potts / Natasha Romanov / Christine Everhart

Christine was lucky, very much so. Tony Stark had accepted her invitation for an interview of some kind with her. She had done things going through the proper channels, mainly asking James Rhodes. Tony would not do any other. She knew it was already some kind of miracle that he was willing to do this one. He owed them nothing after what the media had done to him. The event would be held in front of the compound, on the grassy patch outside. Tony didn't want to be in a closed room, full of people. The weather was good anyway, sunny but not too warm. Perfect. Of course, she had not been able to avoid other journalists to come and film everything, standing in the public but they had been warned that Stark would not be answering to any of them. Her colleagues didn't argue with that. The invasion was still very fresh in everybody's mind. Nothing like narrowly escaping death to put everything back in perspective. Especially when they owed their lives to the one they had spent so much time putting lower than earth.

The area was filled with U.N. personnel. It seemed that everybody was doing their best to protect the ground. Nobody from the outside could enter without an invitation. Some people from the inside were gently told not to go to that part of the premise. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that everybody was trying to avoid the confrontation between Iron Man and Captain America. The journalist in her would love for that to happen in front of her cameras. The old her anyway. Now, not so much. Of course, it would be quite the scoop. The price would be too much to pay though. Both for her and for Tony Stark. He had paid a lot already.

Her team was waiting for him to arrive now. Everything was ready and double checked. Tony didn't ask for a list of preapproved questions, surprisingly. He had always been very spontaneous during his previous press conferences. The "I am Iron Man" moment was historic now. For a man who had been raised under the public gaze, he was shockingly honest in those kinds of moments. That made him an easy target when really it shouldn't have been. We should all be wary of the people whose secrets had secrets. Tony could have become a very guarded person or at least cautious when it came to the media. Now to think about it, the only secrets Tony really kept were the creation of Ultron and what happened in Siberia. Christine wondered how things would have gone if the defensive android had worked properly. Or if the Avengers had been whole.

A beam of bright light suddenly appeared on the stage. Tony was front and centre, like the old times. Dark Armani suit that fitted him perfectly, blue tinted glasses to hide his eyes and therefore his thoughts. He went to sit down, crossing his legs, his posture relaxed. Christine knew that was a front, an act to feel in control. She would need to not to trigger a fight or flight reaction out of him. It was easy for him to vanish in the middle of that interview thanks to his new technology. Something they would need to talk about actually, all those new gadgets he had.

The interview started smoothly. Christine told him again how sorry she was about what the press did to him. He smiled warily but didn't comment any more. It wasn't that much against her but not to give the wrong idea that Tony Stark had forgiven them. That it was all in the past and they could start again just like before. The message was simple but received loud and clear. She asked a couple of simple questions, how he was, how he was feeling after such a battle and so on. Tony was charming with a maturity about him they didn't know about. That Stark was new, just like his armour and something in his demeanour let the public at large know that he would be deadly too.

"Dr Stark? Where on Earth were you during the past two years?" asked Christine.

"Not on Earth actually..." answered Tony with a mysterious smile.

"What do you mean?"

Tony pointed to the sky. Actually, to a particular part of the blue sky. Her eyes followed the finger and she gasped. She then blurted something about the moon, incredulously.