Saving Grace

Nine

The hearing in D.C. didn't really go as well as Tony hoped.

Senator Stern led the whole thing, and he wanted Tony to hand over the Iron Man technology to the military — as if he would ever be stupid enough to do that. Other countries could get and/or copy the technology, and then where would America be?

That's right — screwed.

Then, Stern thought he was gonna get Rhodey on his side, which obviously didn't work. And then Justin Hammer, the CEO of Hammer Industries and Tony's rival, decided to throw his hat in the ring. Tony just brought up footage of him and the US government attempting to recreate his Iron Man tech.

As if anyone could do that any time soon. If anyone is going to do it, it'll be Grace in a few years. He wouldn't be surprised if she did it before she graduated high school; she is his daughter after all.

And she's going to have to live without her father any day now.

As he examines the palladium core that's slowly killing him, Jarvis is giving him the rundown of what the meeting in D.C. did for him in the press. At least they aren't talking about Grace anymore.

Grace.

Happy and Pepper will be there for her when he's gone. They were the last time. She'll be fine.

But the company — her future — might not be. Not with the government after his tech, not with just any person who would decide to step in as CEO.

As he's thinking, Pepper walks in.

"Is this a joke?" she asks, carrying a clipboard and seeming very angry.

Tony finishes his drink in one gulp. "What?"

"What are you thinking?" Her heels click on the floor as she walks towards him where he sits behind his desk. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking I'm busy-" he rolls away from the desk and turns in his chair "-and you're angry about something." He stands and begins walking to the other end of his lab. "Do you have the sniffles? I don't wanna get sick."

She follows him, ignoring his question. "Did you just donate our entire modern art collection to the- to the-"

"Boy Scouts of America? Yeah." He messes with the digital figures projected around him as if on an invisible screen, manipulating them — mostly to give him something to do with his hands. "This is a worth-while organization — I didn't physically check the crates, but, basically, yes. And it's not our collection, it's my collection, no offense."

"No," Pepper says, still following Tony as he walks. "You know what? I'm think I'm actually entitled to say our collection, considering the time that I put in — at least five years curating that."

"You did?" Tony says. "It was a tax write-off. I needed that." He also needed to get it off his hands. No sense in keeping it if he was going to die soon. Might as well give it to someone who can use it.

Pepper sighs. "You know, there's only about 8,011 things that I really need to talk to you about." She continues following him into another part of the lab, where his robots are being kept.

"Dum E," Tony says to one of the robots, lightly hitting it, "Hey, stop spacing out. The Bridgeport's already machining that part."

Pepper stops. "The Expo is a gigantic waste of time."

Tony puts his hands on her shoulders as he walks past her. "I need you to wear a surgical mask until you're feeling better. Is that okay?" He's already dying, so who knows what a cold would do to him.