better than your dreams//tony stark

♡eight♡

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."

Charles M. Schulz

With the little show Tony just put on Fury has decided we can't sit in the shadows anymore. Tony's recklessness isn't only putting his life at risk but other peoples as well. My own life included. Whether I'm ready or not I'm going to have to come clean to Tony about working for SHIELD.

Tony and Fury are sitting across from each other in a booth at a doughnut place. I walk in dressed in my shield uniform.

"We've secured the perimeter, but I don't think we should hold it for too much longer," I tell fury.

"Huh." Tony looks over the top of glasses. "You're fired."

I smile at him as I sit next to Fury. "That's not up to you."

"Tony, I want you to meet Agent Panagos," Fury says.

"Hi," Tony says.

"I'm a SHIELD shadow. Once we knew you were ill, I was tasked to you by Director Fury," I explain.

"I suggest you apologize," Tony states.

I roll my eyes.

"You've been very busy. You made Pepper your CEO; you're giving away all your stuff. You let Rhodey fly away with your suit. Now, if I didn't know better..." I start.

Tony cuts me off, "You don't know better. I didn't give it to him. He took it."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. He took it? You're Iron Man and he just took it? The little brother walked in there, kicked your ass and took your suit?" Fury turns to look at me. "Is that possible?"

"Well, according to Tony's database security guidelines, there are redundancies to prevent unauthorized usage," I explain.

"What do you want from me?" Tony asks.

"What do we want from you? What do you want from me?" Fury counters. I get up from the table. "You have become a problem, a problem I have to deal with. Contrary to your belief, you are not the center of my universe. I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region to deal with." I return with an injection. "Hit him," Fury tells me.

Tony looks at me. "Oh, God, are you gonna steal my kidney and sell it?" I stab him in the neck and the rash goes down. I take a seat next to him. "Could you please not do anything awful for five seconds? What did you just do to me?"

"What did we just do for you? That's lithium dioxide. It's gonna take the edge off. We're trying to get you back to work," Fury explains.

"Give me a couple of boxes of that. I'll be right as rain," Tony states.

"It's not a cure, it just abates the symptoms," I explain.

Fury looks at Tony's neck. "Doesn't look like it's gonna be an easy fix."

"Trust me, I know. I'm good at this stuff. I've been looking for a suitable replacement for palladium. I've tried every combination, every permutation of every known element," Tony informs him.

"Well, I'm here to tell you, you haven't tried them all," Fury offers.

We head back to Tony's house. I sit out on the deck with Tony and Fury.

"That thing in your chest is based on unfinished technology," Fury states.

"No, it was finished. It has never been particularly effective until I miniaturized it and put it in my..." Tony starts.

"No. Howard said the arc reactor was the stepping stone to something greater. He was about to kick off an energy race that was gonna dwarf the arms race. He was onto something big, something so big that it was gonna make the nuclear reactor look like a triple-A battery," Fury explains.