Shadowplay | Tony Stark

SEVEN - BETRAYAL

"Stark! We're good to go, leave him, he's been hurt enough."

Tony's iron-plated palm was raised towards the face of a man sat bloody and bruised in the corner of the crumbling police station.

Filing cabinets had been turned upside down with useless information tossed aside in search of the material Tony and the team had ascended on the small town in search of, finding everything they needed locked on hard drives and USBs after pretty more torturing the information out of the officers.

Tony didn't like hurting people, none of The Avengers did, but people who worked for HYDRA weren't equal to innocents, not even close.

"Fine." Tony grumbled, lowering his hand and turning his back on the quivering wreck of a man, sparing his life.

It had taken two months to pull together a strategy on how best to retrieve the HYDRA intel that Tony had missed on his first visit, only realising what else was stored in the small town after stumbling upon the armoury full of weapons that made his skin crawl even more than it did thinking about the things Stark Industries used to manufacture.

He had taken a grilling from Fury amongst others once returning to New York for heading out alone on what could've been an incredibly dangerous mission, though all was forgotten once Tony produced the initial background files he'd picked up, as well as revealing the information he'd found out about what was happening under the surface in the sleepy town just outside of Chicago.

He left out the part about finding himself a place to stay with a single mother and her son after crashing his suit, choosing to tell the team that he slept and worked in an abandoned mechanics garage he found in a town a couple of miles over for the three days he went AWOL.

Mila Campbell and her son had crossed Tony's mind a handful of times in the two months since going their separate ways. He often wished he could've said thank you properly in some kind of way, paying for a trip to Disneyland or covering her bills for a year, something, anything, to show how truly grateful he was.

It still made Tony cringe whenever he thought about the night he decided to try his luck with Mila, feeling nauseous at the entitlement from himself and equally the belittlement that his subconscious had  bestowed on her in that moment.

He was used to women falling at his feet, not having to try any harder than looking a girl in the eye before they were crawling into bed with him. Tony hated himself for viewing a woman who had been nothing but kind to him, generous and warm from the goodness of her heart, in the same way he'd looked at women who wanted nothing more than the right to brag about spending the night with him after it was all over.

It was foolish and degrading, and although he knew that had Tristan not cried upstairs that things would've unravelled very differently, he still felt ashamed, hoping that Mila had a positive lasting impression of him rather than a tainted one that matched the media.

"Did you hear me? Let's go, Tony."

Natasha was stood with her hand on her hip in the doorframe, staring at Tony with a raised brow. She had successfully taken out an entire room of police officers while the rest of the team secured the area, trying not to kill anyone while they did it, but not caring if the fatalities were those working for HYDRA.

"I heard you, I just have to do something first."

"No, no you don't," Nat shook her head as Tony walked past her, his helmet retracted and his eyes vacant, mind occupied with an inner thought, "No more sneaking off without telling us what's going on."

"Why?" He said, his face changing from empty to a familiar smirk, "It's what I do best. See you back in New York."

Before Natasha could say anything else, Tony had disappeared over the tops of the buildings, leaving a soft trail of smoke in his wake. She shook her head, though not in disbelief as nothing Tony Stark did seemed to shock her anymore, but in acceptance instead.