heartless ; 𝐭. 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐤 , 𝟏

12 - late night confessions

august 2016

"So you're saying Captain America is tearing apart the Avengers?" Jack shook her head in mock disbelief, a smirk lining her face. "Doesn't that go against his moral code or something?"

They were in the kitchen, having started the afternoon with some day drinking, which Tony had definitively suggested. The serum had healing effects that kept the asset from being intoxicated, so she'd hoped to get some extra information out of his slippery lips after downing a few beers. To his credit, he had a high tolerance for alcohol, making this process much more slow-going.

Sitting across from her, Tony nodded, a grimace molding his face into an expression of unmistakable frustration as he gripped his beer bottle tightly. "He's got his head so far up his ass that he doesn't see the damage we've done—are still doing—to the world."

The asset tilted her head. Sounds like he's got some insight into our problem. He might not be a complete idiot when it comes to cleansing the earth of all its threats. She adjusted her stance and crossed her arms. "I thought you were saving the world, though."

Her--what was he? Target? Victim? Roommate? He rolled his eyes and swallowed roughly. "Thanks, Jack. But it turns out the people saving the world are the same people making this world the dangerous place it is." He took a long swig, his eyes losing their usual mischievous light as he washed it down his throat.

Jack--Asset 53--felt a twinge twist her stomach in knots at the sight. She pushed it away as she asked, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Which part?" Tony stared at her with a certain type of fatigue in his body that it was obviously more than just physical stress. The past few months, all the time he'd spent away from the tower, it was taking a real toll on him. His eyes were never always alert, and his movements, though still sharp like usual, were laced with exhaustion. Tony Stark was running on fumes.

The ghost leaned her elbow on the kitchen countertop and maintained eye contact with him, searching for any clue that would give her information to pass on to her Hydra superiors. Or Emile Boucher, whoever ended up being in charge. She supposed this action looked romantic to him, or maybe he didn't read it as anything at all. "All of it. Captain America and the United Nations. What's your move, Stark?"

He pondered over it for a second, staring into the neck of his beer bottle. Then, with a long sigh followed by emotionless words, "We need to be reigned in. It's the only way."

That's something we can agree on, she cocked an eyebrow as she realized it. He may have been a threat to Hydra at some point, but he claimed to have the same goals. Take away the uncontrolled power of the Avengers. But of course, his idea of solving the issue was not going to do anything. She still had her mission to complete. Only a few more weeks until they came for her.

Boucher's voice rang in her head. Things are changing.

Asset 53 let herself, just for a moment, zero in on Stark's face. His eyes were empty and his cheeks were sallow from lack of sleep. Bruises peppered his face like freckles, some only small inconveniences, and some so large they looked like stains on a white shirt. One particularly brutal one enveloped his right eye. When she'd asked about it, he'd only shrugged and said with more nonchalance than she thought possible, "I got shot in the eye."

He noticed her staring this time and stared back, his habit of making everything a challenge failing to fade away even in his most stressful times. Tony Stark could have anything and everything thrown at him, but he still stood again. He refused to be knocked down.

That was why he was so frustrating.

Over the last two months, even with her packing on the seduction to levels of unmatched ridiculousness, he'd never done anything apart from peer at her like she was a new lab experiment to test things out on. He'd rarely said anything that could be perceived as flirtatious, and it was making her skin crawl.